Spotted: Meli Melo

I get so excited discovering brands I've never heard of before. Sadly most of the brands I adore are slightly out of my price range, so I'm usually sat oogling from far faarrr away, but I'm hoping that will one day change.

Our in-house photographer (and friend) Slawek took some absolutely beautiful street style photos from LFW last week, and he was kind enough to let me use a couple of them for this post. You may already be aware of my love of street style (and if not, you do now). There's so much unappreciated creativity going on that we never see, so it makes me so happy when everyday people are recognised for their styling skills and devotion to fashion. This photograph of Slawek's really stood out to me; at first for the stunning colour palette, and secondly for that bag. After a little hunting (i.e asking the stylists and photographers who noted them being given out as styling probs in the somerset house courtyard), I discovered the brand!

Meli Melo  are a British handbag label founded in 2005, specialising in luxury handbags and accessories using the highest quality Italian leathers. This grey tote from the Thela Architectural collection is a particular favourite of mine. The classic shape is really set apart by that amazing architectural base. Again, the colour combination is stunning (definitley my favourite from that collection by far). Priced at a rather modest £620 it's sadly not going to belong in my wardobe for a while, but I can use my imagination...

 

Shades of silence

Waiting for my hair to grow whilst covering my roots has never been so appealing. Fortunately for me I'm a hat person, (I have an incredibly vast collection of which I actually only ever wear about three), so bad hair days are easily disguised..
I came across these wide-brimmed beauties by shades of silence~ they really remind me of that beautiful charred version by Aleksandr Manamis (but actually within my budget). It amazes me how something as simple as a hat can turn a relatively dull outfit into a "holyshitthatlooksinsaaanee" kinda outfit.

Yea you know what I mean. Anyway, what do you think? Do you hat? Or don't you hat? 

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When it comes to accessories, I'm the type of person who owns an awful lot but only wears the same three pieces every day. Having been brought up with a wardrobe full of hand-me-downs, as soon as I reached my teens and starting buying my own clothes I went crazy for cheap high street fashion -trying to buy as much as I could to veer myself away from anything associated with being second-hand. Draping every item of jewellery I owned over multiple layers of clashing prints and sequins are a definite thing of the past for me (said with a hint of nostalgia). 

Over the past few years though, less has become to mean considerably more to me, and if any of you have ever tried to draw or paint with an armful of bangles you'll know from experience it's an absolute pain in the arse. 

And so, (as dull as it probably sounds), everything I chose to wear nowadays is mostly determined by how comfortable and how practical it is, which is why when it comes to jewellery I usually go for something fairly simple. 

After having realised how little student loan I'd be receiving this year I was given an extra incentive to be even more thrifty with the way I dress and what I buy, and so recently  found objects such as elastic bands, netting from a garlic packet, gardening wire, plastic, foil and most recently duct tape are all things that have found their way into my wardrobe. Wrapping strips of metallic tape round my fingers is perhaps one of the cheapest ways of creating rings that I could think of (unless of course I drew them on, which is another possibility). Granted, it does kind of look like I'm covered in plasters, but I enjoy them nevertheless.

On a side note, please ignore the state of my hands- winter and hours spent washing them free from blue dye hasn't really had a great effect on them... 

..old woman.