Comme flashback...

It's testament to be shoddy blogging skills that I wrote a post about the H&M/CDG collaboration on the evening of it's release, and only got around to shooting any photos of my purchases now. But, since I now have a tripod and this post has been saved as a draft for so long, I'm going to indulge myself and pretend it was three weeks ago and this is still somehow relevant...

Like most of us I had poured over the collection in the days leading up to the release and had a couple of pieces in mind - which you'll know if you saw my starring role in Susie's video report of the day. I think the fact I was still recovering from the previous night's bowling is pretty obvious.

Arriving at 8:30am and chatting to Susie for a while I then found myself at the back of a reasonably long queue which snaked round the side of the store, attracting the usual bemused members of the public questioning what the hell we were all queuing up for.

Once the doors were flung open and everyone piled in I didn't find it too civilized as I was desperate to find a couple of specific items and couldn't even locate which rails they belonged on, let alone find the smaller sizes which were obviously being snapped up first. At first it was almost a case of grabbing any of the jackets in a smallish size then editing it down later. I didn't even see the £199 dress coat, and only located one of the desired tailcoats which proved too large, but things had calmed down considerably by 9:20pm and when I wandering down to the other store it did almost seem like a regular shopping day. Albeit a slightly busier one. Most people seemed to get in and out extremely quickly, presumably heading off to work afterwards after as I did myself.

I did manage the main jacket on my list and picked up another one for good measure. The shirt was a bit of a panic buy, and it does demand a pairing with the jackets - or any jacket really - to get the most out of the sleeves. On it's own the effect is a little too Lawrence Lleweyln-Bowen for my liking.

The obvious versatility of the jackets means I've been wearing them pretty religiously since. The shirt less so but it has a proper debut yesterday. Despite the dramatic sleeves, when I wore this outfit yesterday it was the Lela Rose skirt which attracted attention, with women at the Best of London sample sale (which you MUST go to) literally hiking up my jacket to see the label when I couldn't remember the designer.

a close-up of the amazing detail on the skirt...