Walking on sunshine 🌞👙🍍
Walking on sunshine 🌞👙🍍
What's tickling our fancy this month?
Making a splash
While we’re very on board with the latter half of holiday planning – choosing which books we’ll read while sitting by the pool with a fruity drink that’s mostly rum – buying a swimsuit is rarely ever fun. If the top half works, the bottom half inevitably digs into your thighs or vanishes up your arse. If the bottoms are staying where they should, then the top is giving you a serious amount of side boob.
Swimwear brand Mor Swimmy might be the answer to all panicked holiday purchases. It turns out that our dream swimming costume involves a lace back and red velvet heart and looks like a costume from a Meatloaf video. The suit is made in the UK but the fabric is actually recycled nylon from discarded fishing nets sourced from Italy.
The two-woman team behind Mor Swimmy – Emily and Magda – live in Penzance in Cornwall and are big fans of leaping into the sea at every opportunity. We like everything from their inclusive sizing and recycled fabrics, to their donations to good causes and plastic-free packaging. The mermaid duo have created a brand that not only looks good, but feels good, even if we only do a bit of splashing about before going back to our big piles of books.
In a pickle
Laura and Sian have long shared a belief that all meals can be improved with pickles (yes, even breakfast, get creative). Last year Sian popped a jar of Aloha 65 Detonators (£4.50) in the post for Laura’s birthday – no card, just pickles – and then promptly walked back to the shop to buy herself a jar. These brilliant little chunks of pineapple are spicy from scotch bonnet and just the right amount of lip-puckering sour. We often have grand plans for them – they’re brilliant in tacos, and we really want to try them in a margarita. Laura puts hers in toasties so we’ve also got a hunch they’d be very good with ham on a pizza, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into (no need to write in). However, what inevitably happens is we help ourselves to a spicy little snack straight from the jar while we’re waiting for the washing machine to finish. The fridge door pickle buffet might be our favourite meal of all.
Down the garden path
As design inspirations go, Minnie-Mae Stott’s are pretty eclectic, as well as being very relevant to our interests: the British seaside, Greek mythology, Italian kitsch and the history of London all feature heavily in her gorgeous ceramics and homewares. But it’s the tableware adorned with floral motifs that we love the best, particularly the way they all tell a story from Minnie-Mae’s childhood. A bunch of mimosa given by her Granny Anne; the way the golden light hit the William Morris Willow Boughs wallpaper in her great-grandmother’s bedroom; walks in a bluebell wood; and her fascination with fairy flowers (or to give them their grown-up name, forget-me-nots) when she was little. Her pieces are so beautiful, and this platter could only be improved by a towering pile of roast potatoes.
Puff piece
We have an odd relationship with Oliver Bonas. On one hand it’s a good place to buy a birthday card for someone you’ve met twice, or grab a last-minute gift on your way home for Christmas (really sorry about all the monogrammed ceramics in 2017, everyone). On the other hand it’s often a failsafe for our fave skincare brands, including Korres and Soapsmith. So it’s been declared “better than Pret” in the list of places to kill time in a train station. However, while we were busy doling out glowing compliments, we noticed a shift recently: they’ve gone all in on the puffy sleeves. And they’re doing it brilliantly.
Our love of a puffy sleeve is strong. They are just the right amount of ridiculous, and make you look like you bothered far more than you did – it’s really a new flavour of “jeans and a nice top”.
Perhaps we’ll always be a bit cynical about OB, but this summer they’ve definitely upped their game and shifted away from the inexplicably backless tea dresses. And, in the case of Sian’s excellent blue and white striped choice above (was £55, now £36), it’s pleasingly gone a little bit milkmaid meets Mamma Mia. How could we resist?
Hangers-on
There comes a time when, no matter how hard you try to resist it, rattan manages to wheedle its way into your world. It stems, perhaps, from believing that you could, one day, be the sort of person with an enormous, squishy bed covered in crisp white linens, who props themselves up on 27 pillows while reading the Sunday papers, eating a ginormous croissant – just a single, adorable flake on the chin, mind, and no more – and balancing a full cup of coffee on the duvet with no repercussions whatsoever.
It is always sunny, of course, except at night-time when moonlight bathes the room in silver. Beside the perpetually open doors to the Juliet balcony, two ethereal dresses – unearthed in a vintage store in Los Angeles – waft in the breeze. They hang on handsome handcrafted hangers, which just happen to exist in real-life: Hastshilp’s rattan beauties are £12 each, and luckily look just as lovely styled with an old Boden frock and a broken sash window.
And don’t it feel good: two for one | bubblegum and shoe strings | catch some rays.
This weekend, Laura is cosmic dancing and Sian is hoping to be 90% pork puff by Sunday. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.
