Fashion: Designer Pugs for Charity

Worryingly, too many of my friends can envision me winding up as a crazy cat lady in my old age. There was a period in my life when it seemed all cats within a 2 mile radius of my house turned up at my bedroom window. What can I say? It's a gift.... Ironically, my own cat abandoned me a couple of years ago and, despite tracking him down and cat-napping him back, he wandered off again never to return. I've actually really been missing the presence of a pet in my home recently, but with plans to move away soon, it's just not feasible that I can buy one. I try and fulfil my wish for a pet (cat or dog, I'm not fussy) by either 'borrowing' the neighbours' cat or visiting my local jeweller who owns a whole troop of dachshunds (my favourite breed of dog). However, fashion, as if often the case, has come to my rescue with the launch of the charity fundraiser 'Pug Dogs for Happy Kids'. The campaign sees top fashion houses including Valentino, Balmain and Versace collaborate with Luisa Viaroma to give toy  pugs a style-over - quite possibly as close as I'm going to get to the real thing! The toys will then be auctioned on eBay to raise funds for UNICEF to help children living in impoverished conditions in Bangladesh. There are 20 pug toys to bid for altogether and my bid will be going to Giambattista Valli's quite fabulous creation:

To see all the dog creations including the designs of Mary Katrantzou and David Koma, and to learn how to bid, click here.

Fashion: Mary Katrantzou for Topshop

Friday 17th February is exciting for 3 reasons. 1 - I'll be heading to London to spend a hedonistic weekend with my brother, pretending we casually mingle in a world we quite obviously don't regularly reside in. (Afternoon tea at the Dorchester, anyone?) 2 - it's the launch of London Fashion Week. And 3 - Mary Katrantzou's collection for Topshop hits stores nationwide. I quite honestly don't know which one I'm more excited for. 

While prices start at £40, the dresses do reach the three figures. Yes, compared to her mainline this is a Katrantzou bargain, but a dress in the three hundred pound region would still constitute a splurge of significant proportions from my wallet unfortunately. I'm seriously disappointed by the price tags as I absolutely love Mary's collections, so I was, and am, genuinely incredibly excited about this collaboration; not to mention the fact that it's absolutely stunning and the dresses look like they've been plucked straight from her RTW runway. 

My birthday is just under a month away and the dress below would be an absolute dream to wear for it. I'll be wishing for it when I blow out my candles....

What do you think of the collaboration? Will you be buying or are you waiting it out for Marni x H&M?

Images: Topshop & Marie Claire

When Dreams Are Made of Net-A-Porter

Yesterday evening, while indulging in my day of nothingness and reading through Vogue, I got to imagining what it would be like to have Net-A-Porter as my wardrobe. Can you imagine?! Of course, for a lucky few in this world, this is pretty much their reality, but for the rest of us...what a dream! Whenever I go to Net-A-Porter, I always look through the dresses first, then the shoes, followed by coats, bags, jackets and trousers respectively, which explains why my choices are a tad dress heavy. But if I had to go right in and make an instantaneous selection, supermarket sweep style, these would definitely be my top choices.

Would you have anything on the list? What would your top choices be?

All photos from Net-A-Porter

tomorrow! tomorrow!

...starts off London Fashion Week - best bit of all, eh? Ok, I'm biased, but really there are so many great designers to look forward to seeing. Here's a collection of my favourites :

Who are you looking forward to seeing?