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Lifestyle

November 25, 2017

Who Are The Top 10 Male Celebrity Style Icons?

Recent research conducted by Barclaycard has discovered that the average modern man spends more on grooming products, shoes, and clothes each month than the average woman. In fact, men are investing over £300 more than women each year into their wardrobes and are even spending more on clothes than on drinks with friends and tickets to sporting events.

“Reluctant” Returners

Although men seem to spend more, they don’t enjoy spending hours trawling through the shops and admit to being “reluctant” returners. As just 26% of returns are from male shoppers, any purchases that aren’t quite right probably won’t make it back to the shops and will instead remain tucked away at the back of a wardrobe or chest of drawers.

Queues and Sizing

Many would agree that the process of shopping isn’t always enjoyable. Men find it particularly frustrating when they are unable to find their size in stock, and often refuse to spend more than five minutes queuing to pay for their items.

Online shopping greatly minimizes these frustrations, and with a wide variety of fashion-forward retailers to choose from, such as www.ejmenswear.com, investing in a designer wardrobe is now easier and more accessible than ever before.

Celebrity Style Icons

Barclaycard’s research has also revealed the most popular male celebrity style icons. The list is eclectic, with an interesting combination of actors, musicians and royalty, and if you’re planning your next men’s designer clothing splurge, you’re highly likely to find plenty of inspiration here.

10. Prince Harry
9. Kit Harington
8. Ed Sheeran
7. Graham Norton
6. Tom Hardy
5. Brad Pitt
4. Leonardo DiCaprio
3. George Clooney
2. David Beckham
1. Tom Cruise

Ed Sheeran is the youngest celeb to make it onto the list, with his casual yet put-together style securing him a very respectable eighth place. Generally, however, it appears that older celebrities are more widely considered to have excellent style. Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Leonardo DiCaprio all make it into the top five, with Tom Cruise securing the coveted top spot.

David Beckham appears to have firmly put all his past style mishaps behind him, swapping sarongs for tailored suits and proving that rather than following trends, fashionable men are now considering their overall look to secure their sartorial credentials.

Lifestyle

November 22, 2017

Breakfast At Tiffany’s Becomes A Reality

Fifty-six years after the movie’s cinema release, shoppers on New York’s famous Fifth Avenue can order breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Tiffany & Co., the luxury jeweler popularised by the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, opened its café this month as part of its Manhattan flagship store’s renovation.

Holly Golightly, the film’s protagonist, gazed longingly into the store’s windows as she bit into a pastry. Unlike the character, shoppers can now dine within the store.

The Blue Box Café

Named after their famous Tiffany gift boxes, the Blue Box Café specializes in American cuisine and is located on the fourth floor, overlooking the picturesque Central Park. The café is decorated in the company’s robin egg blue, its signature shade, and features new home accessories from Tiffany’s own range.

Wall decorations include chrome figurines and diamonds for an authentic Tiffany & Co. experience.

Those lucky enough to have dined here claim it is an unforgettable experience, adding to New York’s magical appeal and becoming an essential landmark for tourists visiting the city.

Breakfast and lunch cost $29 and $39 respectively and consist of two courses. The extremely popular café was fully booked on its opening day. The Blue Box Café is an ideal pitstop after browsing the store for high-end jewellery and homewares.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

The film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is based on the novella of the same name by Truman Capote, published in 1958. The story, which is written from the point of view of a narrator, tells the story of a girl from the country who relocates to New York and frolics in high society.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s was nominated for three Oscars, including Audrey Hepburn for the lead role, and it won an award for best music score.

In 2012, the film was also added to the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress in the US. This registry is comprised of movies that represent historic and important artistic and cultural achievements in filmmaking.

This helped cement its position as one of the best-loved movies of all time. Fans of the film have traveled far and wide to arrive in New York and have breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Lifestyle

November 17, 2017

How To Use Gelatine To Firm Up Your Project Fabric

There are so many beautiful fabrics and so many amazing creative projects to undertake, but sometimes you just need a little extra help in stabilizing particularly soft fabric to make it more manageable to work with. A temporary stiffener on a drapey fabric makes all the difference.

Options

The good news is that you have options. It might be stitching the fabric onto tissue paper or using a dissolvable product. Sometimes people use sugar water, although gelatine is another option. Think of the gelatine people would drink dissolved in water with the promise that it would strengthen their fingernails! There is little evidence to suggest that it ever worked on nails, but it does help firm up fabrics while they’re worked on, and then it washes out perfectly to leave the material in its original state.

It’s a technique sometimes used by companies that produce silk flowers, who soak the fabric in gelatine and water and stretch it out to dry, leaving it like large pieces of paper. A gelatine solution can also work for chiffon and charmeuse in addition to silks.

Solution

Mix the solution using a teaspoon of powdered gelatine and 500 ml of regular tap water, and allow it to rest for 30 minutes. Heat 1.1l of water to boiling and then add the rested gelatine mix to the hot water. Remove the solution from the heat, and then soak the fabric for an hour before pouring away the water. Because of the gentle nature of the fabric, you should not wring it out; place it on a towel and roll it up before squeezing out any excess water instead. Air dry it if you can.

Once your project is finished, rinse the gelatine out in warm, soapy water. For more information on how to use gelatine to stiffen fabric, see Sew News.

There are so many beautiful fabrics available today in every imaginable color and pattern. For the best range of cotton fabric online, visit the websites of experts like Higgs and Higgs.

Now that you have an understanding of how you can make your fabric easier to work with, the hardest part might be deciding which project to tackle next! Knowing how easy it is to stiffen soft material temporarily, will you ever work with stiffer fabric again?