As we all prepare to dive down into the rabbit hole with the release of Tim Burton’s ‘Alice In Wonderland’ fast approaching, I take a look at how the film and its characters can inspire and update your wardrobe. Unbeknown to herself, Alice has become a quite the style icon with designers everywhere using the film as a muse for their inspiration. Whether its bow headbands, or t-shirts with the film characters imprinted upon them to customised jewellery inspired by the wonderland, the world is definitely going crazy as people want their own piece of her fantasy world. Selfridges in London have transformed their wonder room especially for the occasion as windows and the room itself have become an Alice inspired wonderland.

Alice is infamous for her adorable bow headband. I have recently purchased a couple myself and I love them. Versatile for either daytime or on a night, why not add one to your wardrobe to instantly update any look and add that girly touch.

Although it may not match the colour worn by Alice, I personally love this floppy, bow headband by Freedom. This brand have created an abundance of headbands, all in different shapes, textures and colours to suit the little girl within us all. The cream tone is perfect to match with the spring’s neutral colour pallet. Freedom @ Topshop, £12.

Benoit have released some inspirational headwear for this season and I adore all of it! This black bow headband in particular is a near perfect match to that worn by Alice herself! Benoit available at Liberty’s of London, £95.

Zoe and Morgan are renowned for their amazing range of jewellery which can instantly add that finishing touch to any look. They have released the following pieces of jewellery which may have even have been inspired by the dear white rabbit! The necklace is priced at £120 and the earrings at £95. Both are available from their online store. Also check out the Disney couture range of jewellery themed around the movie!

However if you prefer you can always keep time like the white rabbit himself with this Marc by Marc Jacobs, Gold Turn Lock Pendant. Hopefully it may aid you to keep track of the time, unlike the unlucky white rabbit….…The necklace is £175, Marc by Marc Jacobs…

Hearts seem to be everywhere this season whether they are imprinted onto fabrics, hanging on the end of necklaces or in the form of bags, like this one from Vivienne Westwood. If you are feeling adventurous why not get the shoes to match? I’m sure the Queen of Hearts would envy you herself with these bold pieces that add that ‘pop’ of colour into your wardrobe.

Bag £199 and Shoes £88 both at Vivienne Westwood

OPI have produced a limited edition collection of nail varnish to mark the release of the film. ‘Thanks so Muchness’, ‘Absolutely Alice’, ‘Off with her Red’ and ‘Mad as a Hatter’ are a mix of glitter and bold colours and recently one an ‘In Style’ best beauty buy award! My favourite has to be ‘Mad as a Hatter’, a crazy combination of various coloured glitters all crammed into one!

Add a cheeky grin to your wardrobe with this Cheshire Cat inspired t-shirt from Junk Food. The brand has released a range of t-shirts inspired by characters from the movie, although this cat grin has to be my favourite. I remember first watching the film as a child and been quite scared of the cheeky cat.…….. Since then he has become one of my favourite characters! These t-shirts are selling like hot cakes so you have to be quick to get your hands on one!

If like me you have a VERY sweet tooth then stop by Harvey Nichols where they have stocked up on Alice inspired confectionary. The quirky array of whimsical goodies, from Fancy Nancy, Dermaquette, Curious Chocolate and Food is Art, includes a hand-painted white rabbit, a solid milk chocolate teapot and giant key covered in gold, as well as edible mock turtles, chess pieces and woodland cutlery. Even better, prices start from just £3.25. I ADORE these tempting cookies by Fancy Nancy!!!!!

Written by Sarah Greenwood.

See her blog at http://pinklipstickgirl.blogspot.com/

xx

poster design by iamanoctopus

Ballad Of’s…next event is on the 11th of March. Its also a fund raiser for Haiti, so a very very worth cause dears!

RSVP on facebook http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=319987687301&ref=ts

Or email [email protected]

Can’t wait to see you there

x

….The 11th of March is the next Ballad Of event.

The Ballad Team are looking for exhibitors to show off their fantastic work at the party If you are interested we are after poems, illustrations, photography, painting…anything beautiful.

Or…

If any of you are wonderfuly talented at juggling, fire eating, maypole dancing and circus amazingness get in touch.

Email the team at either [email protected] or [email protected]

Love Love Love

By Katie Wright

It’s been hard to keep up with all the action with all the big names over the final two days of New York Fashion week, and it’s only going to get busier with London Fashion Week starting tomorrow. I’ll be down at Somerset House blogging and tweeting my little socks off so be sure to follow @blondekatie on Twitter for snippets of the action from the front line.

Before all that, here’s a mammoth run down of ten more NYFW collections that caught my eye. Not necessarily a top ten per se, but a ten nonetheless.

1. Things were all boyish and blankety to begin with at 3.1 PHILIP LIM. I preferred the liberal use of purple sequins and chiffon trailing out to one side.

2. DEREK LAM’s girls were not to be messed with - they channeled cowboys, indians and the mafia.

3. Possibly my favourite collection of the season so far was one that featured an array of outlandish motifs - giant body-shaped belt buckles, bar codes, breast plates, crucifixes, jewels, gigantic bows and slogans to name but a few. JEREMY SCOTT combined them all to poke fun at fashion - but in the nicest possible way.

4. ‘Goth secretary’ were the words that sprang to mind for me at PROENZA SCHOULER. But in a good way. The scribble-patterned jeans and duffel coats were great too.

5. I love the way that OSCAR DE LA RENTA takes all the hottest models (Coco, Agyness, Karen, Sasha, Freja et al) and makes them over to look like middle-aged women from the eighties with big wavy hair and frosted lipstick, yet they still look amazing. I put it down de la Renta’s timeless clothes. As luxe, glamorous and expensive-looking as ever.

6. NARCISO RODRIGUEZ takes the cake for craziest head gear of the week. Nice asymmetrical dip-dyed sci-fiesque dresses too.

7. The highlights of VERA WANG’s collection for me were the adorable gothy princess dresses.

8. MARCHESA also nailed the goth-princess look, and took this season’s fixation on body art in a beautiful new direction.

9. The least practical and wearable (at least outside of the A-list lifestyle) aspects of REEM ACRA’s collection were also the most desirable - a coat full of holes and the oh so shiny and wonderful full-length gowns.

10. I don’t know much about MILLY, but I know this Parisiene beret and ubermini combination is a winner.

By Katie Wright

Each season, I think that I look forward to the Marc Jacobs collection as much the rest the next fashion-lover i.e. a LOT. (A couple of weeks ago there were rumours that Marc was ‘over the whole celebrity thing’ and had been street casting for models, so there was added intrigue as to what direction he was going in). And usually I’m blown away by the abundant creativity and beauty on show. But this time round I’m just not sure what to make of it.

Fair enough there are some lovely pale chiffon dresses, and great fur coats, but the midi-length bias-cut skirts and loose blazers in grey tweed that dominated the first 30-odd looks were really quite, well, frumpy. The loose historical references Marc loves to nod to worked wonders as usual (a shimmery velvet damsel-in-distress dress being a case in point) but the only thing that really made me gasp with desire was the pair of see-through rain coats. On the whole, I’m still undecided. What do you reckon readers?

I definitely know how I feel about Halston’s AW2010 offering - it’s brilliant. Halston is a bit like the US equivalent of Biba. It was huge in the seventies and people got pretty excited when the brand reappeared on the schedule of NYFW a couple of years ago. I didn’t really see the fuss before, but this season, with the arrival of new head design honcho Marios Schwab, the billowing disco gowns have been all but replaced by a sharper, sci-fi aesthetic that totally works. Pleated and subtley draped cocktail dresses are augmented with metallic detailing, or beading that resembles circuit boards, and colour-wise muted fawn and teal feature heavily - alongside an egg yolk yellow silk jumpsuit that is pure seventies Halston throwback. Maybe Marios is what Halston has been waiting for.

Also deserving of a mention today is Zac Posen. Just like last season, when the finale flower-strewn sparkling gowns eclipsed everything that had gone before them on the catwalk, Posen’s best AW2010 looks were in the final third of the show. Following a lot of quite dreary sandy brown suits were a bunch of fantastic mini dresses in my most favourite clashing colour combo, pink and red. I want them all.

NYFW continued apace on day four with more of the big hitters (Carolina, Marc, Calvin, more from Donna). We’ll get to those later, but first here are a choice selection of note-worthy names and what they’re up to for Autumn/Winter 2010.

Cynthia steffe - It was a veritable school disco with Steffe’s girls in a variety of uniform-grey and monochrome pinafores and mini-kilts.

At Lacoste, the obligatory sporting whites were out of the way it was a glorious riot of smiling models in colour-blocking brights. Practically everything was cropped - sleeves, tops, hems, you name it. Great asymmetrical cloches too.

Managing to merge the 1890s and 1990s, Julian Louie’s minimalist Victorian dresses came with either long sleeves and ridiculously short skirts or mega high necks and no sleeves. A simple but effective equation.

Helmut Lang: T-shirt with wolf. Need I say more?

Ohne Titel explored a dark military sensibility throughout.

The spectrum of mismatched slighty grungey looks at Gary Graham was wide, but were all paired with mega high platforms.

Elise Overland went hell for leather. And velvet. And er human hair?

As usual, Victoria Beckham didn’t break much new ground, but she knows the value of keeping things simple and I’d happily take all 26 of these frocks for myself.

By Katie Wright

Two grand dames of New York fashion were on the menu on day three, and displayed some of the most wearable and desirable clothes we’ve seen all week.

Oftentimes, DIANE VON FURSTENBURG seems to pinpoint a location with a collection, rather than a specific era or aesthetic, and while last season the giant sandy backdrop was an obvious clue to travel abroad, for Fall 2010 the oil slick-black catwalk denoted that she was firmly back in the city. Diane’s girl this season is an urbanite who likes to mix and match boyish separates in skyscraper colours with flippy, flirty dresses. She also loves to play with texture - velvet here, leather there, and, when out on the town, plenty sequins and shine.

Donna Karan has always had a knack for appealing to the city-dweller, and this year’s DKNY outing was no exception - almost every piece of this autumnal-toned collection could slot ideally into the wardrobes of girls and women everywhere. Her trademark drapey-clingy dresses were giving a Cubist makeover, and there’s a coat for every occasion - pea, duffel, gillet, boxy blazer - plus Karan’s interpretation of the emerging tartan trend was spot on.

Emerging talents in music aren’t always just about the, erm, musicians. There are other artists ploughing the field, like Tom Martin, a music photographer. As such, we decided to pick his brain a bit and find out about him and his art, peppered with some his work.

Here goes:::

Who are you and where are you from?

I’m Tom! I have been given a hole host of bizarre nicknames (Mullet, Tmoose and more recently Wierdog?!) over the years, but Tom will do fine! I’m originally from a small village called Sowerby which is on top of a big grey hill in Halifax. However I’ve lived in Leeds for the last five years and I love it.

How long have you been a photographer?

Well I first properly tried Black & White photography in 2004 so nearly 6 years now.
How and why did you get into photography?

Completely by accident really. Things weren’t going well at school during my A-Levels so I left (which at the time felt like the end of the world!). I didn’t want to completely give up on education though so I enrolled on a foundation Art & Design course at Bradford College. During this time I got to try photography and I loved it. I had a brilliant Tutor called Dave Rowling who gave me some wonderful advice and encouragement- everything I seemed to be missing at school. And that was it I knew it was what I wanted to do, so I guess I owe Dave a lot for my career really!

What kind of photos do you take?

Up until now its all been music really, live bands, posed bands, festivals, etc. But now I’m looking to develop more into editorial and fashion photography. I’ll continue to do music though it’s what I love doing most.

Which photographers do you admire and why?

I’m lucky enough to be friends with most of the photographers that really inspire me. I have to say Danny North really, he’s been a great friend and inspiration to me and I’m sure he’s saved my life on more than one occasion (after endangering it a whole load of times with his extreme location choices!).. He’s a bit of a genius really, definitely one of the best live music photographers in the world today, I have no doubt about that.

What has been your best experience as a photographer and why?

Shooting Glastonbury this year for the NME hands down. I was with a great team if people, got to take some amazing photos and was basically just in awe of the festival the whole time.

What do you want to do in you career in the future?

To travel more would be very nice!

Who would be your dream to photograph?

I don’t know, I guess you wouldn’t until you’d taken it?! Thats the exciting part really.

Pretty neat stuff here.

You can find more of Tom’s work here.

By Katie Wright

After the endless catwalks that are so monochrome they don’t even need to be photographed in colour, Peter Som’s Autumn/Winter 2010 collection was a blast of fresh air today. And it was a blast from the seventies, signified by busy psychedelic prints, silky floral dresses and lots of lemon and lime.

Volume also came in the form of fluffy furry gillets and coats, but was kept in check with tight belted waists. So New Yorkers will be glad to know that if there’s a repeat of ‘snowmageddon’ next year (and Londoners for that matter; the city ground to a halt with the arrival of a couple of inches of the white stuff in January) then Som has plenty of sartorial solutions - even snoods managed to look chic on his runway, as did cloche hats by Albertus Swanepoel.