Hello Lovely people and welcome back to a new blog post. I hope you had a great summer and summer holiday. Here are some great tips if you are planning to go to festival camping. With the summer almost gone, this will be probably for next year. However, this might be helpful for a “normal” camping trip as well. At least I hope so because this was my first ever camping trip. I am not a camping expert yet.
Camping is a great way to experience life outside and I would love to this again. I am sure this camping list will help beginners like me prepare for their first camping trip.
So just copy this checklist and print it out if you ever go “festival”
camping or just camping somewhere sunny.
Like I said before, it is a new and amazing experience to be out in the open-air, sleeping on a nice inflatable mattress and listen to music and relax.
The only thing I forgot is to bring this time, were some warm clothes. Even in the hot summer, the nights can be very fresh and cold. So don’t be fooled by the weather forecast. It was 33 degrees Celsius in Germany and the nights were very cold.
TENT ESSENTIALS
Extra blanket – If you are cold easily
Sleeping mask
Comfortable socks
Pack of toilet paper small
Phone charger – Solar charger is the best
Tissues
Plastic bin bags
Towel – Go for the microfiber towel
Water bottle
HYGIENE
Baby wipes
Face wipes
Mirror small
Hair Brush
Dry shampoo – Baptiste
Shampoo
Small deodorant
Sun crème
Contact solution – Important if you wear lenses
Day lenses
Glasses
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Tampons – Period stuff
Disposable raisers
Plaster – For blister
Hand sanitize
Small sprite mist spray
Small moisturizer
Hairpins and elastics
FOOD PREP
Cooking set – Fuel stove (only if possible)
Plastic knives, forks, spoons
Drinks
Muesli bars and snacks (a lot)
Mix for water – syrup (to change)
Figs dried
Prunes dried
Energy drinks
Juices
MAKE-UP
Small moisturizer
Q-tips
Lip balm – Vaseline
Anything really – Depends on you and the weather, but less is better
CLOTHES
Leather jacket
Hat – Soft, easy packable
Festival dirty shoes
Sunglasses cheap
Extra underwear+ socks
Pyjama
Poncho for the rain
Trainers
Plan outfits for all the days and day of commute
Long trousers – Leggings dry fast
Shorts
T-shirts
Clothes for nights when it is cold
TIPS
Mark all your stuff with your name – more likely
to be turned at lost and found
Take a picture on your phone and set as screen
saver “IF LOST PLEASE CALL THIS NUMBER
AND NAME”
Colourful lights for at night – attach on your
bag and tent
Always check the weather
Tent not facing East
Let me know how your first time camping experience went and what are your tips? I am curious to know how you experience your first time camping. I hope you find this checklist useful.
Welcome Lovely people and welcome back to a new blog post. This time I just wanted to tackle my struggle with Fast Fashion a bit and why I think it is important to me to change my perspective (and hopefully yours a bit too) regarding this industry of fast fashion and be more conscious in what I am buying and wearing. Of course, I am not perfect and I have a long way to go to be completely sustainable and ethical in the choices I make within fashion.
At the moment I am thinking mainly what is fast fashion exactly, what can we do ourselves to reduce this and what are the alternatives?
Miss Widjaja
I started to think about fast fashion more and more around the time that I moved to London two years ago. I can honestly say I was not aware at all that some years ago I had a closet full of cheap clothing (collected over more than 15 years) and I did not even wear most of it at all. Why, mainly because it was cheap, it made me feel like I was someone when I was younger (which I don’t care about anymore since a long time ago). I had always something to wear, at least that is what I was saying to myself back then. (We, ladies, all been through buying clothes and ending up having not a thing to wear :S)
After leaving eighty percent of my clothing in the Netherlands, I still had a lot here in London. I began to give a lot to second-hand shops/ charity shops because I brought clothing to London that didn’t fit anymore (from years of staying in my closest without trying them on again) or they were worn out completely (mostly my work clothes). This was the moment for me to move on and I decided to shop in second-hand shops to see what they had to offer, I needed shirts and trousers for work mainly. Like most people probably, I also like to wear fresh clothing on a daily base, especially if you work fulltime.
Mixing and matching items is the best way to go for me at the moment. I can wear items more than once (after washing of course) and still look like I am wearing something else each day. A promise I made to myself is to buy only an item that I will and can wear many times.
I know I am not perfect and I can do much more to be sustainable in buying fashion-related products. But we all need to start somewhere and be more aware of what we actually buying, no? So let’s dive into this topic and find out why is it so bad to buy cheap clothes.
To make it really simple it is a term used by fashion retailers who are translating designs as quickly from the catwalk to the stores to capture the current trends.
Who are those fashion retailers? We all know them because you can find them all over the high streets and online as super easy and convenient clothing shops/ online stores. I suggest just to google and read some articles to find out exactly which brands to avoid at the moment or check this blog post: HOW TO KNOW THE BEST AND WORST BRANDS FOR SWEATSHOP LABOUR
There are many reasons why it is not ethical. First of all, all those huge amounts of clothing you can find in those fast fashion stores are made from cheap materials, like polyester, which is a synthetic fiber. All those synthetic clothing we throw away so easily are not going to disappear from our planet as easily. All these waste are non-biodegradable substance, which will take 20 -200 years to degrade. This is having a huge impact on the environment everywhere.
Not only synthetic (petroleum based) fibres are bad, but also the way cotton is produced with all the pesticide that is needed for the demand that there is in the world at the moment, which makes the people who are working on the cotton fields for us very sick and a lot of time they are not so lucky as us to just change their jobs.
Not to forget to mention and very important I think, are the workers who do all the work in shitty conditions for us to buy those cheap clothes. The work environment these people work in is in the worse conditions that I am sure no one would like to volunteer to work in. Please see this article regarding the building that collapsed in Bangladesh with all those workers inside that died because of the very bad conditions they were working in.
I think the first step is realizing why is fast fashion clothing so cheap and how is this even possible?! Realize that cheap clothing comes with a high price in the end, which means maybe you will be not affected by this any time soon, but we all will be affected in the near future and it will affect the environment we all live in in the end.
Mostly it will affect the people who are making the clothes on high demands at the moment in terrible conditions.
Miss Widjaja
What I am doing at the moment?
With this all said, I can say I am more conscious of what fast fashion is. I am more aware of what I am buying and what I am doing to the planet with my choices. It is a slow process, but being aware and slowly going to slow fashion and second-hand is already a big step in the right direction.
Let’s be honest, it is not something that you can change from day to night, but every small step will help to eventually not support fast fashion and buy less clothing in general. Which will be a win-win for everyone!
Next step is to focus on the quality. I know now that second-hand shopping is super fun and you will find a lot of good quality clothing for cheap! Important of good quality clothes for me is that I want to buy an item, wear it many times and it still has to look great after many washing.
So at the moment if I am shopping, I am shopping at second-hand shops/charity shops and eBay. I try not to purchase things on the high street, but even if I want to buy in shops, I think I need to check which shops are more sustainable and with good conditions for the workers who are making the clothing. This is something new for me as well, so far I only purchased in second-hand shops here in London and I found a lot of great quality clothing through this channel. (This will be for another blog post I guess)
Great alternatives to consider
Great videos to see regarding this topic you can find below and of course, check online, read articles, google it, watch different videos and blog posts regarding this topic. I think the first step for many of us is to be aware that fast fashion is becoming a huge problem.
Hopefully, we all realize what the effect is of fast fashion on the environment and on the people who are making the clothes.
Please click here to see which brands are sustainable shops and click here (video- the effect of fast fashion), here (video- the wardrobe to die for), here (video- the high cost of our cheap fashion), here (video- the cost of fashion), here (video- Rana Plaza Collapse Documentary: The Deadly Cost of Fashion | Op-Docs | The New York Times) and here (film- the true cost – Netflix docu) for some videos about this topic.
Hope you could appreciate my blog post and started being more aware of what you are actually buying. We all need to start somewhere. Wish you the best!
Hello lovely people and welcome back to a fresh blogpost with a new content. This blogpost is categorised as a fashion blog (by myself), because after two years of blogging, it is about time to speak/ write again about one of my forgotten passions… Fashion.
I definitely grew up with fashion and trends, finding out what my style was during college and the jobs that I had back then over the years. I know I went a bit overboard with the fashion trends in my twenties and I got a bit suck into that poisonous addiction of fast fashion and more is more! Four or five years ago, I started to buy less and less… but I had still a lot of crappy cloths at home that I did not wear or wanted to throw away.
When I moved to London, I had to get rid of so many clothing I bought over a period of twenty years. (Not kidding, it was a LOT!) I decided then and there to be more conscious about fashion, more focussed on what my style exactly is, now I am in my thirties, what to buy and choosing quality over quantity. I am quite proud that I am so much more better in my choices regarding buying clothing than years before. I do enjoy wearing the pieces that I buy now much more and I do actually wear them all. All of this is for another blogpost as the title of blogpost is the Dior exhibition, so stay tuned for that!
This blogpost is my first fashion related one. It is dedicated to the one and only mesmerising exhibition (so far) that I ever saw here at the Victoria and Albert museum London; Christian Dior, Designer of dreams.
Miss Widjaja
I had no idea what to expect until I was at the exhibition. I realised then and there, that this exhibition is completely sold out until the end, so if you got some tickets, you are very lucky! Also if you still need to go to the exhibition, you might want to read this blog afterwards. Spoiler alert all over!
So for everyone who could not get a ticket to the Dior exhibition… I got you covered with some beautiful pictures of this exhibition. (At least I hope so) I can honestly say, in realtime it is hundred times better than a picture of course. I did hear that if you go early in the morning to the V & A museum around 10 am-ish. Each morning they will release some daily tickets last minute, but I can not guarantee anything unfortunately. There might be some great news that I read via TimeOut London. V&A is going to release the next batch of Dior tickets on the 15th of April 2019.
So Ladies and gentlemen, grab your usual glass of Prosecco I would say (It is appropriate today) , sit back and enjoy this experience I had with me at the Dior exhibition at the V&A 2019.
First impression
The very first impression was that it was super busy. You just cannot deny how many fashion minded people we have in London. Probably all the fashion bloggers, vloggers, influencers and people from the fashion industry had a ticket to see this exhibition. There was quiet a queue in front of the exhibition entrance, but the minute I was in… it was already worth the long wait. Each room is so wonderfully displayed with those beautifully crafted clothing. You can really see how beautiful the cloths are crafted and preserved.
The mesmerising ball room
Mesmerising displays and settings
Going from room to room, it is getting better and better. In the ballroom you almost want to cry of happiness. The Dior fashion house produced so many beautiful clothing through different designers from 1946 till now. It is like walking through a fashion magazine and a fairy tale at once. To walking through a palace, a white forest with a mesmerising ball room as the grand final.
The creative directors that are highlighted in this exhibition and from whom you can see the creations that they made for the Dior house are the following;
Christian Dior was born in a seaside town called, Granville
in Normandy, France.
He was a master at creating shapes and silhouettes; Dior is quoted as saying “I have designed flower women.” His look employed fabrics lined predominantly with percale, boned, bustier-style bodices, hip padding, wasp-waisted corsets and petticoats that made his dresses flare out from the waist, giving his models a very curvaceous form.
Yves was picked out by Dior to be the first and only Head Assistant of
the company.
The clothes were as meticulously made and perfectly proportioned as Dior’s in the same exquisite fabrics, but their young designer made them softer, lighter and easier to wear. Saint Laurent was hailed as a national hero.
Wikipedia
Saint Laurent left after completing six Dior collections.
Bohan’s designs were conservative, but wearable and elegant. His collection was well known by prominent social figures. Elizabeth Taylor ordered twelve dresses from his 1961 Dior collection.
This Italian designer who studied architecture left behind the traditional Dior concept of flirtation and romance, and introduced concepts as “refined, sober and strict.”
It was said by Arnault the CEO of
the DIOR house that Galliano has similar creative talent very close to Dior
himself. They both have an extraordinary mixture of romanticism, feminism and
modernity. Seeing his creation
here at this exhibition, they are very extravagant.
This is the first woman in the Dior house as creative Director. Chiuri is from Rome, Italy and worked many years for Valentino.
Maria Grazia Chiuri for Dior
Celebrity Ambassadors
In the beautiful ball room, where you really need to take it all in and enjoy what you are seeing. (next to taking lots of pictures of course)
Here you will find some dresses that some ambassadors wear
at one of the awards shows.
I saw a dress that Jennifer Lawrence and Rihanna wore, I can’t remember to which award show exactly, because the ball room has so many beautiful pieces that I forgot unfortunately. I am not that it to fashion at the moment.
The gallery below will give you an impression of the exhibition. Just click on each picture to see the full size.
Dior
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Final thoughts
It is definitely one of the best and well thought exhibition that I saw so far. Each room is carefully thought through, from Dior his own creations, to the craftsmanship of the Dior house, to the creative designers over the years.
Dior – Atelier
Dior – Atelier
Dior – Atelier
Dior – Atelier
Dior – Atelier
Dior – Atelier
Dior – Classic
Dior – Classic
Dior – in magazine
Dior – Classic
Dior – Iconic Dior Bag
You really get a sense of who Christian Dior is. Through his many classic designs and the designs that were carried out through different creative directors over the years, this fashion house still stands strong as one of the World’s top fashion houses today. You can really see why if you are at this exhibition.
The Dior exhibitions at V&A definitely gets a 10 /10 for the mesmerising experience each room will take you to. I am really happy that I went to this exhibition and I did learn a bit more about Christian Dior and the Dior house.
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I hope you enjoyed this blogpost as much as I love writing it. Finally, I wrote my first fashion related blogpost and I know for sure, many more will follow.
If you liked what you have just read, please rate this blog with a few stars. I really appreciate the time and effort you took to read my blog. Thank you all!
Hello hello Lovely people here in
London and around the world. So many wonderful experience and people I met last
month that I just didn’t had the time to update you guys through my blogposts. I
know. I started the year great with posting regularly, but don’t be
disappointed. I am working on a few blogposts to catch up with you guys!
Without any further delay, grab your glass of wine and sit back to enjoy reading my blogpost about the many wonderful things I did last month.
I was lucky to participate in a project where I met so many kind and lovely people from around the world. At the moment I can’t tell so much, but when I can I will let you know how life changing this experience was for me. Stay tuned for this one!
Another fun experience was spending time with family. One of my cousin came over for a weekend with her friend and we had a blast. It was a short weekend and way too fast, but we did a lot of fun things that are now mentioned below. Thanks for that ladies !
Last month, I went to many restaurants, bars and exhibitions, so I will just put them in categories with a small review and the relevant links for you all below. There are definitely tips for you here, even if you are living in London for years. At least that is what I hope.
This is a lovely British gastro pub near the canal at Granary Square. Huge windows and a terrace outside makes this place a really cosy place for food and drinks with friends and family. I did enjoy the homemade burger with chips and the many beers that they serve.
This is the best Beigel with salty beef and gherkins in London. Who does not know them! Too be honest I forgot a bit how delicious the beigels are. I brought my cousin and friend there and it was like a stairway to heaven. I really did forget how GOOD it is and enjoyed every bite of it. I still don’t know why I do not go more often as I live here in London. Might be that it is not so close from home and the weather here in London has not been with us last few months. The Saturday that we went (Brexit Saturday) it was super sunny and chill to stroll around Brick lane and Shoreditch.
This place is great for dates. Once inside you will forget about the outside world. We had some delicious and fancy cocktails at the bar. The baristas there are amazing! This place makes you almost feel like James Bond. (for real) Definitely going back for a drink or dinner anytime soon.
While strolling around with the gang, we came across the Spitalfields Market and we went for a drink at the Grocer. Lovely casual and relax place to have some beers in the afternoon. If you are around, have a drink here. By the way many delicious foods available on this market.
This is the Wetherspoon in Camden Town. Great place for some casual drinks. This is the place to try different beers and just chill with friends or family. Also very affordable drinks and snacks, why not.
I think this a great place if you are with a large group of friends and in the summer. It feels like you are on a veranda or terrace chatting away with friends. Nice thing is you can get food and drinks from different stands.
Unfortunately, this exhibition is completely sold out. So if you did not get a change to see this exhibition, wait for my next blogpost. It was so worth to see this exhibition and I am happy I bought my ticket a month before. The day that I went it was super busy, but so mesmerizing. A designer pur sang. When this blogpost will be online, you are able to click HERE.
Check the website to see when it is open. I thought it is only a few Sundays per year open from March till end of April. We decided to stroll around the second largest conservatory to take some fun pictures with our vintage cameras. I recently bought, out of the blue, a Yashica minister 3 and a Praktica MTL3 camera to practice the use a manual camera. So much fun to use a real film again, can’t wait so see the pictures developed.
This exhibition is till June, so plenty of time to see this one. If you like the renaissance, you will like this one. This is really the baby steps of the nudes in paintings. Here you can see that the artist didn’t had much experience with nude models and it is slowly developing around that period.
I had no idea that this market was not too far from Shoreditch and Brick lane. We were strolling around and BAMM, just came across this lovely and creative market. A lot of food and drinks. We went for some sweets and we had some drinks at the Grocer. A lot of creative gifts at this market if you are looking for some unique gifts.
It is a bit far, but definitely worth a visit. Most likely in summer or at least when the weather is warm and dry, so you can sit in the park and enjoy the view. It is almost as nice as the park near the observatory in Greenwich.
I think through EVENTBRITE UK you can find free tickets to go to this comedy club in the Castle. It can be very busy, but great way to see many stand up comedy acts in just 2 hours. I think I saw around 9 or 10 in just two hours time.
Camden Town is super touristic and overpriced. We all know. Still it is fun to stroll around once in awhile. Check out the stables, food stand and just have drinks at the Wetherspoon. Always something strange and crazy to find here in Camden Town.
Almost the reason why everyone like and stroll
around Shoreditch is the street art.
Fun fact is that they change the street art once in a while. I saw some new pieces this time. Love the atmosphere in this area when the sun is up and the weather is hot.
Something I would not visit by myself, but happy I did because of my cousin. It is really an experience that M&M is trying to sell in their huge London store in Leicester square. Luckily it was not super busy as we went in the morning, so plenty of time and space to walk around the three floors that they have. Just for the experience it is super fun to see all the different colours and flavours that they have and all the merchandise that they sell. The staff is also super friendly. You can smell the M&M’s from outside the store.
This is the empty church I was trying to find for a while now and finally I DID FIND IT. It is in the City of London. Between Bank station and Tower of London. Beautiful to see an empty church in a garden in between skyscrapers. It is worth a visit in the summer, so you can walk around and see so many wonderful sights around this area.
@ St Dunstan Church
@ St Dunstan Church
So this is it for now. As I did mention, it was a wonderful March. Many thanks for the people who could enjoy it with me.
I hope you did enjoy reading my blog and I hope you got inspired to visit at least one or two places from my blogpost, even if you know them already.
MissWidjaja
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