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You are here: Home / Archives for Fashion and Style

Fashion and Style

Pastel Purple, Hot Pink and…Neutrals? May Favourites

June 7, 2013 By Julianne

I thought I’d succumb to blogger cliché today and share with you my recent clothing and make-up obsessions! I’m almost always obsessed with items in shades of purple and hot pink, but last month I stepped outside my colourful comfort zone and explored the possibilities of neutral eyeshadow!

I normally only wear neutral eyeshadow when I’m meeting new people and feeling shy, or when I’m attending an event where I want to look professional, so it felt kind of weird to wear the champagne-y Midnight 15, from the Urban Decay 15th Anniversary Palette, to a close friend’s birthday party! I didn’t want to be my usual garish self, because we were going to a fancy hotel for afternoon tea, and I wanted to look elegant. Don’t worry, I’m still me, I was wearing a bright pink dress, and Midnight 15 is glittery. It’s not as massively glittery as a certain other UD eyeshadow with Midnight in the name, but it’s still glittery enough to require Pixie Epoxy to stop fallout. I also made it a bit more interesting by putting a little Half Truth (a blackened purple, if you can’t see it clearly) in my crease, and I also wore thick black eyeliner, though it was a little thinner than I usually apply it.

This is fast becoming my favourite Urban Decay palette. Also this month, I was getting ready for work one day and feeling experimental, so I used Flow on the lid and M.I.A. in the crease. I loved it, and my manager said I looked really nice, so I will definitely try that again. More typically for me, I wore Omen a couple of times with a little Blackout in the crease. The only colours I haven’t tried yet in this palette are Chase, Evidence and Deep End – I think the last two look stunning but I don’t have many clothes in those colours. I’m hopelessly obsessed with matching my make-up to my clothes.

Of course, I couldn’t wear neutral eyeshadow without some sort of colour on my lips, and this month I’ve been all about shades of pink. For work, I’ve been wearing this ancient Maybelline Watershine lipstick in Raspberry Cream in an attempt to finally use it up, but I’ve started to genuinely like it! My lips are so pigmented that Raspberry Cream is almost a ‘my lips but better’ shade.

Outside of work, I’ve also been wearing the brighter lipsticks pictured, Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow (a very bright pink), and Lush’s Decisive (definitely a pinkish red on me, but your mileage may very as lots of people describe it as a cool red). Both of these are really long lasting and high quality.

I’ve been obsessed with lilac nails, mostly thanks to this little bottle that I got in a Colour Unlimited set at Christmas. It’s a beautiful shade and I’m afraid I’m going to use it up soon as I’ve been wearing it so much. I was a bit disappointed when I first tried L.A. Colors’ Flurry, because the lilacy base colour barely shows up. But it makes a great glittery top coat, especially over the Colour Unlimited lilac. Another lilac that I’ve been loving is Aromaleigh’s Penelope eyeshadow, an absolutely gorgeous and pigmented product.

Finally from the make-up favourites, Clinique Redness Solutions Daily Protective Base. This is a green coloured primer that I find too thick to use all over the face, but it works really well applied to the skin by my nose, though it took a lot of practice to get it right!

Onto clothes: I’ve been wearing this skirt to work a lot as it’s long and office-appropriate, but also quite light and floaty, great for the warm weather that we’re currently enjoying here in London. It’s a hand-me-down from my Mum, retro M&S. It’s probably from the 1980s going on the tininess of this size “14”.

This jacket was a hand-me-up from my sister. It’s funny that I’ve taken to wearing it so much because she used to practically live in it, though she styled it in a completely different way. I find that it works really well over pretty dresses, top and skirts, and I pin badges and brooches to the lapels to match my outfit. It’s also a lot easier to photograph than that skirt, as you might have guessed!

To be honest, I was wearing all of these quite regularly during most of April too! Should probably wash that jacket. What colours have you been loving lately?

Filed Under: Fashion and Style, Makeup and Skincare Tagged With: Clinique, clothes, colours, cosmetics, favourites, L. A. Colors, Lush, make-up, Maybelline, Revlon, Urban Decay

Fashionable Fiction: Edie, from Diary of a Crush

May 26, 2013 By Julianne

Me again, trying to stay true to my word and post more often! This is a new series that I’ve been planning to start for ages, partly inspired by all the blogs that create outfits for film and television characters, but instead I will be creating outfits for fictional characters based on the descriptions in their books!

Over on my book blog, this fleeting dream, I’ve been celebrating the re-release of one of my favourite teen fiction series, Diary of a Crush, with a themed week, and today I decided to take it over here and create some outfits for Edie, the diarist herself, based on her own descriptions in the books. If you want to know what store or brand an item is from, click the book/date link to go through to Polyvore.

Edie is a bottle-blonde with a Sixties fringe and a love of vintage hunting and eBay shopping. She went to secondary school in Brighton (where she must have acquired much of her wardrobe – Brighton has great shops), but then moved to Manchester to do her A Levels at college. She loves dressing up and swapping clothes with her friend Shona, though Shona seems to borrow from Edie more of the time!

French Kiss, November 9th

Edie, November 9th

Edie goes to a gig with Shona, and wears a Sixties cherry-print dress and a little red cardie. Alas, I could not find a dress that matched the description, so I picked two that I thought would work. I added in an eyeliner pen, so that she could do her eyeliner to match, and glittery red nail varnish like she wore to college when she first met Mia. Finally, it is a gig, and Edie loves her Converses, so I couldn’t resist including red and black options!

French Kiss, first morning in Paris

Edie, first day in Paris

The trip to Paris features a lot of outfit changes, and after a chaotic first evening, Edie wakes up early the next day to get dressed in plenty of time. In the new edition of French Kiss she wears a Nordic sweater dress but I didn’t like any of those on Polyvore so I went back to my 2004 copy for inspiration. I replaced the pink cord miniskirt with a skater skirt to make it more up to date and added some accessories, including a striped scarf as worn in the 2013 version!

Kiss and Make-Up, 5th March
Edie, 5th March

Edie wears a vintage floral dress for a date – of course there isn’t much in the way of vintage on Polyvore so I picked a couple of appropriately-styled new dresses to go with the headscarf and boots.

Kiss and Make-Up, 20th July
Edie, 20th July
It’s the end of college party, and Edie dresses up in a pale pink Sixties shift dress, which again, I couldn’t really find, so I picked out another couple of dresses that, combined with the hair slides and nail varnish, would make anyone look a bit like a ‘strawberry milkshake’!

None of these outfits are much like my normal style, but I do really like them! Maybe I’ll be taking a leaf out of Edie’s book (groan) and trying to pull off one of these ensembles in the near future. What do you think?

Filed Under: Fashion and Style Tagged With: book, Diary of a Crush, fashion, Fashionable Fiction, French Kiss, Kiss and Make-Up, outfits, polyvore, style

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Hi! I'm Julianne and I have so many different passions I have to be relentlessly organised to keep track of them all! On this blog I document my current obsessions and share my tips for juggling multiple interests while maintaining your creative energy. I believe that advanced planning brings advanced peace of mind - so join me, and plan to succeed in everything you do! More...

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