Shop Update: With All The Frills Upon It

You'll be the Grandest Lady in the Easter Parade. 

It's not too late to get yourself an Easter Bonnet. 

Click on the image to visit the item in my shop, and throughout March I am offering a 20% discount with the coupon SPRING. 

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Part of the glittering sea

Photo by Craig

"To me Acapulco is the detoxicating cure for all the evils of the city: ambition, vanity, quest for success in money, the continous contagious presence of power-driven, obsessed individuals who want to become know, to be in the limelight, noticed, as if life among millions gave you a desperate illness, a need of rising above the crowd being noticed excisting individually, singled out from a mass of ants and sheep. It has something to do with the presence of millions of anonymous faces, anonymous people and the desperate ways of achieving distinction. Here, all this is nonsense.

You excist by your smile and your presence. You excist for your joys and relaxations. You exist in nature. You are part of the glittering sea, and part of luscious, well nourished plants. you are wedded to the sun, you are immersed in timelessness, only the present counts, and from the present you extract all the essences which can nourish the sences, and so the nerves are still, the mind is quiet, the nights are lullabies, the days are like gentle ovens in which infinetly wise sculptor's hands re-form the lost contours, the lost sensations of the body. The body comes to life. Quests, pursuits of concrete securities of one kind or another lose all their importance. As you swim, you are washed of all excrescences of so-called civilization, which includes the incapacity to be happy under any circumstances. "

Diary of Anais Nin Volume 5 - Fall 1951

I wasn't going to post again until the New Year but I felt compelled to do this post before 2013 is upon us. 

The passage above sums up how I started to feel about City living, my heart has really always been in the country and Anais describes it perfectly .
After 7 years of living in our magical Capital I found that it started to loose it's sparkle. 

So many of my dreams came true, I learnt many lessons and met some very special people (friends for life). Those experiences can never be taken away from me and I only have our beautiful City to thank for them. 

My dreams can now only be achived by having some distance and by living more consciously. The picture above is taken 5 minutes from our new home, it makes me so happy. 

London I love you and we are still not far, my visits will be frequent and like they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. 

Happy New Year guys! 

I have a feeling 2013 is going to be mega. 

Kelly-Marie xx

V&A Talk- Fashion Festival 2012

On the 8th of December Kristofj Von Strass and I did a talk on behalf of Beyond Retro for the V&A Museum.
I felt so honoured to be talking at one of the worlds greatest, most inspiring and influential museums. The V&A has been my favourite museum ever since I was young and it was my safe haven when I first came to live in London so personally this meant so much to me and it literally was a dream come true. You can imagine how nervous I was!


We were talking as part of the museums 'Fashion Festival' aimed at young people between the ages of 16-24. Our talk described the ins and outs of Visual Merchandising at Beyond Retro, I explained how I sourced and made the props for some of our key projects including last years  Christmas windows, featured in the top ten Christmas windows for Drapers magazine.

We also went into detail about our own freelance work, our backgrounds, where we studied and how we found our way into our careers.

Kristofj and I are both so happy with how it went, we couldn't have asked for a better turn out and we were talking in one of the most beautiful lecture theatres I have ever seen. Thank you to all that came and for all your questions, it was so nice to see so many of you so enthusiastic about going into window dressing and visual merchandising.

I would love to hear from you if you were there, feel free to leave me a comment or drop me an email.

Special thanks to James Dwyer for the photo's. 

Autochrome Angels

         

  Inside my minds eye, i'm living an Autochrome kind of life. 

Read more about the Autochrome process here and click on the photos for more information about each image. 

Diana, The Goddess Of The Moon

This years Halloween outfit was inspired by The Goddess Diana. She is the Roman Goddess of The Moon, The Forest, Witchcraft, hunting and fertility. Minus the hunting part, to me she is pretty much perfect. She can talk to animals (the Snow White of the Goddess world) and is mostly associated with Cats, Stag's and Bears, what a babe.

Diana is always depicted with a bow (it is said that her arrows are associated with Moon beams) and a Cresent moon headdress. As I am already an archer (in the Sagittarius sense) all that was missing was my Moon Headdress.

 

I already had the Silver hat so I embroidered pearls onto the front to create my Cresent Moon and then added the Star brooch.  The Lightning Bolt cape was an early Birthday present from Craig (dreamboat Bowers strikes again).  The embroidery details on the cape deserve a whole post of their own, so so beautiful! 

All photo's taken by Craig in our living room. 

I spent Halloween celebrating my Friend Hannah's Birthday. She is an incredibly talented illustrator and has just started doing her Masters at The RCA. You can see her work here.

 I am wearing:

1920's Rhine Stone dress: Beyond Retro ~ 1940's Lightning Cape: VivaVoceVintage

1930's Silver Hat: This Shop Rocks ~ 1920's Silver Shoes: Ebay

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WINNER

I am very happy to announce that the Winner of my Etsy Shop give away is the lovely...

Ruby Armoire

 Congratulations Ruby!
 Visit her beautiful blog here.

Thank you to everyone who entered, it was so lovely to hear about your favourite items.

 I have sent off Four packages already this week, thank you so much for all for your support and for all who shared.
I have just added some more items so go on over and take a look.

Hope you all enjoy your Sunday.
Kelly-Marie xx

Bluer than velvet was the night

   

Softer than Satin was the light, 

from the stars.

 

Lana Del Rey is a lot like Marmite. I know not all of you will be fans but I do love her, and no matter what people may say about her apperance you can not deny that she writes beautiful music.
 I personally really like her aesthetic and am even into her new Julia Roberts 'Pretty woman' vibe, I wish I could look that sexy in a Budweiser Tshirt!

The Lynch inspired H&M Blue Velvet video is my new favourite. A little obvious but so beautiful, I want to steal the lady with the Parasol's outfit. Shame they don't sell that in H&M.

Hope you are all enjoying your weekends.
Kelly-Marie xx

I am wearing:
1940's Blue Velvet dress ~ 1940's Blue Velvet Turban ~ 1930's leather bag: Beyond Retro
Edwardian Star brooch: Present from Craigs Mum ~ 1920's style shoes: Charity shop

All photo's taken by Craig at Rhinefield House