Something old < SOMETHING NEW

Summer is upon us at last - if this current heat wave is anything to go by! Tis the season of barbecues, beer gardens and the dreaded wedding invites.

I myself have racked up an impressive three this year which means not only must I fork out for gifts and expensive hotel drinks, but I must of course buy new outfits.

The best advice I can give is to buy a nice bottom half (trousers or the current fashionable long skirts) as you can then purchase a couple of plain (and cheap) tops and accessories to make each outfit look new. This can also be done with plain dresses.

If, however, you want to show off to the happy couple and their 100 guests how successful and rich you are then you must of course buy a new outfit for each wedding. Its unwritten wedding law - especially since the intrusion, I mean creation, of Facebook.

The best brand for wedding attire this season is undoubtedly French Connection. They have dresses for the lucky sods who have received ceremony and evening invites and need an all encompassing outfit that can go from respectable at the church, to comfortable at the dinner, to show stopping on the dance floor.

They also have a wide variety of outfits for the rest of us who have received three 'evening invitations' and can have the ability to go as raunchy as we please because we're not wanted till 7.30pm.

I've compiled a few of my favourite dresses for each situation below and I'm sure you'll fall for them as much as I did. As it should be, they are beautiful dresses with beautiful names... just ignore the price tag.


Best friends, otherwise known as all day guests

Garden Flowers £285

Over the Edge £140

Rebecca Beads £140

Spell on You £150

Acquaintances, otherwise known as evening guests

The Sparkle Hour £160

Elisa Beading £170

Rainbow £200

Electric Circus £195

Flu'd up to the MAX

Sorry for the lack of communications peeps but I've got a chest infection, remixed with a flu and am bed bound for the next few days.

Hopefully the drugs will kick in soon! If not for my health's sake, then for my fashion's... Sweats just ain't doing it for me anymore!

MJ xoxo

Coulda Woulda Shoulda #May

Coulda... bought the Cotton Dobby Shirt Tunic from Uniqlo for a reasonable £19.90. For 20 quid you get a wardrobe essential that can be dressed down in the day with jeans and pumps, or dressed up for the evening with statement jewellery, skinnies and nude heels.

Woulda... been a very happy girl if I could afford to buy this Mini Bureau Bag by Desa for £329. I love the leather croco print and I prefer bags with both a top handle and over the shoulder handle - more versatility!

Shoulda... bought the beautiful Regent Savoy Hunter boots for £125. Perfect for the current weather and stylish to boot!

The Words of Alber Elbaz

I am in love with a gay man. There I said it. I am completely besotted with Alber Elbaz, the head designer for Lanvin, the world's oldest running couture fashion house.


My love of Lanvin has been an ongoing affair, but I have only taken up with Elbaz quite recently. It started about five months ago when I read a quote of his in a magazine about women that was so beautiful I was dewy eyed by the final line.


It was love at first read.


Elbaz is famous for his poetic quotes that adore the female form and just reading them make me feel better about myself. Every interview I have read as research for this article has unearthed another Elbaz thought to live my life by.


I've assembled a collection of the best below - just try not to fall in love with him too. 



Interview Magazine

I love and respect women. I work mostly with women. And you know, our logo for Lanvin is a mother and a daughter. I’ve always said, “It’s not a lion, and it’s not a horse. It’s a mother and a daughter.”

Sometimes you have a sketch, and the sketch looks wonderful in your head or on the paper, but women are not two-dimensional beings. It’s not about the front and the back. It’s about what’s in-between. That’s fashion. That’s 3-D.

I read an article about a mother. Her son got injured in a terror attack and he lost his legs. He was 7 years old. This mother left her other four kids and her husband and her job and took this boy to a little room they rented near the hospital. She took care of him for two years. Every time they put prosthetics on him, he’d grow, and they wouldn’t fit, so they’d have to start all over. At that moment, you have to ask yourself: Is fashion important? Is it important to talk about luxury? Does it really matter if you’re going to wear a red dress or not? Finally, I thought, Because of that woman, it is important. You make people dream. You make people think. You have to give them stories. You have to introduce fantasy. Fashion is how we bring them into the world today. That is my job.

 Independent, April 2008

I remember a woman telling me that every time she wore a Lanvin dress, men wanted to sleep with her. Later, I thought that I'd rather she fell in love.

The whole idea of instant fashion that you wear for one day and then throw out the next is no longer relevant. When I work, I always think about the women that I know, the women that I want to know, and the people that I love. I'm very romantic and, if we open a dictionary, romanticism is a desire to go back to the past.

The Guardian, October 2004

I love women and I'm not here to make them look like tarts or try to make myself look very original. My clothes are about comfort, simplicity and not stealing attention from the face. If you change a woman's look, you change her persona. I am here to make her look and feel good about herself.

Even his name is poetic... Alber Elbaz. Perfection.

@ The Met Gala

I was avidly following the live updates on Twitter of The Costume Institute's Met Gala last night I found myself laughing. Half of the photographs I came across were the usual posed paps, celebrities smising whilst looking provocatively over a shoulder, but the other half were the type of back of the taxi shots you'd expect from me on a Saturday night, not Cara Delevingne on her way to the Met. Though of course she was in a limo, not a hackney cab.

As I was compiling a collection of photographs to display on this post I realised that the celebrities' own Twit pics of the night were far more interesting than the official Getty images. It was like flicking through a friend's photo album of the night on Facebook (in a world where me and Rachel Zoe could like each other's updates).

So I have decided to choose the best Instagrams and Twit pics of the night to give this post a behind the scenes effect. There's nothing better than seeing Christina Ricci huddled awkwardly in her car so as not to ruin her Thakoon bow! #lol

@missjourdandunn and @caradelevingne

Christina Ricci by @ThakoonNY

Emma Stone by the @metmuseum

Anna Wintour by the @metmuseum

Amy Adams and Giambattista Valli papped by @fashionologie

@GwynethPaltrow by @FabSugar

Carey Mulligan by @NylonMag

Scarlett Johansson, John Krasinski and Emily Blunt snapped by @HanneliM

@AZEALIABANKS by @NylonMag

Fashion Against AIDS #H&M

Top £2.99

H&M have launched their fifth Fashion Against AIDS collection to raise funds and create awareness of safe sex among young people.

The collection, which brings together ethnic influences from across the world, was launched last week in 300 H&M stores across the country.

Special prints were created by international artists and illustrators to make a collection that bursts with colour and authenticity.

25% of all sales will go to a variety of international youth HIV/AIDS awareness projects.

Shorts 19.99

Jacket £24.99