12 Questions.

One of the blogs I read, Alice Vincent, posted this this week. For those too lazy to click through, 12 questions from a young journalist:

1. Will not knowing enough about the news eventually catch up with me?
2. Is it a problem if I can’t really name my ideal publication to write for, and even waver a little at the general area?
3. Will I ever meet anyone aside from my sister who agrees with me that landing a job at Heat magazine would be a bit of a dream come true for a couple years?
4. Are some people intrinsically better at freelancing than others?
5. Is it wrong that I’m quite happy working for someone else rather than striking out on an entrepreneurial mission?
6. Do I talk about journalism too much to people who are actually only pretending to care?
7. How many magazines should I be subscribed to? Which important ones am I not reading? Which are going to change my life now the same way Vice and NME did when I was 15?
8. Should I have stronger theoretical and political viewpoints? Would these make me a better journalist or blinker me further?
9. When am I going to stop caring so much about Twitter?
10. Are we going to be feeling any more secure about the industry in five years’ time? Should I just give up and become an embittered A Level Literature teacher now?
11. Are interns ever going to be paid properly?
12. Am I genuinely shortening my attention span by keeping a gazillion windows and Tweetdeck open at all times? Will this turn me into a jittery moron unable to read anything longer than 1,000 words eventually?
I found it relatable, even out of the journalism realm.

Some of these can be directly, or almost directly, applied to my situation; the soon-to-be graduate fashion designer - I'm looking at you, numbers 2 and 11.

There's a very real worry of not finding a job, and therefore the worry of having no money to relocate and being stuck in Durham until the end of eternity; wondering if I'm good enough for such a competitive industry; wondering if I should be spending less time on Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/reading blogs/looking for the perfect grad ball dress on ebay* (the answer is always yes, I should be spending less time on those things), among other things.

Maybe I should stop worrying.

I'll worry about all that in a week and a half's time, maybe.

Northumbria's GFW show is one week and 3 hours away and I have a collection to finish. See y'all there, yes?

*I still haven't found it. I have 3 weeks. I had a nightmare that it was a week before said ball and I was still sans dress, and this is starting to look like a probable situation. Eep.

textbook situation

we're talking uni again.

what?

it's all i do right now*

my muse board was missing something; the kind of products she would buy and so on. i mean, i had such a strong muse in mind but it's hard to express "a spoilt heiress with no concept of the value of money, who stomps around her mansion in couture dresses with vintage army jackets and walking boots on a daily basis and doesn't do much but daydream" in visual form.

so when it comes to getting that idea across i really had to draw on my 'comparitive brands' and utilise a little blog-spiration to put some outfits my muse might stomp about in together in the style of textbook**

burberry coat//dries van noten dress//vintage boots

burberry dress//vintage jacket (img from ebay)//vintage boots

3.1 phillip lim dress//burberry coat//vintage boots (img from ebay)

quoth Miranda: such fun!

also: hey new followers!

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*apart from the trip to london for interviews/fabric/friends next week.

**if you're not familiar with textbook, shame. SHAME. he's currently guest blogging for fashionista but mainly styles literary characters using contemporary fashion on tumblr and he's fantastic. AND he's been in my blog list over there > for some time.

silhouette.

i did take some outfit shots today, but the light was terrible and i couldn't be bothered to take them again tonight. it's either too dark or bright morning winter sun on a morning right now; neither are ideal for taking photos anywhere in my room. le sigh.

so instead, some photos from around and about of silhouettes i like; mostly they've been/are going to be printed out and stuck on my inspiration board at uni, as they're (almost) all relevant to my work...

and of course i've forgotton where they're all from, but i think wayne tippets,

vanessa jackman, style bubble and fashion gone rogue covers it...

blog sale day.

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if you're reading this, it means it's been at least 2 weeks since the blog sale! i didn't sell much (boo!) but i still need money (also boo!) and since then i have yet more stuff to get rid of. luckily for you, i love ebay. continue along this link to find my ebay store, which is regularly updated. and in order to make you consider looking EVEN MORE, i'll tell you this:

when i was in london, i was looking for fabrics for my final collection (yes, as well as shopping. and researching). i did, in fact, stumble upon the MOST PERFECT AND AMAZING fabric which i desperately want to use - but lo, it is £70 a metre. buying awesome clothes i have no room for = helping me make my collection/fabric-y dreams come true. you know it makes sense.

that link again! MY EBAY. GOGOGO.

blues.

a swift outfit post. even though i could be posting about any number of things - the Kele gig at Digital last Thursday, or last night's murder mystery extravaganza, for example.

but instead, an outfit i donned on saturday eve, for the another evening of socialising and, err, copious amounts of wine.

vintage blouse+high waisted trews//vintage+claire's rings//

peacocks shoes (i think)//yellow barry m nails - hi, 2 for a fiver in boots!

you guys, i'm SO GOOD at blog pictures. red eye is so this week.

i wish i could get my hair to go like this, rather than randomly waking up with it big, curly and awesome and arranging an outfit to compliment it.

fuck yeah, hair. fuck. yeah.

suggested reading.

today is a slow day; a day when i am not doing much of anything, even though there are so many things i could be doing. currently watching come dine with me, and i haven't seen this one before, so it feels like an achievement.

something i've been meaning to write for a short while now is a little about some of the blogs i read - i am, as one would expect, a fashion blog reader first and foremost, but there are others (or ones that aren't just about fashion) that i hold in great esteem.

the way i follow blogs is pretty much broken down into categories too - those i follow purely for the pictures are confined to bloglovin, where i can see the pics and view the blog if the thumbnail catches my eye...

pictures
if not for my personal style, then for my sketchbooks and design work...
the point, readers, boils down to "here are some great personal style blogs, yeah?"

- another day to dress up is quirky and often vintage-y, which i guess means she isn't averse to wearing a turban, is a fan of a 70s-esque dress, and she wears trousers well. i'm in a trousers mood today, so anyone with the ability to wear trousers well makes me smile.

- zoë cullie or 'haiku ambulance', as my browser tells me, is another good-trouser-wearer. also headscarves. of all the blogs i read, hers is the one that speaks to me and inspires my personal style more than any other. i mean, while i might greatly admire the style of, say, queen michelle (scroll down, scroll down...), zoë's style is much more 'me', in an 'if our wardrobes got mixed up somehow, i think i'd be fine with that' sense.

- stylorectic is a lot more 'here's a bunch of similar pictures of me in an outfit' than the others (the type of blog i rarely find enthralling), but her use of scarves, sequins and leopard print is enough to keep me entertained. that, and the fact that she's pregnant right now and hasn't given up any sense of her style.

pics from another day...//zoe cullie//stylorectic

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words and pictures
from here on in, my google reader contains inspiration, but also, sometimes, things i do care about reading.

- outsapop is your one stop shop for diy inspiration. if you're a diy-er or a designer of some sort and don't already follow for inspiration or otherwise, get on it.

- of the "big blogs", kingdom of style is my pick over, say style bubble. while susie's style is awesome and all, she's sometimes a little overly girly in the designers she posts about, and i'm more interested in purveyors of leather, chiffon and feathers in neutral shades than i am those of pastel fringing. that, and queen michelle's personal style is awesome.

- ganymede kids is a recent addition to my reader, and i haven't much to say on it thus far, but there's a nice mix of wordy posts and photo posts. the right balance, i think, and a balance i hope i strike here...

- ...whereas nice & shiny is often quite picture heavy, but also relevant to my interests. Kylie shares my thrift-love more than most, and has awesome hair.

- i promised myself i wouldn't pimp out my friends too much, but since Ana is the only one who both a) does fashion-y things and b) posts once in a while, you should definitely look at one fabulous thing after another, even when there's some crossover when she's in newcastle.

- coincidently, we're both fans of white lightning. i don't know what it is about WL that i love, but love it i do.

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words
as one might expect, this section contains little in the fashion arena (though it is not a fashion wasteland, nono)
the blogs in this category are the ones i actually read - where as others are sometimes skim-read or flicked through depending on post, these ones are sitting back in my chair, slowly sipping my coffee, nodding and laughing at appropriate sentences type reading.

- tom & lorenzo, aka project rungay is a tv/media/fashion blog all rolled into one. as a fan of project runway, mad men, lost, and bitchy gays, this is in my top blogs and probably always will be. the one blog i read in a different way to the others (as the posts are published, as opposed to first thing on a morning over coffee and breakfast), T&L do some mean red carpet judgery, and have opinions about a great deal of reality tv. their 'mad style' pieces are like costume psychology on the women of mad men and are a great read.

- the man repeller is a blog i recently fell across but is completely relevant to my interests and probably yours too, if you're a fan of fashion first and attracting a man second.

- and i found that blog via the medium of godammit, my one stop shop for ranting and what i like to term 'random hate', in which one might display a completely unprovoked feeling of hatred for an individual. ok, so, hate is a strong word but 'random dislike' doesn't sound as good. anyway, sister wolf's 'comments for jane', directed towards the sea of shoes blogger, and her general disdain for the niche of vacuous, 25-pictures-of-the-same-outfit type bloggers sits right with me.

- nogoodforme is a blog i've championed for a very long time. i've been reading for about a year (...?) but i'm plugging away again if purely for newish feature 'DO AS I SAY' (...not as i do), in which laura jane (one of 3 ladies writing for ngfm, or a third of the nogoodforme troika, as they put it) doles out advice which isn't necessarily based on her personal experiences. said coloumn is genius because it provides soundbites such as the following:

"There is no point in maintaining relationships, romantic or non-, that overcomplicate your life. Complications will arise in any relationship, but I think it's very easy to tell when a relationship only complicates things. Those relationships are bad relationships. They are not relationships. They are simply "ships." Sink those motherfuckers."

- i keep banging on about men i wish i hadn't slept with, but it really is a fantastic and hilarious read and if it takes you 5 links to click on it and read then it takes 5 links. between the one liners and the parallels to either my own life or that of my friends, this could be written by someone i know.

- which is where i heart ncl steps in. northerners should almost definitely click and read and follow, but everyone should take a gander - not only because my upstairs neighbour aaron is the author, and he has a way with words, but because a blog about life and love in newcastle is a great idea. also, he started it merely yesterday and has already done 4 posts, one of which is a lil' interview with yours truly, which will, apparently, be a regular feature. with other people, of course, not just interviews with me. i have high hopes for i heart ncl, primarily because i haven't seen him this excited since he found crusty bread on sale at morrisons.

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perhaps you've found a new favourite today; perhaps not. perhaps your favourite isn't represented and you think i should read it. perhaps you should leave a comment.

stripes.

now THIS is a lazing about the house outfit.
hangovers involve jeans; not leaving the house but spending the day DIYing, making chocolate mousse and watching come dine with me mean stripes galore. apparently.

thrifted top//H&M skirt+necklace//henry holland tights

i love that top, but every time i wear it, it attracts stains. usually of the food variety. pasta sauce, gravy, coffee....

anyways, during my lazy day i also encountered the cosmopolitan blog awards. this isn't a shameless request for votes, but if you're a fan of blogs in general, it's a great opportunity to get your favourites heard. fashion and style is just one of the categories and you can vote as many times as you like (the other categories being: sex and relationships, beauty, e-tailer, lifestyle, gadget tech, news and current affairs, celebrity and the "new fashion blogger" award for blogs under 6 months old.)

i haven't decided quite who to vote for for the fashion-y ones, but i did vote in sex and relationships, as that's what one of my new favourite blogs falls under: men i wish i hadn't slept with

until now i didn't have the right place to plug it, but go read it. hilarious.

stuff.

yeah; no proper post today, but a few notes.

1: I'm off to York, then Isle of Wight fest (incase you hadn't noticed) tomorrow, for a week, so i'll be quiet on all fronts. Maybe the odd tweet. Unless I find things that I must write about in the next 24 hours; in which case, scheduled posts may arise!

2: Bloglovin' followers; I do apologise. There's a new page for you to follow since you can't change the url on old pages...

3: I think I'm done updating? The only thing I haven't glanced through is my blog roll. I've been reading the same ones for ages (did add House of Harps recently, though. Check her out; vintage fabulousness and a love of headscarves, which I am quite the fan of these days), and I'd like some recommendations....

I read a lot more than a link on here, but there are hundreds upon hundreds of blogs out there so post me your favourites and I'll give 'em a look-see.

4: Northumbria got a bit o' coverage on fashion 156 here :D

you might have noticed...

HRRRRRNK.

So.
Big changes due to boredom on all fronts - new name, new url, new banner, new colour scheme.

I think I outgrew ventures of jenn, and so on to venturess. chosen partly due to similarity, partly cos ventures(.blogspot.com...) as taken and venturess was taken. I like to think it's pronounced ventur-ess, like lion-ess.

*ahem*

Just go with it, k?

No other news, but if you link to me somewhere on your blog, update yer links sometime, yeah? (Though if you link to venturesofjenn you'll arrive at a plain white and grey blog with a big ol' link to the new url so it's all good.)

crazy eyes

This post has been a long time in the making.

In the sense that I cba'd to take photos and stuff. But I got round to it yesterday! And mighty glad I did.

Warning: there are a shitload of photos here.

from yvan rodic

So, this picture was on Yvan Rodic a month or so ago, and I fell in love with the makeup. That's something I look out for, on catwalks, in lookbooks, on streetstyle sites. Style is one... faction of influence, makeup is another. An interesting makeup detail can elevate a plain outfit.

All this is a round about way of saying I had a bash at this look myself, and LOVED the results.

I very rarely wear heavy eye makeup. Mascara is a must, and I trytrytry with eyeliner - my mac pot is the best I've used, but still, it eventually wears away. So, last time I did a makeup post, my friend Hana recommended I try this primer from Urban Decay.

It's £11, which is steep for a tiny bottle, but it's genius. And it makes looks like this much more possible to me. And you, y'know, if you have a problem with running eye makeup! It'll at least stop your eyeshadow running down your face.

So, this is what I used:

Rather than go full on black, I started with a moss-y green base, a Collection 2000 cream shadow I've had for YEARS, since last time I went through a moss-y green/khaki phase. (Think I'm back in said phase now. FYI.) - applied with the sponge tip brush....thing, all up the length of the shape I want.

Follows by black powder from this palette. Also ancient. It's the one in the top right corner. Applied with the fat gold brush, all over the green base.

Then a little mac liner, applied with the other end of the sponge tip brush top the top lash line and up into the eye socket a little.

Pretty sweetass, non?

Just while we're on the subject of eyes, these false eyelashes from Paperself are amazing - intricate, delicate, and made of paper.

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"it looks a little like student work"

Tim Gunn quote for you there.

Say Tim, how is that a bad thing? Student work isn't all badly fitting and experimental, yknow!

Last week I got a whole bunch of blogging related emails.
I was all "whaddup with this? i'm not even proper blogging right now*" but righto, whatevs, i'll read and reply and so forth.
One of these was from Krakow School of Design (I know, random, yes?) essentially going 'ere, have a look at wor student's work", though obviously not in a geordie accent.

See, they have a blog, on which they post loads of stuff, including, but not limited to some of the students work. (I suggest you check it out, but note that unless you can read Polish, you'll just be looking at the pictures.)
As someone whose coming to the end of third year, with the dreaded final year looming, I'm really interested right now in seeing graduate collections, and what my peers are creating...
Anyways, I scrolled all the way down the first page and two collections popped out at me, so I thought I'd post em.

Firstly, Anna Wendeker...

She even has her own site, or at least, somewhere to show her stuff, yknow. I loved the structured drape, which is a contradiction but also an accurate description, non? Perplexing. Interesting pieces, even if I don't often care for that shade of pink...

My favourite though, was the all black collection of Anna Ziemniak:

Especially the third pieces down...I adore - ADORE - any mix or variation on poofy skirt and fitted-ish jacket/top half. My my.

Both Annas recently graduated, or at least, recently showed and won various prizes, internships and scholarships (along with 12 other students from Krakow SoD) at the Krakow Fashion Awards 2010, which I think is their equivalent of Graduate Fashion Week?
(Big up to this article for telling me this stuff in plain english...!)

Anyways, all this talk of students and final year and graduating has made me cement this decision: for the time being, I'll carry on writing about whatever the hell I like, but next year I'm gonna write about me making my collection and generally blundering through 4th year, with lil' updates about what my friends are up to too. (Though maybe not Eppie. She's got her own blog dammit, even she only updates once every 3 months...).

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* is it just me, or has the blog world gone a bit...quiet? of late. maybe the disenchanted have moved on....anyway, everyone seems to be posting less, and viewers are viewing/commenting less left right and centre. maybe it's just me. lacklustre. etc.

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how the other half dresses: 80s-tastic

Hey! It's another (AND THE FINAL D:) 'other half..' installment...

Ana has gone back to Lincoln. I haven't sent her these pics yet, but she'll probs get them in a bit and post on it.

We chose 'bad/brilliant 80s jackets' as our theme, because Daniel bought this AMAZING (but also vile) leather jacket last week, which has this lining with maps on it. So he joined it, and wore the jacket inside out.

And then Ana found a houndstooth jacket at a charity shop.

And then I was like 'oh god, which jacket do I own that's 80s enough!', and this was pretty much the only one I could've worn.

vintage jacket+bag//ancient topshop skirt//H&M tshirt+necklaces//+various necklaces//new look shoes

AND THEN I found the houndstooth shoes, and so the theme morphed into 80s jackets + houndstooth, which is pretty 80s anyway, so I guess it's just an 80s theme. Yeah.

This is like, the most dressed down I've been in forever. Even during the day. Ridiculous!

Ana, in black and houndstooth//Daniel's amazing jacket.

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how the other half dresses: sparkle, sparkle

Saturday night (am aware it's now Wednesday; what of it?), we rolled to the Other Rooms to see Robots in Disguise, then theCut. We also had 2 takeaways over the course of the night, but we'll keep that on the downlow.

The theme was, of course, sequins.

And I did, in fact, buy a sequin pillbox hat for occasion, which was to be borrowed by Ana, but she decided against it.

Like a fool. LIKE A FOOL!

(I was gonna wear it on Easter Monday to the family gathering, and forgot, also. Sequin pill-box hat fail ALL AROUND.)

As usze, head on over to ana's blog for her deets.

thrifted sequin dress+sheer blouse+cross necklace//ebayed pinstripe jacket//H&M necklaces+bangles//Topshop ring//Matalan (!) shoes

...and sunglasses I found behind the microwave.

I didn't wear these out; not THAT much of a twat. And yeah; behind the microwave. Did a massive tidy up on Saturday. Mmmmm procrastination.

Close up of bangles and nails and such. First time I painted my nails in MONTHS. And I removed the half moons with a cotton bud and some nail varnish remover; mixing it up a bit....

And there's some Ana looking coy//looking like a twat for you. Brilliant!

PS

LOST. AMAZING. Best sideways flash EVER.

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how the other half dresses: stripes

Friday.

Food.

Ana.

Daniel. (I'd link his blog, but he hasn't updated in months so balls to him.)

I picked this theme: stripes!

dress+bag from H&M//tights by Henry Holland//shoes from errrrr somewhere? verrrry old.//

necklace from ebay//ring from topsohp//thrifted jacket

First, THANKS ANA for ruining my shot; douche.

Second, car parks are the new black.

Third, I picked stripes as an excuse to wear this dress. I'm not big on high necks, usually, but I've had this a few months and worn it, like, once? idk. I saw it hanging there, I saw a theme, etc.

Daniel wasn't in on the theme, but he WAS wearing his new vintage YSL trench, and some studded boots, so we'll let him off. As usge, Ana will tell you where stuff is from on OFTAA, yeah? Note her scarf and dress; yesyes.

I don't know what they're doing there. Your not in hareems now, guyz.

Bonus pics of greatness:

Daniel's bday pressie off of Ana:

And wearing Ana's 'granny earring' with his thrifted 'granny blazer' makes Daniel a granny of some sort, clearly.

Chortle.

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