The 2013 London Tweed Run

Photo by Yu Fujiwara of Tokyobike

Time for tea!

Tweed blazer - Vintage Gerry Weber, Skirt – ASOS. Floral shirt – Zara. Shoes – Topshop. Bag – Warehouse. Bike – Tokyobike. Thank you Kit for the shots of moi!

One does not simply partake in the Tweed Run among 499 others and not come home with 49,999 photos of tweeded butts, as Boromir might say.

We spilled out into the streets, ushered by the marshals – in no particular order but close enough to each other to hold hands. Mobile boomboxes in bike baskets sang the 50′s, conversations budded up here and there while turning corners. Girls rode in heels, hands-free for some boys, and we bloggers cycled with our elbows while trying to capture every moment… At times it felt like learning to cycle all over again – half scooting, half balancing with momentum – except here when you topple over sideways you take about twenty people down with you. Every single head turned on the streets, traffic stopped, and windows opened in cheer – it was exhilarating! So this is what it feels like to be a politician, or blonde. We rode through Marylebone, Oxford Circus, Saville Row, Piccadilly, Whitehall, Westminster… all the postcards of London, then ended up in Lincoln’s Inn Fields just behind Holborn for afternoon tea; then up to King’s Cross to finish the day at a pub, at which point England did what England did best and rained on a parade. Only literally, though.

Many thanks to Tokyobike once again for this wonderful experience! Check out part 1 for more tweed, less buttz.

Stolen from the boys: chestnut-brown brogues

Trench – H&M Trend. Crop-top – American Apparel. Trousers – ASOS. Brogues – Melvin & Hamilton. Bag – Kurt Geiger. Belt – Vintage LV; Thank you Charlie for helping with the shots.

Boy, girl, I don’t even know anymore; it’s that time of the month and I feel like wearing my husband’s trunks as shorts with some ‘bro’-gues and a monocle.

In the meantime, my intersexual wardrobe had a baby and this is her blog.

Coat – Zara (similar here). Bag – 3.1 Phillip Lim Pashli. Skirt – ASOS. Shoes – Vintage Salvatore Ferragamo. Glasses – YesStyle. Sweater – YesStyle. Shirt – Zara.

Apart from falling asleep everywhere and routinely waking up in zone 5 thanks to some heavy-duty anti-histamines I’ve been taking lately, not much else is up. I tell ya, those hotdang things apparently knock out a grown man within 15 minutes and yet I find myself fondling my phone at 4am with crusty eyes, scrolling the Instagram feed like all life mattered and eventually falling back asleep after the fiftieth cherry blossom pic. But during the day it’d kick in when I’m a least bit idle and then my eyelids get as heavy than the damn Pashli bag and I’m desperately asking twitter whether there’s anywhere to nap in the West end. (Quo Vadis on Dean Street, thank you Sophie.) I know I eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey every other day and I guess in essence that makes me chunkier than a ‘grown man’ but COME ON I CAN’T BE FALLING ASLEEP WHILE QUEUING FOR THE ATM.

Uniqlooks March: One item, three looks – White denim jacket

Look 1: White denim jacket – Uniqlo. Polo-neck sweater – American Apparel. Boyfriend Jeans – ASOS. White pumps – Kurt Geiger ‘ELLA’. White bag – MCM ‘Nuovo L‘.

Look 2:   White denim jacket - Uniqlo. Raincoat – Muji. Dress - Issa London via MyWardrobe.com. Shoes – Reiss. Bag – JHYoo.

Look 3:  White denim jacket - Uniqlo. Leather skirt – Vintage. Khaki stilettos – Primark. Furry bumbag - ASOS.

I have this thing every few weeks when I brew myself some redbull-coffee-crushed skittles concoction, sit myself at the computer, crack some knuckles, buckle my seatbelt (yes I have a seatbelt, it’s called duvet) and delve into the internet, determined I’d finally catch up on all the unread blogposts and saved bookmarks. Umpteen hours later I’d emerge with two PS11 worthy bags under my eyes and mystery gas emitting out of my ears, decidedly ‘cleverer’, after catching up on every single streetstyle blog in the universe, five or ten Michelle Phan wisdom tutorials, a whole gaggle of recipes where the only ingredient familiar is ‘salt’, and well, basically the entire internet. Sometimes I’d hit something like this and know I’ve come too deep. But lately, thanks to the previously advertised calamity known as eczema (aka f*kingbastard), I’ve been on house-arrest and therefore have been forced to take ORDINARY doses of said internet. And I don’t know what to do with myself, because you bloggers don’t post enough (!!!), my ‘friends & family’ don’t share enough on Facebook, and that Natalie Tran seems to have gotten a life? I refresh Bloglovin’, Youtube, Facebook every five minutes and confess to have screamed WELL IT’S ABOUT TIME at new updates. Sometimes when I feel extra desperate I read comments under some mega-instagrammer’s account and  feel bad for all the stupid people in this world. Problem with this is, being under certain physical discomfort, doing anything productive (i.e emails & posts) is difficult, but balancing a bowl of popcorn on my chest while parkouring all over the internet is a piece of banana cake… apologies once again if you’ve sent an email and I’ve been quite an asshole about not replying it. Anyhoo, here’s my three ways to wear a Uniqlo white denim jacket, still sadly inappropriate for this weather.

Picking berries atop a concrete jungle…Neeeoow Yooork!

Times Square and its neighbouring corridors of awesome

Sweatshirt – Masha Reva x SNDCT. Skirt – ASOS. Booties – Givenchy. Pouch – Kurt Geiger. Burgundy bag – Marc Jacobs Fulton; Thank you to Mathieu for the outfit shots!

If you followed the blog in 2011, you may remember the sad little tune on page-load that went a bit like ‘…but I would walk 500 miles for a visa… and I would walk 500 miles more… da da da undela undela la la la’. The first quarter of 2011 (around NYFW) I was on a crusade to attain a US visa, that eventually nobody would give, and since then I was genuinely convinced I would not set foot on American soil unless by sailing mistake. Veni, vidi… what’s Latin for ‘failed and cried over a tub of Ben & Jerry’? So imagine the excitement as I pass the ‘National threat | Just another Asian tourist’ threshold at the airport without incident – in fact, go ahead and pick one of these faces and stick it on my body as I’d be wearing it for the ensuing three days in the Big Apple.

It’s difficult to summarize, or even generalize, the effect of NYC to a first timer like myself. If one thing’s for sure, movies don’t spoil anything for you. The city is so awesomely grand that one could not easily fit a view within the scope of your eyeballs, let alone a camera lens, and the experience is composed of layers that simply can’t be bottled up and taken home. Little things like: the language of honks between the taxis (two short bursts mean ‘I had too much coffee and must go number one’ but unsure as I had an old taxi dictionary on me), the musty smell that rises from the subway vent, or how the sun sets in the MOST dramatic way possible; while on cloudier days, the sky looks like it wants to snack on Manhattan. Starbucks is ever-present (and surprisingly popular), yellow school buses (!) cruise the city around 3pm, and there are these random steam outlets along Fifth Avenue (can someone explain this?)… all of this fulfills my postcard expectations of New York and it makes me giddy. Three days was hardly enough though, just when I’d figured out the logic behind blocks! What an incredible city, I can’t wait to be back.

Thank you once again to Coty and Marc Jacobs teams for having me over! #MJDaisyChain