A Tourist at Home

Sometimes it's fun to be a tourist in your own city. I'm the kind of tourist who tries to blend in with whatever place I'm visiting in order to see the real place, not the manufactured directed version that you are fed as a slavish tourist. The hardest part about trying to fit in in a place that you have never been before is not getting lost, so being a tourist in the city that you already know is easy.

So, in true Bristol tourism style, here is Clifton Suspension Bridge and its surroundings in the late autumn sunshine. It's an almost impossible structure, built in the mid-nineteenth century across the deep Avon Gorge, which itself has seen more than its fair share of people jumping to their deaths from the bridge above. The best tale of this bridge that I have heard is that of Sarah Ann Henley, who, intent on ending her life in 1885, threw herself off it only to be buoyed up by her many petticoats, which acted as a parachute and saved her life, guiding her down gently. She lived into her eighties.

I was tempted to wear something voluminous in her honour, but settled for this instead, my vintage Betty Barclay autumn dress. Its length would make it a great summer dress, were it not for the long sleeves. They are too warm for summer and too cold for winter, but perfect for sunny autumn evenings like this. I like that it is cut in a classic shape in a classic colour but that the camel is broken up by the flashes of fushia in the wings of the birds. I bought it in Camden Market in London, which happens in fact to be the place most often thought of by Londoners as a horrible tourist nightmare – I do still go, though.

Dress: vintage Betty Barclay
Cardigan: Topshop
Tights: M&S
Shoes: Long Tall Sally

Burnt Sienna

1. Garance Dore 2.Hanneli Mustaparta 3. Sonia Rykiel resort '11

Burnt sienna is a rustic and rich name for a colour, officially borne of burning a specific type of clay, but unavoidably conjuring images of Italy! I would never even have known its name were it not for Ben's box of oil paints, all carefully labelled with their official titles. Whatever you know it as though, this colour seems to be appearing in all the right places at the moment, and with a name like burnt sienna, it just must be the perfect colour for the approaching season.

There are a lot of these slightly muted hues around at the moment – dusty blue and mustard are two of my other favourites. They have a warm, but almost 'non-colour'-ness about them which I think must be perfect for paler skin tones in the unavoidably even paler autumn and winter.

Somewhere between a too-dull brown and a too-harsh red, I see it going perfectly with grey or cream ribbed tights or soft woollen jumpers, and maybe even with a splash of royal blue as in Garance's picture above. I love the way that Sonia Rykiel styles hers with creams and a daring red highlight. Hanelli's blouse comes from Zara, unbelievably, and goes so well with easy denim.

All Topshop 1. Dress £45/$71 2. Blouse £40/$65 3. Top £28/$45

Topshop's selection is surprisingly extensive. The above are my favourites – the blouse in the middle would go perfectly with faded blue jeans or cut offs; the beautifully draped dress with those ribbed grey tights again and maybe a cosy wool cardigan, and the loose top would be great with skinny black jeans and Sonia Rykiel style red lips.

Left: Vintage 60s dress $30 Top: Librarian blouse $18 Bottom: Burnt umber dress $34

Etsy has the best and most original selection. These three are my vintage favourites – if money were no object, I'd have them all! The polka dotted blouse is such a playful take on quite a sophisticated colour, while the beautiful vintage dress on the left is very sophisticated and is another that would look great with grey. The neckline on the dress on the right is so Joan Holloway, and so pretty. These are grand potential autumn staples – a little nod to the fallen leaves.

Love Me or Leave Me

Somehow, I've managed to leave at least a little bit of time between posting editorials shot by Kalle Gustafsson. They're like Zara lookbooks – you want to post one every month, but have to limit yourself to one per season. This one I think is perfect for mid-September, that period when the light is still bright, the clocks haven't quite gone back and when it is getting chillier and nearing time to merrily light the fire or tentatively turn on the radiators. I already feel resigned to finding another irresistible postable beauty for the deepest depths of December though.

This selection comes from the Swedish Fashion Tale magazine, and has a much colder feel than the last editorial of his that I posted (the beautiful Late Summer) but the attempt at a narrative style is almost the same: female models staring into the lens, hard and haughty, or looking emotional in beautiful clothes.

All images from SkarpAgent.se

The colours are true icy autumn and winter, and remind me how lovely soft blues and greys are, as well as plaid, wool and dark flannel. The makeup here is also typically winter – and unashamedly 60s Bardot – dark eyeliner and resultant smoky tears. In spring and summer I am minimal with makeup, but brash autumn and winter (I now remember) means more of everything – eyeliner especially, although I'm not sure I would want to wear quite that much.

In terms of fashion, this, I suppose, is neither new nor groundbreaking, but in a time when we do nothing but look to the past for inspiration, who really needs that? I love the neckline on the navy blue jumper on the boat, the layering of wool, the denim and, especially, those brown leather lace-up boots. Original this is not, but there is plenty to admire, inspire and take away, not in terms of new season trends perhaps, but certainly in terms of real, useful and achievable style.

Brambles

Blustery early autumn and its abundance of fruit, nourished by sunshine all summer and weighing on the ends of heavy branches by September, inspires me to start baking more than any other season. There isn't really any choice – there's more fruit to be picked than anyone could ever eat, and it would be terrible to let it go to waste. I already have a bag full of Bramley apples waiting to be tarte tatin-ed, and am terrified that they'll spoil before I get around to it.

Crumbles and pies are great desserts to make with autumn fruit, but I really like the idea of being able to preserve a little bit of summer in a little jar for the winter. Bramble (blackberry if you are anywhere other than Scotland) and apple jelly is the perfect way! This jelly is amazing on floury homemade scones or thick toast, especially if you, like me, still childishly dislike the 'bits' in jam.

I made the jelly and the scones last week – they are so smooth and creamy together – and now I have three little jars of summer all stored up, squirrel like.

The recipe, in case you fancy it, is on my Tumblr.

Sessun AW10

I have been checking French label Sessùn's website at least twice a week lately in anticipation of their autumn collection. Created by designer Emma Francois as far back as 1995, the label was conceived originally with Latin American influences in mind, but seems to have whittled said influences down in order to concentrate on fantastic material quality and cut. What's more, Sessun is sold in Urban Outfitters and ASOS, and is surprisingly affordable for a label with such a beautiful lookbook.

I definitely have a thing for faded, hazy, beach location lookbooks, as it turns out, and there were many many of them for spring, but this is the first one I have seen for autumn. I admire the atmosphere of it, although it does seem to take centre stage. The clothes, sidelined though they may be, are both simple and complex in their details, patterns, cut and materials.

All images from www.sessun.com

The long-sleeved dress recalls what the high street often forgets – that winters are cold and cardigans tiresome and negates the need for one. My childhood shopping trips with my mother around this time of year were always punctuated by exclamations such as: 'that's far too cold, you'll freeze!' and nowadays my internal shopping monologue is irritatingly similar. Both of them, though (my mother and my monologue) would be satisfied by this dress, and indeed the red coat, reminiscent of rowan berries and cosy-looking enough for snow.

I am drawn to the breton top, which seems almost to be an inverted version of itself, with thicker stripes of dark and thinner stripes of light. Tartan trousers are likely beyond me but those shoes seem to be a great solution to the dilemma of how to wear boots with tapered trousers.

It's a pity that the models' top halves are showcased the most here, as a quick look on the Urban Outftters website is enough to show you that they do some pretty great trousers, such as these ones, here. Also I would love to see what the hemline of the zipped and belted long-sleeved dress looks like, and how they styled it. The upside of this, though, is the exposure that their perfect autumn hairstyles get instead: all achievable twists and bobby-pinned turns, a modern take on 40s hair is the perfect antidote to the vast exposure that the beehive is receiving. All in, a thoroughly French, and thoroughly covetable, lookbook.

Beautiful Wednesdays

Everything in the Chloe Pre Fall collection is very nice, despite being too expensive and mostly too impractical for any actual person. It's so easily copyable though that it has me rooting around in my wardrobe to find my old school kilt (posh Scottish boarding school, kilts required, don't ask) which I think just happens to be in that exact tartan. I love a felicitous coincidence.

Images from Style.com

It's so vintage Chanel, 1920s and 1940s all rolled into one that I can't help but feel that they pilfered all of my fashion influences and made them into a collection (of perfectly wearable shapes) that I can't afford on purpose. Still, it is lovely to look at, no?

* * *

Skirts n Shirts

It has been quite a hectic week, one way or another, which is my way of excusing myself for not posting since last Sunday. I had a very long, very dry edit to finish which I had intended to do while I was on Islay, but somehow forgot that it was meant to be a holiday and that consequently I really wouldn't want to go near it. So last week was spent indoors (I'm not sure I've been outside since we got back) editing like crazy and fighting the author's semi-colon addiction.

Happily, no matter what I'm working on, I'm always thinking about something else, and in this case that something else was the important issue of skirts with shirts. I'm not talking about any prissy, straight-edged, corporate pencil skirt and cheapo shirt combination here, but lovely floaty 70s a-lines paired with lovely crispy open-collared tailoring – a perfect balance.

Marc Jacobs AW10 – Margaret Howell AW10


Threadbearer (my new favourite style blog) – LiebeMarlene (my general favourite style blog)

I love what shirts do to necks and what high waist a-lines do to waists and calves. I love contrasting floaty with sharp. I love wearing a good balanced outfit. This pairing cuts such an unusual vintage figure and is perfect for the last of the summer days when it's too cold for short sleeves and too hot for tights. As someone who is always cold, I try this a lot in the summer as I think it suits my figure – see here and here. I think though, especially looking at Margaret Howell's AW lookbook, that it's a shape that can adapt amazingly well to any weather and any season.

Whit NY and I Shouldn't be Writing This

Image from Whit NY Facebook page

I really ought not to be writing this, particularly as it is 12.36pm and I have fourteen more pages of a book edit to go before I finish it. I really want to have it done by this evening.

Anyway, it's freezing cold in my flat, and freezing cold in Bristol and was so freezing cold in some places in Britain that there was snow yesterday. Consequently, all thoughts of summer have departed, and all I am interested in, clothes wise at least, is autumn.

In my procrastination, I stumbled upon Whit NY, which is all brand new and launches its autumn collection in June this year, I think. It's not the most exciting thing I've ever set eyes on, but everything seems to be quite 'quirky-basic' (which is a phrase I just made up) and useful I guess. There are navy and white polka dots too, which somehow always seem to draw me in.

Images from www.luckymag.com

What really caught my eye was the brown skirt/stripey breton top outfit, which is actually one of my own current favourite combinations (minus the pretzel hat), which will likely make an appearance here at some stage.

Anyway, it's pretty and fun, and has NY in the title, which always has me interested. Whitney Pozgay, the designer, also has a blog, which you can see here, if you are so inclined! Now I really must get back to matters of grammar.

Autumn?

Image: www.fischerclothing.com

Image: Refinery 29

Autumn and spring are my two favourite seasons – I like the way they are neither one nor t'other. I feel as though I need an excuse to post a post on an autumn collection, but if Rhiannon can do it, I'm sure I can too (yes?). Saying that, this is a particularly springy autumn collection (bare legs shock!) so I don't feel too bad.

Anyway, I'm always happy to ape any era beginning with 19 and ending in 0s, but the 1940s are my absolute favourite, especially come autumn time, and this Fischer autumn lookbook seems to just dive straight into my 1940s delight and swim about in it a bit ... sedately, mind.

Images: Fischer Clothing and Refinery 29 respectively

I love the surroundings I think more than I love the clothes (all the wood, the jars and the range especially). They just seem quite atmospheric to me – kind of nervous and hopeful.

(I'm suddenly aware that all the blogs I read are from the US, where autumn is not autumn, but fall. Do they still use 'autumnal'? It's almost onomatopoeic to me.)