I'd go so far as to say that fashion & beauty is a hobby of mine. In fact, I love everything that is fabulous - clothes, cosmetics, shoes, jewellery, sparkly drinks, roses, perfumes, chandeliers, sports cars, fairy cakes (to look at more than to eat - I prefer the taste of sausages to be honest, though they look less fabulous.... sometimes.). So I suppose rather than a fashionista, I am a fabulista - a lover and connoiseur of all things fabulous!
My idea of bliss is a Sunday afternoon on the sofa or in the pub with a stack of glossy magazines full of new ideas and products from the worlds of clothes, cosmetics, homewares, accessories, holidays and style, my laptop open to asos.com and a nicely pre-allocated budget for spending! I'm not one of these people who will spend £800 on a handbag when I could fill my summer suitcase for the same amount and look just as good - if not better (since when did a handbag ever enhance my bum, make me taller or give me a great cleavage?!) So it's not about buying the most expensive of anything, but buying what suits me and what I know I will get a good deal of use out of. Take my blue & white nautical striped skinny top. It's from New Look and cost me £12. I have had it for about 3 years and it is probably the most versatile piece of clothing I own. It can be glammed up with a pair of skinny jeans and heels, dressed down with a pair of bootcuts and trainers, turned into office-wear with a navy blue pencil skirt and neckscarf, worn on holiday with a pair of white hotpants and wedges. It can be long sleeved, short sleeved, sexy or demure - it all depends on how it's worn and what it is worn with. I love that about clothes & cosmetics.
However, in my move to Switzerland I have come up against a bit of a problem. Here to be a fabulista you have to be rich - and that's not what it's all about! In fact that takes away most of the fun, not to mention the skill! There are none of the middle-of-the-road high street stores that I would frequent in London. Here you are either faced with the high-end designer boutiques (Chanel, LV, Burberry, Prada and so on) where nothing, not even a sock, costs less than 500 francs, OR those awful pikey clothes stores where everything is 'one-size-fits-all' (what so if you suddenly balloon in weight you don't have to buy a new wardrobe? Petite to Maternity in one easy outfit?) and made out of highly flammable material (possibly so it can be easily chucked on a bonfire). With the exception of 3 shops (Zara, Mango and H&M) there are absolutely no trendy high street stores in this city. I'm talking Oasis, Warehouse, Next, Miss Selfridge, M&S, TopShop, Primark, Dorothy Perkins. As for the shoes?!! Don't get me started. Unless you want to wear a pair of clumpy stack-heeled sensible shoes or spend thousands on designer footwear then there aint nothing for you here. LK Bennet, Nine West, Dune, Office.... where are they?! These are companies that are massively missing out on a market here in Switzerland and I am fast starting to think that Sir Philip Green needs to get his act together and start moving some of his empire over here pronto. There's a market and it's untapped. And the fact that anything ordered in from overseas gets subjected to a big, fat, customs bill makes online shopping a non-viable alternative unfortunately.
Anyway rant over. Enough of that. It's too frustrating a subject, and boring too I'm sure. So, there's probably no one reading this anymore. Fuckshitbollocks..... sorry, just checking you were still there. Blame it on the selective-Tourettes. On a much more exciting note, Dan and I went on a week's holiday last week. We jetted off to Djerba which is an island off the coast of Tunisia that has no direct flights from England meaning we were the only English people there which was utter bliss - not that I don't like English people (obviously), I just don't want to be on holiday with hundreds of them seeing as I spend all of my time with them anyway despite living in another country - expat syndrome - and sometimes its good to get away from all that signifies home. Anyway, despite the lack of English tourists, we did meet a lovely couple of English kiteboard instructors that lived over there and who took us under their wing for the last couple of days. And just to prove that we aren't stereotypical Brits, we ended up in a nightclub with them playing 'who can do the shittest, most embarrassing dance ever in the middle of the club?' while we videoed each other and drank shots of Sambuca before making our way back to the hotel, paralytic in a taxi with no seatbelts (or brakes apparently) driven by the love-child of Nigel Mansell and a blind, old, senile Tunisian nomad.
Anyway, the main reason I like being surrounded by people who can't speak English is because I can openly comment on them by the pool without them being any the wiser. Luckily my other half has the same holiday pastime. Our daily poolside conversations went something like this:
D: Uuggggh - look at that guy's moobs
Me: That's a woman - she's just very hairy
D: Oh yeah. Urrrrgh!
Me: Look at that guy there - he talks like he's deaf!
D: he is deaf
Me: Oh yeah. Look at him right next to you- he's so pasty he looks like Caspar the ghost
D: Haha - Oi, Caspar! (turns to me and chuckles)
Caspar (who is actually from Essex): Oi, 'ow do you know my name. I'll 'ave you!
...and so it went on, for a blissful 7 days. The only non blissful bit was being abducted by a Tunisian taxi driver (not Nomad Mansell this time) who decided (without telling us) that he was going to be our guide for the day and not take us to the place we'd asked to go, but instead to a traditional Tunisian ceramic mine. Sound interesting? Well, it was apart from the fact that a giant maingy camel crept up behind me and licked my neck just as we got there and I'd forgotten to bring any wet-wipes, and then I mistakenly agreed to 'have look in mine, have look in mine, follow, follow' and ended up between the guide and Dan, in an underground hole not even big enough to stand up in, which we got to along a long tunnel with no daylight, and when we arrived the guide lit a giant torch which illuminated the tiny coffin-like space, with nothing but an axe leaning against the wall, at which point he picked it up, stuck it in my face and said 'this is what we use to.....' at which point I literally legged it (in a scrambling / falling kind of way) along the pitch black tunnel, milliseconds away from a hysterical screaming, crying panic attack and didn't stop until I'd managed to climb to daylight. I could feel that Dan was following closely behind but when I turned round, bottom lip shaking, tears-gates about to open to check he was ok after our near-death ordeal it transpired that he was actually just trying very hard not to laugh. He did a good job though. I suppose there was an element of fear that if he did guffaw in my face I'd be back down that mine to retrieve the axe.
Anyway, the reason we went on holiday is because it was my final week of being a hausfrau, which means I have now officially started my new job. Today I became the new girl. It was surprisingly painless, and my long-lost sense of purpose was restored by the time I was halfway to work, morning newspaper tucked under my arm (never mind that I can't actually read the bloody thing - I just look at the pictures...), take-away coffee in hand, being carried along amongst the throng of daily commuters. The working people of Zurich. I literally had a spring in my step. (I'm sure by next week I'll be missing my tracksuit and the Kardashians a bit but it will be short-lived I'm sure..) I also discovered the perfect way to get people to like you when you start a new job. I had promised to bake Dan a carrot cake yesterday - my last hausfrau day, so I made an extra one and took it into the office today. 'BROWN NOSE!' I hear you cry, and yes, perhaps I am a bit. But I tell you what - I wasn't just 'the new girl' after that... I was, and will always be 'the girl who brought the carrot cake in' and thanks to my culinary genius of a mother, my carrot cakes (even if I do say so myself) are pretty damn divine. There wasn't a cake-crumb-free face in the building today. And if anyone asked me a question I didn't quite know how to answer (in that 'oh, there's a new girl who has already been bombarded with random questions all day, I'll just go and ask her another one' way) I could easily deflect them with a simple "hello, have you tried my home made carrot cake yet?" instead of answering it, or at least buy myself a bit of time to come up with a semi-suitable answer.
So there you have it. That's my news for the moment. I will keep you posted on how the job pans out and all that jazz. Til the next time anyways fellow fabulistas. XOXO
Posts
