Winter Wool

Hello darlings! How are we all? I'm really excited, you know why?
BECAUSE I'M GOING TO NEW YORK TOMORROW!!! I wasn't joking when I said I was excited! Tomorrow I'm heading off to the city that never sleeps and one of the fashion capitals of the world, I can't believe how lucky I am that I've been given this opportunity.
Unfortunately, its still freezing over there, (although I have just had a look at the forecast for next week and the temperature is actually in positive figures so things are looking up!) so I hit the last leg of the sales (yet again) and bought some new woollen pieces to prevent me from losing a toe...or an arm!

I'll apologise now for the terrible pictures, my room in my halls is really gloomy and I don't have anywhere I can take pictures outside without the whole of my halls or Newcastle staring at me and wondering why I have to take twenty pictures of myself before I take one I actually like!
Anyway, back to the clothes. The first jumper I found in the Warehouse sale when I went to the Metrocentre with Steph and Hannah. Its actually a size 16, which I obviously am not, but I tried it on regardless because I love the colour. It's a cropped jumper with bat-wing sleeves but because its two sizes too big for me (I'm a 12) its a nice length and doesn't appear cropped at all which I prefer.
The second piece is a black cardigan also from the Warehouse sale, (this one is my size). This only cost £12 and combined with the red jumper which cost £18, with a cheeky bit of student discount, together they only cost me £27. I love this cardigan as its thicker than you'd think and (although you can't see very well in the pictures) has a bit of a sporty feel to it because of the knit. It can be worn smartly or in a more sporty luxe kind of way and I love it!
And the final piece is a black snood from Accessorize which only cost £5.70! I've never really been a big fan of snoods as all I can imagine when I think of them is skiers but this one was too lovely not to buy. It goes wonderfully with my black and white coat from French Connection and will create a very chic, monochrome look while I'm in New York.
We set off for the airport ridiculously early tomorrow and we'll be in New York for tea time so as you can imagine, I'm freaking out! I've always dreamed of going to New York and I want to live there one day so this will be pretty momentous for me. I've actually only left Europe one other time and that was to go to Toronto and Ontario in Canada nearly three years ago. Naturally I'm a snap-happy photographer and I take hundreds of photos where ever I go but in NY I'm going to take millions! I bought a new camera this week as well and one that takes high quality videos so I'll also be filming video diaries while we're there of where we go, what we do, what we eat, the shows we see, basically everything! I'll be doing "outfits of the day"'s although they won't be particularly stylish as I'll be drowning in layers of thermals but I'll show you them anyway. There will be a lot of content on here in the weeks following my trip as I'll be doing street style photography too. There's a lot to look forward to.
Anyway I'm going to stop rambling and start my packing as everything with me is last minute, but I hope you all have a lovely week and I'll see you all when I return!
Love Holly x

Illustrations: Spring Summer 2014

Hello my darlings! I hope you've all had a stupendous weekend.
Now its only one week until I go to New York for fashion week (although I highly doubt I'll actually get into any of the shows) and so I thought I'd show you some illustrations I've done of my favourite pieces from the 2014 Spring Summer collections.

Now one of my favourite collections hands down has to be the Chanel show, an obvious choice I know, but the installations Karl designed for the runway were fabulous and seen as I did an entire module on fashion installation last semester anything related to them gets me all excited as I really enjoyed that project. Getting back to the clothes *cough* they too were amazing, the colour and shape to those pieces were fresh and empowering. I also loved the paint-splattered rucksacks, as I use my Roxy rucksacks all the time and now I can justify it from a fashion point of view.
My other favourite collection was Dolce & Gabbana's Sicilian inspired parade of coins, blossoms and prints. Some of the designs were so simple and yet so remarkably romantic and revitalising! What can I say it was love at first sight! My favourites from that collection have to be the blossomed dresses (one of which I've drawn above) and the dress made entirely from coins, they were beautiful!
I thought I'd do an illustration of a piece from each house instead of simply copying a picture off Google Images because I thought it would be slightly more fun (for me at least) and creative, what do you guys think? To say I haven't done art in almost three years I'm pretty happy with them but if any of your have any tips on fashion illustration please share them with me because I would like to get back into illustration. Disclaimer: I used a template that I found on Google Images for the bodies of these pictures, I just drew over the top of them and scanned them in. Anyway I hope you enjoyed this post and I'll see you all again soon. Because I'm in New York next week there might not be any posts but I will be taking hundreds of pictures and I'll share them all with you when I get back.
Love Holly x

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New York Shoe Haul!

Hello my darlings! How are you all? I'm sorry that I haven't blogged in an age but we haven't even made it through two weeks of second semester yet and already they have drowned us in work, no joke!
Anyway enough of excuses lets get down to todays blog post. Some of you may know I am crossing the Atlantic in less than two weeks for a Fashion Comm trip to New York during fashion week! I am so excited but also rather worried as the weather over there at the moment is atrocious, its freezing cold and there is the possibility of snow while we're there so obviously I would be anxious.
In light of this (and my somewhat empty shoe collection) I have hit the last leg of the January sales and bought some new shoes in preparation for my trip, although I could be returning next week to buy some thermals as well!

Now as you've probably noticed, the first pair of shoes here are completely impractical for New York! I wanted some smarter black boots to replace the ones I bought in the Office sale last year which I have worn to death and yet somehow I came out of Topshop with these gorgeous things under my arm. It seems like I'm the last person to buy a pair of shoes like this with huge buckles and straps and I had no intention of buying some however these in astrid grey with the gorgeous silver "tongue" bit (I don't know how you would describe it) were just too lovely not to buy. I'm still going to take them to New York in an unrealistically-optimistic hope that the bad weather will improve...
To counter my hopeless purchase I also bought these adorable ankle wellies from Office. I'm usually not a massive fan of these but if it is still snowing in New York when we get there I will need something snow proof. The only wellies I own are bright pink with a lime green trim (they are much more beautiful than they sound) from Joules which I thought would not fair me very well when trying to get into shows so for £12 I bought these cute studded ones. Thoughts?
I'll try keep the posts more regular but for now I hope you all have a lovely week and it's not gloomy where you are like it is in Newcastle. Love Holly x

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January Sales Finds!

Hello my lovelies! I hope you're all having a wonderful week, mine is getting better and better! On Tuesday I passed my driving test second time round with only four minors! (I'm not entirely sure how because I was a crumbling mess!) I got the marks for half of one of my first uni modules back and I got 67%, to say that that was one of my first modules at university and I've never done anything like that before, I'm pretty happy! My best friend Megan has also had a wonderful week as she not only got a job yesterday but she's also been accepted in university! The new year is off to a good start!
Anyhoo, getting back to the main purpose of this post, I went shopping in Harrogate and in Leeds in the new year and picked up a few wonderful new pieces in the sales so I thought I'd share my favourites with you guys. Here we go!

First, this beautiful bag I picked up in Accessorise, it was originally £45 I think and I got it for £32 which isn't a great discount but it was beautiful and after searching everywhere else and feeling disappointed I couldn't resist. I thought it would be perfect and professional for my trip to New York.
Next I found these gorgeous trousers in River Island, these were a good bargain and only cost £17. These trousers surprisingly fit me really well considering its almost impossible to ever find me trousers that fit because I have huge thighs and high street stores expect everyone to have match stick legs. I love the pattern on these and the fabric is thicker than you'd expect so I can still wear them in these cold winter months.
This sophisticated dress was a great find from Topshop, I'm not sure how much it was originally but in the sale it was £25. Obviously its very smart and I don't really have any occasion to wear it to yet but I thought it would be great for interviews for internships so I'm gonna save it for something important. It's a little bit baggy around the waist so I might take it in if I can do so without ruining the chiffon!
Finally to these beautiful high tops, this purchase has been a long time coming. When I was about 15 (God thats ages ago) I bought a fantastic pair of DC high tops that I have worn to death. I couldn't bare to part with them but they seriously needed replacing. I found these in Urban Outfitters for £25 and I love them. There was a tan colour or black and although the tan ones were gorgeous too, nearly everything I own is either black or white so these seemed like the safer option.
Annoyingly with sales you can't really go looking for something, you have to just sort of see what there is and buy pieces that you might not wear for a few months but are good investments. I was quite lucky this year in that I found things that I needed and not only wanted. I hope you all did well in sales too and I'd love to see what you found so leave links below to any your blogs and posts about sale shopping! I'm back at uni next week so posts might not be as frequent from now on but I'll try my best. Enjoy your weekend! Love Holly x

Christmas Presents: Fashion

Hello everyone! I haven't seen you in a while so I hope you're all well. This post has been a long time coming, Christmas seems like a life time ago and I never shared with you what presents I was blessed with so today I thought I should at least show you the fashion related ones. Just to say I am not trying to show off in this post I simply want to share with you some things that I think are beautiful.

My main Christmas present was this gorgeous alpaca-wool coat from French Connection, its called "The Bunny Coat" and its divine! It keeps me so warm and the classic monochrome colours are timeless so the style will last season after season. And its perfect for my trip to New York in February with my course!
My next fashion related present was these wonderful faux-fur gloves from Topshop. These were £20 which is a little expensive but they are so worth it! They're fleece-lined and so they, like the coat, are super toasty. I'll definitely need these for going state side next month.
My final fashion-related gifts are definitely a necessity for any fashion student, subscriptions to both Vogue and Elle magazines, generously given to me by my parents and my grandparents. Being a student, buying fashion magazines every month can be expensive so thank heavens for these! I've just received February's copies of each of them and already I've ripped out half the pages to stick in scrap books as inspiration.
For Christmas I also got socks and knickers and some lovely Eeyore pyjamas but I thought I'd best not model the knickers. Anyway I hope you enjoyed this post and I also took the pictures for my January sales haul today which I will be posting later this week so stay tuned! Hope you all have a lovely week. Love Holly x

What I Go To School For

Hello everyone! I hope your new years have all started wonderfully!
Today I went shopping with mum in Harrogate because I was so disappointed with the sales in Leeds. We went to Leeds on Thursday and it was so exhausting! There were too many people and too many rails of sale garments, we felt so overwhelmed so I didn't come away with much, but I did get this gorgeous tartan skirt...

The reason I named this post thusly is due to the fact that I look like I belong in Wild Child or some other teen comedy set in an expensive boarding school. This skirt was unfortunately not in the sales but we thought it looked too gorgeous to miss, it's a wrap-around from Urban Outfitters in their Urban Renewal section by One & Only. It cost £35 which is a bit much when there are so many good bargains around but I couldn't resist, I've wanted a tartan skirt for ages as it's such a good pattern for winter. Because this one is a wrap around there is risk of indecent exposure I wore it with my laced shorts underneath to add to the adorableness of the look.
I'm planning another post showing you all the things I bought in the sales so keep your eyes peeled and as always, let me know what you think of the look. Love Holly x

New Years Resolutions!

Welcome to A Freak Of Fashion and 2014 everyone! I hope you all had an excellent time last night celebrating and weren't too hungover to function today. A new year has begun and unlike everyone else I know who adored 2013, I'm surprisingly ready to wave last year good bye and embrace the new one. It's not that anything awful happened to me last year, in fact I'm very lucky for the past twelve months and what I've done and achieved and who I've spent them with, in truth I think I'm just a bit bored.
But now a new year is here and it gives us all a chance to change things in our lives and address some things we were maybe avoiding and the promise of new days fills us with hope and determination to make this year even better than the last. There are certainly many things I'd like to not necessarily change but improve or develop. Here we go...
1. Get on with it. I am so lazy, I spend ages in bed in the morning so half my day is gone and then I don't get anything done, when I sit down to work I'll spend an hour on Youtube first and I put so much off and say "Oh I'll do it tomorrow" and guess what? I never do! This year I'm going to work at motivating myself to get on and do things so I can make the most of my time and really enjoy myself.
2. Do more research. This year I want to keep my eyes open all the time and constantly be seeing and listening and watching new things so that I can be inspired and therefore more knowledgable and creative.
3. I want to be more adventurous and confident with my fashion this year and not let anything stand in the way of my dreams and career. For some reason I feel really awkward saying to people that I'm studying fashion because I don't really feel confident enough to stand up and say "Yes these are my dreams so what?" This year I don't want my self-consciousness to stand in the way of what I want. Which leads me onto my next resolution...
4. I want to be a better blogger. I know I haven't had this blog long but I want it to be successful and inspiring. I want to be able to keep up the amount of posts I'm currently publishing when I go back to university and I'm bombarded with work again. I want to work on the layout and presentation of my blog too because I feel its a bit boring at the moment so I'm going to work on that too in the next few months.
5. I had a small operation in September and my doctor told me not to do any exercise and it has taken ages to recover and I'm still not 100% there but I am very nearly. Because I haven't been able to do any exercise and it has just been Christmas I am now very unfit and not quite as skinny as I'd like to be. Therefore when I go back to Newcastle I will be joining the gym and starting to eat more healthily. I want to be fit and look after myself, I don't want to become a slob because I'm a student.
So there you have it, these are all the things I want to change/improve on within the next twelve months so I can make 2014 a year I'm proud of. In all honesty I'm not very optimistic for how these are all going to turn out but I am determined so I suppose we'll just have to wait and see how well it goes. Please leave me a comment and share some of your resolutions and how quickly you've broken them, or if you're more motivated than me how successfully they are going. I hope this year is one you all will never forget. Love Holly x