The Women's Room | Daily Life and Style Inspiration

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

Fashion & BeautySeptember 22, 2014

Feminine or Feminist: Fashion extremes

By Jane

For the last two weeks I have been trawling though images from the catwalk shows for the day job. Mainly they have split into two camps, the beautifully wearable and the utterly ridiculous. My absolute favourite utterly wearable (if somewhat… 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

Home & GardenSeptember 18, 2014

Marni Flower Market pops up at Milan Fashion Week

By Jane

This month Marni starts a year long series of events to celebrate their 20th anniversary with a specially curated flower market during Milan Fashion week. The collaboration between Marni’s founder Consuelo Castiglioni, her daughter Carolina and curator Stefano Rabolli Pansera,… 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

Home & GardenSeptember 16, 2014

Hemsley Hemsley, The Art of Eating Well: a new way to cook

By Jane

When it comes to cooking I am always suspicious of two things. 1. A sweet snack/pudding that is offered up as “healthy” – as in my mind the two do not go together. If something is sweet and covered in… 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 12, 2014

Women in Clothes

By Jane

Women in Clothes is new book which looks at what women wear and what we are trying to say to the outside world with our clothes. 642 women submitted comments to the project answering questions such as “what are you… 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

Fashion & BeautySeptember 10, 2014

New York fashion week: A collection to love

By Jane

This week I am up to my neck in catwalks – not literally – but I am trawling though everything that might influence our clothing choices for Spring Summer 15. Yes I know I’m way ahead of you people –… 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

Art & CultureSeptember 8, 2014

Kate Bush: In praise of weird

By Jane

Growing up in the suburbs of a northern city, around the age of about 14 I became aware that I wasn’t like other people. I didn’t fit in and felt increasingly trapped and odd. I liked strange music, weird clothes… 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 4, 2014

The What’s Underneath Project: Jacky O’Shaughnessy

By Jane

When you are young you imagine all sorts of things about the kind of older woman you will become – what you will do for a living, where you will live and what you will look like. In many ways… 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

UncategorizedSeptember 2, 2014

Middleagedmum.com: How to change a toilet roll

By Jane

If you are the parent of teenagers this video by dad Will Reid will resonate and make you lol! When it popped up on my Facebook feed a few days ago I made sure my two saw it (despite not… 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

Health & HappinessAugust 29, 2014

How to grow old gracefully: Lauren Bacall

By Jane

The legendary Lauren Bacall sadly died last week at the age of 89 and tributes to her talent and beauty have rolled in from around the world. Reading about her life I was drawn to a portrait of her taken… 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

Middle Aged MumAugust 27, 2014

Middleagedmum.com: In praise of unplugging

By Jane

Visiting the Secret Cinema screening of Back to the Future last week I was slightly alarmed to read that participants would not be able to take their mobile phones with them to the event. My initial reaction was how will… 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