Bonjour, 

Last weekend I went to my local shopping centre to get my new watch fixed (the strap was much too big), but somehow what was supposed to be a quick trip turned out rather more expensive than I'd meant it to... I had the vague idea of looking for a nice dress for my cousin's wedding in a few weeks, which I still need to get, but of course I got sucked into H&M and bought a few things there instead. Also, I realise I haven't posted a haul on my blog yet this month so it was high time really!

Floral Top, H&M €12.99

I basically fell in love with this little top, as it's so summery and pretty. I especially love the lace bordering detail at the hem! I've been trying to incorporate more colour into my wardrobe as at the moment it's about 70% black and 20% white, so this was perfect.

Bonjour,

I've never actually done a 'What's in my bag?' post on my blog before, but I've watched a lot of them on Youtube over the years so I thought I'd give it a go! Personally I find it really interesting to get a glimpse into someone's life through the things they consider essentials - I can't promise anything ground-breakingly interesting here but by all means read on. Since the bag I use every day is the one I use for school, I figured that would be the most obvious place to start as this really is what's currently in my bag, as opposed to just things I would put in a bag if I was going out somewhere.

Bonjour,

First of all, you may notice I've changed the layout of my blog slightly: it's wider than it used to be so I can make the pictures bigger. This seemingly small change actually involved a great deal of fiddling about in Paint to get my banner to the right width, but hopefully it was worth it.

Today I was fiddling about aimlessly in the Polyvore set creator, and I decided to put together a bunch of outfits in a new series of posts for my blog: I plan to take a different fictional or historical character each time and create some outfits for them that I imagine they would wear in the novel or historical episode I associate them with. This combines my love of fashion and literature/history so perfectly, I can't believe why I haven't thought of it before now!

For the first instalment I chose Catherine Howard, also known as the 5th wife of Henry VIII who was executed for treason after little more than a year of marriage. I find the whole story of her early life and downfall absolutely fascinating, which is why about 80% of my collection of Tudor historical fiction is about her in some way - it's so interesting to read different portrayals of her, and build up a many-layered image of what she was really like. She apparently loved clothes and swore never to wear the same garment twice! Obviously all the outfits I came up with are modern takes, as otherwise this would really be quite boring.

I Hate the Way

Please Don't Touch

Bonjour,

This is going to be a bit of a different post today, but I thought I'd share it anyway. So as you may or may not know, I'm in my final year of secondary school and so far this year has been both the coolest and the most stressful to date. I've gone through the whole palaver of figuring out which universities I want to apply to, writing my personal statement and then actually completing the application process, not to mention just about keeping on top of all the school work which has been coming in floods. But aside from all that business, a bunch of cool stuff has been going on behind the scenes, mostly organised by many wonderful people from my year.

Cool thing number one to actually materialise is this jumper. It's traditional in the final year at my school to have a slogan which is put onto a jumper, and everyone who wants one can choose a different colour. The process for the jumpers started way back in October I believe, when we (by popular vote) decided on 'better watch your bac' as the slogan - the slogan has to incorporate the word 'bac' as the final exams we do make up the European Baccalaureate, which everyone shortens to 'Bac'. Step two was to decide a logo, which was done by a competition where anyone could take the logo and do something creative with it to produce a design. Naturally (because I have rediscovered my love of design this past year or so) I decided to enter and eventually came up with the following:

It was pretty much the simplest thing ever, as all I did was download a font, get an image of the hand with the puppet strings and put it all together in a Word document - but for some reason people liked it and it got chosen!

I've been following Paula on Polyvore for a while, but recently I found her Tumblr, blog and Instagram and I'm just so in love with all of them! She has awesome pink/silver hair and I just adore her insta theme and general style. It's a little bit retro but quite minimalist, which works beautifully as an aesthetic.

Araina // @arainatasmin

Araina is someone else I've been following on Polyvore for absolutely ages, although sadly she doesn't make many sets these days. I really admire her healthy lifestyle and all the gorgeous nature and fitness pics she posts, she's truly inspiring! Her Instagram really exemplifies that, and the photography is always stunning. 

I'm absolutely obsessed with Emilija's blog and Instagram, there are no words. I can't remember how I came across her to begin with, but I think it might have been via Facebook as she goes to one of my school's 'sister schools' and we have some mutual friends (she's from Lithuania but lives here in Brussels). Anyway, I'm totally in awe of her style, it's so decadent and opulent and all round fabulous - you can see loads of her outfits on her blog. I love how she combines fur and rich fabrics with ostentatious but still tasteful jewellery, the effect is dazzling!

Kailey Flyte // @mermaidens

I read The Catcher in the Rye a few years ago for school, and it remains my favourite school reading book of all time. Although considered a classic, it's really easy to read as the language is simple. The story is relatively straightforward, but it can be understood at so many levels - probably depending on the age you are when you read it. The main character is Holden Caulfield, who gets expelled from his posh boarding school and makes his way home to New York - along the way he has various encounters with people and thinks most of them are phonies. The plot is simple, but the reason why The Catcher in the Rye is so popular is because it deals with so many themes relevant to teenagers, such as identity, loss, alienation, depression and rebellion. In my opinion there is really no excuse for not having read it, as it's just so wonderfully quirky and totally accessible - if you liked The Perks of Being a Wallflower then I'd really suggest you read it, as Perks has been described as a modern version of Catcher.

Stop. Stop thinking what you're thinking, because there's a high chance you have totally the wrong impression of this book. Which is fair enough, thanks to society's self-righteous condemnation of Lolita that meant it was banned in the UK when it was published in 1956. It's definitely one of those books which you have to read before passing judgement on it, so forget what you've heard and give it a try. The story is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a literature professor in his late 30s who has an obsession with 12-year-old Dolores Haze, the daughter of the woman whose house he's lodging in. After her mothers death they travel around the US as father and daughter, but someone is following them - and the plot thickens... Now if anyone ever objects to you reading Lolita or having an interest in it, just remind them that 1) it's considered by many to be one of the finest novels written in the 20th century and 2) there is really nothing in it that can be considered erotic - immoral yes, in terms of themes, but it's not nearly as lewd as people like to make out. What I especially love about Lolita is Nabokov's absolutely beautiful prose, and I also fell in love with the picture it paints of America in 1949. I actually did a (fairly amateur) film review of the 1962 film here on my blog a while back, so to see that click here.

Although I said these books would as a rule be easy to read, Nineteen Eighty-Four is possibly the exception to this. I first tried reading it when I was about 11, but gave up after a couple of chapters and since then I have read it a few times. Despite the effort, I do think it's very much worth it, as it really is one of the best-known classics of the 20th century and you can find references to it everywhere. It's probably the bets known of all dystopian novels, which is why I was so keen to read it when I was going through my sci-fi/dystopian fiction phase a few years back. Anyway, the book was written in 1949, and is set in the year 1984 in a country formerly known as Great Britain. The world is one of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation, dictated by a totalitarian political system under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite, that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrimes" - alright so that last bit was from Wikipedia but I haven't read it in a while! What I actually love most about 1984 is the invented language they have going on, called Newspeak - the aim is basically to reduce the English language's vocabulary, for example by negating words instead of using a totally different word to express the opposite of something. I found that utterly fascinating, which is probably why it's stuck in my mind so much! I'd really recommend 1984, for its status as such an iconic 20th novel as much as anything else.