Tamara Cincik

The Duke as Count Dukula and I Ready To Style Up a Storm At Mishka Vintage

Last night I hosted a Halloween Styling Night at my favourite North London vintage emporium Mishka.

Spooks, witches, children of the night braved the cold wet wilds of N8 to shop: channelling their inner divas of darkness purchasing looks perfect for the twilight hours and start of party season as Halloween leads to Bonfire Night, leads to Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve…  aka a fabulous bunch of excuses for a cocktail dress, Ossie Clark maxi dress, bias cut lace beauties, or any number of retro treats.  As treats become the new tricks!  Boom….

Sherene From My London Agency and Friends. VERY happy with their purchases.

Lizzie and Miles from Mishka with Kirsty a Local Luminary.

Amazing!

Admiration.

Felicity Knows Her Bags! Formerly PR for Angel Jackson: She Was Delighted With This Retro Lovely.

The lovely Nadia Jones whose has designed the best in high street womenswear (from Oasis to Mary Portas), fell in love with a 30s webtastic long dress, perfect for an awards ceremony she is attending next month; while my bridesmaid, the stylist and some might say living Barbie ‘Dolly’ Anna Trevelyan, rocking a fluro pink wig (sadly I wasn’t with my camera to capture the moment) swooped on an 80′s black and lurex long, sleek cardigan.

If you didn’t get the chance to join us last night, I suggest you do soon!

Designed by Margot Bowman: the invite to the Halloween Soiree

Hope you can make it to Mishka Vintage and join us for a spot of of styling up for Halloween.

My Mother and Baby Last Week at My Allotment.

Browsing the Nowness website last week, I chanced upon the blog and work of New Yorker Ari Seth Cohen.  He has spent the past few years photographing, partying and celebrating those more foxy than silver, more Iris Apfel than shrinking violet; more likely to dye their hair violet than give up their love of sartorial charm and swagger.  Given I have been raised by my own hot rocker mother, a woman whose mantra is ‘darling never give up’, and whose pilates-flexed limbs mean like her mind she is forever young, I too celebrate all that is wise, yet fun, fabulous, yet proud of the lessons learnt by these charming stylistas.

Most of whom are a generation+ older than my mother, yet never forget that more is more and a dash of lipstick, a pair of red trousers or a quirky felt fedora add colour, passion and texture to everyone’s day.  I like the feeling that the best is yet to come and we can all still have fun and play with fashion: sometimes we are told it all stops at 30, taking a look at these portraits and knowing my mother and the woman she is yet to become, I can only say, ‘oh really?’

Iris Apfel: 80+ and still upholding the more is more mantra.

We have Mary Portas revitalising the high street and Channel 4 with her new shop (and the tv programme Mary Queen of Shops tie-in) for the 40+ woman at House of Fraser, proudly defying women to be in their power and purchase what really works for them.  At the Paris Fashion Week shows this week, it really struck me as I gazed covetously at the Chloe catwalk, that these were the kind of clothes I would love to wear, without worrying something or too much was hanging out, while yet feeling I was in the room with enough of a fabulous quota for me to feel stylish enough that I could hold my head a little higher, my shoulders a little straighter: as I do when I feel good…

Kinga walking the Chloe Catwalk SS12

‘Young woman you’re going to be an old woman some day; don’t worry about it, don’t sweat it, everything adds character’…  Ari Seth Cohen’s book is due out next Spring.  Amazon are already offering advance order reservations: and who said past 50 women are invisible?..

She's Amazing: I styled this lady for Sunday Times Style in emeralds and YSL: over 80, she had been modelling for 60 years and somehow was the most beautiful woman in the room.

Going through my own archive I found this shot from a story for Sunday Times Style with Kim Andreolli.  Bedecked in emeralds and YSL, this mother of all models, who had been in the game for more than a lifetime, said that her daily dose of yoga kept her young, flexible and alert.  I celebrate both her beauty and the hope that with a little yogic discipline we all can aim to reach so high for so long…

http://advancedstyle.blogspot.com/

http://www.nowness.com/day/2011/3/23/1382/advanced-style-age-and-beauty

http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Style-Ari-Seth-Cohen/dp/157687592X

http://www.maryportas.com/

Material Girl Magazine: Shoot with Ellen Rogers out now.

Here is a sneak preview of the Material Girl Story I styled at the jaw-droppingly fabulous House of Hackney: shot by Ellen Rogers.

If Ellen and I lived together in an alternate reality universe, it would be a world where Alice fell through the looking glass, tumbled down the rabbit hole and into the wilds and wiles of the Yorkshire Moors with Cathy and Heathcliff…

Please click on the link to see more/buy or take a peek:- http://materialgirl-mag.com/index.php?swfName=issue_nb_00

www.houseofhackney.com

www.ellenrogers.co.uk

Day Tripper from Jeremy fusco on Vimeo.

The fashion film I styled when 9 months pregnant! SS11 Meadham Kirchhoff Collection Special
Shot by my fabulously talented husband.
Now on ASOVFF.

Sir Ben Kingsley Shoot for Corduroy Magazine, with Peter Ash Lee.

http://www.corduroymag.com/

Lily Cole for Corduroy Magazine with Photographer Peter Ash Lee.

http://www.corduroymag.com/

Zoe my God daughter at Vintage at Southbank

Terrace Drinks at Vintage

When Britain really did rule the waves, the high-point of her Britannia arrogance and verve was the 1851 exhibition.  A huge house of glass – a ‘crystal palace’ –  was constructed in Hyde Park.  Queen Victoria, her handsome consort Albert and their 9 children were resplendent in matching costumes: a visual hit of majesterial alchemy.  Exhibits from the Empire wowed crowds who had never left seen Dover’s white cliffs, as well as foreign guests and exhibitors who wanted to display the latest designs, inventions and innovations. 100 years later, to cheer ourselves up after WW2, Britain decided to hold another exhibition based on those same national pride principles, albeit now in a world where not only was the Empire and our certainty shrinking, those participating and attending had survived a war beyond all wars and still six years later wanted some fun and optimism after nearly a decade of post-war rationing.

70s Styling - Vol Au vent anyone?

The 1951 Exhibition saw the building of The Southbank: a concrete modernist Ark of artistic endeavour cutting a sharp swathe across the recently bombed southern side of the Thames: from Royal Festival Hall, to National Theatre, art lived on here in its mid-century absolutism.  The glass house which had encased the original exhibition was bombed and destroyed in its South London suburban location; what people needed was a boost, a sense of hope, yet like all British institutions, one founded upon a memory, an old idea made good, a sense of the past, of continuity into new ideas.

Which leads me to vintage: when I started buying old clothes, they were that, old clothes, secondhand was the name used and they were: 60s cocktail dresses bought from charity shops, deco bags at jumble sales, Victoriana from Portobello, as a teenager my penchant for silk velvet grew unabated as I would forego supper to buy something which I believed enchanted.  I can’t quite remember when secondhand morphed into vintage: perhaps when the prices went up? Perhaps when others en masse showed how they too shared my love affair with the old, with the stories, the craftsmenship and the unique beauty these clothes hold in their seams and darts.

Last Friday, my mother, my god daughter Zoe, my old friend Sukie and my 3 month old baby all went to Vintage at Southbank.  An homage to all things nostalgic curated by the Hemingways of Red or Dead infamy, to celebrate 60 years since the 1951 with a party/shopathon/fete/festival celebration of Twentieth Century modes in music, art, design and fashion.  Transgenerational, we moved from Abigail’s Party installation, to retro Art School printing class.  But it was the shopping, oh my friends the shopping, where my girls of all ages swooped on pieces of beauty, while my baby snoozed on magnificently.  You see he was already wearing the best in vintage: for I had prized onto him that morning a wondrous 1950s playsuit, baby shower gift from the lovely Mica, offset with a red and black check pair of M&S Vans.  I am sure if he could speak he would say ‘Mummy vintage rocks’.  Somehow too vintage has become a noun and for that I applaud last weekend, as a celebration of the best in past memories reshaped into something tantalising and hopeful.

The next day we went to Kew Gardens: both for Jeremy and Dukey their Palm House debuts.  For a still-standing glass palace and a relic of Victorian splendour in a cozy corner of South West London, I can recommend no greater way to spend a sun-kissed day.