Jamz!: Mariachi El Bronx, "Revolution Girls"

Presented without quip nor comment, just dance.

Mariachi El Bronx, "Revolution Girls"!

Credits: Scopata201, TreeLaff

Icons!: Throwback Thursday, Or How I Won the Genetic Lottery

Mintage!: Review of Impress Press-On Manicure by Broadway Nails

I think part of the reason I was never able to fully commit to killer retro style is because I am a lazy git. I mean, it seems impossible to exude vintage glamour when my go-to look is, say, more on the “natural” side with manicures provided by my stressed chattering chompers. Don’t get me wrong, if I had the time and money, I would very much have the inclination to fakify it up. I tried eyelash extensions – and got to feel like the prettiest of princesses for a good week and a half before I freaked out and ripped them off (To assuage my increasing paranoia of looking dumb once they had started molting, I decided to just take clumps of my own eyelashes out – logic!). And manicures I just can’t do. First, I apparently have super thin skin because I never escape a manicure without at least 20% of my fingers bleeding and being doused with the dodgy communal bottle of anti-bleed potion. Second, I have got more ants in my pants than a toddler. Can’t sit still. Just can’t. I love the way manicured nails look but I seriously get palpitations just thinking about going to the salon. I swear once the lady almost started a fire with nothing but the emery board and my fingertips. Shudder.

So when I got the last minute idea to go to the Bethnal Green Working Man’s Club “Cream Revue” night of retro loveliness I needed a quick fix to the state of my aesthetic life. A quick (though not as quick as Boyfriend would have liked – OBVIOUSLY!) trip to Boots cured most of my woes. I seriously love that place – you can get everything there. I picked up a JUMBO Elnett, some Pretty Polly backseamed nylons – which didn’t survive the night – and a set of Impress Press-On nails in leopard print. I read mixed reviews of them on various blogs but figured anything that looks half decent and takes less than ten minutes to do is worth trying.

So there they are! Ignoring my epically gangly fingers, I think they look pretty good… a bit cheesy but pretty dang good. I mean, they are fun and seem to give me a little extra oomph that can only come from vintage-inspired inconvenience – goodbye putting on nylons and using my iPhone with ease! 

The best part - The faint glitter around the spots and the fact that the base colour is a super old school salon pink give me a real John Waters look / feeling and I dig every second of it.

Would I buy them again? You know what… probably definitely! For £8.99, they are easy to use and have so far lasted 24 hours – which is much better than my average regular manicure – and I didn’t bleed!

Some tips for any of you out there that want to try these:

1. Seriously, do your thumbs last.

2. Sometimes the tabs / plastic backing on the glue is quite stuck so be careful and maybe practice pulling a few tabs off the unused nail sizes first so you don't crack the nails you want to use!

3. Seriously, do your thumbs last.

4. Wipe nails down with nail polish remover as well as the prepping pad provided.

5. Don't forget to use the included mini emery board to sand down the nubs leftover on the tips of the nails to avoid snaggin'!

Remember; Year of Gigi!

Credits: GoreGirl, Feminéma

Statement of Intent, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Not Sucking

Hello dear vacuum of space, Hello dear void. Hello dear absence of readers - for now.

Since it’s just you and me right now, I wanted to get a few things out of the way before I go and make this a ridiculously successful blog and we don’t get the chance to have these little one-on-ones anymore…

I’ve tried this before. I’ve tried the "blog" thing, I’ve tried the "lose weight" thing (and when that failed, I tried the “OMG I’m totally not trying to, like, lose weight, I am just trying to be the best me! Get off my case and give me my friggin’ KALE CHIPS!!!!"). I’ve tried the "find my personal style" thing (Damn Lana Del Rey for taking “Gangsta Nancy Sinatra”… Damn her good.). I’ve tried the "fan the flames of my passions" thing: writing, retro style, food, digital media, music… and while this blog probably won’t gently blow the accumulating dust off my untouched Fender (stood in the corner, all in black, looking cool as hell and making me feel like a quitter), I am thinking it will be a good way to crack on with the other stuff on the list.

As I mentioned, I have tried to be a lifestyle blogger before. And I kept with it a good while. But then I tried to be a fashion blogger, a finance blogger, a curvy girl blogger and a digital media blogger. Separately. I was running a three-ring circus of inactive blogspot accounts – just sitting there and watching them exist. I guess I was scared. What do I know about Fashion? What do I know about Finance? Well, I have a degree that says I know something but you get what I mean – I’m no Suze Orman. But I digress. I guess I was trying too hard to be too many different things – and I think the keeping them separate was a true reflection of my increasingly fragmented view of myself. I was having a lot of trouble marrying my varying interests and finding my voice. Maybe I even felt wrong – like I can’t be this and this and this.

However, some recent life events have allowed all the “me”’s and everything that I am to come crashing down on me – and encouraged me to get “back to me”.

First, my father passed away. I won’t go into too much detail now but here’s a little thing I wrote to let people know of his passing on Facebook (The fact that people had to find out on Facebook really struck me as a surreal sign of our times but that’s another discussion).

My father passed away yesterday, November 8th.

Daddy was many things. But first and foremost he was a Father to two children who truly knew him (not to mention Father to anyone and everyone looking for a Slurpee or refuge). He was also a romantic, a hero, a raconteur, a lover and a fighter of life, a dreamer and, believe it or not, an absolute pragmatist when it came down to it. He was a greaser, a hippie, a strong man, a handsome boy and a rhinestone cowboy. To me, he was everything. He was my soul mate and the love of my life. 

I can only hope that everyone could at some point feel a love like that which my father had for my brother and me - to know that love is to never be able to doubt it... 

My father made his exit the way he lived - always the center of attention and weaving that last great story to tell a stranger at the roadside diner in the sky.

Basically, my dad knew me better than anyone on this planet. We were very different but still very much the same. He got me. He encouraged me to be me – the more absurd, the better. I think his greatest fear was for my brother and I to live lives un-lived, or to be his age and not have a damn decent story to tell. It was this encouragement that allowed me to pursue my dreams and move from Los Angeles to Milan to London, my current adopted home.

Second, I literally woke up one day and was 27. 27 is my scary year. Now, before I sound too much like a jerk, let me explain: When I was 20 or so, a friend and I decided that we should claim “scary years” – or the years at which it would be time to take serious inventory of the state of our lives. I chose 27. It was arbitrary and meaningless at the time, but now that it has rolled around I think I might have known what I was talking about.

So that’s it. That’s where I am at. I am finally ready to let my freak flag fly. I am ready to wear my saddle shoes to work! I am ready to wear above the knee shorts! I am ready to volunteer for audience participation! I am ready to let the world know that if I won the lottery I would build a mini-western village to live in and produce a musical / rock opera based on Brandon Flowers’ solo debut album “Flamingo” (Am I really the only one who bleeds that album? Haha. Yes… Yes, I am.)

Welcome, then, to The Year of Gigi! (By the way, I am Gigi!)

I guess since I already have you I will test some material on you. I have been having fits over this blog already. This is really meant to be my chef d'œuvre (haha i googled smarter sounding wordies for masterpiece. copied. check! pasted. checkmate!). I really want this to turn out well so have been psyching myself out about it. But I guess in terms of Mission Statement (Boyfriend’s idea to include the words “Mission Statement”, not mine. He’s the life of the party!): I just want to write about what I do know and some of it will be frothy and some of it will be nonsense and some of it will be about life kicking the shit out of me but maybe, just maybe, someone out there will read what I write and find a commonality and feel just a little bit better knowing there’s someone else out there, just trying to make sense of it all.

As a taster, I am thinking these will be my features:

Life! (Gigi on life!)

Day Out! (Days out!)

Night Out! (Afternoons out! Kidding. Nights out!)

Hello, Cello! (Reflections on being a beautifully wonky pear-shaped – or “cello”-shaped - lady in a Page 3 world)
Yum! (Obvs gotta talk about the foods... how do you think I keep the cello in tune, ;) )

Mintage! / Mintage on the High Street! (Mintage is my dumb portmanteau for killer retro style – “mint vintage”, innit.)

Why didn’t I think of that?! (Worthy start-ups that I find while lurking on the internet)

Icons! (Stylish ladies and maybe even laddies… yes, laddies, too. We don’t discriminate here.)

Jamz! (Music, not preserves!)

And, lastly, some words of wisdom from Marky Mark:

Credits: Know Your Meme, Hark, Cracks My Shit Up