Trend Forecast 2011

...and this season we shalll be mainly adorning ourselves and our homes with, triangles! Modernist, masculine, feminine, glamorous, illuminous and 50's retro triangles. In today's post I will be looking at the three-sided from all angles!

I bought one of  these pink Alchemia chairs from Calligaris at the Ideal Home exhibition in London several years ago. Funnily they arrived from Rome 6 weeks later, when I was actually in Rome and I saw them in the showroom! The colour of these is incredible, but I also love the orange and red ones too!

...whilst lady Gaga isn't everyones' cup of tea (personally I think her image is great fun!), you have to admit that this headpiece from the utterly brillant fashion prop designer Fred Butler is a work of art. Commissioned and made for the unforgettable "Telephone" video with Beyonce earlier this year

...I really enjoy AnOther Magazine, and they have this great feature called "Another Loves", and this watch from Urban Outfitters was "loved" by Fred Butler; go take a look at her blog and you can see why - it is very much in her style!

...Modernist and masculine - Tamasyn Gambell notebooks. A real Bauhaus feel to this design!

...sadly, on a final note, Britain lost two of its' finest designers this year- Lucienne and Robin Day. I've had a lifelong love of Lucienne's fabrics. The top fabric is the one which started it all off, "Calyx", designed in 1951 for the Festival of Britain, and eventually produced by Heals (the rest is history)! You can see the design at the V&A Museum in London. Here it is again used to furnish some incredible chairs!

For other great trend forecasts, check out Design Refuge!

Presents for Film Geeks...

...save or splurge options below. First up (splurge), rather fantastic set of Almodóvar, esspresso cups for Illy Art Collection. These are very faithful to the bold artwork that you see in the film credits of Almodóvar's colourful films. The Penelope Cruz one is esp cute! Next up, is slightly cheaper super Moleskin film journal. Can be dutifully filled in over the Christmas holidays (after the turkey's been demolished, the mulled wine's been fully slurped and all the reles have decamped back to home quarters!)

Charlotte Mann

Charlotte Mann takes doodling to a new level. Her fantastic drawings with marker pen on walls are staggering in their detail. Former Central St Martins student Mann has done some great work with fashion Designer Peter Jensen and exhibited many times in Milan. I especially love the below dining room - a modern take on Rococo opulence. Definitely one to watch!!

Beautiful Mini Lockets

These tiny little lockets from Verabel would make incredible presents for birthdays, Xmas etc. If you want to get them for Chrimbo, I'd get in there quickly as it’s an Etsy job and they are being delivered from Portland in the States. This interview in the Etsy blog is very inspiring for anyone wanting to make a living out of something they love!

Birthday Buttons!

My lovely friend Cata (aka The Smudge), recently bought me a great retro button brooch from Marie Finlay for my birthday. I've been checking out her website this evening and I have to say there is some really cute stuff on there which would make ideal Christmas pressies! My birthday is on remembrance day and I always buy a poppy, but as I'm a bit scatty, I've usually lost it by the end of the day. Now I have found a solution - buy a Marie Finlay Poppy brooch, and £1.00 of proceeds go towards the Poppy appeal fund, and I can put some money in the tin each year too!

Donna Wilson

Congratulations go to the amazingly talented Donna Wilson for winning "Designer of the Year" at Elle Decoration's British Design Awards 2010. I love the quirkiness of style, and the confident use of colour that she uses in her wonderful textiles, ceramics and stationery. The below vase is new to her online collection and I think it will soon become a firm favourite!

Bird Jug

The very colourfully attired, Ms Wilson!

Mad Girls!

OK, I can't resist it anymore, I'm starting my Christmas gift-ideas count down. To start off with, how about these great Joan and Betty Mad Men paper dolls - a great stocking filler for a mere 7 quid! At Culture Label

Grayson Perry Scarf

How amazing is this silk scarf from former Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry? It is a reference to scarves that were distributed during the second world war to help escaped pilots find their way around alien territory, and is a "social and cultural map to help aspiring artists navigate the hostile territory on their way to being accepted by the establishment". Super Chic and available from the always brilliant Tate Online shop!

Womble Chic!

For those readers that are are not from our shores (or are too young to remember), the Wombles, were a pretty funky bunch of animals that spent most of the seventies picking up litter from Wimbledon Common and "upcycling" it for their fantastic underground home! Hopefully the below Womble Chic inspired pics might help you with some interior ideas of your own; living in a burrow on Wimbledon Common is optional.

Please note that no Wombles were harmed during the writing of this post.

SuperGroup!

... is a supergroup of artists that are "a creative A-Team that comes together whenever they are called upon"! This is a fantastically designed website and a great concept for a collective. I particularly like the stuff that Morag posts (from the award-winning Studio Myerscough) Here's some colourful pics of her furniture and art installations.

Triangles!

If you like tetris/ triangular type shapes in your design than you will love the Los Angeles based J1Studio, which wonderfully describes itself as doing thus: "producing simple, functional, unique, modular and systematic objects that function as furniture". The T.Shelf, the M.Stool and the V.stand have now arrived!

T.Shelf

Various Past Projects

M.Stool

V.Stand

Charming notebooks...

...from Katy and June! Take with you on eurobreaks and jot stuff down whilst looking cool in dark shades outside the Café de Flore!

Williams British Handmade Luggage

Looking for a more exciting prospect in the luxe luggage market than the usual overpriced and unexciting monogrammed LVs? Your prayers have just been answered! Williams British Handmade are craftsmen of the highest order. All of their items are so beautifully made, but they also challenge the usual luggage design concept. I've totally fallen in love with the below pillar-box red suitcase - very British!

Katrin Moye Ceramics

Katrin Moye and her team of "decorating assistants" create beautiful greeny-blue hued domestic ceramics that have great style, but also a nice homely feel. The cake stands are especially awesome; I think they would add a bit of retro style to any kitchen or dining room table! Liberty of London stock various pieces from the Christa and Dotted Stripe range, plus Katrin also has a few fabric based deisgns on the ever brilliant Clothkits Website.

Tiny Hoops and Dandelions

Dotted Stripe Collection

Christa Collection

Ingrid Collection

Seriously Marr-ed!!

Today I was going to write a really cool post with lots of orange coloured furniture (which I'm really into at the moment). I'd downloaded the pictures I was going to use and everything, but then, lo and behold, I came across this article referencing the comments of a certain Mr Andrew Marr made at Cheltenham Literary Festival last month, and to be honest, it really rather P****d me off. Of all the people in the British media industry, the person I least expected to sound like a Luddite, was Mr Marr. Below are the comments which have incensed me so much on an otherwise uneventful Tuesday afternoon:

"A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting. They are very angry people.", "OK – the country is full of very angry people. Many of us are angry people at times. Some of us are angry and drunk. But the so-called citizen journalism is the spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night."

Excuse me, what about the so-called professional journalist spewing and ranting whilst sober and in broad daylight, about a topic they clearly haven't given much consideration to when it is their job to do so - much more inexcusable surely! Let me point a few things out to Andrew Marr here:

Fact number one - there are more female bloggers than male -which could be a reason why bloggers are constantly being swiped at by male journalists (just a thought?)

Fact number two - there are many bloggers out there that spend vast amounts of time (unpaid predominantly) to create content which they care passionately about. It's not about play acting at being journalists, that is a different role.

Fact number three - without wanting to sound like Nostradamus here, blogging as an industry is only going to get bigger - jump on the Bloggin train early if you want to keep a strong media presence in the future.

Fact number Four (and the last I promise). Mr Marr has actually written blog posts himself in the past, so he is he calling himself socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy and bald?

Hello, and the winner of 2010 Darwin Award is ... Andrew Marr!

Josephine Baker Perfume..

...from Etat Libra Orange. Etat's founder Etienne de Swardt once famously described perfume "as a tool of seduction, a means of exploring and stretching the senses", Josephine Baker definitely fits the bill for that one then! The young black American girl from the Deep South took Paris by storm in the Art Deco period and is one of the lasting icons of the jazz age. She was a keen wit and also a political activist, once quoted as saying "It [the Eiffel Tower] looked very different from the Statue of Liberty, but what did that matter? What was the good of having the statue without the liberty?" You can buy this amazing perfume from Sephora in the US & Europe and from Les Scenteurs in the UK!