@JacquieOtag

29.7.15

Look #3 | Finery

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If you're of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee as I am, you'll be familiar with the pitfalls of not having an ample bosom to lean on when choosing particular looks.

Enter: the collarbone.

Always one of my favourite areas to highlight, and this square neck cami from Finery London does the job just right.

2.7.15

Travel | Lagos, Nigeria

It hits you, every time. That gentle thud of heavy, sluggish, pulsing heat. The kind of heat that carries the sweat of hawkers, up since the crack of dawn. The kind of heat that wraps itself around the buildings perilously stacked against one another. The kind of heat, that clings on to the braids of women navigating the undulating streets.

The burst of colour overwhelms you. The clashing prints, tailored by local couturiers adorn their wearers, unwitting peacocks in a visual parade. Murals displaying adulations to the Most High, decorate the vehicles that dart through the city. The orange-red earth sticks veils everything in an even, light dusting.

It's the noise that gets you. The indelible horn of what seems to be a permanent traffic jam. Snatches of a conversation in the patois of a city in the tropics. East meets West in dialogues between vendors and buyers.You hear the distant sound of the Atlantic boring rivulets into the coastline where the Earth drifts away.

It's familiar, yet foreign. That heaving, pulsating, trembling heart continuing on, regardless.

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28.6.15

Food | Spinach and Sweet Potato Frittata Time

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What do you do on your days off work? If you're anything like me, you'll try your best to recreate a (hipster) brunch - which for me is anything with an avocado on top.

I scanned some recipes online and whilst most asked for cubed potatoes, I sliced mine thinly with a mandolin and didn't precook them. I also added some broccoli (the flowers and the heart) to this dish, which was so bloody good. Everyone knows that anything that looks like a miniature version of anything, in this case a tree, is basically wonderful.

I used:
8x eggs
handful of spinach
1 sweet potato
1/4 a head of broccoli
1/2 an onion
2x garlic
Olive oil & butter
salt, black pepper, paprika, nutmeg to taste

Shout out to frittatas for being that as long as you have eggs this'll be great type recipes!

26.6.15

Film Roll #1 | Part One

I bought a film SLR off a mate in March (a Canon AE-1) after getting a little fazed by the 'ease' of digital photography. Taking photos is a great skill of course, one that I'm still learning as I'm yet to develop the talent of making ordinary things look like art...

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The Tate Modern.

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A view of London from the Tate.

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24.6.15

Look at This #2

Another hump day, another barrage off cool shit off the internets.


- Tommy Ton, the Don Dadda of Streetstyle photography took some pretty sickening shots at this year's Men Collections. I've pretty much stopped reading streetstyle and fashun blogs, but I'm glad I got over myself an flicked through these. So good.


'I watched my ex fall in love with someone else on Facebook'. Yeah, this is as heartbreaking as the title suggests. This is a perfect write up of a particular situation, yet on a macro level illustrates yet another dimension of the millenial experience: our infinite timelines showing us falling in love, breaking up and moving on. Real feelz.

- Do you follow Petra Collins on Instagram? If not, why? Steadily squirting pepper spray into the male gaze, she's the shit and she's pro all-women. Here's her contribution to the 'What Lies Beneath' project. 


Happy perusing!

21.6.15

'I love it here'

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On a deceptively bright summer evening (yay for the Northern Hemisphere!) I popped over the Chez's new digs in Peckham. I still can't believe how Peckham's reputation has changed so much from my teenage years; once feared as one of London's gangland strongholds, it's now full of artschool hipsters tripping on happy pills and super trendy creative types.

Meh, it'll always be the place where I used to beg mum to buy me Jamaican Patties after long, long Saturdays of food shopping, where big baskets of pungent foreign (sometimes alive) ingredients lined the streets.

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Chez did her makeup using her super professional lighting and I skulked around her bedroom taking photos of her stuff.

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After a long amble around the streets where we searched for somewhere to eat - how hard can it be to find dinner at 10:50pm!?!? - we found a nice little Dim Sum place.

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We ordered endless Dim Sum and beers and caught up on work, boys and clothes because apparently we're teenage girls parading as grown ups.

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We finally left after we got kicked out at midnight for a night of dancing and debauchery.

10.6.15

Look #2 | Biker Dreams

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I'm not going to lie, the sever delay in summer tempartures here hasn't got me too peeved because I get to wear my leather biker jacket (that one day will have to be prised from my back surgically) and my pointy ankle boots.