Little China Girl

If you only fill your wardrobe with clothes you love they'll all go together. That's my theory and I'm sticking with it.

It's not rocket science. However eclectic we consider our tastes, there's always several common factors linking our sartorial choices, in my case rich jewel-like colours, bold prints and an abiding love for Asian textiles.

I've got a magpie's eye when it comes to charity shopping and can spot a desirable piece from a few hundred yards away, like today's Chinese brocade jacket. It's not vintage (River Island with the shop labels still attached) but I loved the opulent shade of peacock blue and the fact it was £2 helped twist my arm - as if I needed any encouragement. As usual, it's a couple of sizes too big but nothing a couple of strategically placed safety pins can't sort out.

As with any new wardrobe addition I'll pick it up, hold it against the rest of the clothes hanging on the rails and the perfect thing will pop out and the colours on this Collier Campbell wool maxi dress seemed just right. With the blues perfectly matched, adding gold-tone jewellery would be a step too far so, as I do 99.9% of my life, I piled on the tribal silver bangles and rings, adding a cheap and cheerful tassel, coin & turquoise necklace from off the market and a pair of home-made earrings.

My latest earrings - the bastard lovechild of a broken 1970s scarab pendant and some metallic embroidery thread. Made in half an hour for the grand total of bugger all.

Three blog posts in a week? Get me! Anyone would think I had loads of time on my hands (I haven't). Truth is that for the last week I've been working from a list and I've achieved so much I've surprised myself. Tasks ticked off include emptying, tidying the garden and finally putting the parental home on the property market, photographing and listing over fifty items on the Kinky website, three days of vintage hunting & washing said finds and pricing, ironing and packing for tomorrow's vintage fair. The most exciting thing though, is that I've booked internal flights and accommodation for the first seven days we're in India. I know....after visiting India for 20 years its probably the first time we've ever had a plan.

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Be still my beating heart! For a whole week a small part of this century-old haveli in Gujarat will be our home. Voted by The Guardian as one of the top ten places to stay in the world, the Devpur Darbarbagadh Homestay has featured in the Huffington Post and has been awarded Trip Advisor's certificate of excellence for the last four years. I don't want to wish my life away but, man, I cannot wait! 

WEARING: Collier Campbell maxi (part of a set, last seen HERE), Brocade jacket and purple suede platforms - AGAIN! (both charity shopped)

I don't do close-ups so you'll have to take my word that I'm wearing red lipstick for the first time since the 1980s. As a twenty-something I was told off by one of those Colour Me Beautiful nazis reps that as a cool summer, red was definitely not my colour, made me extremely unattractive and that I should go for a flattering frosted pink instead (over my cold, hard, dead body). The other day I bought something from Superdrug and this Roving Rouge lip crayon from Sleek came for free. Minutes after trying it my lips started to tingle and I thought I was having some sort of a turn - turns out it's a tingling sensation, supposed to accentuate your pout. That'll teach me for not reading the small print.

There's one final thing to tick off the list for this week - sort out my work outfit for tomorrow's fair in Walthamstow (HERE) - so I best get on and do it.

See you on the other side, unless you're in E17 tomorrow!