New favourite fashion blog - Love Meagan

Apart from the Sartorialist, which I love (oh, and cupcakes and cashmere), I'm pretty fickle about fashion blogs. I love to have an occasional nose at other people's style, but tend to find that fashion bloggers either have 'girl next door' style which is lovely but which I could do myself at home so tend to tire of after a while, or, they are a lot more fashion-forward and nice for a browse but perhaps not wearable for me on a regular basis. So I've been on the lookout for a fashion blog with a real woman wearing wearable stuff that above all fits in with my own ethos of keeping things a bit glam and sexy without going over the top (ok, maybe just a little bit over the top). Enter Love Meagan. I love this LA blogger's clothes, big hair and slightly in-your-face style. If you screw your eyes up small she's kind of got a touch of Kim Basinger. Refreshingly she sometimes gets it wrong, but don't we all? Compared to style Europe-side she could be accused of over matching her accessories (I'm guilty on that charge too) but these minor mishaps are forgiven as she actually manages to look good in fit flops which she assures us she's wearing due to a foot injury but completely gets away with nevertheless. In addition to wearing fab clothes she also does great hair and cute craft project tutorials.

P.s. she has also confirmed the validity of my desparate need for a Louis Vuitton Speedy bag ;P

Meagan's DIY pearl and ribbon concertina necklace

Rocking fit flops

Getting a haircut in Madrid – Do’s and Don’ts

Excuse the blurry photo I took of myself post-haircut!

This is something I’ve mentioned before but have been meaning to come back to. Here’s my light-hearted take on getting your hair cut in Madrid:

Don’t expect UK-style ‘customer service’ – in all but the most expensive of hairdressers you will be offered no tea or coffee, you will not be given ‘hair catalogues’ to browse and more often than not you will not get a consultation. In all likelihood someone will wash your hair and the first time the hairdresser sees your tresses they will be wet and he/she will therefore have no idea of your hair texture.

Do expect a great blowdry. I’ve had good cuts and less-good cuts, but one thing that is consistently great here is the news-reader/pornstar blowdry. Ask for ‘las puntas hacia fuera, con volumen’ for Farrah Fawcett style flicks. If you have an event to go to, or just fancy having big hair, DO just have a blowdry, you’ll feel great and it won’t break the bank.

Do expect them to say they’ll only cut off ‘3 dedos’ (3 fingers) only to realise that your hairdresser’s idea of a finger is the thickness of a Lancashire sausage. Isn't that the case everywhere though?

Don’t expect kid gloves. You can get a decent haircut in high street chains, like Marco Aldany, but you may find the treatment a bit rough and ready. If you have knots, they will be yanked rather than teased out of your hair, and your stylist is likely to assume your head has a heat-proof asbestos coating.

Do tip if you want to. A euro is fine, I’ve seen others just pop it into the hairdresser’s pocket so I do the same if their work is good.

In cheaper salons DON’T say yes to all the extras they’ll try to land on you. That means saying no to máscara (masque) and sí to crema (conditioner). The products might be ok, but often some amateurish trainee hair-washer will just plop an expensive hair mask onto the roots rather than ends of your non-towel-dried hair and it won’t take effect.

Do ask for capas finas (fine layers) otherwise your stylist may be tempted to go for ultra chunky ones which may or may not be suited to your hair depending on how thick it is (On average Spanish hair is thicker than anglo-saxon hair so this means the typical layering here is very choppy - which looks great on thick hair, but can leave finer hair looking a little wispy)

If you have dark hair DO ask for 'mechas finas de color caramelo' (fine honey blonde highlights) unless you want thick orange tiger stripes.

Do make use of hairdressing wholesalers – for professionals only in the UK, here you can often go in and buy salon-only products in enormous containers. There’s one on c/Argumosa on Lavapíes – sorry I don’t know the name or number, but if you walk down the street you will see it if you have your eyes open as it’s pretty big – I promise!

Do ask for a baño de colour rather than tinte if you want semi-permanent colour.

If you'd like to avoid all of the above, you can go to Aveda on C/Ortega y Gasset, 2 friends have recommended it to me. Also, if you want to get your hair done by Victoria Beckham’s ex hairdresser go to Lorena Morlote on C/Don Ramón de la Cruz - they used to do Posh’s extensions when she lived here. I went there for a Yuko Japanese straightening treatment about 5 years ago and they cut my hair really well, brought breakfast and massaged half my body. And so they should have to that price. Alas, now I save the pennies by going to franchises like Jofer, but using the ‘rules’ above it normally turns out ok :-)

Haircuts and movies

A couple of weeks back I blogged about the possibility of having movie nights with my film-buff pals C and J. Well, yesterday evening (before watching the UK-USA draw at a local bar) I went with them to see, À bout de souffle (Breathless in England/USA), a French film from the 60's, in the lovely cinema at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. My very crude summary would be that it's about a petty thief attempting to escape the law and his love affair with a cool Amercian girl who's studying at the Sorbonne. I have to say I wasn't blown away, but I did like the interaction between the impossibly cute protagonists - Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Selberg. It was also lovely to be able to recognise just a few phrases in French :-)

Throughout the movie Jean Selberg sports a gorgeous crop, something I could never get away with. I think there is a certain myth that to have such short hair and still look feminine you need to be very beautiful - I don't think this is stricty true - but I do think you need to have killer cheekbones and a sort of elfin look - neither of which is true in my case. But it did make me think, how lovely it would be never to have to blowdry again, to just wash and go, what freedom!

All this talk of hair is because I am thinking about getting a haircut, something which I often find to be totally traumatic - what if they cut it ALL off? Nothing too short, just a sort of long bob - a bit like what I have now, but shorter and with more shape and vavavoom :-) Below is some of my 'hairspiration':

Whilst we were at the Circulo, we also checked out an exhibition by Hungarian Bauhaus era photographer and artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, which is certainly worth a look. However, as usual, my attention was captured by the banal rather any particular masterpiece - hence my snap of the cinematic toilet doors in the bellas artes cinema: