Stables Market

When you live in the same place your whole life you start to build long and lengthy relationships with certain places; so it is for me and Camden. It’s one of the areas of London I know best having lived and worked there in the past. These days I’m there at least once a week and I never get bored!

Danilo and I were in Camden for a meeting on this occasion; happily the end of the meeting coincided with our lunch-hour so we used it as an excuse to briefly run round the markets and admire the relatively new Amy Winehouse statue. I’ve not discussed it much before, but I’m a huge, huge Amy Winehouse fan; I think the statue is beautiful and it’s a wonderful way to commemorate her spirit. She really was such a part of the local community and Camden really felt her loss personally when she died. I like that she’s back and watching over all of us there.

My outfit is very standard “Laila”; short skirt, white shoes, colourful shirt, bag (my one bag…) and winter coat. Danilo (who took these photos) and James are always saying how difficult it is to take photos for me as I never shut up and lose interest after about 10 seconds, maybe you can tell..!

Bloglovin / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Website

Greaser

These photos mostly serve to show you my Lazy Oaf greaser dress (£10 in one of their amazing sample sales) which features a pattern of records, bequiffed dogs, hair grease and a PAIR OF SHOES I OWN. That’s right, a pattern of fictitious objects designed to emulate a certain mood actually contained a PHYSICAL ITEM I OWN. I was struggling to find two-tone brogues that were vegan, so I bought a black pair and just painted certain sections white. The result wasn’t particularly neat but I like them anyway.

Recently I’ve been getting really into brogues; they started being fashionable in about 2007 but it’s only since 2011 or so that I’ve liked them (recently in Lailalanguage). I’m mostly influenced by the men in my life; James, Danilo, my Dad and at least half of Quizcats have all been known to rock a brogue. I’ve got massive feet anyway and have been borrowing shoes off my male friends all my life (James and I are exactly the same size). I wish there were more vegan brogues out there! I think in general what I wear is far more influenced by the boys I know rather than the girls – that might sound weird as I wear a lot of skirts and dresses but boys always seem more put together and smart than girls to me, I think there’s less room for error because they have less options. Who influences your style?

Bloglovin / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Website

Crayon Christmas

As you may know, my best friend in all the land is James and we “celebrate” James and Laila Day once a month: an entire day we spend together doing fun stuff. Unfortunately my grand plans for our December day (Christmas shopping in Covent Garden, PCC cinema and meeting Santa) went out the window due to kidney infection, but in true heroic style James took matters into his own hands and arrived at my family house bearing gifts and festivities to salvage the day. Amongst the many things he turned up with was A BABY CHRISTMAS TREE. It was by far the best surprise I’ve ever had, I’d been at at home feeling very un-festive and pathetic and James totally bought the Christmas spirit into our house. The best part is I can keep the tree in the garden and bring it in each year!

We ventured into town to do some christmas shopping (I normally leave mine until the 24th, so the 23rd felt very early and prepared) and then had a fun evening wrapping presents and trimming the tree with Christmas TV flickering away in the background. Having James around for these fairly mundane and domestic activities makes me think what it would have been like growing up with a sibling and just constantly having another person around. We also made this festive recording of one of my favourite Christmas songs. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Lazy Oaf x Nasty Gal

The new glitter Kickers are the cousins of my shoes…