Has it actually been a week already? Again, I apologise for the sporadic and utter lack of frequency with my posts. It's been a really crazy week, so I'm afraid my ramblings about what's affecting my current joie de vivre may be arduously long, with references to architecture, birthday-brownie-baking and sartorial antics. How scandalous it is to cover all these in one post, but I'm flying to Hannover at the beginning of next week for dOCUMENTA (13), the art spectacle that continues to take the folk of Kassel by storm. So I think it's a bit necessary to release any internal monologue (stream of consciousness?) prior to this...

Katrantzou-Pencil-(Pencil)-Skirt Image Courtesy of JoJo Magazine

The Edge Condition
Alas folks, as of today The Developing City exhibition at the Walbrook building ended, so my fortnightly adventures there to see the exhibition/be educated at their breakfast talks are now at an end. The final in the series of the NLA's Friday morning breakfast talk events for this exhibition was aptly titled "The Edge Condition", where folk involved in developing the fringes of London spoke about the enormous task of how you go about expanding and developing a city.

Spoiler alert: it's bloody difficult to expand any city, let alone a capital.

I want to write so much about that morning (I took four pages of notes in the space of an hour) but I won't, for fear of breaking Blogger with a post any more enormous than this one. The challenges of expanding London were initially discussed, and how the fringe's local needs are constantly being affected. Others are the demands put under buildings, local organisations, the fringe's dynamic nature. Like, let's just say that Tower Hamlets are put under immense pressure at the moment. As someone who works on the fringe, I understand perfectly well that people want to live in Shoreditch and other areas that sit on the city's outskirts. The location is absolutely brilliant, it actually enables people to walk to work and that couldn't be any more appealing. But as more and more people continue to work in London, there's only so much capacity a city can take. It needs to expand to contain all these people, thus places on the fringe get more expensive and we can no longer afford to reside there. Yet, simultaneously- we need people to live in London, we need this dynamism. The city's population is ever expanding though; London attracts the best of the talent pool and will continue to do so. (Ahem, that last point wasn't made by one of the speakers but I'm biased enough to agree wholeheartedly)

Another interesting thing is the development of the city's transport hubs. Through extensive masterplanning of Farringdon and its station, by the time we reach 2016, Farringdon Station will be taking 56, 700 people through its doors each day (it currently stands at 22, 000 which in itself if epic). And Clerkenwell too was discussed about plans for its development and how this will eventually occur. Did you know there are more designers in Clerkenwell than any other area in Western Europe? That's pretty impressive, but as our society have evolved in the last century, our designers no longer make things. The dialogue between makers and designers expands with each generation... of course, there are exceptions to this rule, such as some of the fantastic designers short-listed to exhibit at the Design Museum this year, but I'll discuss that shortly.

Also raised in this incredible hour of enlightenment, was how much we need designers, artists and as many creative people as possible in London. Without them, the city would falter altogether. Creativity attracts people to a city, it creates an exciting edge that you just can't achieve with only corporate organisations in any city (I feel like I'm stating the bleeding obvious here). Before I go off on a tangent about this, I'm going to have to cut it short with a quotation I picked up with one of the breakfast speakers, talking about the electric nature of developing through London's fringe:

"We have to accept there is more complexity than we know" 


Returning to South Kensington
Seriously, with repeat trips to SW7 occurring this often, I am actually on the verge of re-inventing myself as a Sloane. Soon enough you will find me casually draping my Whistles cardigan draped over my shoulders nonchalantly next time I'm dining out at the Duke of York's headquarters.

Anyway, our department at work were lucky enough to spend a beautiful Monday morning in this part of the city. I ended up seeing the Science Museum for the first time, and revisiting Yoko Ono's retrospective at the Serpentine. It was also rather wonderful sitting under this year's pavilion again too:

Serpentine 2012 Pavilion

Returning to Katrantzou

Back to School chic: Katrantzou Scarf (£340, Selfridges)

This past week has also marked a return to styling influences driven by the dazzling Mary Katrantzou. Other than the incredible HB Pencil pencil skirt, which really does showcase back-to-school/work-chic at its finest (see top photograph), I've been trying out a few of the eyeliner techniques that have been incorporated into her shows. I'm really into the SS2012, and admittedly I did only attempt this once for my friend's birthday party on Friday, and then I rubbed off everything but the outer triangular flicks, deeming to myself that going for the full geometric eyes on a night out might be a little too much. It's subtle (ish) too, meaning I can get away with sporting it to work occasionally. For the photographs below, I used Rimmel's waterproof gel eyeliner which created a really nice dense finish, but it takes an absolute age to dry so in future I'm going to stick to my trusty Bourjois Pinceau liquid  eyeliner.



Also, following on from that post in mid-August when I waffled on about how much burgundy and berry tones are taking over my life, I actually didn't stick to my guns when buying a new treat from the Lancôme counter at Harrods. Believe me, I had every intention of splurging on a rich, dark vampy shade, but somehow the make up artist tempted me into buying a bright purple shade. She kept on saying to me that dark colours are just ageing, and how someone of my youth (¬ _¬) should be opting for a more punchy colour. I already have one of their bright red ones, so I risked the Violette Coquette from their Rouge in Love range. It's a really bizarre shade, much more eye catching than the photo below would let on, but it's most definitely became a staple item for the next season or 3.

Emerald Green Dress: Zara Studded Leather Collar: Zara

Watt always was a golden boy. Image taken opposite the library of Birmingham.

...If you've managed to read the entirety of this post, then reader- I salute you!

Vikki xx

Labels: ART DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE, Design Museum, Designers in Residence, Documenta Kassel, Mary Katrantzou, NLA, Sartorial, South Kensington, The Developing City