Anubis - Giveaway

(MOXHAM Anubis necklace)

After receiving many a compliment about my edgy pieces by underground-chic designer MOXHAM, I feel the time has come to share the love. Or the wearable construction. Whatever, you get my point. So after hitting three digit figures on twitter, facebook and bloglovin (!), I contacted Maddy, the artistic genius behind these Egyptian mythology-inspired accessories to see if she would be game for a MOXHAM-infused treat. Being the sweetheart that she is, she graciously accepted. So here goes, we are offering-up for grabs one of the new collection’s most striking pieces: the dove grey Anubis necklace. It is very similar to the one you have spotted me wearing once or twice A-HELL-LOT on here, which is why I picked it. It was a tough call what with all the oversized clutches, leather cuffs and motif necklace must-haves she has conjured-up for her line, so I really hope you like it as much as I do. See below the usual spiel about how to enter, and make sure you take a peek at the rest of the exquisite collection which will all be available to buy at BENGT FASHION.

For a chance to win the DOVE GREY ANUBIS necklace :
1. Follow me on twitter (@camtyox), facebook and/or bloglovin;
2. Follow Moxham on twitter (@MOXHAMSTORE) and/or facebook;
3. Leave a comment before Sunday 9th of September (midnight) in which you confirm which plateforms from both 1 and 2 you have chosen to follow (as explained above), as well as your e-mail address.

Please note: This contest is open to anyone, you don't need to have a blog or url to take part, just select the "anonymous" box in the comment drop-box below. Good luck.

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Ravie de recevoir toujours autant de compliments ici et ailleurs sur mes accessoires avant-gardistes MOXHAM, je me suis dit qu’il était peut-être temps de partager. Les bijoux j’entends, pas les mots doux qui vous importent peu, j’en suis consciente. Donc lorsque twitter, facebook et bloglovin ont tous les trois atteints un contingent à trois chiffres (!), j’ai contacté Maddy, le génie artistique qui se cache tant bien que mal derrière ces bijoux, inspirés de la mythologie égyptienne, pour savoir si elle serait partante de jouer le jeu avec une surprise signée MOXHAM. Chou comme elle est, elle a gracieusement accepté. Nous vous proposons donc de gagner une des pièces les plus remarquables de la nouvelle collection : le collier ANUBIS gris colombe. Je l’ai choisi pour sa ressemblance frappante avec celui que je ne quitte plus et que vous avez pu découvrir ici. Ma décision ne fut pas aisée vu le choix étonnant disponible, entre manchettes en cuir, pochettes oversized, en passant par ces fameux colliers architecturaux, donc j’espère qu’il vous plait autant que moi. Voyez ci-dessous le bla bla habituel qui vous expliquera comment participer, et ne manquez pas d’aller faire un tour chez BENGT FASHION ou vous pourrez découvrir le reste de sa collection exquise.

Pour tenter votre chance il suffit de:
1. Me suivre sur twitter (@camtyox), facebook et/ou bloglovin;
2. Suivre MOXHAM sur twitter (@MOXHAMSTORE) et/ou facebook;
3. Laisser un commentaire avec votre nom + e-mail en m'indiquant quels réseaux vous avez choisi de suivre. Vous avez jusqu'au dimanche 9 septembre, minuit.

Notez qu'il n'est pas nécessaire d'avoir un blog ou autre site web pour participer, il suffit de sélectionner anonyme dans la boite des commentaires ce qui permet à tout le monde de laisser un mot. Attention, n'oubliez pas de signer du coup! Bonne chance

PJs on the terrace

Have been slowly but surely re-ajusting to the rhythm of a 9 to 5 (give or take, you know the drill) office job which is both immensely exhilarating and crazy-ass tiring. Was lovely to come back from work tonight to a cool summer evening, so le boy and I made our way up to the terrace and enjoyed the sunset, hand in hand glass of Pinot in hand. Heaven with a view. In other news, I have finally finished setting up my new e-shop, so feel free to take a peek as most of the items I am selling have been featured on here at some point so you might just find something you want to snap up. Head here. Also, as promised, stay tuned for a stylish giveaway. Same time, same place tomorrow. See you then.

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Lentement mais surement je me ré-adapte au rythme 9h-18h de la journée de travail que j'avais décidément laissé derrière moi durant ces quelques mois en freelance. C'est à la fois exaltant et super fatigant, donc ce fut un réel plaisir de passer un peu de temps en amoureux sur la terrasse de mon homme en rentrant ce soir. Nous avons profité du temps clément en cette douce soirée estivale et avons débouché une bonne petite bouteille de pinot pour mieux admirer le coucher de soleil. Le paradis avec une vue. Par ailleurs, j'ai profité de mon temps libre ce week-end pour fignoler la peinture (ahem) de mon nouveau e-shop. Il est tout beau, tout neuf, alors n'hésitez pas à aller jeter un œil, d'autant plus que la majorité des pièces que je vends sont d'abord passées par ici, donc vous trouverez peut-être votre bonheur pour pas grand chose. C'est par ici que ça se passe. Enfin, comme promis, rendez-vous demain ici même pour découvrir le fameux concours dont je fais allusion depuis une semaine déjà. Bonne soirée.

Outfit:
Blazer: Zara (old but similar here)
Pyjama pants: Monoprix
Wedges: Mango (see here for similar)
Top: Monki
Rings: Cos, H&M and Cooee
Bracelet: Cooee

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Sprayed-on

Back is the camo, though it has been taken from oversized to sprayed-on .. The demeanour is almost a little (too) teenagy but I needed something low key to wear to Carnival yesterday. Fear not the Celine and Bettys didn't make the trip. Instead I laced-up my go-to all stars, and the boy's front pocket proved to be the perfect carry-all for the day. Good to know.

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Le camouflage est de retour.. sauf qu'il passe du loose oversized au collé-serré. Une allure presque ado en somme, mais il me fallait quelque chose de simple pour le carnaval de Notting Hill hier. N'ayez crainte, les Betty et le Celine sont restés à la maison. Je les ai remplacés par mes all stars préférées et la poche avant du jean de mon homme, qui s'est révélée être le parfait fourre-tout. Plutôt bon à savoir, non?

OUTFIT:
Sweater: Ba&sh (similar here or here)
Pants: Zara
Sneakers: Isabel Marant (Back in stock here)
Bag: Celine (or in beige and khaki)
Bracelet: ASOS
Sunnies: ASOS

ID'ed

(ASOS ID bracelet)

After compulsively obsessing over the chunky Maison Martin Margiela ID plaque bracelet spotted a while back on Elin Kling, and then falling head over heels with the Celine version as seen on super-babe Evangelie, I splurged big time and got my own. Hardly the perfect clone but it captures the spirit. Sort of.

Bombers - H&M life

(photos by H&M - all clothes by H&M)

The bomber jackets I styled into my fall trends shoot with H&M have rocketed to the top of my wishlist. Mark my words, the sporty burgundy varisity jacket will find its way back to the trenches of my closet just as soon as it hits stores, and I'm sure we can find a little room for his quilted metallic friend as well. And while we are busy investing in bombers, why not just go triplette. This alluringly minimalistic number won't get out of my head, and I'm just wondering whether its worth the hassle of being upset when it inevitably sells out. Here is the textbook case instance for 'get it or forget it'... and I for one have the memory of an elephant.

Pixelated

Today I endorse oversized wear - yes, but also XL pixels. Seems like the old camera was feeling left out from all the fall 2012 action, and decided to join the party. Either that or the photographer was drunk ('was not', he protests over my shoulder - 'mildly jolly, if that!'). Fear not, I will get them both to behave next time round. Meanwhile, in anticipation of coat-worthy weather let us salute a more simple rendition of the oversized trend we all seem to be lusting over at the moment: ripped boyfriend denim (an unadulterated classic that hardly even qualifies as a trend at this point), white wedged-sneaks with just a hint of boyishness (ditto), aaaand (here comes the show stopper) Zara's latest leather offering which almost had me ripping my eyes out with envy and heartbreak considering its heart-stopping-eye-watering-kleenex-reaching price tag. The devil's advocate inside me had left it for dead in the store in protest of Zara aiming so far south of the belt (speaking of below the belt, did you catch the royal ass making, ahem, a royal ass of himself yesterday? - G'on then, give it a google. You know you want to!). Here was probably one of the sleekest, chicest, trendiest, must-have-in-my-closet pieces I have ever come across in Zara's high impact collections. Yet when I saw the price, I almost had to lie down there and then in the shop to recover. A wise person once said 'twas the hybrid shop for the girl with just one dollar to stretch to couture. And 250 quid-a-pop jackets are everything but that. So I left, with a dent in my heart and a grubby back. Then, came the holidays and a sunny trip to Lisboa with la famille. And wouldn't you know it said jacket was 30% cheaper - believe me, I did the maths my dad did the maths. So it came home to London. I had to have it. All is right in the world. Besides the fact that my hair needs a trim. But that's a whole different story.

OUTFIT:
LEATHER JACKET: ZARA
BOYFRIEND JEANS: ZARA (similar here)
SNEAKERS: BETTYS BY ISABEL MARANT (similar here)
BAG: CELINE (or in beige and khaki here)
BRACELETS: COOEE

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The rise of oversized

(in order of appearance: Styleby, Magazine #11 - Harper's Baazar US, September 2012 -Vogue Russia, September 2012 - Styleby, Magazine #11 - Vogue Paris, September 2012 - Vogue GB, July 2012)

Minimal, clean-cut, XL proportions have taken over the pages of our go-to glossies this month. One would almost be forgiven for thinking that these six silhouettes all encapsulate the one shoot ... that I have taken upon myself to baptise 'the rise of the oversized' - but feel free to dub as you please. Fall 2012's layered, voluminous simplicity has already become a favourite of mine, and I haven't even shed the tan yet. And so, I hereby declare the search for the perfect drop-shouldered above and beyond normal proportions tailored coat open. Ideas on a postcard please. So far, favourites include bath robe look-alikes, commanding military blazers, and outsized cocoon zip-ups. In the meantime, the boyfriend might find that some of his own outerwear has gone amiss ..

Intimates

Cos bra and panties

You must meet my friend Emily. Now, before you think I am one of those weird freaks who christens their garments (no offence, but that is just squeamishly cringe) let me just point you in the right direction: incurablycurious.com. Emily is a writer. A controversial one at that. She likes to stir up shit. Her compelling reads are both piss-yourself funny and unabashedly, oh-so-refreshingly candid. How is this relevant to caption a lingerie still-life you might wonder? Well you see, Emily and I spent many a tweet yesterday pondering over a rather, erm, dubious quote that we came across in a Guardian article exploring modern society's obsessive relationship with cosmetic surgery. Cosmo former editor, the late Helen Gurley Brown shared the following: "Self-help," she said to Nora Ephron, explaining the methods she used to improve her flaws. "I wish there were better words, but that is my whole credo. You cannot sit around like a cupcake asking other people to come and eat you up and discover your great sweetness and charm. You've got to make yourself more cupcakable all the time so you're a better cupcake to be gobbled up."

- "I don't want to speak ill of dead people but was this woman on drugs!??"@CuriousEmily, you took the words right out of my mouth. The idea that cosmetic surgery is not only acceptable - but rather vital for every women, so that she may attain absolute 'cupcakableness' (seriously, wtf?!!! Metaphor-block much? Sounds like this woman had as much wit as a bloody cupcake) is so twisted it makes my bones quiver. Fear not my cupcake-striving friends, apparently we can all be beautiful if only we are prepared to stick a knife and a needle in it. What a relief. I immediately tweeted back to inform that a recent boob shrinkage on my end has me (almost) signing up for implants. The cause seems to be a shortage in lady drugs pumping through my body (aka I have come off the pill) (TMI) (don't get any funny ideas mind) (hum, and recent baby name tweets are un-connected) (bloody hope the boy isn't reading this). I digress. Point is boobs have gone from being rather small to being pretty much miniature, which is not something I was bargaining for as a 25th birthday treat. But you see I have found the solution. I really only had two choices anyway. It was between using a couple of the effin' cupcakes to pad out the old (baggy) lingerie, or go and splurge on new intimates that would a. fit, b. bring sexy back and c. take a stand against self-hatred. Retail therapy at its very best. The lilac-trimmed, soft grey-lace ensemble in question is from COS ... and rather beautiful it is too.

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This don't make me a sportsman..

Self-induced sportiness is not something I enjoy putting myself through - unless the activity in question primarily consists of mixing athletic and aesthetic in a mean sartorial cocktail that is. Cue outfit of the day. Mind you, despite the unmistakable increase in sporty accents on the catwalk this fall, it seems to me that fashion and sport are still worlds apart. Sure, they brought in the big boys girls for our Damien Hirst Union flag-clad closing ceremony (though all I recall from that night is spamming my twitter feed with pre, live, and post Spice Girl mania). But did the fleeting, golden-hued catwalk happening really come into its own amidst the celebration of athletic achievement and British culture ?

Personally -and to stick to Olympics lexicon - I felt so called #TeamSupermodel was a giant belly flop. And despite the likes of Susie Bubble etc arguing that despite it all, for those involved, and the British Fashion industry as a whole, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, a truly unique event and, well, unparalleled free(ish) publicity for the chosen seven (Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith, Victoria Beckham, Erdem, Christopher Kane, Jonathan Saunders, and Alexander McQueen), I can't help but feel that it is episodes like these that give fashion a bad name...

Let me elaborate. To an industry outsider the seven names wouldn't necessarily ring a bell (that is if they could even make them out - my hearing aid must've run out of battery since I sure as hell missed at least three of them). This reinforces the 'private club' mentality that fashion atheists resent so. To them, us 'fashion people' know all about this avant-garde shit that is going on, and by the time they get to grips with whatever that may be, 'whatever' will be 'so last fall darling'. Maddening I'm sure. As Anna Wintour so bluntly puts it in the opening line of documentary 'The September Issue': "On the whole, people that say demeaning things about our world - I think that's usually because they feel in some ways excluded or not part of the cool group, so as a result they just mock it." After two weeks of Britain coming together, living and breathing at the same rhythm of its athletes, it seems almost a shame to burst the bubble. But more to the point the interlude seemed completely out of context (save for Bowie belting out 'Fashion'), and (though I hate to say it) almost too high-end and one dimensional to fit in with the games' emotionally-charged atmosphere.

Admittedly, the sparkling gowns and pouting models looked absolutely spectacular (gold goes to Jonathan Saunder's column silhouette, complete with feathery Stephen Jones headpiece, as adorned by Jourdan Dunn), but it wasn't until I was able to take a proper look in Vogue's September Issue that the true craftsmanship behind the bespoke pieces could be properly appreciated and admired. I'm just not sure how many non-fashionistas will be purchasing their own copy. Or maybe I'm wrong and I'm just being a cynical bigot, but the whole thing just reminded me about something Tom Ford said during his conversation with Grazia's Paula Reed. While discussing his stance of having top secret shows (y'a know camera-less, tweet-less, highly exclusive don't-leak-anything-to-the-press-on-pain-of-death): "I decided not to do runway shows, because when you do a runway show you have to amp things up in a way so that they read from a great distance..." So it could be that the stadiums, so perfect an arena for physical displays of perfection fall flat when it comes to fashion catwalking... The execution, a concept so close to the heart of the athletes, was just missing.

Thus, and to conclude this extensive (and slightly belated) post about the games, let me just emphasise, as my eponymous article suggests, that though the gear don't make me a runner ... I do like the game. And on that ambiguous note, I bid you farewell for the day.
ps - once again, please forgive the 'glowing' face. I am still makeup-less after bus incident, and heatwave is proving to be the perfect excuse for leaving the house 'naked'.

OUTFIT:
White blazer: Zara (old - similar here)
Studded top: Zara
Leather shorts: Maje (identical pair here)
Runners: New Balance
Ring: Cooee Design
Shades: Rayban
Bag: Celine (finally available online)