Batman x Rick Owens

Batman x Rick Owens by rena-niamh-smith featuring hippie sunglasses

Print dress / Gareth Pugh high heel platform boots / Hippie sunglasses

Grunge Done Good | Outfit of the Week

Monochrome magic by rena-niamh-smith featuring rupert sanderson

UNIF tee / Eddie Borgo ring £77 / H&M slim pants, £15/Rupert Sanderson shoes, £395  / Marc by Marc Jacobs leather shoulder bag £130

I just can't get enough of a print pant these days. Smart, sassy, these H&M versions tick all my boxes, especially in a busy print like this! I love this UNIF middle finger tee, it's fierce as a goth-inclined teenage model high on their own good looks. To take it out of adolescent territory I would add the sharp Rupert Sanderson heels and single statement Eddie Borgo ring in black. The bright Marc by Marc Jacobs bucket bag and round shaded amp up the 90s factor, adding the sense of fun without losing the polish. Natch! 

Celia Birtwell x Uniqlo

Celia Birtwell recently teamed up with Uniqlo, Japanese high street chain extraordinaire, to do a range of printed pieces. An original of the London fashion scene since working with Ossie Clark in the 1960s and 70s, her juxtaposing prints were made famous by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones and Marianne Faithfull. The range will bring her work to a fresh new generation. Pajamas, blouses and leggings are re-imagined with re-mastered archive prints, and prices start at the spiffing £9.90.

I went to the launch night on Oxford Street, which was packed. The prints looked a little mad all sitting together, but no less fun for it! I will be revealing which one I bought very soon... I also met Celia who was there on the night, she is a really sweet lady with a real glint of fun in her eye. She told me how much fun she had designing the range. She has been approached by other brands before, but felt this one was right and had lots of fun working with them. She was involved in many stages, right down to window dressing. She was there with her grandchildren too, one of them posed with us for my sleb-stalker photo!

In attendance too were my lovely friends Lucy of Snippets of Shiny Thoughts and Carrie of Wish Wish Wish. They were part of a girl gang of bloggers: Dunya of Dearest Dear, Kristabel of I Want To Know You and Olivia of What Olivia Did. I love the way they styled their Celia Birtwell pieces one fine afternoon which you can read on Lucy's blog here.

*COMPETITION ALERT!*

To celebrate Uniqlo’s launch of the Celia Birtwellcollaboration, two signed prints are up for grabs. There's also five signedhardback copies of ‘Celia Birtwell’ with Doniminic Lutyens as runnerup prizes. To enter, simply Instagram/Tweet yourself in wearing a Uniqlo x Celia Birtwell piece, tagging #StyledinCelia before April 18th. Good Luck!

To shop the collection, head to Uniqlo online or to participating stores, nationwide.

What I Wear | Neon Jungle

Hat: Comme des Fuckdown
Earrings: Topshop
Necklace: Hema
Shirt: Army surplus
Top: H&M
Leggings: American Apparel
Boots: Office

Central Saint Martin's Late at the British Library

Fashion school has brought about an explosion of opportunity for attending events and meeting new faces. Case in point was Central Saint Martin’s event Late at the Library at the beginning of this month. The British Library has a huge fashion archive and it was done as a way to encourage students to come and use the facilities at their disposal. There were DJs and drinks, photo booths and print-making stands to tempt us in, and publishers and bookshops had stalls to promote their wares.

The Journalism BA students had put together a fantastic display of their favourite magazine covers, like Spare Rib and the Vogue "Reconstruction Issue" from 1945. There was the cover of Woman's World from when Oscar Wilde was editor, as well as Egoiste and Garage. I attended a talk by Dylan Jones, editor of GQ magazine and Chairman of London Collections: Men where he spoke about the need to be ferociously confident in your approach to getting work experience. He also slated Google as the lazy approach to research; “the internet is so brilliant for so many different things, but a lot of the time in research, you end up in exactly the same place because that’s all there is.”

Right in line with the ethos of his setting, he encouraged students to reconsider the physical experience of researching with books, even with the possibility that you might be side tracked with the wealth of information on offer: “being side tracked is part of the joy and part of the success of writing” he said. For Jones, it is the quality of your research that brings about high standards in your writing. For him, GQ is one of the last serious, long-forms of journalism, and with that comes a more old school approach to doing things.

To finish off the night, there was a fashion show by students using the escalators as runway. I got chatting to Jai’me Jan, better known as Jai’me London Boy of Boy Meets Fashion. For Jai’me, events like these are where new talent can be spotted early on: ““What I love about going to events like this is actually seeing the amount of creativity in emerging designers, who are the future of our fashion industry” he said. What’s more, you never know who you’re going to meet: “basically, it’s the perfect way to network with people who actually work in the fashion industry.” Cheers to that!

Gareth Pugh AW2013 | Monday Moodboard

Our favourite fashion kid from Sunderland, Gareth Pugh was this season inspired by a tribe of women called the "Asgarda" who live in the mountains in Ukraine and seek autonomy from men. I am itching to throw on one of those long coats and stalk some lofty snow-swept crags with a band of kick-ass female warriors... Elegant and powerful, clean, architectural all spring to mind. Too much for ya? Appazza some of the collection was fashion from bin liners from a Dalston pound store. Natch! The recession never looked more chic.

Photos by Lea Colombo via Another Magazine

What I Wear | Doll Delight

Loving this new Love Struck dress! Recently on a night out, I was chastised for wearing all black. Appazza it means you want to hide. Pah! Not with these fierce Aldo booties or tiger print Wolford tights! I've matched the studs on the dress with my Absolut Vodka cover I use as a witty clutch bag, too; this ensemble has attitude. The baby doll shape of the dress dress is soft and feminine, though, and I added the bowler to balance out the roar! with softer lines for a kind of punky doll feel.

Earrings: Topshop
Jacket: H&M
Dress: Love Struck
Tights: Wolford
Boots: Aldo
Bag: Absolut Vodka

Valentino: Master of Couture @ Somerset House | London

The much-trumpeted Valentino exhibition draws to a close this weekend. Armed with the mantra "better late than never", I headed down to Somerset House yesterday morning to check out the scene with a new friend from my course also keen to see what was going down. Valentino is a living fashion legend, whose bridging of couture and ready-to-wear has set a precedent in glamour. Working over six decades, he has dressed the most glittering of A list stars right from the earliest living memories of Hollywood as we know it today.

We're going to see much more of Valentino in the near future, and this blockbuster is part of the branding to cement him as a household name. In 2012, the Qatar royal family bought the brand; appazza they want to turn the brand into the "Italian Chanel". Yeah, I know. No big ask, right? This blockbuster is just a part of that branding exercise. Valentino retured from designing in 2008, but the cult of his personality is an obvious thing to play on.

Starting out with key letters, photos, show invites and sketches, the first room covered the designer's personal life. There was notes from Jackie O, Meryl Streep, and in surprisingly large handwriting, Anna Wintour. A bizarre photo Christmas card from Princes Charles, William and Harry; snapshots of the designer with his beloved pugs, who feature in the exhibition's promo image, alongside the iconic red dresses. Valentino was a man who loves life, and his tenure at the house, which ended in 2008, was all about dressing the jet set. He himself lives the archetypal extravagant life, al yachts and art collecting. It is made profitable by his savvy business partner Giancarlo Giametti, whose foxlike work behind the scenes ensured the party always pays for itself.

In the upper gallery, couture gowns were arranged in aesthetic order not chronologically, meaning we played a kind of guessing game matching the designs to the era they came from. Some designs were great, elegant and beautifully crafted; others just seemed an exercise in opulence, too garish to really merit the word stylish. But then, when your day job is dressing the world's richest people, there's going to be a bit of bling overload along the way. 

It's pretty clear, too, what the meaning of "glamour" is - all these bejewelled dresses reminded me of gilded cages in a way. Traditionally, the role of women is to sit around and look pretty. The eternal femme is one who sits around oozing sensuality, usually dripping with jewels and beautiful dresses as a kind of symbol of wealth and prowess. Couture serves that purpose; clothing of breathtaking craftsmanship that have been worked on by an army of invisible workers to adorn the body of one beautiful woman. It's a passive take on femininity; the power of allure, the power of beauty. Right from the courtesans of old, this has been a defining feature of female "power" in the oldest sense.

So, what of Valentino? He is clearly "drawn to" or "inspired by" this traditional kind of womanly grace, and what of it? Fair play to him. He has made a lot of women happy along the way. As the exhibition suggests, he is a master of his craft. In the final part of the exhibition, Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece’s pearl-encrusted ivory silk wedding gown which the New York socialite wore to marry Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece in 1995 made Sarah Burton's effort for The Duchess of Cambridge look minimalist. A room displaying some couture techniques used in his atelier was fascinating. Such workmanship is an art form we should treasure. That I'm sure of.

The past half-century has seen the development of female identity in lots of different ways, and the role of the gay male designer is an interesting one. There is an accepted link between overtly camp male fashion designer and women's clothes. From Unkle Karl to your gay best friend, these people are supposed to know these things, right? What does this say? I wonder if women trust a gay man more than they do a woman as to what works on a female body. There is this idea that this is a man who understands women better then they do themselves. 

This is where I think a gap opens between real women and idealised womanhood. With all due respect, some of the Valentino gowns looked trannyish. Is the idea of womanhood in a gay man's mind really all that relevant to women? Is it what "true" womanhood looks like, or an exaggerated costume for a role that we put on? Judith Butler said something along the lines of, "gender is a script which the actors have come to believe". Do we care? It all looks frankly fabulous.

What I Wore | London Fashion Week

The lovely Bradley Chippington took these Tommy Ton-style pictures of me at London Fashion Week.  The light was lovely that day and the pretty townhouses around the Stand area make the a great backdrop for this kind of shot. He is an awesome up-and-coming photographer who I met during the week, check out his work here. He has some brilliant shots that make up the kind of people watching experience you get at fashion week, and I notice he was outside the Topshop space in Bloomsbury Square last season, a spot I also got to enjoy with great photographic results.

This was probably my most outlandish outfit I wore during the week, a snakeskin print jumpsuit with leopard coat. In previous years, London Fashion Week has always been a bit of an opportunity to dazzle, get decked out in some crazy ensemble I'd never dare wear normally.

I remember one get up when I first ever came to fashion week aged 19 with no show invites and just a whole bunch of attitude - I wore zebra print leggings and a matching body with my peroxide mane and hi-top Nikes in black, white and pink. I remember getting spotted to model or something, before they worked out if I was living in Paris there wasn't a whole lot I could do! Still, made my day, natch.

Anyway, fast forward a few years and fashion week is awash with fashion bloggers posing for the cameras and blagging into shows. Ugh! My turf has been invaded. Don't get me wrong, fair play. But it hasn't taken me long working in the industry to work out that anyone who's anyone dresses with style, not fashion; that its the albeit super-brave art school kids who come in with homemade costumes. I am not downing them at all - they look amazing and are one of the most entertaining aspects of the week. But in the interests of being taken seriously in networking during the week, I have got pretty sleek in my old age, and pared it down something shocking.

So back to this outfit: I mixed up my animal prints but otherwise kept the colour palette hella tight. The cosy scarf is the softest mohair, from my friends in South Africa, Heritage Weavers. Those shoes are the perfect height for strutting without being too uncomfortable. Another fashion myth is that you have to wear heels all the time. Again, it's a take or leave it thing, but there's definitely a faction of the fashion massive who eschew the heels-as-gospel thing and look awesome everyday in flats. Those girls are usually the ones who can make any old men's jumper look cool too, I like to think I'm in that gang.

Sunglasses and jumpsuit: Topshop
Scarf: Heritage Weavers
Coat: Lovingly handed down from my auntie Maeve
Jacket (just seen): H&M
Ring: YSL on Net-a-Porter
Shoes: Acne
Bag: Spitalfields Market

What I Wore | Nineties Grunge

Hairband and earrings: Topshop / Necklace and dress: H&M / Mohair cardigan: Circa Vintage / Boots: Doc Martens

A witchy one for cold days. This is one of my favourite cardigans of all time - 100% wool, it is a layer of pure warmth and fuzzy goodness, a practical choice in winter and a great texture to add to most outfits. Better still, add that oversize shape to a long skirt length and heavy Doc Martens and you have a bona fide nineties grunge look. The funky print of this dress makes me think of feathers and scary things, so I added in the shell necklace and spiky headpiece to work that gothic look for a wicca kind of feel. For night, I would add a slick of black lipstick, natch.

What I Wore | Topshop Galaxy Pants

Necklace: Tatty Devine / Jacket: H&M / Top: Penneys / Pants: Topshop / Boots: Office

It's one thing to be looking for an exact item. Quite another to find it in the sale in your size. Such moments are shopping gold. A while ago, I bought this inexpensive peplum top from Penney's, the Primark in Ireland. Peplums were the hottest thing at the time, and I went for the bright turquoise colour, eschewing the easier option of black. It was cheap as chips, and I was thrilled to have bagged a major trend for a tiny price. So far so good. But time went on and the top remained all but unworn. Was it the colour? Was the peplum a harder trend than I thought to work? Who knows.

I also bought a gorgeous bright lime top from H&M a while ago, and it was slowly making its way over to join the turquoise peplum in the unworn-and-forgotten items gathering dust at the back of the wardrobe. There, too, was a bright purple Barbour shirt I'd picked up for next to nothing at the factory outlet. What was going on? The only trend worth talking about was the unused brightly coloured tops of Rena Niamh Smith. Time for radical action.

It was fairly obvious a decent print pant or skirt would clear matters up, but what print? It would have to match all those colours, which seemed a tall order. And at what price? To be sure, getting even more clothes is great as well we know, but buying one thing because you have already wasted money on another will prove flawed logic if that thing proves just as much a burden.

Imagine my delight, then, when wandering amidst the shrapnel of Topshop's sale after maybe the third round of deductions one afternoon in Westfield Shepherd's Bush I came across these banging galaxy print pants. Yes, yes, yes! Star trend! Pants! 55% off! Not only have they released a new lease of life into all the above mentioned tops, they are also right on for werking metallic, futuristic look for Spring of all things space. I love matching them with a sharp shoulder and these starry studded Office boots for extra swagger. Happy, happy days.

Fond Farewells, New Beginnings | Tatty Devine "Rena" Style

6 months ago I landed a paid internship at one of the best fashion companies in Britain. Scratch that, the world. My contract stipulated that I couldn't breathe a word on social media nor my blog, so I haven't gone on about it much, but safe to say it's an online luxury juggernaut, and is literally gold dust on my CV. As retail experience goes, it doesn't get any better than that.

The most amazing thing was not the work I did every day, although hell, it was a massive turn on to be handling the most exquisite, coveted fashion pieces on a daily basis. The real thrill was seeing how it all operated... and, of course, the people I met too.

Cliche as it sounds, there' a reason they say great places are the people that make it so, whoever "they" are... During my time at said workplace, I met some truly inspiring, intelligent, hard-working people who have put in some real graft to get to where they are right now. We only get one chance at this gig we call life, and that I want to be among the best of them, too.

The sweethearts that they are, they couldn't have got me a better leaving present: a Tatty Devine necklace with my name on it!!! I was so thrilled, it's the perfect memento to 6 awesome months of hard work and even harder play (this company also nails it in terms of perks) - but that job has definitely taught me you can expect the best in life if you give the best. But while the people in that job were the best, the worst part is I'm gonna miss them something shockin'!

I had lunch with the girls on my immediate team who are all super cute and stylish peeps, then it was on to the train back home for my cousin's party up in Newcastle... Thank the stars I had something to take my mind off things, that would have been one depressing Friday night if not!

Next up: a Fashion and Lifestyle Journalism course at the London College of Fashion. Now that, I can talk about to my heart's content, so watch this space. It's time to start pursuing the dream people...

"You can only build as high as your foundations run deep"

London Collections | James Long Autumn Winter 2013

After Sibling, it was off to The Old Sorting Office for the James Long show. The textures were incredible, all the more sensual against the all-grey concrete backdrop, from quilted leathers to metallic threads in the portrait intarsia sweater to brocade trousers. The bomber shape was pretty key, and the soft shoulder was central with the sweaters too. I loved the colour palette to this collection - earthy and yet exquisite, this was a covetable collection for sure - though those jumpers need a frame around them they're so pretty....