Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.

Illustration by Naomi Law

For the last day of  the Sketchbook Pop-Up Shop, case Susie Bubble of Style Bubble fame gave a lecture on Newburgh St, bookending an event that celebrated the creative arts in a social and relaxed atmosphere complete with illustrations all over the walls. As one of the more prolific bloggers out there, Susie Bubble is someone I have ‘followed’ for a long time owing to her quality of photos and copy as well as her evidently well-researched posts. The Style Bubble blog started in 2006 as an outlet for Susie’s opinions, naturally developing a huge following with mentions in i-D magazine, The Financial Times and numerous awards within the blogging world in a relatively short space of time (that’s the online world for you!).
 
Susie has already written an excellent post on the ‘pop up social space’, and as the last speaker at the event ties things up quite nicely – she even featured on the cover of their very first issue. Teaching herself web coding at the age of 13, Susie was always destined to make a foray into the online world. Her blog has grown quickly over the last four years and rather than a ‘what to wear now’ site endorsing celebrity-led trends, Style Bubble is full of Susie’s musings and ideas of what she really thinks. ‘I would only stop blogging if ideas run out’, she said. Not much chance of that in London…
 
Following a few questions from the audience on branding, sponsorship and advertising it was very refreshing to hear Susie’s responses reflecting the idea that a blog should be a personal passion rather than a way to increase traffic and generate sales, as an all encompassing business or brand. ‘I don’t see what a Style Bubble app would bring to the iPad’ she reveals, and equally she doesn’t see a future or market for paid blogs. If they are controlled by the brand themselves she can see the merits, though – ‘if a brand have a blog, especially some of the more secretive design houses, it is a good idea as long as the content is interesting’.   
 
Content is key, and she advises that in order to make a mark in the blogosphere, a blog must bring something new to the table. If you are in need of some more inspiration, Susie uses The Guardian fashion pages, The Coveted, and Jak&Jil for fashion news.

She understands that fashion, especially luxury fashion, is not always ethically sound, and where ‘it is impossible to investigate every choice’ we make on clothing we must be aware of the sources of our purchases. Broad generalisations can confuse consumers; for example, not everything made in China needs to be avoided. When choosing items, Susie goes for what feels right. ‘Buying luxury clothes is selfish. I ask myself if it feels nice or looks good on me’. On her own style, she made it very clear that it’s a personal choice, but in terms of A/W10 predicitons, its ‘texture, texture, texture’! Mix it up and make it your own – for S/S go for pastels and embroidery.
 
One of the nicest elements to Susie’s character is the honesty and modesty in with which she answered the questions. The London-based blogger loves the constantly developing creativity in our city, and how there are opportunities to turn your hand to whatever you want, describing herself as a ‘fraud’ with no formal training! At the moment Susie is unsure how to progress with the blog. Now in a ‘pondering phase’, she doesn’t see herself working with a ‘team’ as it is such a personal project – just her and her handy boyfriend for the photos!
 
3 facts you might like to know:
 
1. She voted Lib Dem
2. She wears her hair up when its windy
3. She was incredibly flattered when Daphne Guinness wrote about her in the FT (who wouldn’t be?!)
 
As well as some consulting work, she has some mysterious up and coming projects, so keep an eye out…

Illustration by Naomi Law

For the last day of  the Sketchbook Pop-Up Shop, price Susie Bubble of Style Bubble fame gave a lecture, purchase bookending an event that celebrated the creative arts in a social and relaxed atmosphere complete with illustrations all over the walls. As one of the more prolific bloggers out there, stomach Susie Bubble is someone I have ‘followed’ for a long time owing to her quality of photos and copy as well as her evidently well-researched posts. The Style Bubble blog started in 2006 as an outlet for Susie’s opinions, naturally developing a huge following with mentions in i-D magazine, The Financial Times and numerous awards within the blogging world in a relatively short space of time (that’s the online world for you!).
 
Susie has already written an excellent post on the ‘pop up social space’, and as the last speaker at the event ties things up quite nicely – she even featured on the cover of their very first issue. Teaching herself web coding at the age of 13, Susie was always destined to make a foray into the online world. Her blog has grown quickly over the last four years and rather than a ‘what to wear now’ site endorsing celebrity-led trends, Style Bubble is full of Susie’s musings and ideas of what she really thinks. ‘I would only stop blogging if ideas run out’, she said. Not much chance of that in London…
 
Following a few questions from the audience on branding, sponsorship and advertising it was very refreshing to hear Susie’s responses reflecting the idea that a blog should be a personal passion rather than a way to increase traffic and generate sales, as an all encompassing business or brand. ‘I don’t see what a Style Bubble app would bring to the iPad’ she reveals, and equally she doesn’t see a future or market for paid blogs. If they are controlled by the brand themselves she can see the merits, though – ‘if a brand have a blog, especially some of the more secretive design houses, it is a good idea as long as the content is interesting’.   

Illustration by Naomi Law
 
Content is key, and she advises that in order to make a mark in the blogosphere, a blog must bring something new to the table. If you are in need of some more inspiration, Susie uses The Guardian fashion pages, The Coveted, and Jak&Jil for fashion news.

She understands that fashion, especially luxury fashion, is not always ethically sound, and where ‘it is impossible to investigate every choice’ we make on clothing we must be aware of the sources of our purchases. Broad generalisations can confuse consumers; for example, not everything made in China needs to be avoided. When choosing items, Susie goes for what feels right. ‘Buying luxury clothes is selfish. I ask myself if it feels nice or looks good on me’. On her own style, she made it very clear that it’s a personal choice, but in terms of A/W10 predicitons, its ‘texture, texture, texture’! Mix it up and make it your own – for S/S go for pastels and embroidery.
 
One of the nicest elements to Susie’s character is the honesty and modesty in with which she answered the questions. The London-based blogger loves the constantly developing creativity in our city, and how there are opportunities to turn your hand to whatever you want, describing herself as a ‘fraud’ with no formal training! At the moment Susie is unsure how to progress with the blog. Now in a ‘pondering phase’, she doesn’t see herself working with a ‘team’ as it is such a personal project – just her and her handy boyfriend for the photos!
 
3 facts you might like to know:
 
1. She voted Lib Dem
2. She wears her hair up when its windy
3. She was incredibly flattered when Daphne Guinness wrote about her in the FT (who wouldn’t be?!)
 
As well as some consulting work, she has some mysterious up and coming projects, so keep an eye out…

Illustration by Naomi Law

For the last day of  the Sketchbook Pop-Up Shop, cialis 40mg Susie Bubble of Style Bubble fame gave a lecture, symptoms bookending an event that celebrated the creative arts in a social and relaxed atmosphere complete with illustrations all over the walls. As one of the more prolific bloggers out there, sildenafil Susie Bubble is someone I have ‘followed’ for a long time owing to her quality of photos and copy as well as her evidently well-researched posts. The Style Bubble blog started in 2006 as an outlet for Susie’s opinions, naturally developing a huge following with mentions in i-D magazine, The Financial Times and numerous awards within the blogging world in a relatively short space of time (that’s the online world for you!).
 
Susie has already written an excellent post on the ‘pop up social space’, and as the last speaker at the event ties things up quite nicely – she even featured on the cover of their very first issue. Teaching herself web coding at the age of 13, Susie was always destined to make a foray into the online world. Her blog has grown quickly over the last four years and rather than a ‘what to wear now’ site endorsing celebrity-led trends, Style Bubble is full of Susie’s musings and ideas of what she really thinks. ‘I would only stop blogging if ideas run out’, she said. Not much chance of that in London…
 
Following a few questions from the audience on branding, sponsorship and advertising it was very refreshing to hear Susie’s responses reflecting the idea that a blog should be a personal passion rather than a way to increase traffic and generate sales, as an all encompassing business or brand. ‘I don’t see what a Style Bubble app would bring to the iPad’ she reveals, and equally she doesn’t see a future or market for paid blogs. If they are controlled by the brand themselves she can see the merits, though – ‘if a brand have a blog, especially some of the more secretive design houses, it is a good idea as long as the content is interesting’.   

Illustration by Naomi Law
 
Content is key, and she advises that in order to make a mark in the blogosphere, a blog must bring something new to the table. If you are in need of some more inspiration, Susie uses The Guardian fashion pages, The Coveted, and Jak&Jil for fashion news.

She understands that fashion, especially luxury fashion, is not always ethically sound, and where ‘it is impossible to investigate every choice’ we make on clothing we must be aware of the sources of our purchases. Broad generalisations can confuse consumers; for example, not everything made in China needs to be avoided. When choosing items, Susie goes for what feels right. ‘Buying luxury clothes is selfish. I ask myself if it feels nice or looks good on me’. On her own style, she made it very clear that it’s a personal choice, but in terms of A/W10 predicitons, its ‘texture, texture, texture’! Mix it up and make it your own – for S/S go for pastels and embroidery.
 
One of the nicest elements to Susie’s character is the honesty and modesty in with which she answered the questions. The London-based blogger loves the constantly developing creativity in our city, and how there are opportunities to turn your hand to whatever you want, describing herself as a ‘fraud’ with no formal training! At the moment Susie is unsure how to progress with the blog. Now in a ‘pondering phase’, she doesn’t see herself working with a ‘team’ as it is such a personal project – just her and her handy boyfriend for the photos!
 
3 facts you might like to know:
 
1. She voted Lib Dem
2. She wears her hair up when its windy
3. She was incredibly flattered when Daphne Guinness wrote about her in the FT (who wouldn’t be?!)
 
As well as some consulting work, she has some mysterious up and coming projects, so keep an eye out…

Now in its sixth year, health the annual Dot-to-Dot Festival has evolved from a small one-day festival similar to London’s Camden Crawl into a sprawling beast that takes over three British cities at the end of every May. Headlined this year by the Mystery Jets and Ellie Goulding, information pills it’s become something of a rite of passage for many bands trying to break the UK’s music scene – charting the rise up and fall down the lineups from year to year is as good a barometer as any for assessing the success of recent indie bands, and many a time I’ve seen a group go from playing an empty venue at the festival only to come back to the same venue a month later for the same band’s first headlining tour and, on the back of hype, the place will be bulging. In many ways it’s similar to festivals like Brighton’s Great Escape, which showcase new bands as much as put on ones that have existing fanbases.

The festival is the pet project of DHP, the long-established gig promoter from Nottingham. As well as promoting tours they found themselves, in the early years of the last decade, in the position of owning all of the city’s main live music venues (meaning, in order of size from smallest to biggest, the Bodega, Rescue Rooms, Stealth, and the venerable Rock City). Using their monopoly they established the first Dot-to-Dot in 2005, with the event, staged across all their venues plus the large Students’ Union of Nottingham Trent University, proving a massive success with headliners like Ladytron and Radio 4. The size and prestige of the festival rapidly expanded – the next year saw headlining sets from British Sea Power and Buck 65 (notably, 2008′s headliner Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. was present at the very bottom of the lineup), and an increase in capacity.

After DHP purchased Bristol’s Thekla venue they expanded the festival to the city in 2007, with the entire festival taking place on one day and then shifting over to the other city on the next. 2008 had the festival spread out over the whole weekend, with the lineups swapping between the cities over the weekend. Whilst widely seen as a huge success by attendees (it’s got something of a legendary reputation amongst people lucky enough to have been there, that year), the sheer size and ambition of the thing meant that DHP had to drop the idea for 2009, returning to two cities with one day each. This year’s innovation, however, sees the festival spread out to three cities with one day each, with Manchester joining the fun. Will it cause organisational meltdown? Born Ruffians‘ 2009 set was cut short by their getting stuck on the motorway on the way back from Bristol, and I know they weren’t the only ones, but knowing that not every band is guaranteed to show up somehow makes the thing more interesting, not less.

Last year’s lineup was heavily focused on the burgeoning no-wave revival (shitgaze, if you will), with bands like Vivian Girls and Crystal Stilts gathering most of the crowds. This year’ selection avoids any such thematic bunching – Los Campesinos! take their place on the posters alongside Beach House, whilst there’s also a rare chance to catch the legendary Liars live.

Top tips for smaller bands to look out for, though: O.Children (whom we interviewed not long ago), Yuck (whom I saw live and thought were AWESOME), Team Ghost (like M83, but more so), Washed Out, and Goldheart Assembly. It’s never failed to be fun day in the sun (or rain), and chances are you’ll be returning to the same venues later in the year to see some of the same bands play to much larger audiences once everyone else catches up.

Written by Ian Steadman on Monday May 17th, 2010 5:01 pm

Categories ,2010, ,Beach House, ,bristol, ,Crystal Stilts, ,DHP, ,Dot to Dot, ,Ellie Goulding, ,festival, ,Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly., ,girls, ,Goldheart Assembly, ,ian steadman, ,Indie, ,liars, ,Los Campesinos, ,manchester, ,Mystery Jets, ,New, ,nottingham, ,O Children, ,Showcase, ,Team Ghost, ,Vivian Girls, ,Washed Out, ,yuck

Similar Posts:

• Festival Preview: The Great Escape
• Green Man Festival: The Festival Preview Series
• DOTMOV FESTIVAL 2008
• Coming up: Stag and Dagger Music Festival
• Coming up: Futuresonic Festival