Confessions of a Denim Addict.

And this one is serious. This obsession shows no sign of slowing down. I purchased my fourth denim dress last week. One of my friends actually caught me leaving Topshop and when I refused to let her see the contents of my bag she grabbed it off me and revealed the shame of my latest denim purchase to the streets of Nottingham. I told her it was for my sister and shoved it back in back before escaping red faced and out of breath from the sheer embarrassment of the revelation of my addiction.

In some ways my addiction has benefited me. I am a connoisseur of denim. If a friend wants advice on a certain brand of jeans and how they fit, they come to me. I am an oracle of denim knowledge. You've got to cut me a bit of slack though, part of the reason behind my excessive collection is the fact that half of my jeans simply can no longer be contorted and squeezed onto my seemingly ever expanding thighs and yet I refuse to dispose of them in the futile hope that one day they may be worn again. But that is just an excuse. I genuinely have no idea how many pairs of jeans I actually own (disclaimer: another pair are currently on their way to me in the post) I have three pairs of dungarees and two pinafores, three jackets, and at least four shirts and that's not even mentioning my dresses.

I actually discovered on a visit home the other week one of my childhood toys; a denim teddy bear. Yeah, I didn't know such a thing existed either, but surely this highlights that I am not to blame for my problem. My mother should have never given such an easily influenced child a toy made from such a gateway material. Sorry mum, but maybe this ones on you.


Image- Tumblr

Can We Talk About... Zara's Slogan Tees

Before I begin, please do not get me wrong, I love Zara as much as the next 20 year old gal- which for those who don't know, is A LOT. Like an unhealthy amount. 90% of my wardrobe is in fact from said retailer. But, this has been on my mind for a while, and we just have to discuss their T-shirt slogans. 

I don't know if everyone is quite as aware and up to date with current Zara stock as I am, but I pretty much consider myself an expert on the subject, it would definitely be my Mastermind subject of choice. That or supermarket sushi. So you can take it on good authority when I tell you that firstly, Zara have a lot of t-shirts available for purchase, in fact they have a plethora of 'T' shaped garments to adorn your upper body with. And, secondly, they all have bloody weird phrases written on them. Many a time I have been drawn to a beautiful striped little number only to discover that is has the words 'Shop Around' on it. My confused mind can't handle it, I just want (yet definitely do not need) a new striped top, what does this phrase even mean? I sometimes panic, am I seeing things, is this God's way of connecting with me? Has some hooligan come in to this shopping outlet and specifically graffitied on this one garment? 

What????

But no, on closer inspection most of the t-shirts available are adorned with similar ambiguous phrases. 'Attractive mind' one reads, the pocket of one instructing 'Put here what you want'. Not just a bizarre sentence in itself but definitely written by someone for whom English is their second language. One in the current collection reads simply 'Brunch' which I get is very of the zeitgeist, but do people really want it written on their tits, or just to eat it? I can kind of accept the one that reassures me that 'Life is a party' and another that advertises 'Free buffet', but 'Thinking in a master plan' once again makes me question if I fully grasp English as it makes zero sense to me. And the one that blazons 'Ouch... Oh ok' kind of reflects how my mind feels when reading these slogans. Look, I love you Zara, I love that you allow me to kind of look like I'm wearing Celine for a fraction of the price (and that fraction is literally like 2/1000 which is a really good fraction) I love your boots, and your bags, and oh god, I really love your coats. But I can't be alone in thinking that the slogans are just weird. If BBC Three are interested I would be more than happy to do a documentary investigating the creation of these T-shirts and their hilarious phrases... Or maybe it's just Zara, in these turbulent times trying to help us have a bit of a laugh, if so, why not? We could all do with it. 



Image- Zara.com

Life Without The Gram

Here ye, here ye, come forth to here the tale of how I managed to live a life without social media (for at least 2 weeks.) 

It was a shitty Saturday night, the kind that only happens in January, when everyone's skint and behind on work and can't fit in their favourite jeans after Christmas and generally want to return to a time of tinsel and gin on a school night and sequinned dresses for no good reason. Not helped by the impending doom for the world, I was sat with my housemates discussing how generally SHIT we felt. Despite two rounds of that game where you stick a name on your head and have to guess who it is, the mood was still surprisingly low and it was just that time of night when you start to become way more philosophical than is sensible (somewhere between midnight and 1am btw.) 

In our depressor's revelation I came to the realisation that I found approximately zero happiness from my social media usage- which had become, to say the least, obsessive. All the free time fermenting in a permanently fully, semi-drunken state over Christmas had led my once controlled use of social media to a more worryingly, addictive level. I would open the apps without realising, my fingers doing the magic (steady on) hours before my brain even realised what had happened. And once there, I would spend what sometimes felt like days scrolling and clicking and stalking until my thumb would ache and my eyes would sting, but most of all, until I felt like complete shit. The worst culprit for self esteem shattering  is the discover page which is inexplicably filled with 'fitspiration' pages and Victoria's Secret models (this can't just be mine?!). Despite how undeniably crappy this made me feel, I have literally spent hours of my life at a time doing it. Why?????? I began to ask myself. January does enough to crush a person's spirit without me adding to this with a stupid app. 

So I deleted it. No cold sweats, no panic, I deleted the app. That night, before bed my hands felt lost without the ritualistic scrolling down my newsfeeds before spooning my cold mobile phone until I drifted off into a sleep polluted with the images of underfed models and women with six packs. And although I do have the app back now, those two weeks and a few days made me feel sooo much happier, I filled my boredom instead with reading and music, and things that generally made me feel better about myself. I still love Instagram, and Facebook is essential for stalking people I went to primary school with, but I use them so much less now and I would recommend a social media detox to everrrrryone. If nothing else you'll find yourself with so much free time- hey take up a new hobby, crochet yourself a top for summer!

Photo- The Telegraph

2016. The Year That Was.

The year that was shit? Yeah I know some pretty grim things did happen. Not quite ready to talk about the events of the 23rd of June and I shall not be mentioning the man whose name rhymes with Bonald Hump. Plus some really bloody cool people died.

But alas my dear people. It was not all bad. Don't get me wrong I still can't wait to wave goodbye to the basic bitch of a year that was 2016. But here are some really good things that happened this year to just to help you deal with your post Christmas slump and dread of the year to come...

Peace in Columbia

Sri Lanka is now Malaria free

The ozone layer is repairing itself

200 strangers attended the funeral of a homeless WW2 veteran with no family

Over 800 Boko Harem Hostages were rescued by Nigerian Army

Happy New Year. 2017 can be better.

@shopjanewest

Cigarettes: Will Cause Cancer, May Also Make You Look Cooler

I'm going to say something controversial here, so I apologise in advance (especially to you, Mum.) 

But in the words of Chandler Bing, smoking is cool and you know it. This may seem like a ridiculous thing to say, especially coming from someone who doesn't smoke, and in 2015 when we know how completely shitty cigarettes really are for you and it probably is. 

But there's got to be a reason why cigarettes are still so prevalent in fashion advertising, photography and films. And it's because they look cool. Little has really changed since James Dean first held a cigarette on the poster for 'Rebel Without a Cause'. If you want to make someone look mysterious, rebellious or sexy, just give them a cigarette to hold and the job is done. 

Exhibit A:

Images- All Pinterest

They also make you look very French which is obviously a plus. But I think what is also clear is that if you want to look cooler all you really need to do is be in black and white. It's a well known fact that every looks approximately 40% cooler in black and white. So great news kids- keep those lil' lungs of yours nice and pink, say no to cigarettes, and just put a nice monochrome filter on your photo instead!

Julie Houts

My latest and possibly best(est) obsession. 

If you haven't checked out the J. Crew designer SLASH illustrator extraodinaire's Instagram yet then why not? Do you even have Instagram?? Ok, fair play, maybe you don't. Once again I found my newest Instagram fix in the depths of the explore page amidst hundreds of 'fitspo' pages featuring muscly nudey ladies showing me their biceps. 

So Houts or @jooleeloren as I affectionately call her (alright, maybe that's her Instagram handle) came as welcome relief from the ocean of tanned abdominals. With her combination of beautiful illustration and hilarious social commentary, Houts seems to crawl inside your little old mind pull out your deepest, darkest thoughts on anything from eating spaghetti to Donald Trump and turns it into the most beautiful pictures. Satirising the fashion industry and summarising the internal thoughts of nearly every 20something woman today these little old piccies are perhaps one of the only good things to emerge from 2016 so far. So until I can afford to buy enough of her prints to adorn my entire walls with in a wallpaper like fashion I'll keep stalking her Instagram. And you should too. 

www.juliehouts.com

Bums: What's the big deal???

"Does my bum look big in this" was the phrase inspired by the svelte (to say the least) physique of miss Moss in the early 90s and echoed from the lips of a million women for at least the next decade. Until now. Or maybe not now, I am a bit late to join the big butt parade in all honesty.

Kim Kardashian broke the internet with her bum last year and the number of bum implant surgeries taking place has rapidly surpassed the sweetheart of the naughties- its cousin, the boob job. What was once just a trend favoured by our Brazilian friends is no longer excluded for the beaches of South America, women around the globe are now reaching for injections, squatting countless times a day and even buying padded pants to make their booty look worthy of a Kardashian's instagram post.

But for me, the worrying part of this trend is the rise of the so called 'waist trainer'. Sounds harmless enough I know, I mean I know my waist could do with lil' bit of old training. But don't be deceived, this waist trainer is infact a medieval style contraption, a corset designed to augment the hips (and thus tha asssss) and contract your waist to a minuscule size. Advertised by celebrities and adopted with glee by young women desperate to resemble their favourite instagrammer of the hour, people seem unaware of the glaringly obvious resemblance to the corsets used to mali women's bodies in the 17th century.

Now there is nothing wrong with wanting a big bum, I appreciate a juicy pair of cheeks as much as the next gal- one of my friend's has an impressively pert pair which I like to squeeze after a particularly stressful day. But we must remember that this is just a trend. Throughout history, trends have seen women's bodies shrink and grow, and I fully support your grabbing of these padded pants if this is what your heart truly desires. However, the thought of young girls permanently augmenting their bodies for a reason which is ultimately a fashion that will pass, is slightly depressing. Bums are ace, there's no denying that. But they are ace in all their shapes and sizes, pancake ones slide in to jeans with ease and giant ones are great for extra shelf storage in a small apartment! So embrace what you've got ladies (or gents.)


Image- revelist.com