outfit – TAPE PARADE

I met up with fellow blog people Bel and Jess all the way back in October, so these have been sitting around for about 6 weeks now! I quite often feel like the old woman of the hills when we all hang out as I’m so old (Bel is actually the same year group as the first class I taught through to A-Level… which is bizarre) but whatever, we have fun!

I’m not actually sure what we were doing in South Kensington as it’s one of my least favourite areas of London; apart from the obvious draw of MUSEUMS it’s mostly just overpriced aesthetics. I have a feeling this is the day my boy was lecturing at the V&A and we were contemplating going… but got too busy drinking hot chocolates…? Or maybe we went solely for the pretty streets…?! I don’t know, it was so long ago! I’ve never blogged about something so far in the past!

I do know we went for tapas and then wandered around the residential area (or “pretty blog streets” as Jess described them) with about 20 minutes of sunlight left; talk about forward-planning. I’m wearing an ensemble from my “maybe keep, maybe chuck” pile, (does anybody else have one of these?) so a lot less put-together than the others!

After taking photos we went and sat in a cafe for about 2 hours and talked about appearance, the media and confidence issues (or lack of) whilst drafting out future blog posts. I’ve got about two female friends outside of blogging and never read any “female” media apart from a few blogs, so this sort of girl chat is very novel for me! I’ve now got a whole series of posts planned out (thrillingly titled “longer life-ish posts and stuff”) which is entirely based on suggestions from Bel and Jess. Thanks guys!

It’s so great having new blog friends! Please go and check out their blogs, they are both far more consistent and stylish then I’ll ever be. And if you have any suggestions for posts to toss into the mix then let me know!
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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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