Self Service

Any regular readers (and I still don't really believe that means anyone aside from Grandfather, my friends Kim and Simon and my sisters, but the statistics say otherwise) will have noticed that I don't seem to have written much recently.  There is one overwhelming reason why, and that is that I have been focusing on getting English Abode live, English Abode being the online magazine and shopping platform which I've set up, with a little (i.e. a massive amount of invaluable) help from my friends Emma M-T and Christopher T-R.  I'm delighted to be able to inform you that, from us, you can now buy everything from antiques to contemporary design, via cushions (obviously), wallpaper, fabric, Potichomania lamps, silk ikat lampshades, Rajhastani dhurries, antique Venetian mirrors, and some of the prettiest laundry baskets I've ever seen.  I'm actually having a hard time resisting buying all the stock myself - fortunately we've got more coming soon.

Susan Deliss silk ikat cushions and lampshade

Rose de Borman hand-printed silkscreen cushion.  See how hard it is for me?!

Anyway, this isn't meant to be all about English Abode, this post is actually about the night we launched when I finally left the office for the first time in what felt like months (but obviously wasn't) and went to Linley on the Pimlico Road for an exhibition celebrating 'British Design, Craftsmanship, Engineering and Innovation,' which is on until mid-March.  

The entrance was kind of fabulous.  Check out the JCBs.  

Anyway, inside was packed, not least with Elizabeth Hurley holding court next to Gladstone Motorcycles (admittedly her date for the evening was Henry Cole, CEO of said motorcycles) - incidentally, just to illustrate how busy I've been, I hadn't even realised that she and Shane Warne had broken up for good, i.e. I haven't even had time to keep up with the Daily Mail sidebar - but also because every stand was so worth looking at properly.   They weren't just presenting wares, but were showing exactly what goes into everything.  For instance, my friend Bettina who was there with her quite stunningly amazing bespoke handbags was accompanied by Ruth, who actually makes the handbags, and things like a length of ostrich skin, to demonstrate how little of each can actually be used (I never knew that it wasn't all spotty).  There was stationery (Smythson's have got competition), millinery, guns (I genuinely know somebody who was given a pair of Purdeys as a confirmation present), cars, luggage (OMG I love Globetrotter so much - I actually travelled all across Russia, Mongolia, China and then flew to Vanuatu accompanied by nothing but a single ancient Globetrotter one summer, a million years ago) - indeed everything, almost. (There were no cushions.)

You should totally go and see it.  But you should especially go and see Bettina's handbags, because they are both beautifully crafted (we're talking Hermes standard) and immensely practical:  the straps are reinforced to make sure that they don't stretch, they're just the right length to carry over your arm comfortably - in fact she offers two sets of straps so that you can change how you wear the bag - travel bag straps are non slip(!), there are all the pockets and pull-outs you could dream of, and they actually stay looking pristine for a mega long time because Bettina has found some wonder coat-er which protects the suede and the leather.  Oh, and because they're bespoke, you can actually change whatever you like.  

This gives an indication of the different sizes.

Different colours - though actually any colour is possible - but gosh I would like the caramel coloured one on the left . . . 

What's included:  spare straps, detachable wallet with inside pockets for different currency etc.

Tragically (for me) Bettina's bags are, as to be expected, quite expensive - though in comparison to other brands (I'm whispering Hermes) insanely good value - so I can't afford one, yet.  However, if enough people buy enough on English Abode, I might be able to, soon.

The title of this post ought to make sense now.

www.englishabode.com
www.bvs-design.com
The exhibition is at Linley Belgravia, 60 Pimlico Road, London SW1W 8LP until the 14th March

Wallpaper OBSESSION

So, fantasising about a bigger house, I started browsing Prime Location.  Tragically, it transpires that I can't yet quite afford a white stuccoed number in Maida Vale.  In fact, it seems I can't afford an actual house anywhere I think I want to live (remembering I am spoilt from years of living in Kensington followed by Chelsea followed by Notting Hill) and so we are destined to remain in our tiny flat forever.

No matter.  I discovered The Great Interior Design Challenge, and have convinced myself that, given three days, I could totally transform our house.  I have become obsessed with wallpaper, you see, and figure that if we're going to be here for a while (or at least until I've made enough for a little mews house nearby, a snip at around £3million) I may as well carry out my design dreams within our present abode - there's no point in mood boards featuring Hermes wallpaper for a dining room that I might never have. (Although I will have it, one day.  It is as certain as eggs are eggs.)

First up, my bedroom.  It's currently painted pale pink, with a pink and green quilt and a vintage pink and yellow and white Welsh blanket, the curtains are blue and pink with ornamental pheasants (I love them, my mother just produced them from a box when I explained I needed some) and there's something of a wealth of cushions:  Chelsea Textiles, Yastik pink and green ikat spots, Neisha Crosland pineapples on a lemon curd background, not to mention the most beautiful bedside lamp in the world by Cressida Bell.  This is a very longwinded way of explaining that there is already quite a lot of pattern - but there are two plain cream jacquard bedroom armchairs should one's eye need a rest, and anyway it's me who spends the most amount of time in my bedroom and I love pattern, so I'm tossing up between the following:

 

Colefax & Fowler, Alderney.  I love it.  Love it. 

Barneby Gates, Honey Bees.  I also love this, but the more I think about it the more I think I'll save it for a spare bedroom in a future house - there's a fabric that matches, so I could do curtains and valances in the same, and even, maybe, explore the possibility of a tented room? (I've always wanted a tented room.)

This is one of the bedrooms at Kingston Lacey.  Now try and tell me that you wouldn't also like a tented bedroom.

But back to my house:  the children's bedroom is simple, and actually there isn't too much pattern going on in there, except for their own Chelsea Textiles cushions of course, and a blue and white dhurrie and the tent I made Sholto that matches his quilt and some other cushions (positively restrained, see?!), and would potentially come down to budget:

Either Celia Birtwell, Beasties

Or Brunschwig et Fils, Bengali, in Periwinkle (I've got a feeling Celia might be cheaper . . .  But oh my goodness I love it.  It's definitely got to find somewhere to live in the next house.)

The bathroom is more complex, because we half got around to doing it up last year in shades of grey, pink and white, with an amazing Neisha Crosland floor - seriously, if anyone is looking for tiling, stop spending hours going backwards and forwards from Fired Earth with different samples, and go to John Lewis and buy these:

They're both insanely practical, and genuinely not even a bit bankrupting.  

But the walls are still just painted (except the ones that are tiled in totally plain white matt tiles from the aforementioned Fired Earth), and now I either want to give it the Hermes treatment (in the absence of a dining room) or this:

Brunschwig et Fils, Shell Toile, blue on pineapple.  But it's just not going to go with anything else. Except perhaps monogrammed towels that I've thus far only ordered in my head.

Barneby Gates, English Robin.  My friend Kitty's bathroom is done in this.  And, get this, her husband did it for her as a surprise!  I can't think of anything more romantic.

Or of course my original Hermes obsession.  Which actually wouldn't screw up the colour scheme too much, I don't think.  Seriously.  Oh I love it so much.

Downstairs is more problematic.  It's currently painted pale grey, i.e Farrow & Ball Cornforth White.  But suddenly nearly every house I go into is pale grey.  It's become the new Magnolia.  And I long for something - oh I don't know - I do actually really like the colour of our walls downstairs.  But there is a bit of me that wants this:

Barneby Gates, Horse Trellis, acid on grey - but it totally wouldn't go with my Chelsea Textiles blinds, which are one of my greatest loves.

Then there's this:

Manuel Canovas, Bengale.  Like, seriously, how amazing?!  How amazing?!  Obviously it's not going to go with the Chelsea Textiles blinds either - or indeed anything else in the whole room, except perhaps for the Psalt Design bench which I've also thus far only ordered in my head, but one day, in one house, I will have this . . . 

This, however, would kind of go:  Jane Churchill, Bruton Damask.  I like the fact that it's quite subdued, too - it wouldn't overwhelm the room at all.  I've still got to sort out the accidental tie-dye sofa, I thinking of undying it, and then redying it a sort of old rose, which would look quite pretty with this, I feel.  But it might look too pretty pretty.

What's certain is that there's lots to think about. And I'm probably going to have a while to mull it over, as when I suggested to Andrew that he took the children to visit his parents for a few days over half-term, thus enabling me to 'do a little work on the house' in his absence (I'd like to paint the floors, too, and a couple of bookcases) he basically refused to leave.  So I'm going to have to wait until he's not expecting it, and re-suggest it, this time without mentioning wallpaper.  It'll also give me time to save up:  On The Great Interior Design Challenge they get £1000 each for the house transformation, and I've got a feeling that I'm rather seriously over budget . . .. 

www.colefax.com - they stock their own line, plus Jane Churchill and Manuel Canovas

www.barnebygates.com - their papers are going to be stocked on www.englishabode.com seriously soon - and I mean seriously, we are days away from going live

www.celiabirtwell.com

www.johnlewis.com

www.brunschwig.com

Decorating Dining Rooms - Part One

I'm ridiculously broody at the moment.  My head if full of thoughts of more babies, despite the fact that we have nowhere to put them (literally.) So, thinking laterally, I'm considering the need for a new house. This is actually an impossibility, due to the fact that neither Andrew nor I have proper jobs, and so can not get a mortgage, and is also complicated by the fact that Sholto starts school in September, and if he gets into my first choice of school then I won't want to move away from this area, ever.  Nonetheless, and firmly in the realms of fantasy, I'm picturing moving all of us into a large house in Maida Vale.  Large enough to have a proper dining room.  Because the more I read about their extinction, and everybody simply using kitchens, the more I want a return to more formal living.  (Combined with two more children.  There's no logic to procreation at all.)

But I can logically trace the origin of the dining room whim:  a trip to Maison & Objet in Paris last week, followed by two days in Venice.  It was china and porcelain galore, and then a visit to the Murano glass foundries and time spent examining the most exquisite examples of hand-blown and hand-engraved glass imaginable.  

First up, Maison & Objet.  It's huge.  HUGE.  It goes on forever.  We (myself and Emma M-T, our Head Buyer at English Abode) got stuck in section 5a for what felt like days.  And after the initial excitement of meeting Michael Aram in person - (I have long wanted his pomegranate salt and pepper shakers - look:

I once did a story on the house of Russian Prince who was married to a French Princess and they had a pair of these on their dining room table, and they looked just beyond exquisite, and very, very expensive, which, in actual fact, they're not.  Anyway, tragically, Andrew doesn't love them as I do.) 

- we began to wonder if we'd ever see anything truly beautiful ever again.  So we set off for the luxury section, but, on our way, I got distracted by Gien.  I love Gien.

The rabbits and those green plates come from their 'Coloured Enamels' range, and the tea pot, sugar bowl and tea-cups are new for this summer.  Aren't they just heaven?  Don't they make you long for an end to winter already?  I so want the bunnies.  Actually, I want all of it, I would use it in the garden of my imaginary Maida Vale house.  Because it's not actually grand enough for my dining room, you see.

So, we got to luxury, and, once I'd managed to surreptitiously charge my phone while hanging out on a sofa in the Ungaro stand (house), and marvelled at Fendi's ability to shagreen absolutely every piece of furniture known to man (strict no camera policy in there, sorry) I discovered something very grand, in a Barbie dream house kind of way:  Sophie Vallepigue, who I also wasn't allowed to photograph, but here are some pieces she made earlier:

Yes those are jewels.  Amazing, no?  They totally appeal to the 'too much is never enough' side of me.  My only concern is what wallpaper I would use in the dining room, were I to fill it up with Sophie Vallepigue.  Also, I think I'd have to have gold-plated cutlery to go with it - the existing silver wouldn't quite have enough oomph.  And then I'm not sure if the overall effect would actually be chic.  Potentially not . . . 

It would probably be rather easier to adjust to living with these designs, by Flux, who were in the 'Now!' section and whom I have been obsessed with since discovering them at Tent.  (I'm rather hoping we're going to stock them at English Abode):

It's contemporary blue and white, and all made at Stoke on Trent!  And I love it.  In fact, I'd almost go so far as to suggest that it's more than half way to supplanting the below on my fantasy wish list, not least because it would actually look very good with our existing (Gien oiseau bleu) blue and white.  

But oh, the 'Etoiles' by Bernadaud.  It is beautiful, isn't it?  Maybe we'll need a second set of china in our Maida Vale house.  And I think it will look amazing with this wallpaper:

Brunschwig et Fils Beauport Promenade in Red.  My current number one choice for the dining room.

Obviously I'd have the pomegranate salt and pepper shakers, too.

Murano Glass will come in part two . . . .  However, just to finish up Maison & Objet, I'll leave you with the chopping board of my dreams, which one wouldn't actually want to use as a chopping board, but which would look amazing as a cheese board (in my new dining room.  Or even before then.)

By Bethan Gray.  And also I hope coming soon to English Abode.  I mean, how much do you want it? How much . . . . ?!

www.michaelaram.com

www.gien.com

www.designsophievillepigue.com

www.fluxstokeontrent.com

www.bernadaud.fr

www.brunschwig.com

www.bethangray.com

www.englishabode.com

Save a Life

I'm not writing, today, about cushions or ceramics or paint colours or Smythson's diaries.  All those things have their place, of course, and I strongly believe in the power of certain things - things that others might dismiss as superficial - when it comes to improving morale in times of trouble.  However, when the chips really are down, one needs more:  one needs people to actually help.

And so, today, that is what I am asking - and I'm not asking for me, but for a little girl called Margot.  She's a month younger than Esmeralda, and she's the daughter of a friend, Victoria Martini.  

Margot and Victoria, before life changed for them.

In March last year Margot and Esmeralda were playing together at a baby shower, Esmeralda trying her damnedest to poach the bow in Margot's hair.  By October, Margot was at Great Ormond Street receiving chemotherapy for a very rare form of dual lineage Leukaemia that she was diagnosed with on the 7th of that month, aged not quite fourteen months. 

Chemotherapy is going well, but Margot, in order to survive, needs to find a blood stem cell donor.  Her father, Yaser, made this utterly amazing and heartbreaking video, which has already had nearly 25,000 views on YouTube.  Please watch it, share it, and please, please act on it.  

It is impossibly easy to register to see if one can be a match for Margot.  One goes to www.deletebloodcancer.org.uk, gives one's details, (and selects 'Team Margot' when asked how one heard about it.)  A pack arrives, one swabs, and sends it back.  It's that easy.  And if one is outside the UK, which I know some of you are, you can find out how to register from whichever country you're in here.

Alternatively, there are donor drives that one can attend.  There's one taking place in Notting Hill on the 1st February.  Another is in Sheen on the 2nd February.  (Full details of both below.)  Please, take friends, family, colleagues - anyone and everyone you know of the right age (under 55) and who is basically healthy - and ask them to register and swab.  

The greatest thing that any of us can do this year is try to help to save a life.  Especially when it is so easy, and takes so little effort.  

Today is Margot's 100th day of being treated at Great Ormond Street.

Notting Hill Donor Drive:  Saturday 1st February 2014, 11am to 4pm, The Tabernacle, Powis Square, Notting Hill, W11 2AY.  (There's going to be a bake sale too, all proceeds going to Delete Blood Cancer.  I'm making chocolate brownies.)

Sheen Donor Drive:  Sunday 2nd February 2014, from 10am, Sheen Montessori Nursery, Palewell Common Drive, East Sheen, London SW14 8RE.

Decorating Disasters, and Reasonable Recovery

Because we set off for Christmas so early - we left London for Shropshire then Scotland then Yorkshire on the 19th - we also got back early, on the 27th.  Which has given both Andrew and me quite a lot of time to sit around the house looking for faults.  Or rather, it has given me quite a lot of time to look for faults, and then point them out to Andrew.

Some are obvious.  Our bathroom, which we started redoing before Christmas 2012, is still not finished.    Our sofa was covered in sticky Marmite fingers, and the Marmite didn't seem to want to budge, even when challenged by Johnson's babywipes, which can usually clean anything.  The ceilings need painting.  The bathroom needs finishing.  The bathroom and ceiling painting are Andrew's jobs, which makes me extra-specially irritable as I can't control when he does them, and the more I mention it, the longer they'll be put off.

Whatever the case with the bathroom and the ceilings, I did not expect Andrew to use decorating as major procrastination to the extent that I tend to.  I went out for nearly all of Saturday, with the children, to allow Andrew 'to work', though he did say that he might 'have a bit of a tidy up' (I thought he meant to do the washing up, and put the lego away.)  I got back to discover that not only had he rearranged all the furniture in the sitting room, he had utterly disastrously dyed the sofa covers.  The sofa now looks like this:

I mean, seriously.  It's sort of tie-dye spectacular meets the press kit for the Comme des Garcons Amazing Green eau de parfum.  (I went to the launch.  It was amazing, and everything was green.)  The cushion covers are a completely different cover to the rest of the sofa cover.  Now, admittedly, the dying was originally my idea.  It all came about because the new cover that I ordered had in fact been discontinued, and this was another option.  I carefully researched the process, ordered the Dylon from John Lewis - four packs of dark green, two packs of brown, the intention was to mix them together to create an olivey sort of colour - and bought the industrial quantities of salt needed from the Coop.  And admittedly, I did tell Andrew that he could start the process, if he wanted to do.  I did not expect him actually to start it, or to forget to add the brown to the first batch (main cover), and so add all of it to the second (cushion covers).  (Although don't my Chelsea Textiles cushions look exquisitely worth every penny?  They're soon going to be available on English Abode, incidentally.)

I think there's nothing for it but to start saving up for this:

The Yanna three-seater sofa in olive green pure cotton matt velvet from sofa.com, £1,345 - I really hope that the cat comes with it.  (I so want a cat.  To scratch the sofa.)

It's heaven, right?  I keep looking at the picture over and over again, and it was, to be honest, part of the inspiration behind the colour I chose for the disastrous dye job.  And speaking of decorating disasters, did I mention the furniture rearranging?  

We differ somewhat, Andrew and I, in our approach to space.  I like symmetry:  pairs of lamps, pairs of cushions, pairs of tables.  Andrew likes to see a lot of floor.  To that end, he had put all the furniture around the walls, and, when he ran out of walls, he simply stacked it.  Think oversized giraffe on top of Esmeralda's doll's cradle on top of a pile of books on top of a bookshelf.  All our paintings looked wrongly hung, and the overall effect was student house - lived in by student parents - that had just got ready to host a party.  i.e. Awful. And he couldn't see it.  Suffice to say, it's all back as it was . . . 

However, there was some positive to his endeavour:  he agreed that we need a better system for storing the toys.  A toy box is something I've been lusting after for a while; specifically, I'd like the Indian Dowry Box that is on the loaf.com website:

Beautiful, no?  It also comes in black and white and grey and white, and is currently on sale for £245.

However foolishly, instead of just ordering it, I showed it to Andrew, who looked at the price.  "No way," he said - and he said it forcefully, so that I knew that he meant it.  He's going to buy a plain wooden box, and I am going to paint it.  Hurray!  I've been looking for something on which to practice my new found furniture painting techniques, learnt on the Annie Sloan course at Phoenix on the Golborne Road.  I have grand designs for our bookcases, but I used cataloguing the books as a major procrastination tool of my own, sometime back in 2009 when faced with some article or other - they're organised by category and indeed subcategory (fiction, biography, history, poetry, art, fashion - fashion biography, fashion history -  etc.) and then arranged by alphabetical order of either author or subject, as appropriate - so it's quite a monumental task.  The toy box will be the perfect starting point.  I'm picturing achieving something like this, which is a late 19th Century Central European painted chest, and which sold at Christie's South Ken for £1,063 in 2010:

Andrew suggested that my enthusiasm might outweigh my abilities.  He has no faith.

The thing is,  it's occurred to me that the exquisite chest sold for less than the sofa.com sofa costs.  Seriously.  And, if I had a spare grand and a half, I know which I'd prefer.  I've got a feeling that we might be living with our Amazing Green decorating disaster sofa for a while.  Fortunately, I know where to go for throws.

The theoretical holy grail (perhaps slightly dull?):  The Hermes giant Avalon blanket.  At £950 it's still (just) cheaper than a new sofa. 

The Missoni Jocker throw, available at Selfridges for £355.  I love Missoni.

However, I think the best solution of all is going to be a length of fabric from Susan Deliss, whose cushions, lampshades and kilims are soon going to be available on English Abode.  Quite frankly, I don't quite know how I'm going to stop myself buying her entire collection.  

Susan Deliss

Susan Deliss

This disaster might well have turn out to be rather a good thing, after all.  (Though not necessarily for either the bathroom or the ceilings, both of which still need attention . . . .)

Incidentally, if anyone was thinking of dying their sofa cover, it totally works.  You just have to make sure that you remember to put the appropriate amount of dye in with each load.  Which, obviously, we failed to do.


www.englishabode.com
www.chelseatextiles.com
www.sofa.com
www.loaf.com
www.christies.com
www.hermes.com
www.selfridges.com
And, just in case you missed my plug, www.englishabode.com

All Wrapped Up

You know those magazine articles that are full of lovely ideas for beautifully wrapped presents?  They suggest brown paper and string with homemade dried orange peel and cinnamon sticks attached, or using pages cut (never haphazardly torn) from magazines, or arranging layers of different coloured tissue paper finished with generous servings of a wide satin ribbon, doubtlessly bought at great expense from VV Rouleaux.  Seriously, google 'creative gift wrapping', and just see what comes up.

I've saved you the hassle of googling.  This is one of the images that comes up.  Amazing, right?

Anyway, I don't have time to do any of that.  Not since I got married and had children and my sister got married and had a child and my sister-in-law had a child etc. etc. - not to forget Father Christmas's duties - the point is that I now have to wrap what seems like five hundred presents every Christmas.   So, these days, I go in for rolls of the least gopping wrapping paper Paperchase has on offer, and copious quantities of Sellotape.  I occasionally manage to accessorise with some silkiness, but it invariably has chocolate smeared on it (Esmeralda loves the ribbon drawer.)  On balance, however, I find myself at peace with my somewhat slummier wrapping method, and it has definite advantages:  the receivers of my gifts tend to have very low expectations of what is going to be inside.

What a present wrapped by me actually looks like.  Especially since I ran out of Sellotape and have been having to improvise with electrical tape.

Despite my lack of wrapping skills, I thought that I was pretty organised as far as Christmas goes this year.  I got the bulk of the presents wrapped, and delivered, to my parents' house in Yorkshire about a month ago.  So I switched off.  Today, in horror, I realised that I had nothing for my father, and virtually nothing for my husband.  Oh, and one of my orders, containing Esmeralda's presents, has not arrived.  And we're leaving London first thing on Friday morning!  I tried to do some emergency shopping this afternoon at the Olympia Horse Show (it's not too late to get tickets incidentally, and it was fab, Esmeralda loved it, especially the Shetland Grand National) but it wasn't great for much besides sparkly browbands and multicoloured numnahs, both things I think my father's horses can probably do without.

Olympia Horse Show, Shetland Grand National.  I always wanted to ride in this when I was little, back when my sole ambition was to be the first female jockey to win the actual Grand National.  Times changed.

I've potentially got a chance tomorrow afternoon at Winter Wonderland, and for a moment it really was looking like all those I forgot about were getting things from the genuine replica German Christmas Market (or however it is that they phrase it.)  But then I remembered Amazon!  Who now sell everything! (Including serious art.  Weird, but, whatever.)  I can get it all delivered, ready wrapped, to Yorkshire!  And the only reason I remembered this is because my friend Georgia has been doing Gift Lists on her blog, Before the Baby, and published Esmeralda's wishlist today.  Georgia's site is seriously worth checking out if you've got children to buy for.  And if you're buying for a woman, well, my friend Willow has done an amazing list on her blog, Willow Rose Boutique.  (I want everything.)

As far as husbands and fathers go, I have one thing to say:  Fine Food Specialist, who, if you order on Thursday by 11am, are still able to deliver in time for Christmas (just like Amazon!)  They've got it all:  truffle oil and goose fat, Gentlemen's Relish, endless cheeses, caviar, foie gras, whole hams - some of which are the most perfect stocking fillers imaginable (perhaps not the ham.  Unless your stocking is giant.)  And because I get to share what Father Christmas gives my husband, I'm definitely adding the Artisan du Chocolat Salted Caramel Drinking Chocolate.

However badly wrapped, what's inside is not going to disappoint.

www.olympiahorseshow.com

www.hydeparkwinterwonderland.com
www.amazon.com
www.beforethebaby.com
www.willowroseboutique.blogspot.com
www.finefoodspecialist.co.uk

Happy Christmas!

Wise Women Bearing (Beauty) Gifts

There was an article in last week's Sunday Times Style, by Esther Walker, about the moment one realises, post-children, that it's time to up one's game.  I've known I've been needing to do it for a while now, and the feeling is reaffirmed every time I go into Mayfair and have lunch with my friend Deep, who is Fashion Director of Tatler and has the sort of innate style that I dream of, or go and eat cake with my very chic friend Christina who until recently worked at Vanity Fair, and who has insane will power (she'll order the cake, but only eat a a single forkful.)  Christina is pregnant, and I bet she won't let herself be the kind of mother who, when her child throws up on her in the night, wipes the worst of the sick out of her hair with a baby wipe and then sprays it with Mitsouko.   And I don't for a moment suppose that either of them are the kind of people who haven't got around to changing their skincare routine since their twenties.

Well, nor am I, technically.  For in my early twenties, I used whatever I was given in goody bags or was handed from the Vogue and Tatler beauty cupboards.  I paid virtually nothing for any of it, covered my face in Creme de la Mer one week, Clarins and Lancome the next, and some new and unheard of brand from Iceland (the country, not the shop) the next. My skin didn't mind one jot.  My skin was amazing.

And then I got married, got pregnant, had Sholto, got thin again, got pregnant again - all the time using the same Clarins products that I discovered in the second half of my twenties - had Esmeralda, looked in the mirror, and realised that I look about four hundred years old.  I can't actually blame Clarins - in fact, I owe Clarins for the fact that I don't look six hundred - rather, the age increase is down to the lack of facials, the broken nights, the occasional severe sugar binge (see 'broken nights'), the fact that I blatantly should have moved on to the product range developed for women in their thirties, and that side-affect of mothering that they call guilt.  (I feel guilty about everything:  guilty that I work, guilty that I don't play football with Sholto every afternoon, guilty that I have yet to cook a single thing from the Annabel Karmel 'perfect baby nutrition' book, guilty that I'm still co-sleeping with Esmeralda, guilty that I'm not also still co-sleeping with Sholto, guilty that I can't quite stretch to the the fees at Notting Hill Prep, etc. etc. etc.)  And all of this means that I don't look like Sienna Miller.

Why, why don't I look like Sienna Miller?

However, I'll feel even worse, and probably guiltier still, if I don't get to grips with my looks soonish.  My friend Talia, who had her second baby a whole lot more recently than me and looks incredible, told me about the Tracy Anderson Post-Pregnancy Workout DVD.  I've ordered it, I just need to unwrap it from it's cellophane, and get it into the one remaining DVD player in the house that Sholto hasn't filled with raisins.  My friend Samantha, who has three children and is about to be forty (not that anybody could tell) swears by body brushing, which I totally mean to make time for.  And Calgary Avansino, the former Executive Fashion Director of Vogue and general wellbeing guru, dictates good food (i.e. not M&S ready meals) and daily exercise ("Sweat is your fat crying").  I follow her vogue.com blog assiduously, and am determined that the entire family will be eating more healthily come the New Year.  (And you can forget Annabel Karmel.)

Calgary Avansino.  Look at her, just look at her! I think I need a juicer.

But it seems that the Gods were listening to my plea for a somewhat easier quick fix, for I found myself at one of those Christmas fair things at the Cavalry Club, and who should be there but a girl called Georgie Cleeve (with a tiny baby called Ophelia strapped to her tummy) who I knew when she used to work at House & Garden.   She has developed a whole skincare range called Oskia, which I imagine everybody in the world knows about except me, as they've won pretty much every beauty award going.  (I now feel guilty that I didn't do something as clever as Georgie with my maternity leave.  And I've realised that it's time to start reading the beauty pages.  They're doubtlessly packed with helpful information.)

Well, after less than a week of using Oskia, I only look about a hundred.  It's amazing!  I think my favourite product has to be the Renaissance Mask, which was voted Best Mask by the Anti-Aging Beauty Bible, and Best Prestige Skincare Product in the UK Beauty Awards, and which means I don't have to worry about the fact that I haven't had a facial in about a year (who has time?  Seriously?)  I'm also a big fan of the Nutri-Active Day Cream and the Bedtime Beauty Boost.  Oh, and the Get Up & Glow, which won Best Skin Perfector at the Natural Health Beauty Awards, and which one can put on either under or over one's moisturiser. I am literally glowing (in a good way, rather than a 'Oh my God I realised I was going to be late to pick up Sholto from school, so ran here, pushing a buggy, and now I'm bright red and quite literally melting' kind of way.)  And Georgie told me that she's going to send me the Renaissance Cleansing Gel - she was utterly horrified to hear that my concept of 'cleansing my face', these days, is splashing it with water.  (It dries out the skin.  I know this, I know this - my mother's facialist, the great Janet Filderman, told me when I was fourteen, and still I persist.)  It's time to stop.  It's also time to stop walking around with chipped nails (unacceptable past the age of twenty-five, I reckon), unbrushed hair (ditto), and in jerseys from Zara that have seen better days.  (That last I have potentially remedied.  The Erdem sample sale took place last week.  Whoops.)

Get Up & Glow.  This, combined with one of Calgary's juices would surely be a total game changer.

So, it's more time at the gym, healthier eating, improved grooming . . . . . I'm probably not going to manage all these things immediately (even as I type, I realise that the Chanel Rouge Moire that looked so fabulous on my nails on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday is now chipped, and therefore sadly must come off.)  Oskia, however, I'm sticking to. I am a total convert.  Especially since one of my parents' friends just mistook me for my sister Rosanna, who is eight years younger than me (and much more beautiful.)


www.tracyandersonmethod.com
Calgary Avansino's Vogue.com blog; her own website is coming soon - www.calgaryavansino.com
www.oskiaskincare.com