Oh, I really enjoy the Japan Centre on Kensington High Street, granted it's all the way near the palace at the end of it and is easy to miss. They have a really good restaurant and cafe with proper matcha served as in Japan, none of this watered down nonsense. I also like the exhibition space in the basement (think it's currently about Japanese architecture). Lovely little bits in the shop section as well, sadly most of which I usually can't take home. But, otherwise, yeah, it's a pretty weird shopping area, too much heavy traffic to feel like a pedestrian area, not very inspiring shops. Probably serves the people who live around there well enough, there's a few charity shops in the side streets, I think it was the Royal Trinity one that had good items but they were priced accordingly. Studio Nicholson seemed to donate there.
I know Flo, I overdid it, I was surprisingly fine the day after returning but I totally vegged out the day after that. But as much as the internet says everything closing in August in Paris was overstated these days, everywhere I went to was pretty dead, or worse, filled with very loud American tourists (I'm not sure my annoyance with them is based on current geopolitics or that they just seemed to be the main mass of tourists and they were just numerous, probably a combination thereof). I need to figure out how to share images, I moved cloud provider and I'm not sure how it shares in a public setting.
Vintage does seem to be going through a weird price inflation moment which means anything of age is going to specialist sellers. I think the younger generation that purposefully wore secondhand have sort of outgrown the stage where it was just the super cheap stuff that came with a certain clout for being obviously old and worn and are moving onto a new version with proper vintage clothes where they look a little less bedraggled but still obviously wearing not new clothes.
Fashion news, Proenza Schouler has appointed a new designer, I wasn't aware they were looking for someone, I just assumed they'd design both there and for Loewe. Guess not, unknown to me designer, Rachel Scott, her own brand is Diotima, my first quick impression was bit 'eh', ignoring the waffle about French existentialism and post-structuralism, not sure I'm seeing much Caribbean style in her work, but I'm not an expert on that (I'm guessing the mentioned nuance is lost on me), but she seems to have a fondness for Harris Tweed so that puts her in the good book for now.