Our Japanese stockist Moviegoer is an online shop that curates clothing and fashion evoked by independent and cult movies. Each season the creative shop owner Sawori styles her own photo story of our collections inspired by movies she loves. This season Sawori took our SS14 Flower Power collection and turned it into a tribute to the popular manga series Honey & Clover. Honey and Clover (ハチミツとクローバー Hachimitsu to Kurōbā) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Chika Umino. The story follows a group of college students as they navigate Art school, tackling unrequited love, creative challenges and finding jobs.

One of the main characters Hagumi Hanamoto is a shy, sheltered and gifted student who is described as being very child-like. Hagumi is depicted in the manga as wearing long, loose vintage looking dresses layered over long-sleeved tops, and flat shoes. Her appearance and dress sense inspired a whole new contingent of Mori Girls when the feature film of the manga was released in 2006. Mori Girl poster girl Yu Aoi played the part of Hagumi Hanamoto and gave a whole new meaning to layering in her eclectic outfits! Moviegoer's take on a "Book of Deer Hagu-chan" layers our Marianne Dresses over boyfriend jeans and converse sneakers. The effect is an arty looking Mori Girl and we love it!

I would highly recommend Honey & Clover to anyone who wants to watch a super girly anime!

Remember our best selling Bird Disguise Blouse from our SS12 collection? Well Daria of Kittenhood really knows how to style it!

Daria has rather ingeniously styled her Book of Deer blouse in two very different ways on her blog. 1) Here she is at the University of Art & Design graduate exhibition in Cluj-Napoca, Romania looking very chic pairing her blouse with a relaxed white trench. Full style post here

 2) And here is Daria demonstrating expert layering with her blouse peeking out under a Dear Creatures dress...read the full story here.

Follow the life of Daria on Kittenhood.... she likes all the stuff we like: cats, fit-and-flare dresses, bikes, novelty prints, foxes, breakfast food...

A little bit of cute therapy for the end of the week~

I have been sitting here reminiscing about my trip to New York City last month and thought I would share some vacation snapshots with you. Sorry they're a bit low-res, all pics were taken with my phone. Those who know me will know that my phone (HTC One Max) is my absolute most-prized possession, it is as big as my face and I like to hide behind it in public. Perhaps one day I will get a DSLR(?) and start snapping blog-worthy pictures, but until then I hope this collection of moments from my trip will make you feel like you were there with me.

★。、:*:。.:*:・’゜☆。.:*:★。、:*:。.:*:・’゜☆。.:*

I am not such a stranger to NYC as I have had the good fortune of having family and dear friends there since I was little. I also spent 3 months interning at Anna Sui back in my St Martins days. Nevertheless, it had been a good few years since my last trip to New York so I felt more than obliged to plan a visit. Our main agenda was to wander around everywhere, eat 7 meals a day and hang out with some old pals. Highlights included:

• The Charles James exhibition at the Met. Each dress had a screen next to it playing infographic videos of how the garment was constructed. The ingenuity of Charles James' pattern cutting is unparalleled, I couldn't get my head around the engineering of each ball gown. Very clever man.
• Cereal Milk soft-serve. New York's food scene needs no introduction so I will not bore you with a list of places we ate at. All I can say is we stuffed ourselves with no abandon and Momofuku's cereal milk soft serve is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best thing I have ever eaten. It tastes like Saturday morning cartoons.
• Visiting the Anna Sui studio.It's been 6 or 7 years since my internship there and it was lovely to see some familiar faces. I'm always apprehensive whether people will remember me after a certain time has passed (those of you with uncommon names will know the feeling) and I was thrilled that they did. After my internship I continued to design T-shirt prints every season for Anna Sui and being back there inspired me to get cracking on some new ideas for them. Below is one of the designs I did for them last year.

  

• Spotting Sesame Street filming on 5th Avenue. I love puppets and couldn't believe it when we saw Sesame Street on location. We suspect it was Murray interviewing some kids. I had to refrain from running up and hugging him.
• Sky Writing in Brooklyn. We were basking like seals on a friend's rooftop when this plane spelled out 'Existence or Nonexistence' over our heads. A sign from the heavens perhaps?

I could go on and on about the wonderful things we did, New York is a city that is infinitely impressive and entertaining. I am reinvigorated to seek out more USA stockists so I might have more reasons to hop over the Atlantic!

 *★*☆*★*☆*★*☆*★*☆*★*☆*★*☆*★*☆*★*☆*★*☆*★*

It's Not Her, It's Me is a blog on my regular reads list... Toshiko Shek is a San Mateo, California based blogger and a self-described "fashion enthusiast, artist, and crazy cat lady". I love Toshiko's style versatility, her outfits can look sophisticated but she always sneaks in little elements of cute. She remixes boxy jackets, capes and leather with novelty prints, pastels and lace. Toshiko recently styled our Odetta Dress in a dreamy sun-saturated blog post. Toshiko paired her vinyl-print dress with F21 two-tone chunky platform sandals and a Mori Girl straw hat.

"To go with my happy state of mind, here are some photos of me wearing Book of Deer frolicking around in the rose garden. Isn't this Odetta Vinyl dress so perfect for summer? Look closely, there are not only florals but vinyl records too!" ~ Toshiko

Read the full blog post and all about Toshiko's enviable LA life here at It's Not Her, It's Me.