I have been taking part in quite a lovely little project with Karen Millen*, a kind of “love your city” affair, where I had to style an outfit from the new collection and shoot it on location around London. I also did a nice Q&A about my favourite places to go in the city around Christmastime, and you can see that over on their website if you click here. Answering the Q&A really made me think that I should do more posts about London, seeing as though I have lived and worked there for the past fifteen years or so… I often think, too, that nobody really knows the streets of London more than models – except perhaps taxi drivers and couriers – because we spend so much time traipsing round going to castings and photo-shoots in obscure places. In any one day you might have ten or so appointments, all in different areas of London – SW7 to NW3, back to SW1, to EC2, to E3, to W8, to SE23 and so on and so forth. Pre-iPhone days, when we used to have to rely on the good old A-Z to get us about, models were quite literally experts at finding places. And knowing exactly which tubes would take you where, and whether it was quicker to hop on a bus than take the tube… (It was very rarely a taxi, in those days. We were always broke, new models, waiting for money to come in from the agency.)

Anyway, I’ve gone off on a complete tangent! Here’s the outfit I styled using some pieces from the new collection. I’ve become a bit of a layering fanatic recently, not quite on a “Helena Bonham Carter” level, but nearing it. There’s something very liberating about throwing on clashing textures and prints and colours and it’s something I want to do more of. Mostly using various types of leopard print. You can see that I managed to shoehorn in some leopard print in this outfit – the coat is just absolutely gorgeous. It’s actually quite lightweight and roomy enough to fit a big jumper underneath and I think that it would also look great with black skinny jeans and high boots. Very rock and roll.

Underneath the coat of dreams, a crystal beaded top which I picked out because it felt so festive. I liked that the actual body of the top was quite a casual, sweatshirt affair but then it had this heavy embellishment. I tucked it in to a high-waisted skater skirt which I love; great cut, leg-lengthening and flattering at the waist where it cinches in. It’s very clever! (It’s now in the sale, too, at around half the original price – find it here.) I finished off the look with black tights and Stretch Suede Over the Knee boots, which made me feel very retro and “girl about town”.

What do you think? I love that the boots give a long, lean look to my legs but that the rest of the outfit was quite layered and voluminous! After styling my London outfit, I picked out some of my favourite items from the collection for Karen Millen’s gift guide. I chose a red velvet dress as the gift I’d buy for myself (sends me straight back to childhood – I haven’t worn a velvet dress for about twenty-odd years!) and as a gift for a friend, I chose the sequin pattern dress which has a lovely shape and a good, sexy, party-length hemline.

If you’d like to browse the new Karen Millen collection you can do so online here – my little Q&A session is here. Photos shot at the back of St Paul’s Cathedral, just in case you hadn’t noticed the big dome in the first picture!

(*this post is sponsored as part of my work with Karen Millen.)