Music: Paramore – Paramore *

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Paramore have gone through a lot in the four years since their previous album and as a result they’ve got a lot to say – their self-titled 4th album is 17 tracks long and clocks in at over an hour in running length. After the departure of the Farro brothers, who were heavy players in the band’s songwriting process, the band lingered on the precipice of a break-up for a while back in 2010 but persisted and the result is an album full of twists, turns and surprises. Rest assured, this is still Paramore but this is a Paramore that’s got a hell of a new musical range to shout about.

‘Paramore’ is a battle between old and new. There are still some old, well-loved elements lurking: the band’s reputation for producing angsty, alt-rock, high-energy hits can be found on ‘Now’ and ‘Part II’ (a response to second album ‘Riot!’s track ‘Let The Flames Begin’), but you don’t have to look any further than album opener ‘Fast In My Car’ to see a maturity and a change in direction for the now-trio from Tennessee – Hayley Williams sings about the band’s struggle between its members within the first few lyrics of the album: “Been through the wringer a couple of times / I came out callous and cruel / and my two friends know this very well / ‘cause they went through it too.”

The album leaves no boundaries untested, experimenting with synth sounds on ‘Grow Up’ and ‘Daydreaming’, ukulele (yes, really) on interludes ‘Moving On’, ‘Holiday’ and ‘I’m Not Angry Anymore’, and even a gospel choir on ‘Ain’t It Fun’. Paramore have chucked in emo for a more streamlined, shinier, pop sound and it’s successful at being a refreshing change and a jab at adulthood – Paramore may have toured through their teenage years, but its members are now in their mid-twenties and beyond and, like it or not, it shows.

* This review was originally published on 11 April by Hi! Magazine. You can see all my reviews here: http://www.hihimag.com/author/rachelfinn/

Rachel x

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LFW: 12 of my favourite photos I’ve never shown you before…

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Maria Grachvogel AW13

I first went to London Fashion Week in 2011. I was 17 and I thought it was the shiniest, most exciting world I’d ever been invited into (I had tickets to just 2 shows) and I told anyone who’d listen about it.

Two years later, I appreciate that blogging about every pair of shoes I wore, every person I met, every single show I saw and every thing had for lunch etc, actually isn’t that fascinating. So I’ve pulled back on the MUST BLOG LFW TO DEATH mantra this season. This is mostly for 2 reasons: 1) every little thing I did in those 5 days probably isn’t that interesting, and 2) it makes more sense to review the shows that either I really, really liked…or that I actually had some decent coverage for. If I saw a great show but was shoved somewhere way in the back and only caught a fleeting glimpse of a model’s hemline with my camera, it’s just not going to do the show any justice whatsoever and it’d look very mediocre in terms of a ‘show review’.

Bearing that in mind, even in a mass of, quite frankly, crap photos, there are always some gems. (It may look glamorous to be seated on those benches by the runway but it’s the photographers at the end of the catwalk that stand up for hours at a time that really get the good shots…) Here are a few photos I haven’t had the chance to share before that I thought were pretty cool, whether I did a full show review or not. By ‘cool’, I mean ‘cool, I managed to use my self-taught photography skills to take a photo of something without it being horrendously blurry or out of focus’.

All photos by me. Obviously.

- Yulia Kondranina AW13

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(All of these dresses are made almost entirely of tassles. This definitely warrants a full post on something so bizarre/totally awesome in the future.)

- Designer Unknown
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- Bernard Chandran AW13
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- LuLu Liu AW13
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- Maria Grachvogel AW13
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- Janucha AW13 (rehearsals)

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- Liz Black AW13
DSCF5866- Jena Theo AW13

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Rachel x

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Let’s talk about Saint Laurent.

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Calm the f*** down with all this ‘controversial’ labeling you’re throwing around, put down the coconut water and don’t think like a fashion zombie.

It was sometime late in the evening here in London on the 4th of March 2013 when I first learned of uproar in Paris over Saint Laurent’s Autumn/Winter collection, and I’ll have to admit I was entirely underwhelmed, not by the collection itself, but by the reaction it caused. Fashion folk on Twitter talked about their precious YSL being ‘ruined’ (I think we could have predicted massive changes were going to happen for the brand anyway the moment the ‘Yves’ was dropped from the historic designer’s name but, you know, let’s deal with one ‘controversy’ at a time). There were people asking for Hedi Slimane to be fired, or indeed, questioning how long it would be before he was fired, so I for one was expecting something quite dreadfully spectacular when I looked up the collection.

Maybe it’s the fact that, for someone who attends Fashion Week, works in fashion, mixes with people in fashion and, in theory, ‘follows’ fashion, I’m really not that ‘fashion’ at all. ‘Controversial fashion’ for me somehow led me to images of girls being sent down the runway wearing nothing but paper pants and nipple pasties, or something on the same level of ‘ridiculous’ and ‘impractical’, but let’s face it: Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent AW13? Well, I already see people dressing in similar clothes to those the collection presented everyday.

New Grunge

And I understand that fact, in part, is part of the problem and the reason the collection received some bad reviews (and I say some because really, no one in fashion ever trashes a designer completely, at fear of not being invited back next season. No review is better than a bad review). Some said it was a bad regurgitation of what Topshop and Forever 21 have been doing for the past few years now, but let’s not ignore the fact that actually, Saint Laurent’s ‘grunge’ is something that’s been happening for the past few decades now, not a mere couple of seasons. From its birth from the grunge bands of Seattle in the late 80s and early 90s, it’s gone from subculture, to mainstream culture, to catwalk culture and back again: Marc Jacobs’attempt to bring grunge to high fashion at the Perry Ellis SS93 show (above) lost him his job and many so-called ‘grunge revivals’ since have been slammed by anyone who isn’t a teen or  early-twenty-something.YSl

I guess it’s because, with the catwalk, we expect sophistication in many respects. Of course, micro-trends can come and go but elegance will be timeless whether you’re 18 or 80 and I entirely understand the threat this collection can be seen as to those die-hard enthusiasts of YSL’s, sorry, I mean Saint Laurent Paris’ classic Parisian charm.

But let us not forget that fashion is fashion. Trends change and are reinvented and come back again, and might be loved or hated, or maybe loved one season by a minority but loved by a majority the next. Fashion – and that extends to music, art and other cultural things outside clothes – is, more often than not, a force that drives forward through shock and effect: nothing would change if we were all to believe there was nothing wrong with everything the way it is right now.

ysl2I like this collection because, actually, wearing a pair of patterned tights or a flannel shirt is far more achievable in the real world on a real budget than attempting to trying to work a ‘fashionable’ gold studded, backless, low cut, unforgiving leotard into our wardrobes, say. And, pretty as ballgowns are, how often do we actually get to 1) wear them, or 2) even have the money to buy them. If fashion is a movement of the masses, let’s actually give Hedi some credit for giving us something that may possibly actually be worn by the masses, whether they consciously follow fashion or not.

I suppose I am biased as, being a city-living 19-year-old whose budget starts at ‘thrift shop’ and ends at ‘high street’, I’m exactly the market the likes of this ‘bad Topshop’ is catering for. But is that such a bad thing? No matter how many times they tell me neon-trousers suits are in style, the fact is this: I’m young, I want to have fun with what I wear and I’m never going to wear a suit for ‘fashion’ until I’m at least 30 because I would look like a 12-year-old dressing in my mother’s work clothes.

I live in the east end of London and plenty of people my age dress like this. It may not be ‘new’ but it’s current and, whatever the YSL legacy is, or was, or will go on to be, I like the collection and I’m sure I’m not the only one hiding in a mass of new-YSL-hating-fashion-clones who thinks so.

Right, let’s all go back to our lives now.

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Review: Here Is Your Temple EP

Here is Your Temple

When a debut EP starts like this does, with the striking fuzzy bassline and dreamy vocals of lead single ‘So High’, it’s hard not to expect the rest of the tracks to be equally as memorable.

The Swedish five-piece’s self-titled debut is a five-track alt-pop dream that lilts from one track to the next in a wave of synths and harmonies, occasionally interspersed with a charm of plucked and charming guitar strings. Although the first song is the one most likely to get people dancing, the quintet hit their peak of synth-driven pop and melodic hooks on ‘Once Rich’ with their choruses of ‘nothing is a sure thing’ and they take a well-deserved bow on final track ‘Daniel’ in a five-minute slow synth opener that builds into a strong drum and guitar closer.

It’s a strong EP, with an upbeat opening and a nucleus of a centre folk-inspired elements (‘Say Hi’) which makes for five substantially different tracks that slot well together. Listen to it in its entirety to appreciate the full effect.


Here is Your Temple is released 15 April 2013 on Bolero Recordings.

This review was originally published by HI! Magazine: hihimag.com/ents/music

@rachelmichaella - @WatchThisPlace -

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Young Blood by Mayada Khammu Collection Launch @ The Wellington Club

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I first came across designer Mayada Khammu at a collective being shown at Fashion Scout last september and her talent definitely stood out. For the official launch of her line ‘Young Blood’, Mayada drew on her previous pieces but has expanded the range with more pieces and arange of charity t-shirts and jewellery, a percentage of the proceeds of which go to WarChild UK – a charity which helps children in war-stricken countries stay safe, get adequate medical care and stay in education.

Young Blood is inspired by the voice of 2nd generation British-Arabs wanting to fit in with Western culture yet still wanting to hold onto aspects of their roots. Young Blood is where East meets West. Mayada Khammu uses traditional Bedouin techniques as a reflection of Arab culture as well as a colour palette of black, gold and acid-prints as a nod to the interior of Bedouin tents. The use of  couture lingerie and fetish latex, often in masculine shapes, blurs gender boundaries and embodies the liberated fashion choices of the Western woman yet the use of strapping, harnesses, oversized jackets and hoods still hints at the sexual conservatism of the Arabic woman.

“Karl Lagerfeld on MDMA in the Torture Garden”

In the past, Mayada has described her collection as ‘Karl Lagerfeld on MDMA in the Torture Garden’, and that description definitely embodies elements of ‘Young Blood’: elements of high fashion – the ballgown, the black jacket, the LBD – are all bigger, brighter and hit with doses of latex, street and sportsluxe cool.

A promising collection from a young designer that’s sure to be a hit with the younger fashion crowd.

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For more information and to buy, see www.mayadakhammu.com.

@rachelmichaella - @WatchThisPlace -

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