The Gardener Collection in Liberty

Liberty’s have a great selection so get down there and check it out - you’ll be just in time for Mothers Day!  Don’t worry if you can’t make it down to Liberty’s, I will be adding new pieces from The Gardener Collection to our online range - there will be some lovely new bangles and earrings that are just perfect for Spring.

Suzy A & Manuele by our cabinet in Liberty

The lovely Manuele from Liberty’s is going to be around to help you try on as much A. M. as you want!

Thanks, Susie x

Paris in the Spring!

(it’s cold, but lovely and sunny)

It’s Paris Fashion Week again. The days are quite long, from 8AM to 8PM. Having to speak French, Italian, Japanese etc so my brain hurts a bit. Day two today and a really busy day so it went very quickly. Lots of Japanese buyers to keep us busy. The stand looks nice and we’ve lovely new collections so all in all, I’m pretty pleased.

Buyers at the show

New collections

Just had Sushi with some French friends so I’m all frenched out. Dying to chat in English again! I’ll report in properly with all the news when I get back to London.

Alex

Only a few days to go until London Fashion Weekend! Control yourselves please…

This season it’s being held at Somerset House on the Strand… Perfectly grand surroundings for such amazing fashion goodies!  We’ll be bringing loads of brand new stock at a reduced price and some bargain pieces starting from just £20!!

Thursday 25th Feb 5-10pm

Friday 26th Feb 11-10pm

Saturday 27th Feb 9.30-7pm

Sunday 28th Feb 9.30-6pm

There is a small charge to enter LFW-END,  it’s so worth it tho!  Last year the girls at Alex Monroe HQ grabbed some lovely bargains.  Please check out the event web-site for all the details and some examples of what’s on offer :

http://www.londonfashionweekend.co.uk/

I can tell you now, that we will be bringing plenty of BEE’S!…

...A swarm of silver bee's waiting for fashion weekend

Please pop by and say hello, Suzy A and the girls will be on stand to help and advise.

See you there,

Susie x

We originally launched the range as a capsule collection at Liberty in November last year, which was a complete instant sell out! It mainly consisted of more dressy pieces, which were perfect just before all those Christmas parties, as anyone who saw, or the lucky few ladies that own pieces will know!

Alex has now built and expanded the range, so there are more wearable ‘everyday’ pieces, but this does mean more choice, and therefore more difficult choices to make……

Myself and Suzy A are working at the show, but making the stand look good has been very much a group effort, so thank you to everyone involved. Here are some pics:

Our stand.

As the new collection has a distinct glamorous and slightly gothic feeling, we really wanted to capture this, and set the scene on our stand.  To do this we needed lots of props, and luckily Alex’s friend Carol is an absolute genius with antiques so she found us lots of amazing pieces…..

Little pictures, glass decanter, peacock feathers and candlesticks....

A lovely old Chinese clock, candlesticks, and Carol even managed to find the perfect chairs on the street!

And I suppose I better tell you about the jewellery too!

A real box of treasures!

Alex has really created two collections in one, with  rich gold Peacock feathers contrasted against jet black Crow feathers.

We have plated the Crow pieces with Ruthenium, which is actually from the Platinum family of metals. It’s an amazing finish, a really strong black colour and almost iridescent in places - perfect for glossy Crow feathers!

London Fashion Week gives us the opportunity to show our buyers all of our collections, so they can pick the pieces they want to have in-store.  Yesterday was really busy, and we took new orders from Indian Summer, EcOne, Madeleine Hamilton and Fenwick.  We also had some nice chats with the girls from KJ’s Laundry, Cerise and Austique, who all said the jewellery was flying out, which is great.

Orders placed at the show will be going into stores around June, so I’m afraid you will have to wait until then to see the pieces in the flesh.  We may launch a few pieces from the collection on-line before then, so watch this space….

For more sneak-preview pictures of ‘The Peacock and the Crow’ check out our Facebook fan page.

The stand is starting to get busy so I better say bye for now! Emma and Suzy A x x

]]> http://www.alexmonroe.com/blog/2010/02/london-fashion-week-february-2010/feed/ http://www.alexmonroe.com/blog/2010/02/marmalade/ http://www.alexmonroe.com/blog/2010/02/marmalade/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:28:09 +0000 amonroe http://www.alexmonroe.com/blog/2010/02/marmalade/ Marmalade is one of the best things in the world, but there are a few rules;

1/ you have to make it yourself,

2/ eat at least a jar a week.

Curiously enough, although Japan is my food heaven, I’ve never had nice marmalade in Japan, so I’m posting this on my Japanese blog as well. Hmm, might have to ask Mayo to translate… (have a look here)

Anyway, it’s marmalade making time for the sad old  stay-at-homes (that’s me), so I spent last night boiling up my second batch. And may I say it’s one of the best ever. I used my Mum’s recipe, easy and failsafe. Here it is with translation into plain English…

Recipe: 3lbs Seville oranges, 2 Lemons (plus anything else? Grapefruit, lime etc??) 6lbs Marmalade sugar. 1/ Scrub the fruit, put in a pan with 6 pints of water, boil for 2 hours, go watch some t.v., cool. 2/ Cut the fruit in half and remove the insides, pith and all, put insides into a muslin bag, tie it up. Cut up the peel thinly. Put peel and bag back into the liquid and boil for half an hour, more t.v. Cool. Remove the bag and squeeze it out as best you can. Chuck the rest away. 3/ Add the sugar, stir until dissolved, then boil very fast for about 15 mins or until the liquid begins to set when you drip it on a cold plate. Turn off the heat then leave to cool for 20 mins. Then pour into jam jars.

Boiling it up

The finished product!

It doesn’t get any better than that!

Alex

Little 15 competition

We did a great press breakfast at Harrods this morning. All the gorgeous glam press girls and nibbles and chat. I looked suitably scruffy as usual, eating all the nibbles I could get, and stayed around for the ‘Meet the expert’ day. Bought some fab chocs for Valentines day from  Holdsworth. After trying a few (!) I couldn’t resist. Besides, they’re hand made in Derbyshire. We like hand made in the UK. Yummie.

Holdsworth chocs in Harrods

Daniella behind the counter at Harrods

Stopped off at Panter and Hall on my way back and bought this print. Couldn’t resist it.

(’Gus’ by Helen Fay)

Just a quick note to let you know that we’ll be doing a FAB Trunk show at Little 15 in the city on Tueseday 9th February (just in time for Valentine’s Day). We’ll be there from 12 ’till 3, but the Special Exclusive pieces will be there all day. Jutta is in charge at Little 15 (we’re old friends and she’s always chatting on our blog), so whatever time of day, pop along if you can and say ‘Hi’. We all take time to put together these amazing one off pieces for our trunk shows, our on-line trunk show shop has been going really well, but there will be a whole new selection of pieces in Little 15! Oh yes, if the boyf. has trouble knowing what to choose, send him this link of Emma on how to buy a gift…..

Little 15 trunk show

Rakhi came in this morning and said she saw our jewellery on ‘Material Girl’, that new series on the bbc; “Drama about dreams, love, clothes and how we all use them to run away from who we are and towards who we should be …” so we thought we’d do a little guide to AM jewellery on the box. I loved the one when Emma was asked for an interview on ITN, about how to buy your loved one a piece of jewellery. Very apt with Vally day looming. Get your boyfs to check it out, I think it’s great. Also we love Emilia Fox. And we love Silent witness. And she always wears our stuff. Keep your eyes peeled and let us know, we recently spotted Annie Lennox on Jonathan Ross, Angela Griffiths on ‘Angela and friends’, Gabby Logan on an advert for Five Live?

And Jo Whiley wears AM all the time! Let us know if you spot anyone else!

Emma in ITN

Silent Witness

Material Girl

Cold Berlin from the plane

Silly me just took a thin top and light jacket, and it was -13 degrees at night! My bones have only just started to warm up. But I loved Berlin. The main point of my trip was to see the Adamsky Caramia girls Kristin and Monica, check out the show we were doing, and also to check out Berlin. I got the 7a.m. flight out (sooo early I treated myself to BA posh class), dropped off my things at the Ellington and hit the show. I was really impressed. The show looked great, was packed with buyers and full of interesting stuff. Our stand looked best and the girls had displayed my jewellery in a lovely bird cage. It looked great. K and M were lovely, of course. I hung about for a while then headed off to check out the city. Out for supper with the girls, very nice Italian (Monica is from the South of Italy).
Friday off out into the city for a bit more research. KaDeWe and Gallerie Lafayette etc. A bit of sight seeing.

Brandenburg Arch

Back to the show for an hour or two, then off to check  out some of our stockists; LaLa on Mulackstrasse was a super place near Mitte, then on to Konk which is another beautiful shop in Kleine hamburg strasse. They made a great little shopping guide to the area, so make this your first port of call and it’ll help you navigate this lovely boutiquey area. I bought some bits and bobs for the kids. Check out the amazing in’t veld choccie shop!

Pressies for the girls

By this time I needed some serious warming up so I did it German style with a massive slice of cake.

Coffee and cake

Really pleased to see some of the lovely shops that stock us in Berlin (stockists info). A quick nip to a couple of museums then off to the airport. Easyjet this time. Back to the real world eh?

Emma cutting the cake.

Saturday PM; Emma’s Birthday party. Karaoke in Clerkenwell. Need I say more?

Me and Suzy A's Nigel. I love Karaoke!

Sunday; Nieces confirmation. I’m not a big Church goer but I’ll always step up if I’m needed, and I was. My niece Edie needed to be given away for her confirmation so me and the kids went up and did the business, all followed by a slap-up lunch at Lemonia in Primrose Hill. Nice because the Bishop did the service.

The Bishop and all

Us lot in the church

Monday; Mayo had a bit of fun working on a new collection…

Mayo working at her bench

Tuesday; Negotiate new lease on workshop. All went OK.
Wednesday; Big New Year meeting here. All very positive. Big expansion plans which I’ll talk about soon. Treat curry for lunch! Cinema with mates in the evening. The Road. It’s seriously depressing so only see it if you’re in an OK mood.
Thursday; Teaching at St. Martin’s. I love it there. The students are fab and sooo creative and it’s just great. Teaching a Charm, and a Ring project. My nephew Mario came round and we ended up meeting a few mates in the pub, should have learned by now, too much too late…….
Friday; Headache. Teaching at St. Martin’s. Still love it. Got our samples ready for Germany and sent them off. Visit from Southwark health and safety (yurgh).
Saturday; Day, time to think about tidying up my shed. I lit a fire and pottered all morning. Did a bit in the garden too.

A fire in my shed.

Last day for the Turner exhibition at Tate Britain. All very nice. I hold the world speed record for exhibitions, I managed the whole thing in under 10 mins. Perfect.
Monday; TV  company visited. Want to do a documentary with me talking about wills…. Not sure about it but would be great to get a will done.
Tuesday; Season strategy meeting with Harrods. All very exciting. They want to really step things up so we’re scheduling loads of great deliveries throughout the year. I think we’ll more than double our stock, space and sales. Can’t wait to get going on it all! But had to; Connie had exams at Alleyns School so I had to drop her off really early then whizz from Harrods to pick her up, Libby’s teacher called saying she was ill so raced over to get her, organised babysitters and wasn’t back at work ‘til 5. Ah well, it’s going to be a late one tonight!
Just saw that Susie has put the new pages on the web-site. One for ‘Valentines’, and a great new ‘Trunk show’ page. Only one available of each of these pieces!

Off to Berlin tomorrow, for ‘Premium’, part of Berlin Fashion week. Looks like it’s that time again….Berlin, London, Paris, then Tokyo . Doesn’t time fly?!

Alex