Go your own way #1: Rumours
Sadly my headwear collection doesn’t include a top hat, but I did happen to have a bowler hat casually lying around the flat. I put it on with some leggings, heels and a shirt and decided that was about as close as I could get to the first Stevie Nicks-inspired outfit this week. I took my picture, put my camera away and happily turned to the next task for the day – popping to Sainsbury’s for that night’s recipe ingredients. My heart fell. Did this mean I had to go to Sainsbury’s in a bowler hat? Bugger off – no, of course it didn’t. I’m not going to Sainsbury’s for blueberries wearing a bowler hat any more than I’m cutting my hair into a full mullet. It wouldn’t be so bad if they hadn’t recently invaded Topshop. At least then I’d just look mad rather than tragically try-hard. It’s OK to try hard and succeed. It’s not OK to try hard and fail abysmally, and in public, unless what you’re trying hard at is worthwhile. I took the hat off, then took my heels off for good measure and put some trainers on. The job was a good’un. Thankfully I was only popping to the shop. Imagine if I’d been at a festival, which is the Guardian‘s suggested outing for this look. I’d be knee-deep in mud in the middle of a rain-lashed field, straining to drag my high-heeled hooves over to the main stage while keeping a top hat on my head and my bottom flatteringly tucked under in my skin-tight ski-pant and silk shirt combo. Meanwhile my wellied mates would be happily drinking scrumpy and watching Magazine, just like life’s supposed to be all about. I’m off to Latitude this weekend and I’m not packing heels. Or my bowler hat. My friends will be so pleased.
Rumours
- Slander
I got the light all wrong so you can barely see me. Be thankful.
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If you wear a top hat – or a bowler hat – to the supermarket, it’s officially time to get over yourself
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If you wear heels at a festival involving fields and tents, it’s officially time to get over yourself
First impressions
On Saturday morning I settled down with a bag of pastries, a lightly furrowed brow and the latest copy of Weekend to discover what was in store for the next week of my new life. I’m already becoming quite interested in what happens when you transpose the magic and sense of possibility of a lifestyle magazine on to the reality of everyday life, with its size 14 bodies, disorganised flats, working hours and supermarkets with limited stock. The bubble very quickly bursts. But it seems unwise to draw any conclusions now, so I’ll stick to my first impressions as I leafed through the magazine, happily perusing the pretty pictures and stopping occasionally to brush croissant crumbs from my chin in dismay as I realised what I was set up for this time around.
Fashion:
- Stevie Nicks is great but when I open the fashion story inspired by her style, my eye is drawn to a small top hat and a pair of lace leggings. This doesn’t bode well for me. It bodes badly for me. I then notice this is supposed to be festival fashion. Because I’m not best pals with Sadie Frost, I don’t wear heels at festivals. And I slightly object to the suggestion that anybody should
- Menswear! Hmmm. But I’ll probably do a better job of emulating the outfits, poses and ankles of these guys than I do the women
- Alice in Wonderland, brilliant, but isn’t it getting a little tiresome watching Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter being wheeled out in white face powder, backcombed hair and crazily eccentric facial expressions every time Tim Burton makes a new film?
- Balenciaga sandals. I can but pray they’re not on sale yet or I’ll be on the phone to my bank about my overdraft quicker than you can say ‘death to Natwest’
Make-up
- Lauren Luke’s doing Dita von Teese this week and it’s music to my ears. This is my preferred face paint. Out the window with all that beige rubbish
Recipes
- Oh no, more sweet pies! Call them flans, tarts, whatever – they’re pies, and I can’t keep eating them every night for long before the last remaining jeans go Oxfamwards
- I spy the word ‘chill’. This is on my list of hated recipe words alongside ‘preheat’, ‘marinate’, ‘leave to rise’ and ‘allow’. It’s all very well if you’re relaxing at home on a saturday afternoon with a gin and tonic and a group of friends, wistfully watching your golden-haired children play happily together on the lawn as you hand out more olives, but what if you just walked six miles home from work carrying an awkward bag after editing marketing dross for nine hours, sustained mostly by coffee and cup-a-soups from the vending machine, and JUST WANT SOME DINNER? Chilling indeed
- That’s more like it
- A new column, great. About love, fantastic. Wait, do I need a partner for this one? What was there before this column started anyway?
- Harr, yeh, right
- Oh yeh, that was there before
The worst that could happen? Bring it on
I love Oliver Burkeman’s writing so I’m looking forward to having an official reason to practise what he preaches each week. If any part of this project is going to change my life it will, apparently, be this one.
This week’s column covers quite a lot of ground so I divided it into separate, easily digestible points, as one should always do when contemplating the nature of reality.
Conclusions:
- Don’t convince yourself it’ll all be OK – flesh out the worst-case scenario. As a life-improving technique this didn’t work for me. I asked myself: ‘If I start a blog in which I have to follow everything the Guardian Weekend magazine suggests I might do, wear, eat, cook and think every single day of every single week, and then add unflattering photos of myself, paste them next to photos of models, attempt to write something hilarious about each task and publish the whole affair online so that anyone in the entire world – from my granny to my boss to my youngest cousin to my ex to a stalker to a prospective lover – can see it, what’s the worst that can happen?’ Then I fleshed out that thought for a while
- Don’t visit meaningoflife.tv unless you have nothing pressing to do for the next month. This is wise advice, as it happens. I didn’t follow it and neither should you
- Don’t hold on to the idea that the perfect relationship/job/house would make you happy. Yes, but what if I based each element of my relationships/job/house obsessively on a weekly lifestyle magazine? That would make me happy, wouldn’t it?
Raise a glass to cocktail dresses #3
I don’t own a feather skirt but I did my best with what I’ve got today, and that’s what it’s all about around here.
The quiffed hairstyle doesn’t work with a short fringe so I’ve ended up resembling one of my favourite ever gals – Little My of Moominvalley. It’s always good to channel Little My because you feel feisty and tough, which mixes well with the 3 Men and a Little Lady mischievousness of a newly cut fringe.
Where my copy really falls down today is with the high-waisted skirt, as I don’t have a matching enough one. I did some hoiking but had to reverse the process to avoid exposing my buttocks to London twice in one week. Moderation, as my mum always tells me, is the key.
Trollin'
Moomin'
I’m working on the pouting skills. And I blame Lauren Luke for the shiny face – hopefully next week’s make-up will involve powder.
Conclusion:
- The distance between the skirt’s waist and the blazer’s hem is the point. And I missed the point
Raise a glass to cocktail dresses #2
Today’s outfit got me in a panic. None of my clothes fit me at the moment (something to do with clotted cream). I just cut my hair into an imitation mullet, which made the hairstyle really tricky to emulate. To be fair I made it all the way to work with my matted, badly coloured hair pinned on the front of my head in a sort of curly arrangement. But then I got to work (half an hour late because I’d been photographing the non-mullet all morning) and went straight to the loo to sort it out. If I’m going to succeed at this project I’ll need to take myself a bit less seriously I think, which is saying quite a lot.
Anyway it’s an utterly stupid outfit – the dress totally doesn’t work tucked into the jeans and the hair looks like a basin when I wear it up. The earrings are pretty close – lightning bolts instead of stars – although they’re one thing you can’t see in the photo. I’m not going to spend any more time on this post because it’s a boring one. The granny looks better than me. That’s all you need to know.
Cocktail dress
Cockfail dress
Still, the tampon machine adds a touch of wisdom and glamour.
Conclusion:
- My days of jeans-converse-t-shirt-ponytail-done are over. I need to plan these outfits the night before, or I’m for the sack
- Older ladies tend to be bonier, which makes them look chic. I don’t tend to be bonier
- You try for a mullet, you get a basin – how can this possibly work?
Kristen Stewart
This week’s Measure votes Yes to the 70s mullet, so it was time for me to wave goodbye to half my locks in a tribute to Joan Jett (at least I know how to spell her name). It didn’t really work, to be honest, which I put down to the fact that I spent most of my evening making clotted cream shortcake. It turns out an ex-boyfriend had made off with my hairdressing scissors (no he isn’t – we split up for other reasons) so I used some Ikea kitchen scissors instead. They are the type of scissors you once used to cut open some kind of gunky thing and then put back in the drawer without the foresight of wiping them, meaning they stick together each time you snip and you have to use all your thumb strength to open them again. This greatly detracts from the precision with which you can cut your hair into a mullet. I also did the cutting in a half-dark room in the small hours of the morning with a carrier bag on my knee to catch the trimmings. I started with the fringe, which was easy enough as I’ve had a fringe for half my life and almost always do it myself. The sticky scissors were annoying but as I can’t pride myself on my patience, precision or foresight, I pride myself on my tenacity instead. Then I started hacking lengths of hair off the sides, and this is when I started to get scared. In fact, I had to stop. I’m not walking around with an actual mullet whether the Measure tells me to or not – especially since they’ll only stick it on the ‘going down’ list next week anyway. So I have a sort of socially acceptable mullet now, by which I mean I have a fringe.
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- Mullet over
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- Mullet under
Conclusions:
- Sharp scissors make all the difference
- Don’t bring on the mullet
Clotted cream shortcake
Last night was my first attempt at the recipe side of all this and I had high hopes, what with two tubs of cream being involved. The ingredients cost me about seven quid. Unfortunately neither patience nor precision are my strongest points, which already causes me problems because I’m a sub-editor. Turns out I’m not only ill suited to my chosen profession, I’m also ill suited to the life of a baker. I forgot to buy baking powder. I forgot to buy baking parchment. I forgot that I don’t have a baking tray. I didn’t measure the ingredients, which I already know to be the cardinal sin of baking. Basically anything with ‘baking’ in it went wrong. Nevertheless I mixed up a bowl of crumbly yet gluey dough, greased a muffin tray with a rancid butter wrapper I’d put in my fridge when pretending to be domestic, squashed the dough on to the tray and smacked it absentmindedly until the edges started to squidge off. Then I put it in my oven, which burns one half of any given circular object and leaves the other half raw (i’m thinking particularly of pizzas) and left it in there for 15 minutes while I ate most of the strawberries I was supposed to fill the shortcake with. I couldn’t be bothered to get the hand-blender out just to whip some cream, which does make me wonder what I think it’s meant to be for, so I just shook the tub until I got bored. Don’t try this – it doesn’t work. Then it was time for the shortcake to emerge, looking gloriously golden on one side and pallidly similar to this week’s make-up look on the other. I broke it in half, shoved it on a plate, put the strawberries on, poured over the double cream and hurriedly took a photo before squirrelling the plate away to my room like a Freaky Eater. It was mostly raw inside, I admit, but if you made sure each mouthful had enough cooked bit and plenty of cream, it was pretty nice.
Here’s what it was supposed to look like:
Clotted cream shortcake
And here’s my attempt at culinary mimicry:
Clots who love cream can't bake
I like the way the photo has an element of the paranormal.
Conclusions:
- I need scales
- I need patience
- Raw dough tastes fine as long as it’s sweet
Raise a glass to cocktail dresses #1
The first outfit of the project was pretty easy to put together from the stuff I have in my wardrobe and, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve sprained my ankle and had to rely on a walking stick topped with a large ram’s horn to get about, I wouldn’t have looked that out of the ordinary. The clashing florals are tame for Dalston and the loopy 40s-ish hairdo is par for the course. I removed the chunky brown belt instantly because the dress has a dropped waist – and I have yet to be convinced that tucking a scarf into your belt is in any way a wise thing to do. I attracted a certain amount of interest walking down the street, which I quckly realised was down to my dress having ridden up under my bag, revealing cycling-short-length Primark magic knickers and their associated bulges to the world. My camera is out of action today so I had to take these awkward photos on my phone. Pose imitation and photography skills to improve vastly, I hope.
Raise a glass
Reveal your arse
Conclusions:
- Mismatched prints – great. Add a rustic walking stick and the effect is entirely changed
- Tucking scarf into belt – why? Would Isadora Duncan have wanted this?
‘Beautiful’ bronzing
My first post and I am already bringing shame upon myself. It’s my 7am attempt at Lauren Luke’s ‘beautiful bronzing’ look. A previous letter to the magazine complained that Lauren looked exactly the same in all four stages of her tutorial, which I fear is the case for me here. Step 1: tired and pasty. Step 2: tired and pasty. Step 3: tired and pasty. Step 4: tired and pasty. Writing that has made me hungry for a cornish pasty.
Here’s the look I was aiming for, followed by what I achieved in my bathroom at home:
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- Beautiful bronzing
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- Beastiful bronzing
Admittedly I had neither expert lighting, expert photography nor expert equipment at my disposal, but nonetheless this is a bad result. I ended up adding mascara and pink blusher at the end because I didn’t want to leave the house looking like a maggot.
Conclusions:
- Lauren Luke is instantly shaping up to be a harder act to follow, portrait-wise, than I had imagined
- I ought to invest in a set of make-up brushes
- A full face of beige make-up is not for everyone
I've always found it funny when people write letters to the Guardian's Weekend magazine complaining that the recipe ingredients are too middle class and the fashion only looks good on thin people. After all, it's just a magazine. Or is it? I decided to follow its recipes, fashion and lifestyle advice as closely as possible, to see if the aspirations promoted therein can really be achieved by the average reader who is not especially wealthy, not necessarily model thin and is obliged to work regular office hours. This blog has no affiliation whatsoever with the Guardian but I link to the Weekend magazine website for the purposes of illustration. 
Guardian Girl 
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