nw3 to nyc

Observations on moving my family across the Atlantic

Category Archives: Fashion


by Leave a comment

Bargains, bargains

blog pic 7

A bit like TK Maxx but so much better. Century 21 immortalised in Sex and the City and still going strong. Despite its 80s facade and out of the way location up a side street near Fulton Street subway and close by to the 9/11 Memorial site, it is bargain heaven. It sells clothes and accessories over 5 floors and is rammed. I try to get served, which seems to be an art in itself, as I elbow my way past the thousands of tourists who seem to have heard about it too. I am on a mission to get a new pair of sunglasses. Fendi, Madam? Why yes, you can have last season’s sunglasses for $60 plus tax when they used to be $300. Some Michael by Michael Kors sunglasses retailing at $110 for $39.95 plus tax? Why thank you very much and yes, they do look fabulous.


by Leave a comment

American Wife

Not me, but the title of a book I have just finished. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld was published in 2008 to great critical acclaim. Reading it in our New York apartment, it seems a good book to start our time here. The story of a fictional (but loosely based on Laura Bush) First Lady, who looks back on her life and how she got to the White House from her humble Wisconsin beginnings. I enjoyed it, it’s got a nice tone to it and although I was a bit surprised that the rise of Charlie Blackwell to State Governor and then President was covered in a few pages of the 600 page book – you’d think it was a fairly important plot line. I compare the experience of Alice Blackwell, fictional First Lady to the current First Lady, Michelle Obama. She is a hugely impressive woman: she went to Princeton (as does the fictional President in the American Wife) and Harvard Law School and had a very successful legal career before entering the White House in 2008. The First Lady in American Wife was a librarian who gave up her job when she got married – how life has changed for women now, not that I’m knocking being a librarian, of course. Last Sunday’s New York Times got its priorities right and dissected the First Lady’s wardrobe, extolling her preference for sleeveless dresses (well, she has the arms, no bingo wings there) and a fondness of Michael Kors (no longer on Project Runway’s judging panel, for anyone interested, but now proud owner of massive store on London’s Regent Street). Good to see the US press is as obsessed with high profile women’s wardrobes as they are in the UK – I think of Kate Middleton in particular (let’s see what her pregnancy wardrobe brings us).  Samantha Cameron by way of contrast, as the UK’s First Lady, gets nowhere near as much attention as the First Lady in the US and she’s more stylish than all of them.

 

 


by 1 Comment

Plastic fantastic

In the UK, there is a strong drive to reduce plastic bag usage. Visit the major supermarkets and you now have to ask for a plastic bag and those that are available are so thin, they are hardly worth using. Anya Hindmarch led the style crowd with her I’m not a Plastic Bag which came out in a heavy canvas with thick rope handles in 2007 and instantly sold out. Every major retailer, museum, even school has their own hessian bag of sorts as we all salve our environmental conscience. Every week I would take my bag of bags off to Sainsbury’s smug in the knowledge I would not need a bag, annoying the sales assistant when I refused to put my loose veg in a bag and it rolling off on to the floor. So I brought this attitude to New York and thought it would be pretty much the same. I already have a massive collection of plastic bags: double bagging at the supermarket and just in case, let’s stick yet another bag over that chicken, which has already been aggresively shrink wrapped. One bag for the washing liquid in case it escapes  from the child locked bottle. Agh, i cannot bear all these bags, even in the health food shop they’re at it and you’d think they would at least make an effort! I do refuse bags but that seems to be unusual. I haven’t quite summoned up the courage to recycle my Fairways bags – mostly because they pack for you and I’m too scared to ask them not to. I had this romantic notion that everyone in the US used large brown paper sacks and held their groceries like a small baby, but I’ve only seen brown bags in use once: when they were inside a plastic bag.


by Leave a comment

To pad or not to pad

I refer of course to the ubiquitous padded coat worn by New York women of all ages. There’s the very popular long padded coat that goes to your knees and looks not dissimilar to the duvet on my bed (but black – always black). The shorter number that is nipped in at the waist and often comes with a fetching belt. And the variation on this very common theme: the furry hood. I’m thinking South Park circa 1998, Kenny?  I was strangely channelling the trend in my Rab coat, usaually only seen in deepest London winters and occasional forays into the countryside. I’ll be trading it in for something slightly more stylish and alot less padded.


by Leave a comment

Dazzling, dangerous, daring dogs…

You may recognise this from one of Lauren Child’s books, where Trixie Twinkle Toes Trot Alot Delight is a pampered pooch living in a fashionable apartment in the lap of luxury with her owner Mademoiselle Verity Brulee. Think it’s fiction? Think again. They live right here in New York City. There’s the white ball of fluff in a pink jacket, treated like a child. The glamorous maltese in matching purple coat and bootees (I kid you not) whose owner loves the attention we give her dog as we admire her dog’s attire (I am incredulous, E is in raptures). And my favourite so far (there will be more no doubt given the obsession with dogs around here – no change from NW3 there) another ball of white fluff, so small it was in the owner’s pocket wearing hair clips on the fur on her ears!! I am lost for words. Trixie, by the way, didn’t like her life, she wanted to get muddy and splash in puddles in the rain but most of all she did not like her name, she wanted to be called growler or gripper. I’m sure her NY peers would agree.