Mesh leggings…er, yes please!

We went on the hunt to find a really cool, unheard of leggings brand for our BITCHY girls (and for ourselves too of course).  Can I tell you it was a bit of a challenge.  Considering leggings are such a staple we thought there would be dozens of leggings brands out there just waiting for us to get in touch.  But they were pretty thin on the ground.  We rolled up our sleeves, we persevered, we searched high and low, and we are very happy to say that we came up trumps.

We stumbled upon designer Sarah Claire and her lovely collection of mesh leggings “Dainty Things”.  What a great way to wear leggings in the summer, with built in air-conditioning!!  Wonderful.  This small capsule collection ticks all the boxes for us:- cycle shorts – check, mesh – check, nude colour palette – check,  knee pads – check!   Now check it out in the store.

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Good Vibes 2010 Trend Report – Australia

Heya, my name is Sharna. I am a designer that lives in Brisbane, Australia where the winter day time temp does not often get lower than 20 degrees celsius, although we think our winter is freezing………I know, I know right, who ever said an Aussie gal was tough. So in saying this weather really does dictate what you wear.

It’s summer in Australia at the mo so that means festival time. Today was all about Gold Coast Parklands, Good Vibrations festival, it was a wicked line up and a wickedly, hot day. Hot, sexy, chiquita’s a plenty and the order of the day were the 3 ‘S’s “shorts, sexy and see thru”. It was freakin crazy to see how many girls were sporting shorts of some form or another, mainly the faded, v.short, ripped denim kind. The girls pulled out no stops and you could feel the sass and love in the air.

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Cheap Monday Unisex AW10 – we told you so….

Construction Jean AW10 - coming to bitchingandjunkfood.com

Something devastating happened over the summer. I ripped the arse out of my favorite jeans at Hackney Wicked festival. I’m a grown-up, things like this shouldn’t happen any more much like grazed knees(yup ticked that box again recently, a direct result of vertiginous heels over fashion week) but they’re gonners(the jeans not the knees). I loved them so much that I recently wore them out with black knicker shorts underneath, the hole gaped and they now resemble chaps and I still haven’t thrown them out(this doesn’t mean I’ll be wearing them though but this has started me thinking about chaps but more about that later).

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Holly Fulton – the name on everyone’s lips

Recently at LFW we got to whizz around quickly and one designer that caught our eye was Holly Fulton who was showing her first solo season at NewGen.  It’s no surprise that in our hast it was Holly Fulton that grabbed our attention,  her AW10 collection is amazing!

I particularly loved her range of accessories – the neckpieces are wicked, and the interesting thing is that everyone seems to interpret them differently.  They have tribal elements yet have a techno edge to them as well, what a crazy combo right? And is it just me but can anyone else see Transformers in these neckpieces? To create these Holly Fulton uses acrylic plates with giant oversized crystals, leather straping and chunky dog-clips.

They work so well and not just if you’re a cute little pop star.

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Bitchy in Sportswear International

Just back a meeting in Dublin, we have our first bitchingandjunkfood.com Re-made and Vintage ranges hitting down in two weeks time. We also have out first hit of a jewellery range we’ve done for Urban Outfitters dropping in two weeks so we’re up to our elbows in feathers, fringe and crystal at the moment.

We were greeted today by three shiny copies(not one, not two, three, need to be specific ) of Sportswear Interntional. We were featured in “New blood” designers to watch shoot from the Jan/Feb edition of Sportswear International. We’ve lots more coming your way for SS10 and will be posting a preview of our Uni-sex label TWO WEEKS in the next two weeks.

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Rachel Freire, James Hock and Bitching shot by David Alexandre

Jacket by James Hock

Another shoot that happened a few months back that I’ve been meaning to blog for ages. Readers of the blog will already be familiar with Rachel Friere, one of my very close friends and a big inspiration. She regularly collaborates with photographer David Alexandre on shoots and the team came together again for the shoot in this post.

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Must-watch video – Rhianna references Basquiat, Haring and Warhol.

Right, I know it’s fashion week and I should be writing about same but I’m not. We will but probably not till it’s over and we have a chance to sit back and digest what we really dig and what we don’t. I am having a video obsession since we shot our first fashion video last weekend and as you probably already know I’m really interested in it’s capabilities as a medium to communicate fashion. We’re excited about what we’ve done for AW10 and we’re going to push it as far as possible for SS11- brain already ticking over.

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Bad blog, bad blog and Floria Sigismondi

We’ve been really bad bloggers of late, all of us. If you read “the rules” you’re supposed to blog daily. But what if you’re just too busy designing. Everyone who writes for BITCHY has a full time job in the fashion industry and sometimes squeezing out a blog post at the end of an 11 hour day just isn’t possible. It’s something that should be organic, we do this our of passion and we don’t feel like anyone should feel ‘forced’ to write or guilty for not.

We haven’t just been sitting there twiddling our thumbs, although we have been twiddling fabrics and trimmings. We’ve just shipped our first two major international orders on our re-made range and are working on two other collabrations – one London based the other, Tokyo.

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It Never Rains in Southern California-Part two

Damn You, a second time Albert Hammond, for thy lies! It does rain in Southern California! And when it does, it’s insane! This I got to bear witness to a few weeks back. It was not even cats and dogs, it was bloody elephants and buffalos and lions. It was literally torrential rain pouring side ways for seven days! For most Los Angelinos the rain is actually a pretty beautiful break. It gives you an excuse to sit inside and eat chocolates and drink red wine, an excuse not to go for a run, and most importantly, an excuse to not be so bloody social, active and happy! A chance to hibernate like all other human beings do a little bit during the dark and cold winter.

My backyard.

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Jasper Goodall

First saw Jasper Goodall at an art show at Electric Blue Gallery a few months back and stumbled upon his work recently on another blog so went for a bit of a net snoop. Image below brings together several themes churning around in my grey matter at the moment – Egypt, the cosmos, bondage and triangles(not necessarily in that order)

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Chris Ofili – Nigerian born Manchester based artist at Tate Britain

Afrodizza(second version) 1996
Acrylic, Oil, Polyester Resin, Paper Collage, Glitter, Map Pins and elephant Dung on Linen
243.8×182.8
Courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery London

New year’s resolution – get out and see more art shows(beats all that gym nonsense and spending less) so I’m starting with this one. An RCA graduate, Ofili established his name through exhbitions at Charles Saatchi Gallery in North London and has also had numerous solo shows during the nineties including the Serpentine Gallery. In 1998 he won the Turner prize and was selected to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale last year. He is counted as one of the UK’s top artists. 

Ok so that’s the serious art stuff out of the way but why should you really go to see the show and how can you relate to it? Ofili draws on many contemporary insiprations as well as primitve cave paintings. Themes referenced in his work include blaxploitation films and gangsta rap which he uses to question racial and sexual stereotypes in a humorous way. Lyrical content is very important in his work and he regularly uses hip-hop titles in his work e.g Pimpin Ain’t Easy by Big Daddy Kane.

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New In store – Rachel Freire sock garters

Rachel Freire Suspender Trio

We’ve been a fan of Rachel Freire since we became warehouse buddies where we had our last studio. It was inevitable that her designs would find their way into our store. We managed to persuade her to recreate her AW09 sock garters and suspender trios exclusively for Bitchingandjunkfood.com. We’ve been keeping a close eye on street trends and have seen this look cropping up worldwide. Ties in nicely with the boudoir trend everyone’s talking about for Spring Summer but a little less obvious and a whole lot slicker.

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The Winner of THE DRESS

I-HAVE-THE-DRESS

We ran a competition this Christmas to win a dress of a lifetime that we found in one of our vintage suppliers. We were struggling to put a price on it so we decided not to sell it but to give it away for free. We asked entrants to come up with imaginative ways to get our brand out there and the winner would be sent the dress completely free of charge.

We’re happy to announce that the winner of the dress was an Australian girl who is also a talented fashion blogger. She mailed us with pictures of the T-shirt that she’d made  each image titled to spell out I – want – the – dress. BITCHY girls heart her and her blog….you can check it out for yourselves at Thrifandthread

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Racing Stripes

Don’t know what’s wrong with me but face paint seems to be my latest venture ever since seeing Avatar and listening to too much Empire of the Sun…So definitely squealed when I saw these red brows on the SRC783 blog.

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A loft on the Lachine Canal – one day…

Cot would be replaced with modular corner sofa.

 Today the trail of Fashion blog reading has lead me on to architecture, not something I’ve ever blogged about before, nor something we even have a category for(so it will go under art for today). Having spent the last year living in a warehouse I’ve developed a little bit of an obsession with loft and warehouse living and, more specifically, mezzanines. There’s something quite grandiose about the two ZZs but apart from that mezzanines are a great way of creating extra space without dividing into compartments. Slightly reminiscent of  treehouses and bunkbeds, mezzanines awaken my inner child. My dream home, pictured above, was created by L. Comber architects in a 700sq feet loft in Canada. A little on the austere side, I’m not sure where all my paintings, candles, books paintbrushes and magazine tears would go. Presumably there is some walk-in-wardrobe concealed behind a glass panelled door. I imagine that the person living in this loft has a rack of clothing lifted straight out of 10 Corso Como. They probably also have at least two of everything. They are not driven by fashion but form, functionality and lifestyle. Distinct possibility that they are slightly OCD and I imagine shoes would not be allowed indoors. Wonder how aforementioned people deal with baby puke.

Anyhow, for now I’ll make do with a 3 bed period flat(with endearingly crooked walls, creaky floors and draughty windows) and dream of what might be one day(if I was tidier, less eclectic, chucked out all my clothes and became a bit more serious). I probably would also need to straighten my hair.

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