irina

Is it just me but - if you happen to be finding yourself in London now, during the Olympic Games - it's this drawing in, this compulsion to watch, to be present, to not miss anything - sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and think, I've got to turn on the TV, the BBC site, what events are I missing? As if they're still going on while I sleep.

But there's more to life than just the Olympics, and I've been falling behind on posting all the street style I've been doing. This is Irina, who I met at the V&A on the first sunny warm day in what felt like forever - just before the start of the Olympics. She is interning with her friend Laetitia (who's getting her own post next), at Sublime Magazine ('the first international sustainable lifestyle magazine'), which sounds like EXACTLY my kind of publication. They both are gorgeous, and I love their very different styles - and they both were so sweet and modest and surprised that I'd want to photograph them.

I've been giving a lot of thought - because of the Games - to the idea of photography. EVERYTHING is about the camera. We were there, early, in Hyde Park, cheering on all the amazing women at the triahlon, and everything is about the photo. There seems to be some kind of energy that boosts humans on, lifts their spirit, when we are cheered, when we are praised, when someone wants to take our picture. I can't explain it, but I see over and over and over, each time someone wins a gold, they say 'it's the crowds, cheering us on', and that somehow seems to include wanting to record, to bear witness, to events.

It's like- even though we can get the images from the professionals - we simply want to say I WAS HERE.

There's another competition going on, between Westfield East and Westfield West, which piqued my interest, because I live West (South Kensington) and the games are mostly East. So I'm entering in both categories. Which, I suppose, will cancel myself out. Today's post - being shot at the V&A - falls goest to Team West. Please vote, if you'd like. But frankly, I feel that people have great style in the East or the West. Both deserve, in my book, the Gold.