Mas: The Notting Hill Carnival

The party has started. The festival season is well underway (and thankfully ongoing,) with the desolate demise of Reading and Leeds Festival this weekend, BUT with that brings our favourite event of the solstice – yes, Notting Hill Carnival is commencing this bank holiday weekend with a prodigious fashion paroxysm and is set to be one of the most stylish and fashion accelerative yet. The largest street festival in Europe and once started in 1964 to celebrate the abolition of the slave trade it is now an alliance of social solidarity over colourful sights and sounds. Take note the fashion conscious, this is one you will not want to miss!

The Notting Hill Carnival Heritage
Behind the Mask...

Vibrant Days and Vibrant Nights
Inspirational Palette

Here at The Stellar Boutique we’ve been keeping an eye out this season and if our predictions are correct, (our eyes never deceive us,) it’s going to be a inequitable concoction of acid house and neon tropics showcasing the best of the best nineties grunge a la Cara Delevigne and Alexa Chung and combining it with a traditional vibrantly flamboyant and intensive carnival palette. The emphatic Caribbean festival sees the streets of West London come alive every year with over twenty miles of vibrant costumes and surreal fashions with this traditional aspect established from the very roots that brought the festival to life, with attendees dressing up in costumes that satirized the European fashions of their former masters. And what exactly do I wear? We hear you ask! Think the utmost sparkle, the brightest of colours and the most outlandish of the prints mixed with vintage denim for a hint of subtlety!

The Notting Hill Carnival Wrangler AfterParty 2012
Mario Testino for Vogue, December 2008
Fashion Fantasy in Harpers Bazaar, August 2009
Feel the Ora

Still stuck for inspiration? View The Stellar Collection here.

We've earned our Carnival stripes...
They call it mellow yellow...

All hail style from the streets

At The Stellar Boutique we bode a massive importance on our favourite street style images from the past and the present in regards to us sourcing the most innovative and on trend pieces from an array of novel and edgy up and coming brands and designers for our lovely customers. We love to watch our customers interpret key trends and make them their own to make sure we always get it right first time and play a huge part in this trickled transformation! With this we have decided to present to you an ode to street style, an online shine if you will, of collated images from the likes of Tumblr and Pinterest encapsulating our favourite trends of this season.

View our new fashion collection here at The Stellar Boutique.

Aztec a la Discotheque
Don't Look Back In Anger
XY Androgyny Forever
Neutral Ain't Boring
Ruffling Feathers
Vintage Nights
Smells Like Teen Spirit

Hand of Fatima

We’ve been seeing this symbol everywhere right now, there is a Fatima hand frenzy in the fashion world!

The hand of Fatima, also known as Hamsa, origins are unknown but it predates Christianity. A universal sign of protection, it is a talisman symbol and those who wear it believe it will protect them from harm against evil forces and bring them goodness, abundance, fertility, luck and good health.

It has evolved to become regarded as a sacred and respected symbol in Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shamanism, Jain beliefs and now in the new religion of Fashion!

We’re seeing beaded bangles, long pendant necklaces and the symbol on boho bags all about town. where did the trend come from? Who knows…. in these unsafe times are we superstitiously looking for protection or are we just following a trend some celebrity started by accident? The later is more likely we think, but it looks so good we don’t care!

View our hand of Fatima jewellery here and Fatima hand decorated boho bags here

A retrospectively vintage season

It’s been a hell of a season in the wonderful world of fashion and here at The Stellar Boutique we couldn’t help but take a moment to appreciate the absolute inundation of vintage fashion inspiration on the Spring Summer and Autumn Winter catwalks alike. In a fad of revival, all things vintage seem to be fundamental in both catwalk and street style alike. We’ve been utterly bombarded with nostalgia this season with the revival of Mod culture, monochrome and op art from the sixties a la Moschino, candy stripes at the likes of Dolce & Gabbana (the raffia bag is to die for,) and checks at Chanel and Louis Vuitton, alongside Paco Rabane’s swinging sixties on the Autumn Winter 2013 catwalk.

Vintage Mod
Chanel Spring Summer 2013
Acne Spring Summer 2013

We are absolutely loving the reincarnation of nineties, with the phenomenon of androgyny, dishevelment and the most portent – grunge. An anti-fashion and a trend that lived and died on the streets, the more unkempt the better, think Nirvana, a catalyst for this trend alongside the likes of Marc Jacobs acting as a key facilitator for this fashion movement. This season we’ve seen designers revisit their own archives to portray their own pre-eminence ready for both Spring Summer and this coming Autumn Winter 2013, with the likes of Nicole Farhi, Rihard Nicoll and Chloe taking inspiration from the asexual grunge spectacle of the nineties, combining the sensibilities of the x and y wardrobe this season. Apprehensive? We were too until we paid attention to our favourite fashionistas Mary-Kate Olsen and Cara Delevingne, carrying off nineties grunge like it’s nobody’s business.

Marc Jacobs Grunge 1992
Kurt Cobain 1992
Mulberry Autumn Winter 2013

Contrary to this we have some serious style envy from the orientalism on the catwalks of Stella McCartney and Marni with inspiration taken from the genius that was Paul Poiret, seen as the solo individual who pointed the way to the modern era.  Ranked among the most exceptional contributors in fashion history, he was not only an avant-garde couturier, but a visionary, a man who was prepared to take many risks, producing garments of orient-inspired costume in which the trend reached an apex during the early twentieth century, using kimono sleeves made expressively due to the avant-garde art movement, inspired by the Far Eastern costumes of the ballet Russes.

Emilio Pucci Spring Summer 2013

Lucky for us here at The Stellar Boutique, melancholy is here to stay, with Autumn Winter shaping up to be a perdition of a vintage celebration. We see designers look through their own previous collections for inspiration – think Christian Dior’s ‘New Look,’ seventies dogtooth and Hitchcock femme fatales at Gucci and Temperley. And finally, we’ve saved the best until last, we see the merriment of British heritage with Alexander McQueen’s Elizabethan collection and anarchistic punk at Topshop Unique and Versace for the Vunk label. Think heavy duty with leather and studded embellishment spikes, dominatrix patent and bondage slashes to reveal flashes of flesh, leaving it all to the imagination. Unassuming is no longer standard with traditional tartans, oversized furs and dishevelled leopard prints. An inconspicuous fall? Chances are “pretty vacant!”

Punk Editorial Feature with Agyness Deyn
Skinnies and Dr Marten Street Style
Vivienne Westwood Punk Retrospective
Moda Operandi Givenchy Autumn Winter 2013