Books

In: New Look, out: Borders



Bloody hell! There I was popping in to Borders on Oxford Street to ‘use the facilities’ and I was greeted by the world’s biggest queue for the tills, coiling every which way around the ground floor. There must be a new Harry Potter book out, I thought, but no, it’s much more sinister than that. New Look has bought five Borders stores and the Oxford Street branch is one of the unlucky ones. Almost everything is half price (but not the magazines, natch) hence the frenzy.

The photography section looked tantalising on first inspection but when I returned for a proper recce two hours later, everything was on the floor.


What a sorry state of affairs. What on earth is going to happen to the rest of our bookshops if this is happening to Borders now? What can we do? I don’t have anything against New Look but there is already a flagship store in Marble Arch (unless they are downsizing and swapping sites), is our appetite for jazzy leggings so great that we need two branches of the same store in the same street at the expense of a bookshop? It’s all too sad!


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At home with Margiela, Diesel and Nicola Formichetti



I’m not sure what to make of the news that Maison Martin Margiela has launched a home collection. Is it selling out? I do love Margiela’s all-whitewashed utilitarian house style but ready-made and boxed up for people to buy off the rack? I thought I wanted it, but now I’m having second thoughts. (Fickle, moi?)

Even more confusingly, I find myself strangely drawn to the Diesel furniture shown at Salone in Milan last week – it’s just so un-Diesel! In fact, it’s more Margiela than Margiela!*
All this interiors talk brings me neatly to a new book I browsed through in Topshop yesterday on my way to the Mywardrobe press day.

A compilation of creatives’ live-work spaces in London, Paris, Barcelona, New York, Berlin and Tokyo, it comprises the dwellings of Nicola Formichetti, Julie Verhoeven and Gary Card among many others. Conclusion? A creative is not a creative without a higgledy piggledy mound of magazines and/or books taller than Trellick Tower (guilty!), an Hermes box or ten for storage and display (I have that too!), an abundance of cheeky retro toys (yup) and a carefully considered hotch-potch of found-in-skip furniture (check!). Hang about, why the hell aren’t I in this book???

*PS: yes, I know they’re owned by the same company…

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The Sartorialist for Barneys?



An interesting article on Scott Schuman AKA The Sartorialist in the Times magazine last Saturday. The bit I liked most? This bit:

‘To launch the Sartorialist book there will be a pop-up shop in Barneys New York (“The Sartorialust,” he says, “selling great accessories that really define a look. A great watch, great pyjamas, great suspenders…”)’ – although Fashionista points out that this hasn’t actually been confirmed yet. Still, it does tie in nicely with my retail experience fantasy of stores having specially-curated areas by guest ‘buyers’, so if it does happen at Barneys, maybe it would happen in other stores…

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The Rock And Roll Public Library




This is turning out to be a week of scrapbook-mania, moodboard-making and ephemera-loving! Firstly, I decided to make some fashiony moodboards for my own pleasure so have started with the fun bit – namely deciding on themes and sorting all my relevant scraps into piles. To aid the creative flow, dear D came home this evening with a Waterstones carrier bag tucked under his arm. Therein was the Satchmo book, a present for us to share which is even better than I expected. Pages and pages of cut-out photos, hand rendered type and yellowing tape artfully arranged into beautiful, personal collages that tell the story of Louis Armstrong’s life. As if that wasn’t ‘WOW’ enough, an email just pinged in my inbox from PR pal R about The Rock And Roll Public Library.

This is an exhibition that opened today featuring a lifetime’s collecting of pop culture and ephemera by West London cool dude Mick Jones (otherwise known as iconic guitarist and songwriter from The Clash, Big Audio Dynamite and Carbon Silicon). Jones has collected and archived all his Clash-related videos, magazines, stage clothes, artwork and instruments as well as more personal letters and artefacts amassed in his studio over the last three (or even four) decades. The exhibition is on show for a month but Jones has longer term aims for the collection. “Ultimately I’d like to have a permanent place to exhibit the whole collection like a museum, like a library where you can come and see the stuff and maybe get a copy or sit there and read it. I also would like to bring artists there because it’s history really,” he said. It’s on until 18th April and I can’t wait to go!

Read more about The Rock and Roll Public Library…

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