Bookshelf Boyfriend founder featuring on Radio Scotland

 

Annie McGuire & Julia Sutherland

Bookshelf Boyfriend’s founder Alysia Maciejowska will be appearing on Radio Scotland’s The Fred MacAulay Show this Wednesday morning.

 

She’ll be chatting to co-hosts Annie McGuire, their resident techie, and Julia Sutherland (less techie but equally lovely) about the trials and tribulations, joys and highs of setting up and running a website.

Tune in to catch her at about 11am. For more info about the show check out the Radio Scotland website.

The Glam Show Live – ticket giveaway!

Bethanie Lunn – our very own Queen of Fabulousness – will be appearing at The Glam Show Live later this month, where she will be divulging more of her insider secrets and further advice on her four fabulous commandments!

The girls at Glam Show Live have kindly offered Bookshelf Boyfriend readers a £5 discount on the Silver Day Ticket* – simply enter the code BETHL0709 in the promotional box on the ticket form.

*discount code valid until 15th October 2009

The ultimate day out for women is coming to Earls Court London Saturday 31st October – Sunday 1st November – The Glam Show in association with TV’s lifestyle expert Nicky Hambleton-Jones.

Showcasing the latest in women’s fashion, lifestyle, health and beauty the event will combine fantastic shopping opportunities together with fabulous fashion shows and the latest in products and services.

The two-day exhibition will host fashion shows throughout each day, featuring the most up-front fashion trends for autumn/winter, alongside vintage style presentations and expert demonstrations in all aspects of beauty, health and lifestyle.

**WIN WIN WIN** A VIP GOLD DAY TICKET TO THE GLAM SHOW LIVE!!!

To help kick off the fun, the Glam Show has also donated six Glam Gold VIP tickets which include entry to all eight feature zones, access to the VIP lounge, a Glam luxury goody bag and a Glam event guide.

To be in with a chance of winning one, fill in the subscription form on Bethanie’s website being sure to state your full name, postal address, email address and which day you would prefer (Saturday or Sunday) – and winners will be picked out of a very stylish hat!

Read Bethanie’s article How to Be Fabulous: My Four Fabulous Commandments on BookshelfBoyfriend.com

V&A Fashion in Motion: Roksanda Ilincic

 

November’s V&A Fashion in Motion programme presented one of London’s most successful young fashion designers, Roksanda Ilincic. The show took the form of five vignettes, specially created for the V&A and featured a selection of key pieces from her past three collections.

After studying both architecture and applied arts in her native Belgrade, Roksanda came to London where she gained her masters degree in women’s wear at Central St Martins College.

Critically acclaimed for her beautifully crafted garments, Ilincic’s distinct style is inspired by the romance and femininity of 1940s and 1950s Parisian couture. She combines these influences with contemporary twists such as raw edges, a-symmetrical lines, strong blocked colours, structural shapes and exaggerated pleating.

Models graced the runway with attitude and aside from harsh eyebrows and sleek hair, the bare minimum of makeup. Each one of them wore towering Christian Louboutin boots.

The choreography showed disparity – the animation of dancers followed by the sleekness of models added a playful tone alongside the silent movie charm of the tinkling piano. Movement enhances the creations; billowing silks flow behind the models and wave with the dancers.

Garments throughout the show played with contrasts, presenting Roksanda’s architecture versus fashion background; the base structures were foundations for lustrous fabrics in playful shapes and bold colour ways, whilst graphic elements went against intricate embellishment, sharp tailoring was set against flowing lines and bright accessories mixed with neutral outfits.

Roksanda’s talent lies in providing simple yet individual chic. She plays with hemlines, shape, structure, and colour; clean lines and boxy shapes counter balance gathering, netting, rouching and one of a kind embellishment.

Ilincic has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including on two occasions, the British Fashion Council Fashion Forward Award, whilst she has also been awarded Topshop’s ‘New Generation Sponsorship’ and ‘Fashion East’ for three seasons. She counts Cate Blanchett, Rosamund Pike, Kate Hudson and Christina Ricci, amongst her clients.

Fashion in Motion: Roksanda Ilincic is brought to you as part of the V&A’s Fashion in Motion series. Featuring some of the greatest designers of our time, Fashion in Motion makes high fashion accessible to a wide audience in the unique surroundings of the V&A.

www.roksandailincic.com

 

[Hannah Eichler]

This sporting life

With the Rugby League World Cup having got underway in Australia at the weekend, the site of this fast-paced game, with sweaty athletic bodies running around a pitch, reminded us at Bookshelf Boyfriend Towers to watch a film that none of us had seen for years. 

This Sporting Life, directed by Lindsey Anderson in 1963, centres around Frank Machin (played by Richard Harris), a Rugby League player from Wakefield in Yorkshire.

If you’ve never understood the allure of Rugby League, or its importance to industrial working towns in northern England, then this film will enlighten you and demonstrate how utterly compelling it can be.  Not only that, This Sporting Life is one of the greatest British films ever made.  A “kitchen sink drama” figure-heading the new wave of social realist filmmaking in the 1960s Britain, it is beautifully shot and beguilingly acted – winning Richard Harris the best actor award in Cannes. 

Not necessarily the happiest film you’ll ever see,  but if you only need one reason to watch it, we are all agreed here that Richard Harris looks Hot!

 

This Sporting Life is available to buy at Amazon:

This Sporting Life (DVD) [1963]

If you want to find out more about the Rugby League World Cup, the official site is:

http://www.rlwc08.com/

If you want to know what on earth Rugby League is, why its so great, and get to grip with the rules, then read our Girls guide to Rugby League at Bookshelf Boyfriend.com.

 

Fashion vs Sport at the V&A

Through its constant re-invention, the world of fashion has taken influence from a massive range of concepts over the years.

As showcased at the Fashion vs Sport exhibition at the V&A, even the world of sport has come to influence the way we dress. Technologies of sportswear have been integrated into dressmaking in the last few decades, producing higher performance, yet stylistically aware garments.

The polo shirt was the first sportswear item to be worn casually in the 1920s, and since then designers such as Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood, Prada and Nike have taken into consideration form and function, as well as fashion by producing casual, street styles.

Sportswear giants such as Nike have produced collections which explore the connections between sports engineering and street credibility. The customisation of sportswear which is seen on the street is filtering ever more into designer collections, where labels are combining sportswear with everyday apparel.

 

Designers have always been aware of the way that clothes are used as a different language to express personality and taste. Puma’s range of trainers by Mihara Sutiro convey a playful nature and are used as satirical, almost political statements, whilst Walter van Beirendonck produced an outfit which made an attack on McDonalds and the world of capitalism.

However, through advertising and consumption, the sports items produced by fashion brands now bear little relation to their original function. The combination of sport and fashion has inevitably meant that the status symbol, and therefore the fashion have taken presidency over the sport. Whilst at the exhibition, you only have to glance at Chanel’s surfboard of 2003, or Paul Smiths bike of 2006, or most recently Chanel’s fishing rods of 2008 to see that fashion is now the key feature.

 

http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/fashion-v-sport/

on until 4^th Jan 2009  

 

[Hannah Eichler]

Is Batman the perfect boyfriend?

We’ve been trying to ascertain at Bookshelf Boyfriend Towers if Batman (aka the Dark Knight) could be the ‘perfect boyfriend’.  Without question he has a stream of benefits that support the argument that he is: the undeniable good looks, pert pecks and defined cheekbones of Christian Bale; the billionaire status; the regular heroics; and his fleet of rather outstanding vehicles combined with his lack of droning on and on about them for hours whilst standing in the rain looking in adulation at them all with the rest of his mates from the pub. Also, we’re fairly unanimous here that we are rather partial to the solitary dark and brooding gentleman (we’re all big fans of Heathcliff here too), a trait which Batman has in abundance.

But then there are the negatives as well. He is up and out of the house most nights, so little time for a quiet night in just the two of you with a bottle of wine and a dvd. But then again, even Batman needs the odd night off, and it is kind of nice to each have your own space.

Its all very well if you’re Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhall’s character) and know the alter-ego of Bruce Wayne, but if he didn’t include you in the trials and tribulations of what is, understandably, a hard-going and at times traumatic ‘hobby’/night job, there would be lots of opportunity for jealousy, anger and irritation to rear their ugly heads, while you constantly wonder what on earth he is up to each night and why so tired and grumpy during the day. However, the answer to that problem is a simple one, which should be the bedrock of all strong relationships – openness, honesty and trust.  If you’re getting annoyed with the long hours that Batman is keeping you should feel comfortable enough in your relationship to raise this issue. Similarly he, as Bruce Wayne, should be honest with you from the moment your relationship gets ’serious’ and explain that he leads the life a world-class stealth vigilante, and that maintaining the anonimity of his true identity is of the utmost importance in order to protect the good people of Gotham.  If he can’t trust you to keep this a secret, and if you can’t be sympathetic to his nightly exploits and consequential ‘downs’ the following day, then frankly the relationship is doomed from the start and, indeed, Batman is not the perfect boyfriend for you.

The best thing about Batman is his modesty, and quite right too. Although his strength, agility and skills have taken more than just a lot of hours at the gym to achieve, without the strong team around him he would not half the super-hero he is today. Most significant is the relationship between Batman and his right-hand-man Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine) and his head of R & D at Wayne Enterprises, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman). The mutual respect and loyalty shown between these men is testament to the fundamentally good character of Batman, and a demonstration that a similar relationship between the two of you could also manifest itself. It is also a fine example that no man (or woman) can achieve super-hero status by their own merits alone. The moral of this story can be applied to our own mundane regular lives, if you or your partner have tried to fix a problem for example around the house, but to no avail, there is no shame in calling that plumber or joiner to come and fix the problem for you – Batman would do just the same.

Stubborn pride gets you nowhere, and that is a trait that Batman, as the Dark Knight at least, does not possess. 

Conclusion: Batman could well be the perfect boyfriend, just so long as when he is Bruce Wayne he drops his overt playboy antics.

Hurrah for Helen, and Meryl, and Greta…

We were shocked to read over the weekend, that Greta Scacchi, now 48, once went to visit a plastic surgeon to see if he could rectify the small problem she saw as being the “hollow” below her eyes – we’re still struggling to work out what this is.  

Its not that she went to see the plastic surgeon in an attempt to resolve what sounds like a complex since childhood – most of us have those moments of thinking “if only I could rectify my this that or the other my life would be sorted” moments.  Our shock is that despite the fact that she is still one of the most beautiful women to grace our screens, all those years ago she left the surgeon, devastated, with a whole list of problems; from her nose being too small to her underbite being to big and her chin too long.

Luckily for us, she saw the sense once the bill arrived and didn’t go ahead with any of the procedures.

There seems to be a greater appreciation these days for natural beauties in older women, helped by the likes of Dame Helen Mirren (62) looking fantastic last week in a red bikini – and looking better than most of us here at BB Towers, despite us being 30 years her junior.

And then there’s the forever beautiful Meryl Streep, who, at 59, has once again seen box office and now chart success this week for her dynamic role in the film version of Mama Mia this. She is once reported to have attributed her perfect skin to “actively not touching it with her hands” – if only we’d all listened to that tip ten years ago!

The truly marvellous thing about these actresses is that they provide a fantastic example for us 20 and 30 somethings, and an avenue of aspiration away from the nip-tuck culture we’ve been subjected to over the last few years. These women are all the more beautiful and distinguished for the fact they haven’t had surgical intervention, and we should all take heed and not resign ourselves to a trip to the surgeon once we hit 40. Helen, Meryl and Greta – we love you!

For a little non-evasive help and advice on maintaining your natural good looks and beauty for the years ahead, check out our article on strength training for women in the Bookshelf Boyfriend sport and fitness section, and our tips to great skin.

 

[ASM]