Top Shopping. Oh, and Top Shop.


We got a bit ahead of ourselves with the weather, didn’t we, Sydney?  A full working week of hot, sunny days and the weekend starts with grey skies and rain.  It seems like such a waste to spend Saturday at home though.  So today I made it my mission to make the most of the great indoors that Sydney has to offer and came home many hours later with shopping bags (of course), a full stomach and an iPhone full of Instagrams.  In the end, it wasn’t so grey today, after all.

The day started, as all great Saturdays do, with brunch.  It’s been months since I’ve managed to hit Cavalicious for my usual Saturday feed but I finally made it today.  It was like meeting a long lost friend again.  One that makes a killer bacon and egg roll with lashings of barbecue sauce and a mean mocha.

Jacket – Zara, dress – Isabella Oliver Maternity.

It always helps to look the part on the weekend.  And for me, this means a denim jacket and stripes of some description.  It’s a look that just says come rain or shine, some excellent shopping is going to be going down today.  Which proved to be a self fulfilling prophecy.  At David Jones, no less!  They’ve actioned some major discounting on the Ladies Designer floor.  So major I went into pregnant body denial and tried on all sorts of things like Pucci fitted dresses…..
I was mucking around with the filters on Instagram which is why the print of the kaftan looks more psychedelic than it is in real life.  So do not adjust your monitor.  

Fortunately, even I could hear Emilio pleading with me to stay well away (for now) because look what I found instead!  This Camilla kaftan.  At 40% off.  It’s from the winter season but it was a perfect fit.  To my mind, Camilla is the patron saint of third trimester bumps.  Her one size fits all approach and the fabulous fabrics and detailing make everyone instantly feel a few inches taller and a few inches narrower.  It’s all so comfortable as well.  Surprisingly, the kaftans work with flats which sealed the deal for me.  Is it wrong to now be in dire need of a second investment piece of Camilla?  Do stay at home mothers of newborns have much cause to be traipsing around in kaftans?  Even if you say no, I am determined to set a precedent.

Oh yes, and then I went to Top Shop.

Where the cordoned off queue and black suited security men with ear pieces door policy was still in force.  There wasn’t a line at 11am but come noon, the queue snaked around the corner and in front of the shop next door.

I wonder what it’s going to be like when H&M open here….

I had a question from a blog reader about whether I could research the availability of drapy tops (maternity or otherwise) at our Top Shop.   This Muppets PJ top is all I could find.  I was going to buy the set until I realised that the briefs it came with were actually pretty brief….

Sadly, there isn’t any maternity in store but there is a section of the lower ground floor for petite sizing.  Most of the ladies wear in store at the moment is very fitted or cropped.  The layout of the store is a vast improvement on what the building was like when Supre was the tenant.  The ground floor is ladies wear, the first floor mens.

The basement houses denim, accessories, makeup, a photo booth and notable collaborations between Top Shop and specific designers.

The range was better than I expected it to be. It seemed on par with the South East Asian branches.  The Sydney store does have some of the feel of the flag ship London store but there’s no comparison in terms of the unique ranges the mother ship has relative to what Sydney has to offer.  These are going to be interesting times for the local high street.  As it is Zara and now Top Shop have the attention of the majority of CBD weekend clothes shoppers and more foreign competition is slated to reach Australia next year.  If I had to choose between Zara and Top Shop for me personally, I think Zara probably has more for me but Top Shop does do good designer collaborations that are worth keeping an eye out for. I wonder if Kate Moss will be doing another collection with Top Shop soon?

I left empty handed today but did like the look of these studded flats.

Elsewhere in the shopping malls of the CBD, spring was in the air, interpreted using various media.

There were paper flowers to promote a shopping event at Westfield.

 And these large mobiles hanging from the arched roof of the QVB.

The Galeries Victoria went global, to promote a new T shirt store, I think.

Browsing a bookstore has got to be the ultimate rainy day activity.  I took the photo below from one of the large windows of Books Kinokuniya.

As I was browsing, a young Australian author, Oliver Phommavanh was hosting a reading and signing of his latest book in the children’s section.  It sounded like a lot of fun and in a rare turn of events for a bookstore, snacks were served afterward.  Oliver’s family and friends had catered for the event with takeaway boxes of Pad Thai, plates of prawn crackers and cakes.  It was lovely seeing how much reading and ‘hard copy’ books still mean to kids these days.  I know that so many smaller book stores have been decimated in this era of smart phones and tablets but I hope that the bigger stores will continue to thrive and that books read for pleasure remain in print.

Guess what found their way home with me from the book store?  More of my childhood favourites as well as this set of Pantone inspired colour books.  Where would the world be without Pantone to create order and consistency in colour?

The boxed set contains 6 books, each devoted to a particular colour.  There are large cut out images in each book that are filled in with a particular Pantone shade.  The coloured pages are given both a Pantone number and winsome names like Macaroni and Cheese Orange.  Hours of fun for children of all ages.

Speaking of fun, I’ve got to remember to put all the clocks forward tonight for daylight saving tomorrow.  Best make a start on that now.

Have a lovely evening.


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