Kingdom Of Style

Tutting At Tuttles

Sometimes the things I like even has me squinting my eyes and questioning my own taste. Most of these instances are footwear related and this one is no exception.

LD Tuttle are one of those brands that i just can't quite get my head around. They appear to be one step removed from being in Crocs territory yet I often find myself inextricably drawn to them in their clumpy ugliness. However, after a wee nosy at Creatures of Comfort I find these shoes which even I have to scratch my head at. Behold the shoes with feathers...

I'm not sure what the point is of having some feathers sticking out of the back of your shoe, other than to make people think you've stood on a bird.

I fully admit that there is something in me that likes them. I like shoes, I like feathers, so I guess combining the two might click some box in my head that says 'yeah, shoes with feathers are ok". But intellectually I know it's far from OK. It's so not OK. I do wonder what Mr Tuttle was thinking about though when he made them. Maybe he was having chicken for his tea that night.

In reality I'd ever wear them as Amber being a gundog and all might mean she would chase me all over the house trying to catch the shoes with what appears like a small bird trapped in them.

Queen Michelle

Plumo- taking the piss...

Every time I take a prowl around Plumo, I can't shake the feeling that they are ripping the royal piss.
As well as charging like the light brigade, the site and catalogue always seem to have a condascending vibe, almost as though they are doing you a favour letting you purchase their wares.
Now to be fair, they do have some really nice things, which become much more affordable if you watch out for their sale.
But this leads me to another gripe. Before I fork out any of my hard earned cash, I want to see as many details as I can - close-ups, back view, details, but Plumo seem to think that if they just give you one atmospheric front view then that should do you. It doesn't!

Having said all that, I am quite intrigued by the following...

Matryoshka Shrug (Sale £95)

Matisse Coat (Sale £119)

Linen Dress (Sale £75)

And for Queen Michelle- Black Cashmere (Sale £69)

Queen Marie

The Worst Two Words In The Fashion Language

Fur. Gilet.

Possibly the most horrendous two words you could put in a sentence together. Immediately conjures up images of a cowboy boot wearing, coin belt donning Ms Miller wafting around London, spawning a zillion cheap high street versions. Those damn floaty tiered skirts just wouldn't go away for about 3 summers after she'd moved on from her 'boho' phase.

The thing about her boho phase, and that look in general, is the Sienna Miller was possibly the only woman who actually looked good swathed in so many layers and jaggly bits.

It's with raised eyebrows then that I find myself inextricably drawn to a wool and fur gilet. From Marks and Spencer.

You see, I cut through Marks and Spencer every morning as it's a short cut to the street near my studio, so I always have a quick gander at the Limited Collection then work my way along the aisle until I get to the money spinner for M&S - the Old Lady Pound - the bulk of the shop that caters for, well, old ladies. But the kind of groovy granny kind of old lady - not the head-to-toe beige type.

Yet, here sits this faux fur trimmed and wool gilet and it calls to me. Everyday, it calls to me. I really can't explain why, but I see potential in that there gilet. I suspect it will go on sale and you know what? I'm going to buy it. Yes I am.

I already have a plan you see. I'll take that old lady gilet and mix it up with some leather and some PVC and I figure I could turn it into something Rick Owens would be proud of!

Minus a daft grin naturally, the fur gilet will go super well with some mega high heels, extra tight trews, leather elbow length gloves, from which I recently hacked off the strangely long fingers and made into arm-warmers, and an ancient draped top with some leather front panels. I also plan on adding some black feather trim (yes I know, more feathers) under the fur, which will hopefully sit a little over my shoulders.

My old lady gilet will be instantly transformed into something supremely edgy with the added bonus of keeping me warm. The old ladies will be horrified at my sacreligious usage of a perfectly good M&S product!

Here's hoping that bad boy goes in sale...

Queen Michelle

Someone call Dr Dolittle...

Trust me, we're going to need a professional in here.
The situation is getting rapidly out of hand, and I don't know how to stop it...

Hello! My name is Marie and I have an animal print problem...
It all started innocently enough. A little splash of cowprint. Nothing too heavy, I could handle it...

Then someone offered me some giraffe. No big deal they said. So I said sure, crash me some giraffe...

The next thing I knew, the lurex zebra was being passed around. Still cool. I know what I'm doing.
I only do this in the privacy of the palace, I'd never do it outside.

But then today, I was looking at this coat and realised I was thinking about going public.
How did this happen?

I've got to be stopped!
Help me Dr Dolittle, you're my only hope...

Queen Marie

Forgive Me Fashion For I Have Sinned...

...I never watched Sex and The City and I have no interest in the film!!!

There. I said it.

How many Hail Mary's before I'm forgiven??

Queen Michelle

Forgive Me Fashion For I Have Sinned...

I appear to be dressed like a dog's dinner today!

Do you ever get days when you leave the house and suddenly become aware of what you have on and think, "what the hell am I wearing??!". No? Maybe it's just me then.

Well today I'm having one of those days. When I have days like that I actually find that the mental discomfort at my sartorial mistake pretty much renders me useless for the whole day! I spend my time pulling at and re-arranging my clothes, even wondering if I should quickly nip out to Topshop and buy something to change into a lunch time! Clearly completely ridiculous, they are after all just clothes, but today I'm just having a day where it looks like I fell into my wardrobe and came out wearing what stuck.

I hate Mondays.

Queen Michelle

Forgive Me Fashion For I Have Sinned

I actually like the super weirdy Balenciaga shoes from the Autumn collection.

In all their strange, cyber hiking boot style I find them rather alluring.

Perhaps I am swayed by the fact I loved the whole collection in general and the shoes seemed perfectly in sync. But there is also the part of me that could actually see me wearing them with plain tent dresses (yes, I am keeping my smocks and tent dresses, despite magazines dictating to me that they are soooo "out" thus rendering me deeply unfashionable and shoved to the bottom of that thermometer graphic where it says 'smocks are so out that anyone still wearing them should be taken out and have a body con dress wrapped tightly around their head until they die'.). I'll take my chances.

I like tent dresses and these Balenciaga shoes - and I'm PROUD!!!

Queen Michelle

Forgive Me Fashion For I Have Sinned

I like these Dries Van Noten shoes.

As much as I'm an advocate of ugly shoe love, even I know some shoes are taboo. Like high heeled gym shoes. But I like them. I would wear them. I will buy them when they go on sale, because they WILL go on sale as I know not another human who would probably like these.

And no-one can disagree with me because it's my birthday and that means for today I'M ALWAYS RIGHT.

Queen Michelle

Forgive Me Fashion For I Have Sinned...

I wear fake glasses.

I don't mean fake designer glasses, I mean fake prescription glasses. I feel guilty whenever I wear them because I have perfect vision and I only really wear them because I think heavy rimmed black glasses look really good.

I started wearing them about 11 years ago and it began as irony...

An very dear old friend of mine, James, had weak eye site as a child but he also had a lazy eye, so his optician made him wear an eye patch over his good eye to strengthen his weak one. This of course meant he spent much of his childhood bumping into things. But to make matters worse, he also had to wear glasses. If you're working class in the UK you get your glasses for free, but back then (we're talking the 70's here) the glasses you got were these heavy black rimmed affairs, and when you saw someone wearing them you knew they were NHS. In Scotland (in some parts anyway) they are affectionately known as 'NHS skelpers'. I'm not sure how they came to be called 'skelpers', I can only assumed that if you were caught wearing them you could expect someone to come up and skelp you (skelp is Scottish for hit. You can hear many a Scottish mother calling out to her badly behaved child "Am gonnae skelp your arse if you don't behave yerself!"). So every time I visited James I would see this school photo of him his mum had on the mantle, and he was wearing his NHS skelpers and I always laughed recalling the tale.

I then found a pair of heavy rimmed glasses quite by mistake in a random shop, but they had clear lenses. They reminded me of James' NHS skelpers and I had to buy them. So I kind of wore them because it made me laugh, but then I discovered they were actually really handy. My face has very little by way of fat on it, so if I've had a bad nights sleep the dark shadows under my eyes are very apparent and no amount of light reflecting concealer hides them. Well the glasses are perfect because the black rim hides the shadows, so on days when it's too dull to wear sunglasses, I just pop on the NHS skelpers and my shadows are hidden! Over the years I of course have been compared to Nana Mouskouri.

Yesterday I was wearing them to hide a big red spot thing that had appeared right on my eye socket, where my dark shadow usually are, and it was quite swollen. So on they went to disguise the offending spot.

But then I discovered something rather odd - it seems that fake glasses have become a bit of a trend in certain circles! I found this out as I was searching for a photo and I happened upon a site called MisShapes. This is a club and there are lots of photos of people at the club and a large percentage of them appeared to be wearing NHS skelpers! A large percentage also had exactly the same hair and exactly the same clothes but that's another post.

I was rather surprised that to see that some people didn't even go as far as to put the lenses in the glasses and just wore the frames! How odd. So maybe I need to re-evaluate my wearing of the NHS skelpers, seeing as the 'kids' are all doing it..maybe I should invest in an eye patch. Do you think that would catch on?

Queen Michelle

FORGIVE ME FASHION, FOR I HAVE SINNED...

I am ashamed of myself but I must confess my sin before my fashion brethern.
I WANT THE PRADA PHONE!

I crave it's shiny blackness and sleekness.

I know this is a shallow and base desire.  Hopefully it will pass quickly like the nasty viral cold tthat has stuck down poor Queen Michelle on the first day of her Easter Break.

GET WELL SOON OTHER QUEEN

xxxl

Forgive Me Fashion For I Have Sinned

I knowingly bought an item which is FAKE. I was consumed by desire and lust which blinded my judgement. Kind of.

OK, a full and frank confession. Remember how I was in consideration of the investment dress and how I really wanted the white one? Well I decided that it was too impractical to buy such an expensive dress in white, but of course it didn't stop me thinking about it. All the others seemed dull by comparison to this angelic mass of beaded white fabric.

And then it happened. The Temptation Of Queen Michelle.

I was innocently perusing eBay and came across a seller from Hong Kong who was selling a rip off of the white Chloe dress! It didn't look exactly the same, and clearly not half as beautiful, but it was only £50! My dilemma came when it stated in the auction it was Chloe, which it clearly was not, but it was very similar so I thought perhaps I could get the best of both worlds - my desire for a white dress with none of the cost.

Right then I made a deal with the devil. I pressed the BIN button.

This dress won't even be a tenth of the quality of the Chloe dress, but if it's up to the standard of say Topshop, then, as much I am ashamed to admit it, I will be pleased. If it is indeed wearable then I will cut out the label and if anyone asks I will tell them exactly what it is - a cheap Hong Kong rip off.

I of course will give a full and frank report when it arrives - my first (and hopefully last) foray into the world of fakes...

Queen Michelle