the next party

petite kitchen

Okay that's it. I've made up my mind. Instead of the fancy dinner party I planned on throwing - just for kicks - I'm going to have a breakfast instead. I'm going to invite friends over and cook from some of my favourites (Nigel, Nigella and Sophie, of course) and treat my guests to muesli and muffins and mugs of tea and neverending gossip because breakfast is the best, most heartwearming, most exciting of meals isn't it? Because you have the whole of the day ahead of you, because it could go any way, because nothing is impossible after you've had muesli and yoghurt, because it might make you feel like james bond for a day, and who doesn't want that? This is happening.

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disappointment and delight

"The modern strawberry is a tale of disappointment and delight. I have learned to treat each punnet of really good berries I encounter as a box of fleeting, precious jewels, a treat to be enjoyed with unalloyed pleasure; no cream, sugar or splash of Beaujolais, just the warm berry in all its scarlet glory. That perfect fruit is a rare find, but once you chance upon it life seems, for an instant, to stand still. Eyes closed, you are briefly lost in buttercup meadows, with bees buzzing on the heavy afternoon air. You need to make much of a truly excellent strawberry when you find it.... Once a year I find myself falling for a cardboard punnet of misshapen, organic fruits the loud scarlet-red of a Ferrari. It is then, breathing in their honey-sweet scent, the prickle of their yellow seeds on my lips, that I wish they could always be like this." 

Nigel Slater, Tender Volume 2

The Design Files

When is a strawberry just a strawberry and yet simultaneously not a strawberry at all, much more than a strawberry, really? Only in the hands of Nigel Slater. Some people in the world just get food. Nigel is one of them. And when you find people who get Nigel as much as you do (your mother, you friend, the proprietor of your favourite canteen) then you need to hold on to them for dear life, because you know that these ones are true keepers.

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cinematic style (sort of) - men in uniform from various

Tom Cruise in Top Gun // Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper in The A Team // Jake Gyllenhaal in Jarhead // Josh Hartnett, Ben Affleck and Alec Baldwin in Pearl Harbour // Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman

Who doesn't love a man in uniform?

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cannes cannes cannes

zimbio // grazia uk // le fur coat

There are possibly only two reasons for the fact that I am one of the world's most hopelessly devoted film buffs. Firstly, my mum's Vanity Fair subscription, which kept my elbows-deep in Hollywood drama from the ages of twelve to sixteen. And secondly, the Cannes Film Festival. Teen Vogue used to cover it in the breathless way that only Teen Vogue can ("Kirsten Dunst, her honey locks back to strawberry as she films the latest installment of Spiderman, was every-inch the Sofia Coppola heroine in a backless pistachio satin sheath dress at the premiere of Marie Antoinette!"), and for a teenager that's pretty powerful stuff. There was always a cinderella moment, a belle of the ball (Diane Kruger in that mercury dress!), a class clown, a European up-and-comer (Cannes is, after all, where the world first met Brigitte Bardot) and the hangers on in haute couture. There's something about the excess and the elegance of throwing together world-famous stars and world-famous supermodels and world-famous beautiful people in one gloriously naff Riviera setting and pressing play. You never know what's going to happen. All you know is that the men have to be in tuxedos, even the paparazzi. My life dream is to go to Cannes one day. Until then, well, this year's festival starts today.

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the dream

Rachel Kara
 

A few weeks ago Rachel and I went to Palm Beach and had smoothies at The Boathouse and took our sweaters off and greedily bathed in the sunlight and dreamt of a life lived at the edge of the ocean, north of the beaches. In more ways than one it was so sweet. See the whole post here.

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the everything

Vanessa Jackman // Garance Dore // Margaret Howell S/S 2013

Show me the girl who wouldn't give it all up for the perfect pair of overalls and I'll show you a liar. 

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the home

eefje de coninck

Maybe because I'm facing the prospect of never leaving the house ever again (honours year is slowly taking over my life and I fear I will become a hermit by October), but all I can think about lately is the home. What it's going to look like, what I want to put in it, who I'm going to share it with. I went to Ikea the other day and bought a beautiful bedside tray table, and I filled with all of the things that I normally just throw on the floor (hair ties, books I'm reading, punnets of strawberries) and I think it's not a bad start on the road to this.

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homespun

 I wrote an article on the lovely, down-to-earth, soon to be of New York, New York knitwear designer Katherine Mavridis for Broadsheet. You can read the interview and see more of Rachel's - as per usual - completely breathtaking pictures here. Very soon I'm going to be able to share more of our work together, and I just can't wait. We've been sitting on it for a while now and we're bursting at the seams to show it to people! Watch this space...

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not yet

 garance dore

Thanks for reminding me I still haven't got the perfect leopard print coat yet, Garance.

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indigo

 A kitchen-style buffet breakfast, with food in le creuset pots and freshly-baked baguette sticks poking out of wicker baskets, a library of comfy chairs and wide-spread lounges filled with books on Wan Chai and movies you can take up to your room and watch at your own leisure, floor-to-ceiling windows onto Hong Kong's iconic skyline, a rooftop pool nestled amongst the hills of Victoria Peak, rooms adorned with hand-tiled mosaic mural walls, organic bath products and linen robes, friendly, attentive staff who know your name and smile at you as you leave every morning - sounds like kind of a dream, doesn't it? Well that's the Hotel Indigo, and let me tell you, it really was.

Hotel Indigo, 246 Queen's Road East, Wan Chai, Hong Kong

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