I head off to Madrid tomorrow morning for the weekend so I'm going to be MIA for a bit - caught up in tapas and the Prado and all the splendor of Espana! I will certainly post about it when I get back!
For now though, my tour of London markets continues...
If Borough Market is foodie heaven, then Camden Market is the haven of the fashion hungry. Sure, there's plenty of touristy, I Heart London tank tops, but in amongst the mad clutter (that goes on for block after block, sidestreet after sidestreet, floor after floor) there are some genuinely awesome fashion discoveries. I spent about three hours wandering around there last Sunday, spent way too much money and barely dented the pile of fantasies displayed for shoppers to paw through.
I was especially surprised to note that lace designs and liberty prints were HUGE trends. I tend to shy away from both as a rule, going for more bold tribal prints and solids, but the array of tantalizing choices made me determined to return to the States with at least one of each in tow.
Here is what I came home that day with:
(There's an Aldo surplus store on Camden High Street and they were having a HUGE sale and I fell in love with these instantly. About as close as I'll ever let myself get to clogs.)
(I dug through probably a hundred little lace dresses until I found this one. The tulle inserts in the lace are what sold me - I can't wait to wear it!)
This ring (and the one below) are from Lorarty, a designer specializing in wire jewelry. His pieces are MIND-BLOWING. As of now, he has two shops in London and one in Spain, but nothing in the US and his e-commerce site (www.lorarty.com) needs a lot of work. Once he gets it up and running though, all he needs is some publicity and I'm sure his sales will take off - I wanted to buy up half of his stock just that day! We got to chatting, and he told me that he's been designing for about 10 years now, that he uses only the best copper wire (with very few pieces in silver) from a supplier in Istanbul so that no one can replicate his work, and he even gave me a little demonstration on how he creates the jewelry. I told him I wanted to send some pictures to a few American magazines so he let me take a few but the lighting was so bad that none of them came out! I was SO disappointed when I got home! Maybe I'll go back and try again...
(For more information on Lorarty jewelry, email: info@lorarty.com)
Oh, and there's food here too:
Textile booths!
Omg Amazing Trims! I just want to make entire dresses out of these!
The lovely Alex in her perfect red blazer perusing the 13th floor.
