What should have been

This is the outfit I was going to wear last night to see the Luke Waller painting exhibition at Cutler and Gross but, alas, I had to be realistic and stay inside to finish up some code debugging that had run away from me.  I'm being very strict with my targets now so if a task isn't complete, no fun times for Duck... (sorry Monica!)  It's twice the shame because I was desperate to wear the jacket I discovered at the Bicester Village Designers Collective.  I saw the James Long pink, bouclé-like tweed biker on the runway over a year ago and added it to my long AW lust list.  Like most things I have my eye on at fashion week they quickly slip from my memory over the 6-month period before the store shipments drop and somehow I never get around to tracking them down.  I said yesterday it was fate (even if my scientist mind doesn't believe in it) that I finally found this jacket again - the sole one on the first rail I saw as I entered the shop.  Within five minutes of the party starting I had it wrapped in tissue paper on the counter; it wasn't getting out of my sights this time around.  The wool is soft and cosy, it's lined continuously throughout in black satin and while the fit means it probably won't be a winter outer layer, it sits nice and snugly over a simple t-shirt for 'transitional' periods of British weather (otherwise known as 'summer').  There were some naysayers when I requested Twitter opinions from the dressing room but screw you guys, I love it.  It's as close to a Chanel as I'll ever get with my six-foot frame. 

Wearing: wool biker jacket by James Long, dégradé t-shirt by Helmut Lang, gold bunny necklace by Tina Lilienthal and jeans by Odyn Vovk.     

xxx

Duck

Runway photos borrowed from Style.com

British Designers Collective: Menswear

It's not often Twitter spurs me to do anything other than shop or eat; rather it's much more likely to be distracting me from doing whatever it is I'm really meant to be doing.  I can close my browser and put my phone on silent but those nasty microblogs (have we stopped using that term yet?) still manage to track me down via DM emails or that Ubuntu Twitter programme I've tried to switch off a hundred times but still pops up now again to inform me my latest Instagram post was #MEGACHIC and #OUTOFCONTROL.  Anyway, today is probably the first time the Twits got me doing anything productive - i.e. writing this blog post.  Everybody is talking about the launch of the menswear British Designers Collective pop-up yesterday at Bicester Village, which I attended but forgot to blog...even though I had all my images edited by bedtime last night! 

The crowd of us taking the train up to Oxfordshire's not-so-secret shopping haven was a little bit different to the womenswear launch but I still recognised a few friendly faces in Disney Roller Girl and The Very Simon G.  Bistrotheque provided us with delicious hampers of sandwiches, bread and cheese, pâté and champagne (I promised myself I wouldn't drink at lunchtime but I may have slipped and fallen head-first into my plastic glass).  A little bit more vegetarian food might have been nice but beggars can't be choosers...  Being menswear, the designers selected for the store were obviously also slightly different.  There were staples such as E Tautz, Folk and Margaret Howell who I'm sure will sell well, but I was much more excited about bStore, James Long and Jonathan Saunders.  

I had also promised myself I wouldn't spend any money but that wish went out the window when I spotted a pink bouclé wool biker jacket, lined throughout with black satin, from James Long's AW 2011 collection.  I had seen it on the runway, loved it, and there was only one in the store, IN A FITTING SIZE.  Then James came up to me himself to tell me how fabulous I looked in it.  Fate.  If you're thinking of buying any pieces yourself I'd get up there pronto, I saw quite a lot of men clutching British Designers Collective bags on the way back to the train station... 

Sunshine, lollipops...

It's a good day to be alive! I woke up this morning to glorious sunshine streaming into my bedroom (really need to start closing those blinds properly, if only to save the neighbours' modesty), clearing back those rain clouds that have been blanketing our sceptred isle. I am fond of the winter but the monotonous downpours and dreich skies can get you down. Work is certainly ploughing ahead on the gold building next door, reflecting rather than blocking the sunlight into our courtyard. I can barely contain my excitement to see the finished product!

I also just had a highly productive Skype mit meinem Doktorvater (doesn't it sound so much cuter auf Deutsch?), meaning I should get lots of useful work done this afternoon. That said, I'm off for a quick trip to the menswear pop-up at Bicester Village this lunchtime, so I might be working quite late this evening again. While sunny, it's not exactly summer temperatures yet (high of 15°C in May?!) ergo I'll still be wearing my coat and scarf today. I found this old All Saints scarf in the back of one of my wardrobes and wondered why on Earth I ever stopped wearing it. It's long enough I can pretend I'm an extra in Harry Potter...

Styled by Snufkin

What with all the excitement of coding going well (yesterday I managed to get the analytic forces working and today the torques will be a success – I realise this probably means nothing to you...) I completely forgot about blogging this week. Sometimes I can only have one side of my brain firing at once, but then it gets worn out and I have to switch to something creative for a break. This morning I suddenly had that urge to get my camera out and then realised le flatmate is back in the homeland until the end of the week. Despite having had my tripod for over a year now, I've never actually attempted to use it outside; I'm pretty sure my Spanish neighbours think I've completely cracked up now. I think the results aren't too bad, although it's really hard to adjust the lighting when the camera screen is facing away from you... Clearly, I need to convince a sugar daddy to buy me my own studio.

This is the penultimate outfit post based around pieces I managed to track down in Antwerp. I couldn't go to Belgium and not come away with a bit of Ann Demeulemeester, and at around 140 Euros this wool and hemp jacket was a bargain. Add to that the size that fits me is SMALL and I was sold. The back and sleeves are closely knitted while the front has a double layer of fabric with large buttons and a Mao-style collar. The shaping round the back, the collar and the khaki colour (label says 'mud') lend it an overall Austro-Hungarian look. I like to think it's something that Snufkin/Snusmumriken might wear.

Win Win

Coming home for the weekend is all about admiring Dad's orchids, taking Grandma to the supermarket, arguing about the difference between porpoises and dolphins in the back of a taxi, and the luxury of sleeping in a bed with ironed sheets. Yesterday morning, on the train up, I finally made a major breakthrough with my research which should mean I get to move onto something more interesting and productive...like actually writing my papers/thesis. We celebrated with a trip to Zaha Hadid's Riverside Museum to see Glasgow's old transport modes (although our family's own motorbike and side-car must currently be in their storage facility).  Our verdict on the museum: nice roof, poor organisation, the cars are so high up on the wall they can barely be seen and why exactly do museum panels now have to be worded for five-year-olds? Anyway, a glass of prosecco at The Urban and a pizza at our local finished the evening off nicely. Tonight we're going to experiment with a trip to The Bungo – none of us have been there yet despite it opening quite a while ago.

Today is also the day to announce the winners of my Scandinavian give-away. Everything was done very scientifically using an online random number generator to assign the winners of a crate of Rekorderlig cider each: Amy, Shini, Justyna, John and David. In addition, John has won the Rascals' gilet and David the Won Hundred sweatshirt! Moomin sends his congratulations to everybody. 

Burnt out

Last night I dragged myself away from the laptop and off to Aqua London for the UK launch of Scandinavian estore, Nelly, as my one evening away from work this week.  All this rain and coding, rain and coding has been really pissing me off so I decided to break out the S/S wardrobe and premier this Qasimi t-shirt I ordered after the show last June (yup, still need to do something about resizing the images on those old blog posts).  The lace-like panel on the front is actually laser-cut cotton which takes on a delicate, papery texture in the process.  You can still see the singed edges - it looks like someone has burnt the intricate pattern with a cigarette.  I didn't take my camera to the party but you can see some pretty stellar photobooth images below.  Apparently Jen (who is visiting from Zürich, yay!) and I are the only ones among us who really know how to work that digital lens...  

Scandinavian give-away

In honour of all things Scandinavian, I have teamed up with Rekorderlig cider (Sweden), Rascals' (Denmark) and Won Hundred (Sweden) to bring you an exciting give-away!  This is the first proper give-away I've done (apart from the Comme competition) so I thought I should make it a bumper one.  I have five cases (8 bottles each) of Rekorderlig's new mango-raspberry cider to send out to five lucky winners.  Two of those will also win one of either an army-green Rascals' quilted gilet (size L) from their A/W collection or a yellow Won Hundred sweatshirt (size M) from S/S.  Unfortunately loveable Moomins could not be included at this time.

To enter the competition make sure you like Rekorderlig's, Rascals' or Won Hundred's Facebook pages [OR their Twitter accounts] and leave a comment below including your email address in the Disqus field.  No obligation to like my page on Facebook but you can if you want to...  Unfortunately, because of the alcohol content, you have to be 18 or over* and resident in the UK to enter this competition.  Let me know in your comment if you'd prefer the gilet or the sweatshirt!       

Antwerp II

I'm at a really stressful point in my DPhil right now where I just have to get something working and it's taking much more time than I had hoped.  I'm basically working on code every single day until my brain is fried and all I can do is watch Great British Menu repeats while flicking through photos of happier times.  In one of my brain-fry moments this weekend I took some time to mess around with the GIMP (no laughing please, we're adults), figuring out different colouring techniques as well as things you can do with layers and layer masks.  It's a pain not having access to Photoshop which has all the helpful online guides, but that's the price I pay for having a laptop where I can really program my maths efficiently.  Linux has its ups and down.  Anyway, here we have some disfigured images from my trip to Antwerp that haven't seen the light of day yet.  Matthew, Charlie and Lexxi in all their technicolor glory.   

Instagram diary

Last night the Amazonian Emily of Fashion Foie Gras celebrated her and her brother's birthdays with a chic party in the basement of Milk & Honey, where I was stunned to meet a woman around my own age who didn't know what a blog was.  She didn't mean she didn't read blogs - which I could understand - but that she had no idea what one was ('So you put your writing...on...a website...have I got it right?').  Her 'explanation' of working in finance is no excuse; I know perfectly well what futures exchanges are even if I choose to ignore them in my daily life.  I find that kind of ignorance about the contemporary world astonishing.  The fact that there are thousands of blogs focusing on finance and economics would be completely lost on her.  Anyway, it got me to thinking [insert Carrie Bradshaw draw on cigarette], I tend to take it for granted that my blog readers also know about and use other forms of social media such as Twitter, Pinterest and, particularly, Instagram.  But maybe you guys aren't as addicted to your iPhones/Androids (please tell me you're not still on Blackberry) as I am, so I thought I'd start sharing an 'Instagram diary' with all the photos and snippets of my life that never normally make it onto the blog.  Sort of like my visual diary, but with touch screen photoshopping and excessive use of Frametastic. 

So, first up we have my photos from last night. Since I was mixing with the fashion (Emily) and finance (Emily's significant other) crowd, I went for a swanky chic look.  I stole a dotted-nail idea from something I've seen Charlie do, experimented with curtains before going back to a sleek, pushed-back hairstyle and wore my sheer Alexander Wang dress over some black basics.  Glitz and glam was added with the Erickson Beamon bracelet I got in the Bicester Village Designers Collective pop-up and an ASOS ear stud Anna conveniently left in my house last week.  At the party we discussed this intriguing triangle below.  Consensus was: Duck gets intelligence only :(

Now let's jump back to the preparations for my birthday party last week.  Outfit preparations began with a little shopping trip to Oxford Circus.  There were the snakeskin DMs I got using a Liberty voucher (although I was also sorely tempted by a nylon-fronted Dries van Noten t-shirt) and then a black t-shirt from COS.  I couldn't choose between three different styles - one boxy, one fitted, one slinky - so I ended up getting them all.  They were pretty cheap and you can never have enough basic blacks, right?  I feel the whole look was tied together by the Jil Sander harness.  I really need to get more use out of that because I love it so much.  I don't want it to become earmarked as 'for fashion week only'. 

MVIO: Han Sang Hyuk

I love the blogosphere.  Apart from facilitating the expansion of my friendship group (beyond Anna) to include others with the same obsession as me, it has opened up my spending habits to fresh designers from all over the world.  Like Korean brand MVIO as designed by Han Sang Hyuk, whose A/W 2012 collection was recently posted online by Diane Pernet.  In many ways, Korea seems to be the new Japan of the fashion world - a country generating large numbers of talented, modern designers but keeping much of that talent at home.  Only a few brands from the Far East make it onto the European or American markets but I might just hope that MVIO will make the jump, at least to stores like the LN-CC or boutiques listed on Farfetch, if they aren't going to come to Paris to show their wares.  I like the quirky fusion of men's tailoring and biker gear in this collection, as well as the comic pseudo-Céline styling of the strong jacket over the shoulders.  Apparently some of MVIO's collections have been a bit wackier - they sent 'a 7 foot tall headless model riding a motorized Segway down the runway' (see here) - but this subtle twist on traditional clothing is what's working for me.  I'd really love to get my hands on one of the jackets or the suit in the third image.  The only problem would probably be the sizing; in Tokyo I had to buy an XL belt in an emergency, and even then I could only close it on the last hole.  The shame of it... 

xxx

Duck

Do you like my brogue?

[I want to predicate this post by stating that I am not being paid or gifted anything by Dr Martens, the gushing you are about to read is 100% genuine.]

I bought a pair of black Dr Martens brogues on the internet last year.  You may have seen them around, most likely because I've been wearing them in every single outfit post since then.  This would be for three main reasons:

1. They look good.  Chunky and rugged but old-fashion and polished, they have a stacked sole which makes me look even taller than I already am.   
2. They are incredibly hard-wearing. Days of wandering London's dirty streets, nights of dancing at parties and they are still standing strong.  There is barely a crease or scratch to be seen.  A quick slick of shoe polish and they look brand new again.
3. They are my comfiest "smart shoes".  The thick outer leather is a little stiff at first and requires breaking in, but once they've softened up they are more comfortable than my Converse.  Nine times out of ten I'm going to opt for the brogues over the Prada creepers just for the comfort factor.  If I really want to make a statement, then the Pradas win out. 

Now, I have recently been looking for a new "evening shoe".  Something that I keep in the closet for special occasions and whip out to add some spice to an otherwise simple evening outfit.  I was lusting after some new season Pradas and Raf Simons but really, I just can't afford that right now.  So I was wandering in Liberty the other week, the remainder of my birthday money and a £30-off voucher burning a hole in my pocket, when I saw these: my black Dr Martens brogues, but updated with a snakeskin insert.  I highly doubt it's real snakeskin given the price, more than likely patterned leather, but still.  I had to get them.  If you still don't understand why, see points 1-3 above.  In.  Love.  

So now you'll be able to figure out the time of day I take my outfit shots.  Daytime if it's the all-black brogues, evening if it's the snakeskin hybrid.

Raf squared

I've posted about quite a few events recently so it's probably time to get back to the fashion matter at hand.  Well, sort of, since this is actually the outfit I wore to my birthday party, but drinking and the damned/blessèd central heating meant that most of the outfit was left hanging on the back of my chair for the night.  

I had been absolutely determined to wear this jacket I got as my birthday present from my parents at the Antwerp Raf Simons archive sale (the real reason I themed my party modernism/modernity/futurism).  It's from the SS 2000 collection (just before he put his company on a short hiatus), and is the second piece of true Raf I've managed to get my hands on; the other is a SS 2005 lightning bolt t-shirt that I'll get around to blogging sometime or another.  The blazer fabric is a mottled blue and black which shines electrically in the daylight but looks dark and sleek when inside.  I've been looking for a single-button jacket for a while, but the pointed lapels and the fact that it's not another black jacket were what really sold it to me.  It was the only one of its kind on the rail and it fitted me like a glove -  the deal-sealer.  I know I'll get a lot of use out of this. 

And what could be more appropriate to wear with old-school Raf mainline than current-season Jil Sander as designed by Raf?  Seemed like the perfect combination of modern minimalism and futuristic vision for my theme.  The ridiculous colour clash was just an added bonus.

Wearing: jacket by Raf Simons, t-shirt by COS, PVC and python harness by Jil Sander, trousers by Topman and brogues by Dr Martens.  

Birthday boy

I would apologise for the number of photos in this post but, you know, it's my birthday party and I'll do what I want. I feel that every good birthday, like every good meal, comes in at least five parts so I'm breaking the blog post down this way. Perhaps this will help the overindulgence go down in the most delightful way...

We kicked things off with cocktails at the Sanderson's Long Bar. Famous for being a den of iniquity (i.e. where high calibre ladies-of-the-night like to congregate in search of prey), the hotel is enjoying something of a renaissance and the lit-up bar still evokes New York cool. Charlie wore her Ann D skirt split up to here to fit in with the usual clientèle. Drunkenness Level: 1/10.

We quickly moved onto a delicious dinner at L'Autre Pied. Mother and I tried it out last time she was down and were hooked, especially because it has a separate vegetarian menu. I had a medley of broccoli (one of my favourite vegetables) while the others chowed down on fish and Silka deer. Apparently the desserts were so amazing that Anna actually had to go face-down in hers although I opted for a slate of cheeses complete with birthday candle. Red wine, white wine and a couple of dessert wines led to the Drunkenness Level reaching a good 5/10.

Thamanyah

Usually the Just in stock! type emails I wake up to every morning from the likes of Net-A-Porter, Luisa Via Roma, etc drive me round the twist. Everyone basically stocks the same designers and they try to palm off current season pieces as fresh and exciting in their editorial shots and cobbled-together moodboards when really all I can think about is next season...  However, every so often a design pops up that really piques my interest and actually encourages me to open my browser. Cut to Sunday morning, hungover as Hell after my birthday party (H-I-larious photos to come when I get extricate my memory card from flatmate's laptop), clutching a pint glass of VitaminWater (it's all about the multi-v still lemonade) as I drool over Ahmed Abdelrahman's Eastern/Western fusion designs on LN-CC.

I haven't heard of Ahmed or his brand, Thamanyah, before but I'm hooked. A quick Googling session didn't yield much information though what I found looks promising. The Dubai-born designer is a protégé of Michelle Lamy, presumably the reason behind his backing by Rick Owens, and his first commercial collection for SS 12 is inspired by the four supposed defining concepts of the Arab peninsula – identity, religion, military might and petroleum.

Taking oil and the military as inspiration could lead to a studenty hodgepodge of a collection but instead Thamanyah is a line of essentially traditional Arabic garb reconstructed in Western fabrics with modern cuts. The wool gabardine kandoras are simple, striking and monastic in their austerity, although a thread on Style Zeitgeist has relegated them to the heap labelled “good for editorial but completely unwearable”. Not so sure about that but then I have been known to wear a black floor-length dress. I'm a particular fan of the trousers-with-skirt combination (finally answering the seasons-old question, 'Can men wear peplums?') and the kilt which are much more Charles Guislain than souk-chic attire. I'm looking forward to seeing what Ahmed produces for AW. And for the prices to come down a notch or two...

xxx

Duck

So fresh and so clean clean

The title of this post probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering this first set of images but hopefully it will by the end.  I may have left my house feeling fresh and clean but I certainly didn't look it by the time I'd made it to Queen's Park tube.  It's been so windy in London recently (apparently we've had all the summer we're going to get) that very few outfits are managing to make it through the day unharmed.  Even my hair is only coping due to copious applications of extra strength Elnett.  There's no equivalent of helmet-head for apparel so I was already a crumpled mess when I met up with Lexxi.  It probably didn't help that I decided now was the best time whip out one of my Antwerp purchases, a super-thin crêpe Damir Doma shirt-dress that creases like a bitch.

"Whaaat, Damir Doma from the Antwerp stock sales!", I hear you cry incredulously?  But Damir isn't Belgian... True, but while we there, Charlie and Lexxi took me to a shop specialising in 'recent designer clothing', Labels Inc.  Normally I'm not really a vintage kind of guy (let's just call it second-hand, OK?) but you can actually find brand new pieces in this shop - this shirt still had the original Damir tags on.  We think the owners travel around Europe going to all the sample sales, hoard up the bargains they find, and then sell them on at a profit.  In that case, I probably didn't get this for the lowest price possible, but considering I don't get invited to Damir Doma sample sales (Paris?) it was still a lot cheaper than the RRP.  It's not looking its best here but trust me, after a good iron it's pretty damn nice.  Stasie might even go as far as calling this outfit 'homeless-chic' but fearing a Galliano-style backlash, she's keeping her beak shut.