Fash Mob »

• Missoni Home’s first residential building – in the Philippines

  April 2, 2012 @ 4:30 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  

  This 52-storey apartment tower in the Philippines will be the first residential building in the world to bear the brand and design of Missoni Home – and it shows in the striped fabrics, the colour pops and accents and the fact that it’s just oh-so swish!

  

  Its communal area, known as the Canopy, will house the pool, lounge, DJ booth and barbecue – and the apartments, of which there will be 645, will rent for roughly $315 per square foot. One-bedroom apartments start at $82,000 – and, lest you get confused, the Missoni design features are only in communal areas. If you want them in your apartment that’ll cost you extra. How about it? Fancy some thrilla in Manila?

  

  

  

  

• Taylor Tomasi Hill’s New York apartment

  March 5, 2012 @ 12:30 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  

  Taylor Tomasi Hill, my number one fashion idol (one of these days I’ll do a countdown, but it may take me a while as Clemence Poesy and Rachel Bilson fight one another, Gladiators-style), has had her New York home profiled by Vogue. (Do you see now why she is my numéro uno?) There is absolutely nothing about her home that I don’t like – I’ve spent a while gazing at these photographs and hoping that, right before the photographer came ’round, she bundled all of her excess stuff into black sacks and stuffed them under her four-poster.

  

  Come on; where are Saturday’s papers, unread on Thursday and strewn all over the coffee table? Where are those four cups she kept meaning to put in the dishwasher and accidentally left beside the armchair? Where are the promotional leaflets that fell out of this month’s stack of magazines and the notice from her dry-cleaning company of that special offer they’re running this Friday? Where are her keys? Her glasses? Her YSL lipstick that she lost three weeks ago and keeps finding beside the TV before totally forgetting about it again? Seriously! This can’t just be me!

  

  It’s images like these - taxidermied chicks an’ all – that make me want to get rid of all of my belongings and start afresh, with whitewashed walls and very little else. Sigh. Click through the photographs to see more, and prepare to get a serious case of life envy.

  
  

• Valentine’s gifts from Red Dog / The Store – and a dog in a jumper!

  February 3, 2012 @ 4:30 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  Every blog headline should have a dog in a jumper in it. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, check this out! It says “God loves a dryer” on it! God loves a dryer! Geddit? The person who dries up!

  

  These are all available from Red Dog / The Store. Aprons are €22 and tea towels are €12 or three for €30. The press release I got that suggested these as Valentine’s gifts was, honestly, my favourite press release of the last three weeks. Let me tell you, there are a whole lot of crazy, heart-shaped Valentine’s gifts going on out there. A whole lot!

  

  Don’t act like you care how much that jumper costs. That jumper is priceless.

  Tell me, kittens: what’s the best Valentine’s gift you ever got? (I once got a teddy with a recorded message from my boyfriend in its belly … I still have that teddy, and sometimes it makes me feel warm inside just imagining him, in the Teddy Bear Factory, recording that really, really embarrassing message.)

• Cute spring interiors from Penneys

  January 11, 2012 @ 4:30 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  It’s not always my first stop for interiors – no, that would be the Conran Shop at Arnotts, swiftly followed by my bank, sob - but Penneys‘ homewares have definitely taken a big step up in the world in the past year. These candy-sweet cushions and throws are available in February, with prices starting at just €5 for the bunting. (Has anyone noticed the rise of bunting? It’s frightening. Soon it’ll be carnevale all year ’round.)

  

  That said, I don’t think they’d go with the eclectic, shabby-chic look I cultivate in my home – and did I mention I collect teapots? I’m an enigma wrapped up in a mystery, dontcha know!

• Agyness Deyn’s New York loft – headache much?

  December 27, 2011 @ 10:17 am | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  London’s hippest It-kid (perhaps next to Alexa Chung), Agyness Deyn*, is selling her New York loft and – as often happens with these things – the sale of this property has necessitated photographs of its interiors being circulated all over the interwebs. (The fashion world weeps with joy.)

  

  I have quite eclectic tastes, and my home resembles something between the inside of an Avoca store and the inside of an insane fashion-obsessed person’s brain, but this level of eclecticism is beyond even me. It’s as if Agyness is entirely consumed with the idea of owning something from every single era in history, without any consideration for the concepts of continuity or Feng Shui (for shame).

  

  In a way, the interiors are such a pity because the space itself looks incredible, and I don’t hate the walls, floors or ceilings, so the loft could be a good investment. But I wonder how much of your money you’d be spending on owning an array of couches and chairs, enough for your entire extended family to come over and play separate games of chess on each available surface.

  

  Not the most relaxing bathroom in the world, but the tap fixture is interesting, at least. (That said, it’s not as if you could accuse Agyness of being boring in any of her interior décor.)

  

  Now, all that said, I do quite like the bedroom. It reminds me of The Little Mermaid mixed with some kind of crazy Russborough room, both of which references please me mightily. What do you think? Would you go for this kind of devil-may-care interior or would it give you the migraine to end all migraines?

  All images via Grazia Daily.

  * Did you know Agyness’s real name is Laura Hollins? So it stands to reason that her home might be as contrived as her persona.

• Home improvements

  July 18, 2011 @ 10:30 am | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  On Sunday of this weekend, once I’d done about four hours’ work (no day is a free day for a freelance, y’know), I decided to get down to it and give my room a bit of a revamp. I’ve been living in a “new” house for around six months now – although I guess it’s not new any more – and I hadn’t really done anything with my space since moving in, at which point I was just glad that I could fit all of my stuff in it. (And even then, it was at a stretch.)

  I was also a little bit inspired by these really simple photographs on Ingrid’s blog, and thought that I needed to rearrange my things so that (a) I could get what I needed easier and (b) I didn’t feel so much like I was walking into the stockroom of a Chinese market store all of the time. You know, the stores that sell really amazing scarves alongside 10 million worlds of junk you never knew you needed.

  Anyway, rather than witter on about it, here’s a glimpse behind the scenes of my sometimes-fashionable life. (For those of you who follow me on Instagram, I apologise; I wanted to use a nice filter and couldn’t figure out how to take the pics without sharing them, so you got some serious Instaspam for a while!)

  

  

  Those Penguin mugs are my crockery weakness. I dream of owning them all one day, so am expanding my collection carefully. Sometimes I use them to drink out of; other times I use them to store things in my room. A pretentious but practical storage solution. (more…)

• Le scented candle, c’est chic

  July 4, 2011 @ 12:30 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  It may long have been the cheesy solution to a Christmas present panic, but there’s something undeniably chic about a house that smells of a fresh, crisp, cool scented candle. As opposed to, you know, garlic, or burnt toast, or Sure deodorant. Not that my house ever smells of those things – oh, no. Instead, it smells of scented candles – at the moment, a set I picked up in the Avoca sale, but in an ideal world, it would smell of a combination of the following:

  

  I love Jo Malone. It’s definitely one of my go-to present stands in Brown Thomas (I know, I know, this is a really bourgeoisie statement, but it’s true) and the grapefruit scent is one of my faves. It’s a lovely fresh, citrus scent – clean, cool, sexy in that kind of unisex way. Delicious.

  

  Image via Augustine Wong.

  This scent may not be very PC at the moment, but it’s another gorgeous unisex fragrance. And Diptyque candles, though they are ridiculously expensive at around €45 (on a good day), last forever.

  Lastly?

  

  This Kenneth Turner scent, blue tangerine, is amazingly mesmerising. Citrus but with a bite – and at €20 or so for a big, neverending candle, it’s really good value too. (I get mine at Kildare Village, where prices are lower than elsewhere, just FYI.) I also bought the tea lights, because occasionally when I’ve finished cooking dinner and am listening to S Club 7, I like a little tangerine in my life.