Amanda | The Womens Room

Fashion, We Are ReadingOctober 3, 2014

The Perfume Bible by Josephine Fairley and Lorna McKay

By Amanda

Do you remember the recent post we did on The Perfume Society? Well, the fragrant team behind that great idea, Jo Fairley and Lorna McKay, have brought out an excellent book on the whole subject of perfume, how to buy,… Read More

Fashion & BeautyOctober 3, 2014

+J is back at Uniqlo -a few things to buy

By Amanda

A quick additional post today and attention +J fans! There is a small collection -called the Best Of +J -available currently at Uniqlo. Now, no one told us this was going in store, we thought +J had finshed forever, but… Read More

Art & Culture, Out & AboutOctober 3, 2014

See this: Leading Ladies by Nancy Honey

By Amanda

100 Leading Ladies, a photographic exhibition celebrating 100 influential senior female figures in society, opened yesterday at Somerset House. The photographer is award winning Nancy Honey, who clearly had her work cut out for her pinning down these super successful… Read More

Fashion & Beauty, Health & HappinessOctober 1, 2014

Style icon: Dame Barbara Hepworth

By Amanda

I grew up with Barbara Hepworth all around me, thanks to my dad, a keen amateur sculptor, who introduced me to her wonderfully curvaceous, calming forms as soon as I could say ‘not that boring old art stuff again’. Inevitably… Read More

Things We LoveSeptember 29, 2014

Mark Hill Wonderball hair brush

By Amanda

Attention people, this new Wonderball hair brush by Mark Hill is fab. Stupidly (in a good way) simple in its design and nicely substantial in its quality, it is also very easy to use. You use it to dry your… Read More

Fashion & BeautySeptember 29, 2014

Style Icon: Mary Wall

By Amanda

I bumped into this very stylish woman on Sunday morning outside the Royal Academy, we were both queueing for the Anselm Kiefer exhibition. I asked if I could take her picture as I thought she looked amazing -she looked like… Read More

Health & HappinessSeptember 27, 2014

Weekend Woman: Maxine Peake

By Amanda

Maxine Peake is the sort of woman I’m very slightly scared of; she looks so intent, so fiercely intelligent and seems so brilliant at what she does I know I’d be terrified of her if I ever got to meet… Read More

Fashion & BeautySeptember 25, 2014

The Best Dress List, with Allium B

By Amanda

We love it here at TWR when we find women who are doing it for themselves, to badly quote the Eurythmics. Allium B is a Brighton based design studio set up by sisters Clare and Mary Burgess, which has specialised… Read More

Things We LoveSeptember 23, 2014

Chelsea boot wellies by J Crew

By Amanda

[show_shopthepost_widget id=”281374″] Oh my these are cute. Chelsea Boot wellies at J Crew, for a quite acceptable £68 (well not bad for J Crew prices). And in leopard print too! They almost fit in the ‘useful’ category. How can we… Read More

Fashion & BeautySeptember 23, 2014

GrownUpCore: The impact older women have had on fashion

By Amanda

We’ve gone a bit back-to-school-homework-topics with our approach to fashion discussion this week on TWR. Jane’s show-and-tell post yesterday questioned the relevance of designers who still produce clothes better suited to an over-sexed Barbie than today’s modern female. Today I’m… Read More

Health & HappinessSeptember 21, 2014

Weekend Woman: Rose Wylie

By Amanda

This weekend’s woman of substance who is definitely not fading away, is the artist Rose Wylie, who has just won the prestigious John Moores Painting prize. Rose is 80. She trained originally as an artist but gave up to have… Read More

Art, Culture & Craft, We Are ReadingSeptember 19, 2014

A World Of Quilts by Cassandra Ellis

By Amanda

I’m a big fan of Cassandra Ellis’s quilt books and this new one’s no exception. I am yet to make a single project, but I do dream of making one of her lovely designs some day, I’m certainly stock piling… Read More

Home & GardenSeptember 19, 2014

The Women’s Room’s best dinner party gifts

By Amanda

I’ve been meaning to write a post on dinner party gifts for ages, but because I don’t go/give that many (middleagedad has an ‘aversion’ you may remember…) I keep forgetting the level of sweat-inducing panic you can get into trying… Read More

Fashion, We Are ReadingSeptember 17, 2014

The Biba Years, by Barbara Hulanicki and Martin Pel

By Amanda

Biba fans, there’s a new book out and it’s by Barbara Hulanicki herself, together with Martin Pel. I flipped through it quickly the other day at Waterstones, it looks wonderful .I don’t need to say too much else do I?… Read More

Art & CultureSeptember 17, 2014

Jungle’s Grown-up Dancing Dudes

By Amanda

Who said young people had all the moves? This is Shepherds Bush based, modern soul band Jungle’s newest video, with two grown up blokes dancing like demons. Dad dancing this is not. proving what we already knew- that grown-ups can… Read More

Out & AboutSeptember 15, 2014

‘Ich bin ein cocktail trinker’, TWR recommends the best cocktail bars in Berlin

By Amanda

Last week I was in Berlin, my first ever visit. Middleagedad wanted to see some art, I wanted to look at the retail (work, honest) and shop vintage and youngestson wanted to check out the music stores. I can report… Read More

Fashion & BeautySeptember 13, 2014

Weekend Woman: Natalie Massenet

By Amanda

It’s Fashion Week in London, so Natalie Massenet had to be our Weekend Woman this week. Unless you’ve been living in a fashion-free zone for over a decade, you’ll know that Natalie founded everyone’s favourite clothes-lust website, Net-A-Porter, by working… Read More

Fashion & BeautySeptember 11, 2014

How to wear: vintage jodhpurs

By Amanda

Bringing everyone back to this autumn rather than next, have you got your head around culottes yet? I have and I’m not going there. I’m not doing it even though I saw Vogue’s fashion editor Lucinda Chambers wearing a gorgeous… Read More

Art, Culture & Craft, We Are ReadingSeptember 9, 2014

Elementary Sewing Skills, by Merchant & Mills

By Amanda

This is a glorious little book to have if you are a keen sewer, or want to be. We adore Merchant & Mills, Carolyn Denham and Rodrick Field’s stylish haberdashery company, with its irresistible store based in Rye. They have… Read More

Out & AboutSeptember 9, 2014

Style my holiday: a thought on fantasy holiday wardrobes

By Amanda

About once a year I get an urge to sell my entire wardrobe on ebay and start again. I look at my rails of clothes and think ‘I don’t want any of this, what I really want is to wear… Read More

Things We LoveSeptember 9, 2014

Magma Sketchbooks

By Amanda

We’ve found some rather fabulous notebooks by Magma which stationery fans might like to know about. The plain pages are a good quality, and at the back there is detailed information about each of the different notebook type’s worlds. For… Read More

Health & HappinessSeptember 6, 2014

Weekend Woman: Joan Rivers

By Amanda

What sad news that Joan Rivers has died. We never got around to adding her to our weekend women list while she was alive, so we’ll just have to do it now. To be honest, Joan seemed so indestructible in… Read More

Health & HappinessSeptember 5, 2014

Something for departing student teens: Graze.com

By Amanda

I was chatting to my sister about the impending departure of youngestson to university and she reminded me about how her student son was super grateful for his weekly Graze.com box of nibbles during his first year away from home.… Read More

Fashion & BeautySeptember 3, 2014

Flattering necklines for grown up women

By Amanda

While women of the world recoil in disgust, again, at some sleezey bloke posting hacked images of female celebrities without their clothes (we’re hoping there’s a special, nasty room in hell where people like this are headed too) we’re looking … Read More

Things We LoveSeptember 2, 2014

Perfume review: Wood Sage & Sea Salt by Jo Malone London

By Amanda

Jo Malone London has a great new fragrance out that might suit middleagedads and teensons. Mine have been very impressed with it, so much so that it disappeared off my shelf a while ago and I forgot all about it… Read More

Fashion & BeautySeptember 1, 2014

Comfortable underpinning, with Triumph’s Magic Wire

By Amanda

We probably should be starting to talk about winter clothes this week, as that last Bank Holiday week is sort of the end of summer really, don’t you think? But I’m not ready for it yet, even as the temperature… Read More

Health & HappinessAugust 30, 2014

Weekend Woman: Kate Bush, Obvs!

By Amanda

Ok, ok so the world might have gone a bit overboard with Kate mania this week, but really how could our weekend woman be anybody else but Kate Bush this week? After years away from the spotlight and what must… Read More

Home & GardenAugust 28, 2014

Summer harvest recipe: apple cake, using lots of apples

By Amanda

It’s been an amazing summer for fruit in my garden, I am staggering under mini mountains of plums, damsons, pears and apples. And our cherry tree gave us so much fruit we stopped weighing how much at 50lbs. Now what?… Read More

Home & GardenAugust 26, 2014

Readers Kitchens: Blending, Brewing and Blessing with Kristin Perers

By Amanda

We haven’t done a Readers Kitchens for ages, but when we visited the inspiring kitchen of photographer and This Is 50 blogger Kristin Perers, it was a no-brainer, it just HAD to go on the blog. Kristin is a vicar’s… Read More

Home & GardenAugust 22, 2014

Pattern Makers, Thinkers and Being Kind, with Starch Green

By Amanda

Today’s guest post is by our regular contributor and intrepid explorer of interesting people and crafts, Julia Little. Whether it’s a marriage or partnership, being together for half a lifetime or more is a challenge. I’m not sure what the… Read More