Cup&Cake; my new favorite cafeteria in Barcelona

Cupcakes are no longer the "thing" in pastry as macarones and cake pop sticks are the newest in desserts, but I still do love them. In Spain there is no great culture of cafeterias, as they tend to have their coffees ("cortados") fast on the corner bar and with no sweets accompanying the cafe. For this reason I haven't found too many sweet cafes to enjoy a large milk coffee with some cake in beautiful surroundings. Finally yesterday I visited Cup&Cake, a beautiful and tasty cafe in the quiet, but centric street Enric Granados, 145, just before the Street Diagonal.  And surely I will repeat the visit.

The place was spacious and beautifully decorated and the cupcakes + cafe were delicious! They also have a terrace where you can enjoy these sunny summer days. From 12 flavors of cupcakes my selection was Brownie. They have also some cheesecakes and sandwiches to order and all are home made with fresh products.

I warmly recommend this place if you are a fan of long coffee moments with a friend or reading a magazine. From their web page I found out they have another "Brunch&Cake" -place at the beginning of the same street. It might be also worth visiting in the brunch hour.

Cosy street of Enric Granados

Finally I have all Monocle 2012 issues

Yesterday I could finally complete all my Monocle 2012 Issues when I picked up a beautiful package from the post office. Why I want them all? Because in 2012 Monocle had a section called "A fresh look at the best of Spain" and throughout the year they introduced top 100 experiences from Spain under different categories; Design&Fashion, Food&Drink etc. The section was made in collaboration with Spanish tourist office and Monocle. I already had most of the issues, but as few were missing I could order them from Monocle's web shop.

A toast to this; an international publisher brings out something positive and innovative from Spain. Not only dull news about the crashing economy. Thank you for that!

I already fancied Monocle as a chic, interesting, well written magazine and now even more when saw its packaging. So well styled and branded product.

In the final issue (59) of 2012 there are Monocle's annual softie awards: a ranking of the world's top 30 softest super powers. Spain is 16th with the phrase:
"Things are not sunny in Spain these days but we love it anyway."
Indeed and I keep buying Monocle.

More plastic "all weather" shoes

As it is not clear whether it is sunny&warm or grayish&rainy it is better to stick with plastic shoes. Brazilian brand Melissa is perfect for that. Melissa designs and makes plastic shoes from recycled plastic in Brazil. When the shoes get broken and old you can recycle them as they are made from plastic. Practical.

Melissa does lot of collaboration with different designers. I think the most successful in the past has been with Vivienne Westwood (in 2008) and this years's collaboration with Jason Wu also looks great. I was a bit disappointed to the shoes designed by Karl Lagerfeld as an ice cream on the heels was not something I was expecting from the master. Well, maybe the shoes, or plastic shoes, are not the thing for K.Lagerfeld. Quite consolidating that not everything turns to gold although great designer designs it. A curiosity is the collaboration with Angry Birds...that is strange. I don't know whether the shoes are already a history thing or they will be in the future collection, but I would be interested to know what kind of shoes they created/will create.

I love the following pics from the Melissa Magazine. They are so candy.

My favorite Melissa Trippy shoes.

Model Jean+Jason Wu is also my favorite and it has lovely colors

I can't believe these 90's bags make a return! Gosh; I should really search for my mother's white plastic beach bag, whether it would be still in condition to be used. In fashion everything really returns sooner or later.

Melissa Incense+Karl Lagerfeld's ice cream shoes

If someone got excited here is Melissa's online shop.

Good news and bad news

The good news are that Sami Sykkö has returned as a blogger to Helsingin sanomat. Here is the well written, funny blog (only in Finnish, sorry): Sami Sykön tyylillä.

The bad news are the actual highly embarrassing situation where one of Mariekko's designer has actually copied one piece of folk art to be her print. We are speaking copying here and it is sad and scandalous to such a design house that Marimekko pretends to be. Well it has been that the designer Kristiina Isola was "inspired by" folk art piece created in 1963 by Maria Primatšenko, a renowned Ukrainian folk art painter. The similarity is obvious. Kristiina Isola, a dotter of Maija Isola (one of the most successful designer of Marimekko), has apologized and said she didn't thought of the copyrights, she just wanted to share the lovely feeling of the original illustration. Highly dull from a designer who probably doesn't like if hers or her mothers prints would be copied. Where is the professionalism and designers pride?

The print was in Marimekko's 2008 collection, so it is not on sale anymore, except some companies as Finnair have used the print to illustrate their airplanes...uups. Finnair is about to hide the print asap from its planes. To paint the planes all white.

At the moment Marimekko and the National Museum of Ukraine, to whom the original illustration belongs, are negotiating the next step, Maria Primatšenko's niece has said he doesn't want any compensation as in Ukraine they are violating the copyrights of his grandmother all the time and no one actually cares. Marimekko has also said to continue the collaboration with Kristiina Isola, which I don't know if it is stupid or noble. Apparently there exist already a lack of ideas and honesty and maybe might be a time to retirement for Kristiina Isola. That would be my opinion.

Maria Primatšenko's "A Rat on the Road"

Kristiina Isola's "Metsänväki"

Garments in Landscape by Satu Maaranen

Inspiring news; Satu Maaranen, fashion designer graduated from Aalto University, Finland has won this years Hyères Fashion Festival held in France. I had never heard about the competition, but apparently it is pretty appreciated in fashion scene. Job guaranteed if you even get to the final, not to mention winning the event.

Nice to hear a Finn has won an international competition and when I saw the clothes I surely understand why she was so successful. The clothes are gorgeous! Really beautiful color surfaces - landscapes as the designer's inspiration was. I am so happy that finally there is a young designer from Finland who uses colors, lots of colors in her clothes and that the clothes have a form and are not too shapeless! There a many appraised young designer's in Finland of course, but they all are pretty dull with the color palette (black, grey...) and really there has been none that I would like or even would understand why the mark would be appraised.

Satu Maaranen has been already collaborating with Marimekko during few years and this year's Spring/summer collection also includes clothes designed by her.

Congratulations for the prize and hopefully she doesn't completely vanish from Finland's clothing scene to the international markets!

Satu Maaranen with the clothes of her winning collection (photo; Sirpa Räihä, HS)

Photos from the catwalk of Hyères Fashion Festival (courtesy of Vogue Italy)

A print by Satu Maaranen and a dress from it, old season of Marimekko

Dresses by Satu Maaranen, S/S 2013 Marimekko

Rainy weeks

Sunny spring didn't last long, we are back to the cloudy rainy weather. Good time to have a glimpse to rubber boots/wellingtons on the market.

Hunter has this year lovely colors; I love the gloss mint boots. My first acquaintance to the brand Hunter came in 2010 when visiting New York. We travelled in March and it happened to be really rainy week in NY and all ladies, well almost all in the Manhattan, were wearing Hunters. And they looked great and surely kept the feet dry and warm. I almost bought a pair to me, but as the price was pretty high decided to fill up my luggage with some other stuff. Since then every year I check out the new colors and if they would have lowered the prices. Until now, nope, although the production has been moved partially to the Far East to lower the production costs. From 1856 until 2008 these iconic British boots were manufactured in Edinburgh. It is such a pity that so many successful brands can see as the only option to transfer the production to the Asia region.

A curiosity is that Hunter was also the manufacturer of the wellingtons for the army in the World War I and II. Wow. That must have been many, many boots.

This spring's new gloss colors, works well in the short model

Everyone surely finds a color they like from this selection

My Marimekko's "Suomu" rubber boots and these are made in ITALY!!!! Good stuff. 

I like the narrow design with high heels and leather detail on the upper part of the boot.

In 1960's Annika Rimala designed a print "Pikku Suomu" and 

it can be still found on this years spring collection of Marimekko. 

Marimekko always recycles classics in its collections.

Spring has arrived, again

Hopefully now it stays, as I am about to update my closet from winter to spring/summer clothes. Now would be a perfect time to make an inventory of what clothes I have, which ones I don't use etc. I'm not worried about the amount of textiles there is, I never have considered myself as a shopaholic, but to have an order and update of what I own. I am not going to follow any principles of limiting the amount of clothes, though might be interesting.

Hmmm, now when writing about it might be worth of trying the Project 333. From the blog Pitsikirja - a lace diary I learned about the Project 333 that is "a minimalist fashion challenge that invites you to dress with 33 items or less for 3 months". As a curiosity I could count my clothes to verify whether the amount of them is extensive, although I think not. Will see..

Well, for the first time the inventory came to my mind when I received a Moleskine Style Journal as a gift. First I thought what I should do with that, but now when having it it starts to be very useful. For example you can list all the sizes of your family&friends in order to know the right size of each brand when buying presents. One would avoid the stupid "what's your size" -calls. At the end very practical.

As a listing lover this kind of journal might work well, to have all stylish things under one covers.

As the Moleskine calendars this book also has stickers to point out different pages. Things to list on these pages would be favority Etsy -shops, vintage -shops in Barcelona etc. 

Another inventory would be to clear up all the piles of magazines, articles ripped off from different leaflets etc. and maybe, just maybe gather only the "important&useful" things up to the Style Journal.