\\\ IF YOU SEEK STYLE... ///

Look no further than your Vogue Paris archive.

A selection of Vogue Paris editorials I had on my wall last year in university halls. I'm posting because it's THAT time again. Tomorrow, Mum and I are driving the peasant-wagon back down to Leeds with my enormous and totally un-studenty collection essentials for the year; 4x3 metre hot pink vintage Iranian carpet, 2 clothes rails, sewing machine, bed canopy, hat collection, papier mache elephant the size of a small armchair and my work-in-progress Bestival costume. There might be a duvet and a kettle in there somewhere...maybe...

I suddenly feel very grown-up. No, grown-up is the wrong word; I feel as if I have now crossed the line between adolescent frivolity and adult responsibility; in short, the boring bits. The bits with names like 'Gas bill' and 'quarterly rent installment' and 'home insurance.' Now, if I want to use the internet, I have to not only pay for it, but SET IT UP. (Last time this happened it took Mum and I around 4 days and many (not cheap) hours on the phone to India to find out what an 'AirPort 14-bit key' was and why we couldn't find ours.) If I want to watch TV, I've got to buy a Virginmedia megawhopper package and then spend another 4 days working out which little wire goes in where. It's hardly the first time I've lived away from home; heck, I spent four months in a North London bedsit when I was working as a fashion intern at 18 and managed to go the whole time without meeting any of the crackheads on the stairs. And somehow, sleeping in the jungle on the Burmese border, or out in the bush in Zimbabwe whilst an elephant drinks from your shower-water bag feet away seems a breeze compared to battling with a student landlord over a broken bed, back in the real world.

No matter, I digress. What I have to remember, is that while the rest of the adult population trudges through similar waves of mind-numbing admin that comes with a 'civilised' existence as I do, many of them don't have things like multiple 21st birthday parties to attend, fascinating English literature reading lists and London Fashion Week ticket requests to distract them. So I'll count myself blessed, pay my gas bill, and shut up.