Retro

Red Hell Paloma Bunny Cardigan: Tiger Milly | Dolores Polka Dot Top: Collectif | Denim Pencil Skirt: New Look | Heels: F&F

I had a really lovely weekend that seems like it was ages ago now, even though it was actually only 3 days! As a Christmas present from our parents, my sister and I got tickets to Matilda the Musical in London along with train tickets to get us there. Living up in North Yorkshire, we don’t often get to go down to London, so it was like a mini holiday for us really! We got the train down on Friday morning, which meant we arrived around lunchtime, managed to drop our bags off at the hotel (which was the Premier Inn at Bank – a pretty nice location and well located for the tube), Matilda was on in the evening so we had the afternoon to go explore. We decided to go somewhere fairly close and headed to Camden as we’d heard the market there was awesome – and that it was indeed! I don’t know what I was expecting, but I know I wasn’t expecting it to be as huge as it was! We managed to spend a good few hours just walking around looking at everything there – the stalls seemed to go on and on, inside and outside, with everything from vintage clothing, antiques, trinkets, handmade things, and all sorts of food. We regretted the fact that we’d grabbed a quick lunch at Pret before getting to the market as there was SO much yummy looking food – ah well, next time.

Anyway, while there we happened across a Collectif store. I’d bought a few things from their site recently and had a fleeting visit to their Spitalfields store about a year ago when Charley and I went to the Lingerie Awards, so of course, I had to have a look, especially since the upstairs section had both sale and sample sale items! The point of this whole story is that, of course, I had to buy some clothes, and this top is one of them. Over the past year or so, I’ve slowly moved more towards wearing retro/vintage shapes in my clothing since it suits my figure more than modern clothes do, and Collectif is one of my favourite brands for it at the moment.

I tried on a good handful of things, but only came away with this top (the Dolores polka top) and the Dolores polka dot rose dress – I didn’t realise at the time they were both Dolores, but the dress has elbow length sleeves, so it’s slightly different! Both items were £25, which was pretty good I think, although the sizing was a bit strange. I got the dress in an 8 and it fits absolutely perfectly (will show this to you sometime, although it needs a little fixing as I wore it to work the other day and took too wide a step, splitting the slit in the back a bit, oops!), but the top is a 12 and a pretty good fit too! I could probably do with a 10 in the top to be fair, but the 12 was the smallest size, plus when I tried it on, I didn’t realise it had a zip on the side – it’s easier to get on now that I know it has a zip!

The rest of the weekend in London was a lot of fun too, but very tiring on my feet and legs – there’s a lot more walking to do than you think! Matilda was fantastic, especially considering how small the children were in it, and we had tea at Jamie’s Italian before that. On Saturday we went over to Portobello Road first (pretty much just so we could sing the song from Bedknobs and Broomsticks) where I finally got to try an underbust What Katie Did corset (the Vamp – look how awesome it is!! Awful picture, I know!). We then went to Goldhawk Road so I could do a quick fabric shop – I’d found out before that fabrics in London are way cheaper than up here, and that was definitely true. The cheapest I can get up here is about £6/m (unless I happen to catch a £5/m weekday market, which is impossible since I’m at work), and those are not exactly the nicest fabrics. I only bought two – a scuba fabric for my next Watson bra and a postbox print. In the afternoon we had tickets booked for the Tower of London, so we hada quick lunch at Costa then spent the afternoon there. In the evening, we met Beth’s friend who’s living down in London now for a meal at Cote by the river, which was really yummy, then went to see her house. And finally, Sunday morning, we went over to All Bar One on Regent Street for breakfast, wandered Oxford Street, then went to Libertys where I accidentally bought some Liberty fabric – oops! Yeh, that was expensive, but I thought I might as well while we were there and I only bought 1.5m.I’m also really excited now because we’ve got a proper holiday booked for later this year! It’s a special birthday of my dad’s – not sure I’m allowed to say which! – but we’ve got flights and accommodation booked in the south of America (not South America, the Deep South of North America!). What with all the house buying and everything (I think we’re very close to a date on that), it’s a fairly expensive time – I’d looked into travel insurance like this only to realise we already have it with our bank account, so fortunately that’s saved us a bit. I’m already looking at places to visit, where to go to eat etc. when we’re there. Ben, my sister and I will be heading over there for 2 weeks, while my lucky parents are spending 3 weeks there, so we’re on the look out for what we can do – I’m excited!