Holiday Wear: Orange Sherbet

As I was not around to blog my usual Weekend Wear posts, I thought I would pick one outfit from my holiday and write a post on that instead! This is an outfit I wore at some point in the second week of our trip and aside from the glasses and hair flower, it was comprised of new purchases I made during the holiday (who wants to read about my Primark shorts and tee shirt combos anyway?), yay!

Let's take a moment to talk about this dress. It is ORANGE! Like, borderline neon orange. I have never worn anything so bright since my mum stopped dressing me as a kid (there were a lot of Lion King-esque ensembles when I was ten, let's not talk about that though...) and as a teenage goth I never thought I would wear something so bright ever again. It is the second orange frock I have bought in recent times (teenage me would be rolling her kohl-plastered eyes in disgust) and waaaay out of my comfort zone. But! I really like this dress. The cut is seriously cute and the white print (all moons and shooting stars) reminds me of Lucky Charms. So even though it is very bright, I was still drawn to it. The Boy deemed it as approved, declaring it "something a cartoon character would wear" - he always knows just what to say. I have Christened it the 'Orange Sherbet'.

The dress is from JC Penney (or JCP as they are now rebranded as), a large US department store. JCP have introduced some new designer-name collections to their store (think H! By Henry Holland at Debenhams, same kind of concept here) including Lulu Guinness, Betsey Johnson and Nanette Lepore. This dress is part of Nanette Lepore's L'Amour collection for JCP, and I managed to get it in the clearance section which made it even sweeter (I'd have paid full price for it anyway).

I paired the dress with my new Levi's studded denim vest (bought from the Levi's outlet) which I customised with a few pins that I had with me until I got it home to my full magpie-like range of pins, button badges and brooches. This broke up the bright orange a little and I had been dying to wear my new vest anyway so it was a win-win for me!

My hair flower and faithful heart-shaped glasses are from H&M (every girl needs a pair of heart-shaped sunnies...) and I did my 'holiday mani' nails a few days before using OPI's Strawberry Margarita, Sinful Colours' Crystal Clear glitter with a Hello Kitty for Sephora decal on my ring fingers. The result was a bright pink, glittery, kawaii dream - exactly what I was going for.

It was very, very warm and sunny that day (and every day that fornight) so tights were out of the question. I know, I know! I don't actually wear tights in Florida, I go with my bare legs and let my self-consciousness fly out the window for a few weeks. Who's have thunk it, eh? They would have dissolved in the heat though! I had bought two pairs of Vans trainers while at the outlets (perfect summer footwear, so light and comfy) and could not resist the uber-glitter goodness of these shoes! They remind me of Columbia from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, so it really didn't take much else to persuade me to buy them. As I was wearing such an eye-catching dress I really had no clue which shoes to wear, nothing seemed to match or was subtle enough, and black just looked weird. So I decided to fight fire with fire, or at least, glitter!

I wore this wee outfit to go bowling at Splitsville Luxury Lanes, which is new at Downtown Disney, and later that night we played mini golf (so much better in the cooler evenings compared to during the day). We had a blast!

Do you rock the orange sherbet look? What is your latest dress purchase? Have you ever fought fire with glitter?

Thanks for reading!

Local Lovin': We Are The Robots

In Local Lovin' I will be looking at designers/ stores/ brands/ creators of marvellous things/ anything else that catches my eye - all based in Glasgow. I believe that we should be supporting the talent that we have locally so have decided to start Local Lovin' as a regular feature. If you would like to be featured please get in touch! See my Contact page for details. 

This post has been a long time coming and some of you readers will already be aware of design darlings We Are The Robots (WATR) and their cute, quirky creations. The girls have been appearing at design/ craft fairs at venues such as Hillhead Bookclub, Oran Mor and Chambre 69 for as long as I can remember. I first became aware of WATR when I bought my Sheldon Cooper cameo ring (those 4 words alone just smack of awesomeness, don't they?) from them a couple of years back for a very reasonable couple of quid. The girls were also one of the first brands that I seen using the now-very-popular Scrabble tile motif in their jewellery, and I was drawn to their fun, statement designs using my favourite pop-culture icons (yes, Jim Parsons is an icon, okay?) and nostalgia-tastic items such as lego blocks. Since discovering them for myself, I have also bought a few of their pieces for friends as gifts - even for boys, seeing as some of their designs are suitable for everybody!

I wanted to hear a little more about the thought process behind their designs and the company in general so I caught up with the girls (or, as they are better known, The Robots) who were lovely enough to answer my questions...

When did you start your company and what made you decide to do it?

We have known each other for about 8 years now and met working together for a high street retailer. We became friends and after a while realised we both had crafty/design-based backgrounds and wanted to make our own jewellery.

We set up We Are The Robots (named randomly after a Kraftwerk song!) about 7 years ago and joined the Glasgow Craft Mafia, selling at markets organised by the Mafia and great events like Made In The Shade. For a while we were one of the only Glasgow based kitsch jewellery companies selling at such events.

If you had to sum up the style of your products in a sentence how would you describe it?

We try to make fun, kitsch, but also wearable jewellery, clothing and accessories.

What kinds of things inspire you to create your clothes and accessories?

We’re inspired by all manner of things! From music to pets and everything in between! We tend to design items which we like ourselves! We’re well aware of current trends, what is selling in high street stores, celebrities etc. however, we like to stick to our own designs and stand out from the crowd even if it’s not to everyone’s taste!

What kinds of customers can normally be found shopping at WATR?

It’s obviously hard to tell with online sales however at our stalls our customers are generally young girls and women, aged 16-30.

What have been your favourite pieces so far?

When we started out we sold pixel heart necklaces which we loved (and even had matching tattoos done of them, pictured right) It was always a great feeling being out and about and spotting someone wearing one of them.

In more recent times, we’re particularly fond of our kitten collars and leopard collar chains, also popular with customers.

Finally, Anything coming up soon for WATR?

We have stalls at Ecomunky at Oran Mor 28^th April, and a monthly stall at Granny Would Be Proud in the Hillhead Bookclub.

We have recently joined forces with Made In Glasgow, a platform for Glasgow based artists and designers. As well as featuring on their website we are in talks with them about future events, details of these will be released shortly.

We are updating our website constantly and coming up with new ideas all the time. For anyone interested in keeping up to date, we suggesting “liking” us on facebook or following us on twitter (@wearetherobots_) or instagram! (@wearetherobots).

A big thanks and hi-five to We Are The Robots for being featured in this week's Local Lovin'! I hope you enjoyed reading a bit more about them. I really admire their passion and the thought that goes into their collections, as well as their dedication to going their own way and being themselves (it can be so easy to forget your own principles and it's great that they don't). I look forward to seeing what they come up with in the future, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for them at future craft fairs too!

Have you ever bought anything from We Are The Robots? What is your favourite WATR piece? Do you consider Sheldon Cooper to be an icon? 

Thanks for reading!

*all pictures used courtesy of We Are The Robots*