NY

Before I ask myself do I really need more heels? or should I wait till my birthday for those running trainers? I would just like to say thank you to you readers and fellow bloggers for your support with this here blog. I believe the best way to show my appreciation is to continue and improve Style A-Y (all suggestions welcome!) 
and before you all go into hibernation before the new season stock arrives and spend January, also know as the Monday of the months, asleep, consider reading Style A-Y as one of your resolutions. Cheeky...

Happy New Year Y'all

hugs not thugs
kisses not disses
xoxo
Amyyyyyyyyyy

Film Junkie

I have taken to watching films more or less all the time in Roch.

In particular I couldn't stop thinking about Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides (I read the novel in the summer). I craved Marie Antoinette for the visual mind game that it had struck me with the first time round, the 'style over substance' argument annoys me because I think that this film perfectly portrays history. If Paris Hilton were to marry an impotent French Prince, instead of idiots with camcorders, then potentially this might have happened to her, yes, BUT there is no escaping the fragilely evanescent life she led and this film isolates the viewer just as Marie was from the reality outside the young queens world. I feel that this visually scrumptious version of France's iconic but ill-fated Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette is history as a guilt free pleasure.

Similarly the screenplay The Virgin Suicides was written and directed by Sofia Coppola. I think her style masters the act of combining fantasy with a harsher and disturbingly familiar reality, which perfectly captures a story that is being told as it was remembered, not necessarily as it really was. Because of this, in the  film there is never a truly satisfying answer; gentle humour that speaks of the angst and awkwardness both the Lisbon girls and their young admirers experience in their early teenage years combined with the devastatingly isolating act of a multiple suicide creates a dream-like ambiance. Not to mention how beautiful it is to watch, so detail-oriented. The focus on Kirsten Dunst, fragilely evanescent again...

It inspires bewilderment in me...

Just a Parting Note: watch Happy Campers and Heathers.

I must admit life is so much easier now that I can answer "sure I've seen Superbad".



David LaChapelle

I have developed a love for the work of David LaChapelle. After the initial shock that I had been subjected to something I shouldn't have and feeling of violation, I really got quite addicted.

You learn to appreciate the good stuff.

Amy's back, tell a friend

"We are about to begin a journey through the cosmos, through the story of our own planet..."

Cosmos was first used by Pythagoras to describe a well-ordered and harmonious universe - a world open to human understanding. Well I can tell you there ain't no harmony or order in fashion!
After finally finishing my first 14 week term at UCA I have just had the chance to stop and think. Although I haven't exactly been glamming it up Gucci style or expanding my wardrobe, university has been no less impressive. Questionable, impressionable (and quelquefois unobtainable) yes, but that is why I love it, forever changing forever ranging.
Thanks to Portishead, Fleetwood Mac, Fat Freddy's Drop and bottles of Roset 2 for 1 at my local newsagents, I have managed to adapt perfectly. Although you have fallen by the wayside, my resolution for the new year is to pick you back up as often as I do a publication.
Prove it, I hear you say...well here goes...

Wile out

Want to know why I haven't been posting...

But seriously Brick Lane, Gemma Cairney, Carnaby Street, Liberty's, Erin O'Connor, Miss Kent Pageant, Hannah Marshall, RD Franks, Dover Street Market and millions more to come I promise.

Hugs not Thugs, Amy xoxo

steady

During that period of time known as 'exams' that I can now look back on, I also came across this draft in my postings section of this here blog. It starts: "Storing my gifted TeenVOGUE Handbook (thank you Queen B!), the June issues of Vogue and Dazed and Confused, a couple issues of Look and Grazia, my latest read; The Virgin Suicides, uncut Factory Girl DVD and my notebooks (sigh) ...I struggle to keep the tears from my eyes. But every cloud has a silver lining...I only go and win the UCA Graduate Fashion Week Competition! So...armed with only my tickets and camera, I definitely didn't need all of those things.." The title for this post was 'I don't need you', but after my most recent confused albeit personal contribution, I thought it unwise. And so I begin to get back to solid foundations and remember a most brilliant experience that is (would you believe it) fashion related! Yes dear readers, I shall now after a ridiculously long (I shall not say how long as tis too discomforting to know that right now I would make the worst catwalk/trend reporter/ blogger as it takes me so bloody long to get on with it hence the really long sentence with no punctuation!) time, I am going to tell you about my experience of GFW.

Once upon a time a young lady won a pair of tickets to the Rochester Graduate Fashion Show. Surprisingly the young lady was reluctant to accept the invites as a nightmare known as A-level exams had struck her being, but luckily the lady's friend Hana agreed to attend such an event with her and the foolish young lady came to her senses and so this story can continue. She was very excited because this was to be her first 'proper' catwalk show. Rumour had it UCA alumni Zhandra Rhodes would be in the front row... Walking towards the venue, the two friends knew exactly that they had arrived because every well dressed, fashion influenced person was also walking in the same direction, (she likened it to the opening scene in the lion king where all the animals flocked to Pride Rock). Before the friends could stop to admire these fashion prowlers, the Earls Court 2 towered over them and the friends were overwhelmed by crowds of them mingling at the security mobbed entrance. Both ladies felt rather timid at this point in the story but hastened to go inside. The two friends were met by such a sight

The two friends were in awe of the huge scale of such an event and as they went round the exhibition they saw things like this...

and this...

and really cool stuff like this... 

and this...

and she really loved this...

  

and this...

and these...

The young lady got so carried away with the visuals that she didn't think to document who, what, where,why, when?!

And for a further quick sidetrack; then came footwear...

oh and the accessories that caught her eye...

Sidetrack over.

And so the story can continue. It was time for the two friends to take their seats. Already overwhelmed the girls definitely weren't glamorous as they were rather boiling hot, hence awf pic: 

Then came the fashion, courtesy of students from the lady's potential future university!
As this was her first proper fashion show and she was so completely gob-smacked at being there and being within metres of Zhandra Rhodes, she neglected to really pass judgement on these collections. (I know, stupid right?!)

Fashion is subjective, make of it what you will.




A parting note: don't get so excited/crazed/overwhelmed/lose your cool, that you overlook details for reference, you will kick yourself.