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Lucky Me, I Joined The Club

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Instagram is a very brilliant place, not only is it a never-ending orbit of pretty pictures from the whole wide world, it’s also an ace place to find out about new people and things to be a part of; and by far one of THE coolest things I’ve discovered is The Lucky Dip Club. Now, I’ve been having heart shaped eyes at this club for a long while, it’s run by a gal called Leona in Hackney and this is what happens; you get online at 7am on the first day of each month and if you’re super fast on your typing, you can get your name down for a box to be delivered to your door…a box full of the cutest treats based around a different sweet theme each month, it’s basically like finding THE BEST trinkets from creative types but without having to hunt them out…Leona finds them for you and bundles them up in a box. Then, PLOP! Through your letterbox comes a surprise present JUST FOR YOU, YES, ALL FOR MEEEE! You cannot overestimate the element of surprise, to get a present through your door and unwrap it is RIDiculously exciting, it’s like allowing yourself an extra sneaky birthday, my kitty Walter, heck, even he was buzzing too to see what was inside! This was my first box (I’m not generally awake at 7am on any morning but a sunny August morn made me hit the website JUST in time…BOY was I chuffed with myself!!) and the best thing about the Lucky Dip Club is that it makes you feel like you’re part of a very cool gang, a gang that LOVES cuteness and treats! A one-off box is £20, or you can have a long-standing subscription for £18 a month and each box contains a personalised item…Oooof it makes you feel very spesh indeed. I can’t rate this thang enough, it’s a little box of wonderfulness and you can just feel that it’s been put together with love. AND their branding has polka-dots too, just like my Prim! A real treat. Boom, I’m hooked, you wanna join the gang?

So, what was inside my box? The theme for August was ‘A Geek Girl’s Guide To Travel’ and this is the load of loveliness I received; a cute as heck newsletter, a pencil case with my initial S on the zip, a camera necklace, a pack of note-cards, stickers, a fabric patch and a postcard…..Hurrah for Lucky Dip Club!

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I Dare You To Pick One Decade

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If you haven’t seen this super cute video yet then, firstly; ‘duh? Where ya been Gurl?’ and secondly, let me be the one to show it to you, it’s totally fun! A short, sharp, shot of fashion history in a two minute vid, kinda like playing dress up dolls without any actual effort. Ace. This sweet treat shows the key look of each decade from the 1920’s to the now and although the looks are kinda cliche, the people at mode.com have got it pretty spot on in showcasing the most coveted trends from each era. So many looks to love, the question is, which decade’s look would you go for if you could only choose one? If you like, HAD to choose one era and stick to it for evermore? Ummm, I’ll take the 30’s. And a bit of the 70’s. And some of the 80’s. And a bit of the 20’s. And some 50’s. And a touch of 60’s. Eeesh. #toomuchtolove

 

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Cooking Cocktails- The Breaking Bad Pop-Up Bar

ABQ London, a 3 month summer pop-up bar themed around THE best TV show ever, Breaking Bad, is where The Boy and I went for Date Night last week.This event (named after the US state of Albuquerque where BB is set) is the sweet brainchild of Locappy and the creatives behind pop-up Annie The Owl which hit London in the Spring, and it’s pretty ace. Parked up in a slightly random and derelict car park in Hackney is a massive American RV just like the one Walter and Jesse cooked Meth in, cue; EXCITEMENT. Once inside you have a small team in their yellow Hazmat suits helping you ‘cook’ blue cocktails in the ‘lab’; think glass beakers, dry ice, white powder and test tubes, all under the crystal meth coloured blue light. Fab. You get two hours in the van, around 20 people at a time, and you get two generous cocktails which you cook with your team. It was kinda kooky and a little low budget but that made it feel all the more authentic and like a great secret discovery. Given the brilliant idea of it AND the massive cult following of the show, I’m kinda pleased that it wasn’t done on a big grand corporate scale with mass coverage and big budgets, It was cool and had an off the radar charm to it. I can’t really think of how they could have made it better, we concluded that the only thing would have been a fake raid on the van while we cooked; alas, we didn’t get busted. We booked our tickets way in advance for this and it’s limited slots meant it sold out pretty quick, but, they’ve just announced that they’re releasing another batch of tickets very soon, so if you fancy playing at being a dirty Meth maker this Summer, get booking and cooking! abq10101abq3abq4abq5abq6abq8abq9abq-london-26

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Audrey Bored-rey?

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Now, I LOVE a good photography exhibition. If it’s about fashion and iconic women, I’m there, standing as a wide eyed pedestrian, my gaze fixed on glossy captures of beauty. And, when I say beauty, I mean life, in all it’s glamour, gristle, realism and fantasy, it’s all beautiful and photography shows us that better than anything. When I saw that there was an exhibition of unseen Audrey Hepburn photos at The National Portrait Gallery, I figured I’d pop it on my list. The website said to book ahead as demand will be high and so, even though it’s not something I usually bother doing, in an attempt to be organised and to force punctuality upon myself I dutifully booked myself a 1pm slot on a Tuesday for £10. Most galleries suggest pre-booking as it creates the idea that it’s gonna be popular but I never guess it really means it, but, when I arrived a little early on the day, goodness, it was busy! It was in it’s first week, and there was another big free exhibition going on but ooof, it was heaving and they were crazy strict with time slots, all the slots up until 5pm that day had already sold out, so in this instance I was pretty pleased with my pre-planning. When the clock hit 1pm I went straight into the exhibition and it was as busy in there as it was the rest of the gallery, so busy you could hardly get to see the photos, jeepers! I couldn’t believe just how many people wanted to get their peepers on the portraits. Obviously Audrey is lovely and very pretty to look at but, crikey, what made this so special? Well, I still don’t know. The pictures were nice, many were very small and there wasn’t any which I felt were anything new, it all kinda felt like I’d seen it before. I assumed that it would get more magnificent as I went round, it was all very beautiful and a sweet insight into Audrey, but, I have to admit, I was a little under-awed. And then, it came to an end, after 3 very small rooms! A nice selection of images of a great icon, but, meh, I was left wanting more. I like Audrey, she’s not one of my most favourite girls, but I appreciate her and enjoy watching her, but these images all seemed a little stale. Maybe because I go to so many fashion photography exhibitions, my eyes have gotten used to bigger things, I like my photos in galleries to be huge, so big you feel small in comparison, so big you can see every eyelash and every pore of the skin, so you feel you’re getting something that you wouldn’t get if you just flicked through the accompanying book. I like to see a character in the images, a change from one image to the next, I guess maybe the simplicity of Audrey and her image alone is the beauty of this exhibition. I know these are portraits rather than fashion photographs, I just think I hoped for more fashion and variety in them. And they were all so small! I didn’t love this exhibition, but I did like it. I just felt it was a little over-hyped. The cynic in me thinks that maybe the estate of Audrey Hepburn needed a boost as many of the images were on loan from the family, and I see that there’s a new Audrey Hepburn cookbook hittin’ the book stores by her son with all her favorite recipes. Totally fair play, if Audrey Hepburn had been my Mama, I sure would be shouting about it all the damn time.

These shots were the ones that stood out to me;

  1. Audrey Hepburn by Philippe Halsman for LIFE Magazine, 1954 (above)
  2. Audrey as Ondine by Philippe Halsman, 1954
  3. Wait Until Dark by Howell Conant, 1967
  4. Audrey for Vanity Fair by Steven Meisel, 1991

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Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of An Icon is at The National Portrait Gallery until 18th October 2015

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