stars and stripes: flash

This year, Topshop held their Unique catwalk show in a truly spectacular space in East London. It's hard to convey the contradiction of these kind of events - I know this from my brother's world, the music world- you get this kind of 'insider' moments and then suddenly it's like a feeding frenzy - the Papps - who are just, after all, doing their job. There's something about the lightbulbs going off: it's freaky and a little scary.

I really hate flash. Even as a kid, birthday parties, it made my eyes tear, and mainly, for me it doesn't produce the kind of photographs I want to create. It's.. hard. Sandra (5 inch and up) was explaining that I need a proper kind of flash, one of those attachment thingies, or to put a card in front of it, but it was kind of dark in the space before the show started, and everything was so blurry, so I needed it (altho I love the blurs: I was more fixated on getting a shot of the girl in the red tights and possibly Christopher Kane skirt, than the celebrities). Alexa and the others were so kind about posing for flash and all, but later, after the show (and I can't WAIT to show you shots of the show - later and tomorrow) I happened to find myself in a quiet space in the entrance, and it was just Pixie and me, each texting our friends along the lines of 'where are you'? 'I'm here, where are YOU?' and I said to her:



'It must be so weird, being you. I mean, don't you just sometimes want to tell everyone to just STOP IT?'

And she glanced around to see that no one was listening and just gave me this sheepish smile of relief, and kinship, and said yes. And with that, I didn't take her photo, I simply left her alone.

isa

Met Isa, from Sweden, on the way to the park, on Gloucester Road. She'd done eight catwalk shows and was just coming from Toni & Guy, because the junk they put in her hair for the shows had made it turn colour. She showed me: while her hair is natural blonde, it did have a slight.. neon green tint. They gave her some treatments at Toni & Guy, assured her it was just temporary. Occupational hazard. At least no one made her dye it black. Even Alexa Chung has jumped on the black hair bandwagon, following her pals Agyness, Lily, and Daisy. Those girls!!



Isa has gone back to Sweden now, and back to school. But she's such a lovely girl, and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of her. I just hope her hair goes back to it's proper colour. She was trying to be brave, but I could have sworn I saw the hint of a tear. Perhaps it was simply exhaustion. Get some rest, Isa, and come visit us again.

UPDDATE: Hats off to the wisdom of Pearl, @ Fashion Pearls of Wisdom, who sent this comment shortly after I posted last night: "Ah that happended to me when I was blond many years ago, chlorine in the pool gave my very blond hair a green tint, tomato ketchup is bizzarly the key to neutralise the colour back! So dont worry Isa your lovely locks will be just fine!"