Meeting Rags Of Love

It’s been a long time since I’ve done an outfit post! But first: Belphoebe. The first time I discovered Rags Of Love I found a girl with a sense of humour with similar taste in clothes and an Angela Carter fan (like me) to boot. Times have changed; we’ve both left peter pan collars behind for pastures new (Bel has gone more neon Hackney kid, whilst I’ve morphed to mundane office twat) but the humour, intelligence and personality I first fell for are still very much present. Yay for Belphoebe!

Last Friday I met Bel for lunch at Exmouth Market and two hours of houmous and unadulterated #ootd photos later I skipped back to my office with a massive smile on my face. “Blogger” is a a bit of dirty word and I’ve personally found the blogging world to be a cruel place (aside from a handful of lovely individuals), so apart from replying to comments I don’t engage much. However, making new friends in real life such as Bel more than makes up for the crappy online world and bizarre self-aware system we met through and it is these happy thoughts I’ve been carrying around all week. I want to meet all of you in real life now! Whose next??!

You can thank Bel for these awesome pictures. You’ve seen generic going-out Laila and this is default boring work Laila – print dress, one of my three jackets (tragic) and lots of stuff shoved in pockets. My knees look sort of weird?! They’re quite scarred and misshapen in real life (bike accidents/muggings) so it’s funny you can see in the photos. I associate most of my dresses with boys I know; this one is the “Danilo dress” as the first time I wore it Danilo was wearing a check shirt in almost the exact same colours. My fake leather jacket is horrible but I’d genuinely rather die than wear real leather. I imagine in like 20 years there will be attractive fake leather options and our kids won’t have to walk around wearing crap clothes in return for having morals. Le sigh. What do you guys reckon?

Which bloggers would you like to meet?

Dress – Miss Patina. Jacket – market in Barcelona.
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Dress of dreams

We were wandering around Cardiff when one of my friends noticed a shop selling brightly coloured sequin maxi dresses and said “Laila, your dream shop is here!”. I ran inside only to discover the most BEAUTIFUL dress I have ever seen nestled on the back wall. Peachy satin corset, sequinned lace flowers, frilly bows and diamnate ruffles leading into a lengthy feathered train; what more could any self-respecting fairy princess want?! The very friendly shop assistant told us it was the only one of it’s kind and had never been tried on. I pretty much leapt into it when I found out it was in my size and she kindly let me cavort around in it long enough for all the boys to get bored and head to the bike shop next door.

I always loved fairies and princesses and the bigger and more whimsical the better! My Pinterest board of dreamy clothes has a lot of frilly fantasy items and my love for princess clothing has led me to amass quite the collection of second hand wedding dresses over the years (sadly no groom in sight) and probably a few more tiaras than is necessary for a freelance musician and volunteer charity worker. Sadly I didn’t have a spare £365 to add this particular number to my collection, but rest assured as soon as I can I’ll be back to snap it up for future gigs, carnival parades and midnight dances with charming members of fairy royalty… well, I can dream right?

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