London

Me and Penny Perry took one of our famous trips to London this week. The purpose of the trip was to see the Tim Walker exhibition at the V&A and carry out some uni research for my upcoming projects. The V&A is one of my favourite galleries in London, I've always loved it since the first time I visited in like 2013 to see a music exhibition, featuring garments worn by the likes of Bowie, Sex Pistols and Gaga.

I'm going to do a separate post on the Tim Walker exhibition and how fascinating, beautiful and ethereal every room we walked into was... but anyway with this trip to London I really wanted to do things that I haven't done before. Whenever I go to London I always shop in the same places and stick to the same areas that I'm familiar with, such as Camden, Soho and Carnaby Street. So this time change was due.

Me and Mom have never seen any Banksy and it's always been on our bucket lists so we decided to tick it off! We headed to Shoreditch where apparently there are a few Banksy's. I had a map of the different Banksy's up and I'm absolutely awful with maps and couldn't locate us anywhere. I thought we'd be able to walk down Shoreditch High Street and be like bam! Banksy, bam! Banksy. But no.

We finally found one, in the back of a bar in their beer garden kinda thing. There were 2 Banksy pieces here, the HMV dog and the policeman walking the sheep. The area was filled with street-art (I hate saying graffiti because graffiti is more vandalising and tagging whereas this sort of stuff is actually art) as well as the 2 Banksy pieces. In the area you could see there had been a lot of pieces done in the same recognisable Banksy style but it wasn't the real thing. All the real pieces are covered up with a plastic covering to stop them being defaced, this also helps people on the hunt to pick out the real from the fake.

We then went to New Bond Street, I braved it this time and went into Alexander McQueen. Last time we came to London in the summer, I was too intimidated by the doormen to go in, so I just had a look at the beautiful clothes from the outside and just took in the beautiful window display.

Actually going into the store was such a beautiful experience. It was one of the few experiences I've had with high end retail. I went in the Burberry store when the Burberry x Vivienne Westwood collab launched, but it's a massive store on Regents and that certain space was kind of an exhibition space so it drew a lot of attention. I also went into the Vivienne Westwood store in Mayfair. Fucking hell that was an uncomfortable experience. I definitely looked too poor to be in there considering I think it was an appointment only store. I asked if I could take photos because I was a student but it was the couture store so my answer was a big fat, no. Lol.

My experience in McQueen was so much nicer. Henry had pre-warned us that they get plenty of students going into the store because there's an art space upstairs and that they're very welcoming. The doorman was lovely and I asked the shop assistant if I went and looked at the exhibition, sadly it was closed but she invited me to look around all 2 floors of the shop. Be my own bloody guest!

Me and Mom had attended the McQueen 'Savage Beauty' exhibition at the V&A when it was on and have been enraptured by his work for years.

The shop was like an exhibit itself, the changing rooms were like nothing I'd ever seen before and as for the garments. It was McQueen of course they were beautiful! (Apart from those hideous romper stomper thick soled trainers that McQueen himself would be turning in his grave about.)

All in all, I think this was not only a successful trip to London but a very successful research trip and I can't wait to tell you about the Tim Walker exhibition!