BREAKING NEWS - DRINKING DOESN'T GIVE YOU WRINKLES

My lovely friend from NYC has sent extremely reassuring news.  Apparently her dermatologist, who is well respected, has said that drinking doesn't lead to wrinkles!

Smoking's the arch-enenmy of your skin so to be gorgeous and wrinkle free, lay off the cigarettes!  But bring on the booooooze!

Things I'm loving

Type a random word into your iTunes library and see what comes up.  My favourite playlist at the moment comes up when you type in 'street'.  I was searching for StreetHero (see earlier post) and iTunes gave me this beauty!

Backstreet Boys (admiting publically I possess their music - thank goodness no one reads this)

Dancing in the Street, Martha and the Vandellas

The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy), Simon & Garfunkel

Brooklyn Boys, StreetHero

End of the World, StreetHero

Black Girls and Jesus, StreetHero,

Momental (sic), StreetHero

14th Street, Rufus Wainwright

Street Fighting Man, Rolling Stones

We Love The Disco Sound, Streetlife DJs

Street Fightign Man, RATM

Down on the Street, RATM

The Sunny Side of The Street, Tommy Dorsey

What else can you come up with?

i LOVE this

How awesome is this?  Anyone have a dog they'd volunteer for this?

Ruck sack

For my German lessons (so I can move to Berlin next year) I have so many books and papers and rubbish to carry about the place that I've taken to using a ruck sack.  The same Jansport navy blue classic ruck sack that I used at school some, oh, 7 years ago (that LONG ago?!  arg!!!!).

My question is whether it's possible to wear a ruck sack without looking like Bella Swan?

Answers on post cards please.

I've been a very good girl this year... honest ;)

I want these.  Badly.  I promise to wear them for whoever buys them for me.

Hotty McTotty.

Things I'm loving at the moment

In amongst copious amounts of Christmas music, here's a new band that I'm listening to.

StreetHero are New York based and with a sound they describe as 'a distinctive mix of high-energy dance rock, modern rhythms and electro-soul.'  That doesn't mean much to me but I like them.  The Brooklyn Boys video has its roots in '60's pychedelica, 70's porn and 90's club culture.'  Got to like that.

They have a new EP out, which you can download for free here. 

Go do it.

Well that's no surprise

According to a new survey, women are more likely to remember a pair of shoes than a boyfriend.

Seriously, who's surprised?

Shoes are invariably awesome and you can always tell if they're going to give you blisters when you first try them on.

The same can't be said of men.

No brainer.

I love boxie too

One of my favourite blogs ever What Katie Wore just showed the lovely Katie wearing the awesome 'What Joe Wrote' t-shirt from I Love Boxie.

They have a great range, check them out!

I want the Miss Not Mrs Robinson t-shirt.

http://www.iloveboxie.com/index.html

Note to self...

...stop doing the 'styled' photo for Etsy.  Especially as it's with your own clothes.  It makes you want to keep everything you buy as you just know it would be awesome with that shirt/skirt/top/pair of shoes and that's not the point.  You have to SELL them.  Not keep them.

Not keep them.  Right.  I'm on it.  Honest.

I've lost my girl

This is what I'd like the boy I can't stop my stupid brain from bringing up regularly to be thinking.

The only question is just how far is that from the reality of what he's actually thinking?

Evidence of how proud the French are of the couture industry

Christian Lacroix needs a whopping great investment to keep it going otherwise it's going to be pared down to a skelton staff to manage licenscing.  The most interested buyer, Ajman sheikh Hassan Bin Ali al-Nuaimi of the UAE, failed to submit the necessary documentation on time so it looks like the house will be shut down.  But wait, the French government are stepping in! 

According to The Cut the French Industry Minister Christian Estrosi is on the case.  He's using France's diplomats in the UAE to chase up the sheikh.

As The Cut puts it 'Dubai's in the hole, but a legendary couturier needs saving. Priorities, please.'

It appears France will bail out the couture industry as well as the banks.

Underrated areas of the body: the back

 I came across this photo on the myvintagevogue flickr stream.

It's just so chic.  Look at her back!  It's such an intensely sensual picture.  Very sexual but in the least obvious way.

Perfect.  It could have been taken 50 years ago or 15 years ago.

This week I am mainly...

...trying to find time to actually make some things!

I want to do a pearl necklace or two.  I've got some awesome skull beads coming my way for them soon.

And I need to go and find some more stock!  That's going to be the big challenge now, keeping enough stock so I can always have a few things to sell but having little enough stock that I can actually move about in my bedroom.  Oh, the travails of running one's own business...

Polar bears obsession

Have I told you about my polar bear obsession?  It started recently, mainly due to the awesome song by Ted & Francis called 'I wish I was a Polar Bear.'  To be honest, who doesn't?

Anyway, here is a selection of brilliant polar related items for Etsy that I love and am trying to work out if I can justify purchasing in anyway.

What a beautiful card!  So cute!  The small child in the plane is slightly wrong though.  And who has ever had time to send a separate New Year's card to Christmas???

I'd actually wear these earrings.  It would look like I had two mini-polar bears worshipping me.

A polar bear locket!  Just what I need to express my love!

This is just plain weird though.

Apparently it is a collectable vintage Japanese cake candle holder of a clown on a polar bear circus act.  Right.  Umm.  I am a little lost for words.

Although, I'd love to see a circus which had polar bears.

Ted & Francis MySpace; Spotify link to the song.

I love this, someone buy it for me for Christmas

I want this broach so much!  How cute is it?!

Anyone wanting an easy present for me can buy it here...

Lovely new dress

I love this dress.  If I was a size 8 I'd probably not be selling it.  I find it so difficult selling the clothes I buy (damn my emotional reaction to inanimate items of clothing!) that I might make it a policy to only buy items of clothing that are too small for me.  Too large won't work because I wear 'over-sized' clothes all the time.

Anyway, here is the beauty!  Enjoy!

Click here to view it on Etsy.

First ever stock update

Welcome to our first ever stock update...

This awesome shirt has just been listed on Etsy.  I love it, so I'm not quite sure why I'm selling it.  Especially as I've finally found something with to go with the taupe skirt in the pictures.

And this dress - so pretty!  I think it would work really well with thick tights, clompy boots and a bit of leather.  Kind of screwed up 80s, I'm wearing my mum's shirt-waister attitude.

Here it is looking a bit hot secretary.

More coming soon, check out the website for more photos!

WTF?

Lost the power of speech over this.

As I type...

everything is going live...

The first clothes are going to be listed on Etsy today and the website is going to be lauched!

I can't believe we've actually got here!

Launch date is actually close by!

So, after a very, very long time - three months in fact - things are nearly ready to launch.

1.  We have clothes to sell;

2.  we have a website;

3.  we have a business account and credit card (I am still getting it out of my purse and starring at it in wonder, I am so excited the bank let me have one!  And it's got boy & schwester on it!!!);

4.  we have an Etsy account; and

5.  we have a dress maker's dummy to photograph the clothes on.

All we need know is the photos!  That's Sunday's project so look out for listed items from Sunday afternoon!

We're SERIOUSLY excited about it.  Or at least I am.  Boy's disappeared off the radar.

New party trick

So I mentioned previously that I have been making more jewelry recently.  One of things I have been doing involves pearls (photos to follow, I promise) and for this I had to learn how to knot them.  It's one of those things that's simultaneously harder and easier than you imagine.

Knotting a piece of string with a pearl on = not hard.

Knotting a piece of string right next to the pearl so the pearl barely moves at all = much harder than you think.

Solution = this awesome video on YouTube teaching you how to do it + patience.

Thank you to the lovely Jewelry Supply people for putting up such a great video class.  Now I have a new party trick.  Still working on doing it with my tongue, a la the cherry stalk.

I want to grow my hair so I can plait it and look romantic and whimsical like this

From this blog.

Tom Binns and jewelry nostalga

Tom Binns has been much lauded already but I am going to add my meagre fanfare to the praise anyway.  I love his work, I came across it just before Michelle Obama wore it and made his name more widely known.  Don't look at his website unless you want to start planning how to arrange more credit limit/re-mortgage/earn considerably more in a recession.  In particular, I'm loving the Faux Real collection.  It's all unbalanced sweet shop colours and classic on acid.  Heaven.  It reminds me of those rings you used to be able to buy at toy shops on the counter that came in the most incredible colour.  My favourite one was this massive 'emerald' one.  Those were the days.


In terms of my next project, I saw these Tom Binns necklaces ages ago and have been meaning to try my hand at one for forever.

Again, I'm loving the old fashioned quality they have, as if a very rich old lady has piled on every single one of the (real, obviously) necklaces she owns for dinner.

I want to buy some similar necklaces (fake, obviously) and try to make my own.  I love the coloured one but I think it would be harder to get a good effect on.  Cheap diamante necklaces seem like they would work better in my head.

I've been doing more jewelry recently, piling on the pearls and velvet ribbons.  Look out for them for sale when we actually launch.

Photo from this blog.

Beautiful badges and brooches!

Project inspiration alert!

I was reading Tavi's blog this morning and came across this Galliano SS10 jacket, which is officially GORGEOUS.   Loving the Miss Haversham, successful vintage fair rumaging feel that it's got about it.

The only question now is whether to do a jumper with shoulders like this, a jacket with lapels like this, a hat like this (ooh, like that idea...)  Watch this space!

Photo from Tavi's post, here's the whole show on Vogue, which is brilliant.

Me want-y!

Aren't these the coolest converse ever?  Well, perhaps with the exception of these studded converse.  I love them so much!  They're sort of Morticia Adams-esque - I want to wear them with long chiffon skirts and lots of black lace.

Here's the blog I found them on.

Rant 1: unpicked pleats

Ok, so this is childish and irrational but one thing that is guaranteed to make me curl up inside with frustration and anger is when people don't unpick the tacking stitch out of their pleat.

Do you know what I mean?  That large cross shaped stitch that holds a pleat together on a coat/jacket/skirt?  It's loose, doesn't match the colour of the garment and is meant to be temporary to protect it while in the shop.

WAKE UP PEOPLE!  It's meant to be taken out!  I have a desire to go round with a small pair of scissors and snip them off in the street.  I might get arrested though.  Generally they're not in a good place to be discovered waving a pair of random scissors at a stranger.

No photo, as I couldn't find one online and have yet to actually master the subtle art of stalking one out with my camera.

The Oubliette

London is probably the key inspiration for boy & schwëster and a project like The Oubliette Arthouse is a prime example of why living here is so inspiring.

The Oubliette Arthouse project is an 'alternative arts organisation' which locates empty buildings, squats in them (can squats be used as a verb like that?) in order to provide artists with a space for their work until they are evicted.  I first came across them a few days before their Waterloo residency came to an end and this was the first time I've been able to get to one of their events.

I saw a play called 'The Wisdom of the Den'by David Christopher that was performed by a group from Dyssing Monadys [sic], which is an art group that supports work by dyslexics.  Being dyslexic myself I was already excited about the project.  It's all too easy to go and see bad fringe theatre in London but this show, in the centre of theatre land, was great.  There were a few cringe-worthy lines in the mix and sometimes the time jumps weren't always very clear but as a whole it was enticing and interesting.  The play wasn't exactly pro-women but neither did it cast men as the blameless.

I can't wait to see where The Oubliette ends up next.  Today's the day they get evicted from their Leicester Square abode.  Hopefully they find somewhere soon.  Now I'm trying to think up a project that has a quick turn around time to suggest for the next venue...

First post!

Wooo!  It's taken a while but here's the blog.  We're working on the website and it's getting close to done.  No business account yet because the postal strikes are holding up the papers arriving.  Once they do get signed we can register our Etsy shop and get selling!

I'm hoping it's done in the next 3 weeks.  Watch this space!

Things we're loving at the moment:  Yalla Yalla, just off Brewer Street.  Going for lunch there again on Thursday.