I hate cliches about the 'haves' looking down at the 'have-nots', the 'labelled' laughing at the 'non-labels', 'the rich' snobbing it up about the 'the poor'.  Most of the time, it seems to me that it's just an oversensitivity on the part of all latter parties.  Life is rarely like Pretty Women and the posh shop assistants aren't jeering at you in this tough economic climate when they're mainly grateful to you just for frequenting their store.  When I stumble upon a cliche, it pisses the hell out of me for the reason that I've always hated pigeon-holing people.  So today, when I got on the tube, sat right down and was stressfully drinking my Americano, I noticed two ladies sitting across from me giving me the oddest looks.  Did I have unrubbed moisteriser on my face?  Was my hair sticking up?  My outfit was a little tame/rushed so nothing to look at there.  I then realised they were staring at my bag, an old and faded Vivienne Westwood number.

It was already apparent to me that a real bargainous charity shop where you're fighting with penny pinching biddies is becoming something obselete in London but when Westbourne Grove, where yummy mummies are aplenty and boho trustafarians 'slum' it in their 'poky inherited' little flat in Notting Hill, opened up Oxfam's first new 'boutique' on 10th May (World Fair Trade Day) well, I'm sort of flummoxed and all for it, all at the same time. 

ASOS lovers/browsers/lurkers might have noticed that there's been change ahoy at ASOS and since I seem to have some sort of odd obession with their rebranding process because I did a quite lengthly post on one of their previous stages of reincarnation/reinvigoration a while back I feel dutybound to continue my fascination. 

Clearly, they have rid themselves of the box of 'cheap, celeb-inspired, knock-off' fashion judging by the range of labels they now stock but to take it that step further, it seems they have some cleverclogs working behind the scenes on the 'Get ASOS some cool' strategy. 

A recent interview with Hannah Murray in Pop magazine, aka the girl who plays Cassie from Skins (oi, oi, oi season 2 has been raised up a notch so if you were skeptical wating the first, I'd re-check it out) brought out a memorable quote about the white sunglasses she wore quite a bit in the first season   

Those white specs were very on-trend.

‘Oh, I don’t know anything about on-trend.  Someone did tell me they were a bit “Kurt Cobain meets Marc Jacobs”.  I pretended to know what they were talking about.’