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ISSUE 6 • SUMMER ISSUE “STYLING YOUR CURVES FASHIONING YOUR LIFE”
THE MONEY ISSUE £3.95
TRAVEL: BUDGET VS BLOWOUT THE RISE OF THE MULTI TASKER
SUMMER FASHION TRENDS TOP TIPS FOR MANAGING YOUR MONEY LEARN HOW TO NEVER DIET AGAIN
Plus
Denise Bidot chats to SLiNK Make your own beauty products, WIN a makeover day + discount offers www.slinkmagazine.com | 1
EDITOR’S CONTENTS LETTER
Fear of Finance.................................................................................................................................................4 Financial Phrases............................................................................................................................................5 The Rise of The Multi-Tasker...................................................................................................................6
Get in touch! We love hearing your thoughts and feedback. Have gorgeous summer x
New York Calling..........................................................................................................................................72
Rivkie Baum Editor in Chief SLiNK magazine editor@slinkmagazine.com www.twitter.com/slinkmagazine www.facebook.com/slinkmagazine
Culture.................................................................................................................................................................76
The Upside to Austerity................................................................................................................................7 Summer Loving................................................................................................................................................8 Burn Baby Burn............................................................................................................................................18 How I stopped hating my body in just one day.......................................................................20 NY/LON..............................................................................................................................................................22 Money Vs Fashion........................................................................................................................................28 Simply Be Store Launch..........................................................................................................................29 Trends / Shopping.......................................................................................................................................30 The Fashion Olympics...............................................................................................................................42 Your Money of Your Life...........................................................................................................................48 “It Cost How Much?!”...............................................................................................................................49 XXX........................................................................................................................................................................50 Accessories......................................................................................................................................................56 Denise Bidot Chats to SLiNK...............................................................................................................60 Hair & Beauty..................................................................................................................................................64 Natural Beauty...............................................................................................................................................69 Tried and Tested............................................................................................................................................70 Music: Kreesha Turner..............................................................................................................................70 Travel.....................................................................................................................................................................78 Food..................................................................................................................................................................... 80 Motoring ............................................................................................................................................................90
THE SLiNK TEAM: FRONT PAGE CREDITS: Photography: Joseph Sinclair Model : Grace @ Hughes Models Hair : Simon Webster assisted by Alice Gazagnes & Phil Gilbert Make Up : Lauren Baker Styling : Rivkie Baum T-shirt dress : H&M Necklace : Sam Ubhi Gold Cuff : Stylists Own
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Rivkie Baum : Editor in Chief editor@slinkmagazine.com
Katie Antoniou : Culture Editor culture@slinkmagazine.com
Samantha Mire : Design samanthamire@hotmail.com
FEATURES:
Ginny Weeks : Beauty/Travel/Motoring ginny@slinkmagazine.com Ashanti Jason : Accessories Editor ashanti@slinkmagazine.com Simon Henbery : Food Editor Head Chef at the Chelsea Brasserie food@slinkmagazine.com Stephen Geraghty : Food Photography www.stephengeraghty.co.uk
Jeffrey Michael www.jeffreymichaeldesign.co.uk Willa Gebbie : Illustrations www.willagebbie.com Claire Kearns : Illustrations www.curlyc.co.uk Kellie Brown : New York Calling www.thefatshioninsider.blogspot.com
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W
elcome to Issue 6, the Money Issue. As I write this, Facebook’s joined the stock exchange, Greece is teeteriing on the edge and me? Well I have to curb my coffee/going out/ shopping habit if I want to have any hope of saving each month and have taken to car booting my possessions to make some spare cash. It seems that we are all battening down the hatches. From multi-tasking jobs, ebaying and swishing as times get tighter on our wallets, we are becoming more and more creative about how we boost our incomes and in the spirit of this, SLiNK dedicates this issue to how we spend, understand and interact with our money. We have some gorgeous fashion stories and trend edited shopping pages to entice you with as well as some fab discount codes and money saving prizes. There is also great beauty, tried and tested treatments and for the super saver we explore how to make your own beauty products. As usual, Simon rustles an absolute feast in the kitchen, and I can’t wait to try out this issues recipes! Studio 52 are offering SLiNK a lucky reader an amazing makeover day and portfolio pictures absolutely free! Finally for all those that joined us at issue 5 and supported our first print and digital download, we salute you and are pleased to see you back again, we hope you enjoy this issue too.
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FEAR OF FINANCE I
have a confession to make. I am completely money averse. That is to say, the cash itself is fine. I like what I can do with it, but banks are to me what milk is to people who suffer from lactose intolerance. They make me feel queasy and cross, and I generally avoid them at all costs. I don’t open my statements or check my balance. I don’t own a credit card because that would mean having to understand how credit actually works. I once left a letter from the tax office lying around unopened for so long that the rebate it contained, expired. On the rare occasion that I do have to speak to someone about money, I don’t really hear the words. I hear little blips and squeaks, like a fax machine with sums thrown in. Like some dreadful surrendered wife, I entrust our joint account, and all the gubbins to do with it, to my husband, because I think he’s better at it than me. I tell myself I’m too busy to get my head around our finances but the brutal truth is… I’m scared. There. I said it. My name is Freya Hardy and I am a great big woman-child. Well, I have decided enough is enough. I am 31 years old. I have two children and a very grown up mortgage. The thought of my daughters growing up with the idea that money is something HE understands and SHE doesn’t, is more than I can bare. I must conquer my fear of finance, for me; for them; for womankind.
I suggest to Piper that I am thinking of digitalizing everything to ‘cut down on waste paper’. Piper calls me on it, explaining that this is a bad idea for anyone who is as money averse as I am. ‘That will just make them much easier to ignore’, she says, sensibly, ‘If they are there, in real life, you’re more likely to actually look at them. Gather them all together and open them one by one. Have a friend handy if it helps.’ When push comes to shove I can’t face any of my friends discovering how completely childlike I am when it comes to bank stuff, so I decide to go it alone. It is a gruelling experience. It’s a long time since I’ve seen this many numbers gathered together in one place and I soon find myself fighting the urge to throw the statements in the shredder (where they belong), and go to the pub (where I do). I don’t know what makes me decide to soldier on. Probably it is the thought of my daughters, aged twentysomething, marrying some patronising, pompous, sports-car-driving stuff shirt just so they’ve got someone to pay the bills, because mummy never taught them how to fend for themselves. Before very long all the statements are open, and now I just have to read them, which leads me very nicely to the next bit of advice Piper has to offer.
READ THEM
I definitely can’t do this alone, so I mention my ‘quest’ to a couple of journalist friends, one of whom works in the financial sector. She very kindly hooks me up with Piper Terrett, a freelance financial journalist. Piper is also the author of a book entitled; ‘The Frugal Life, How to Spend Less and Live More’. There is a picture of her gardening on her website. No pinstripe suit, no hint of horns, or hooves! I’ve found her, the Wind Beneath My Wings, the Yoda to my Luke Skywalker. I contact Piper and ask her to think of a few things I could do to begin taking back control of my money. Her advice is spectacularly simple.
It’s one thing to open bank statements. It’s quite another, I discover, to actually absorb the information contained within them. At this point I draft in my husband, who has been begging me to sit down with him and go over the family finances for months. We split down our monthly costs into two categories, compulsory and discretionary. It is these discretionary costs that really scare me, because I know I am responsible for most of them and this makes me feel hugely guilty. I notice a few things immediately. The words ‘Beijing’ and ‘Mr India’, the names of our two favourite fast food establishments, appear far, far too often. When I tot up the figures it turns out we’re spending over £100 a month on takeaways, which is outrageous in anyone’s money.
OPEN BANK STATEMENTS
KEEP A SPENDING DIARY
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‘Your statements can only tell you so much’ Piper says, ‘Keep a spending diary for a couple of weeks. Write down everything you spend, even the tiny purchases you’d normally make without thinking. This will tell you where exactly the cash in your pocket is going’. This stage of my quest means facing some rather unpleasant facts about myself. The first being that I smoke (yes, I know – revolting), and I smoke more than I think I do. You may not believe me but it’s far easier to ignore your three, ok fiveday-habit if you don’t have to write down the actual financial cost, which is at least as arse-cringingly horrendous as the smell. The fags will have to go. The second is my addiction to haberdashery. I love sewing and tell myself that these little purchases (a bit of ribbon here, a length of fabric there) are ok because they feed the soul. The truth, however, is that I need to use my stash up before I buy more stuff. It’s not as bad as the smoking obviously, I am unlikely to die from a sewing related illness, but still.
MAKE CHANGES ‘Budget’, as far as I’m concerned, may as well be a four letter word, but budget I must, and so the husband and I settle in for a frank discussion. To say the conversation is tense would be a massive understatement; it’s a full blown argument. Mostly because he insists on uttering phrases like ‘let me explain this to you in a way you’ll understand.’ At one point I glance down and realise that, for the last 15 minutes or so, I have been swinging my legs back and forth and puffing my cheeks in and out in the manner of a nine year old girl. No wonder he’s speaking to me like I’m a child. My body language is saying ‘Bovvered, do I look bovvered?’ So I take steps to consciously adjust it. I stop fidgeting; I sit still and forward and start actually engaging with the spreadsheet in front of me. And, amazingly, it’s ok. Once we start talking about what we can do to address the Black Hole of Calcutta that is our monthly curry expenditure, I begin to feel much better because I can see a way through this. I realise I am no longer part of the problem. I am part of the solution.
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by Freya Hardy / Illustration by Willa Gebbie
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SUMMER LOVING
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Photography: Joseph Sinclair Models : Grace @ Hughes Models Adam @ Nevs Grace wears: Tribal Maxi by Style369.com Neckalce : Sam Ubhi Bangle : New Look Adam Wears: Tee by Mark Thomas Taylor Jeans : Models Own Sunglasses : Trussardi
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DISCOVER FASHION & FLAWLESS FIT |9 GET 20% OFF YOUR NEXT ORDER WHEN YOU ENTER CODE “SLINK20”www.slinkmagazine.com AT THE CHECKOUT.
HOW I STOPPED HATING MY BODY IN JUST ONE DAY One woman tells how she cured her dieting habit and got her life and her self-esteem back.
“There’s a perception that being overweight or obese is automatically unhealthy, and that being thin is better, and it just isn’t true,” says scientist and health consultant Angela Meadows, founder of Never Diet Again UK. “Things like fitness and self-esteem have a surprisingly big impact on our health, and both of those are much more attainable that permanent weight loss. Scientific evidence just doesn’t support dieting as a means to improve health. Dieting does so much damage to our bodies that it actually shortens our lifespan.” Based instead on a health-focussed approached called Health At Every Size®, Never Diet Again UK is running a series of one-day workshops around the country. Called ‘Break the cycle: get off the dieting rollercoaster once and for all’, the workshops are designed to help women with a history of yo-yo dieting and compulsive eating normalise their relationship with food, improve their self-esteem and body image, and pursue lifestyle changes that actually deliver on their promises. More and more health professionals worldwide are switching to a Health At Every Size® approach. Dr Lucy Aphramor, an NHS specialist dietician and an honorary research fellow at the Applied Research Centre of Health and Lifestyles Interventions at the University of Coventry, is a strong proponent of the non-diet pathway to health. Dr Aphramor said, “The harmful effects of dieting have been well documented. A Health At Every Size approach provides an effective way of helping everybody to improve health and wellbeing safely and sensibly. It is very encouraging to see the Break the Cycle 10 | www.slinkmagazine.com
Seminars promoting a HAES approach and helping people to find positive ways of relating to food and their bodies.” Recent workshop participant Lauren Bartley said, “I was a bit nervous about attending. I wasn’t sure about the whole body acceptance thing – how could I ever accept my body at this size? But being in a room with all those other women who were going through exactly the same thing, I started to realise that it couldn’t be all of us, we couldn’t all be not good enough. It was one of the most empowering experiences of my life. “I can’t believe how many years I’ve spent punishing myself and hating myself and feeling like a complete failure just because I couldn’t lose weight and keep it off. Everyone says it’s so easy. Just eat less and move more. If we couldn’t do it then obviously we just weren’t trying hard enough. But when we got into groups and started looking at all the diets we’d tried – we just started laughing. You name it, we’d tried it. Every diet, every book, every programme. Even the crazy ones that deep down we knew couldn’t really work – we were just so desperate, if any one promised us weight loss, we’d pay anything, try anything. But none of it worked. Finally I understand what dieting does to our bodies, why it wasn’t my fault I couldn’t stick to a diet. And the stuff we learned about weight and health… I just couldn’t believe it. There’s just so much science to show that weight isn’t even that important, and that dieting doesn’t work, and it makes you feel worse about yourself, and it actually makes your health worse, and everyone’s still telling us that we need to lose weight. I was really shocked. And then I felt angry.” In the weeks since she attended the workshop, Lauren has taken the leap and thrown out her diet books. And using the tools she learned on the workshop she has ‘cured’ her food cravings practically overnight. “It’s as if a light switch has been flicked,” she says. “I just don’t seem to crave chocolate anymore. I can’t believe it.”
Angela agrees. “I kind of miss dessert to be honest. I hardly ever want it, and even when I do, I’m usually full already from my main course. Once I would have eaten it anyway. ‘It’s a special occasion, it’s my birthday, we’re at a restaurant, I’ll start again tomorrow.’ Now that I let myself eat what I want, I just don’t want that stuff any more.” “If you’d told me that I’d learn to actually like my body in just one day, this body, I would never have believed it,” says Lauren. “But it’s true. I’m so much happier now. And now that exercise isn’t punishment anymore, I’m doing much more of it. I’d forgotten how much I love to dance. All those years trying to fight my body, and all I needed to do was to trust it. It’s like being released from captivity. It’s been completely life changing.”
NEVER DIET AGAIN UK Break the Cycle: Get off the dieting rollercoaster once and for all. Choose from day course options to a 5 day retreat. For more information, dates and cost: Email: info@neverdietagain.co.uk for more information or visit our website: www. neverdietagain.co.uk Gift certificates available.
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N
ine in ten women are unhappy with their bodies. Old women, young women, women of all different weights and backgrounds. The vast majority of us have been on at least one diet, and most have tried dozens, but nothing seems to work for more than a few weeks or months. But is it even necessary? New research is showing more and more that weight is not as important to health as we previously thought.
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Bra and Knicker Set - Ann Summers Ring - Alexander McQueen Stockings - Stylists own
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SIMPLY BE DESTINATION SHOPPING JUST GOT CURVY I love shopping online, just as much as the next girl. Let’s face it, with our penchant for multi-tasking, between working multiple jobs, running homes and living our lives, the joy of shopping whilst in pyjamas/ working/having dinner or simply just having a moment to browse, shopping online has revolutionised our lives and our wardrobes. For plus size girls, the world of online shopping has been incredibly influential in challenging the high street to provide far more on trend clothing for women size 14+ and while the market is catching up in terms of trends, where plus girls are really missing out is having that physical shopping haven that feels just as fresh and fashionable as their size 8 counterparts. Sorry... Make that were missing out. As of 2012, plus fashion specialist, Simply Be have broken out of just online retail and
taken the leap into physical, retail stores. Simply Be have opened 6 stores across the North of England - Doncaster, Leicester, Gateshead, Teeside, Bury & Liverpool. A market leader in terms of both on trend fashion and designer collaborations, Simply Be have ensured that they have a beautiful shop fit to match. While the shop floor is clearly laid out, with sections for denim, lingerie, dressy and casual, there are curvy mannequins dressed to kill in the latest looks. The changing rooms, where most high street retailers falter are spacious and bright, with magic mirrors that allow you to snap yourself in your chosen outfit and load to facebook and twitter in order to get the fashion-packs approval. If that wasn’t enough, the extensive lingerie selection is completed by an in-store bra fitting service (it’s all about the right foundations girls) and so to get fitted and shop fashion in one
store is a dream come true. TV screens showcase the brands latest photoshoots and posters of the top looks add to Simply Be’s fashionable edge in terms of plus size offering. This really is the one stop store for curvy girls in need of a bit of retail therapy. Curvy poster girl, Gemma Collins of TOWIE fame, is a big fan of Simply Be, so much so that she opened the most recent store in Gateshead and had herself a good shopping spree and a glass of bubbly. If you haven’t dropped by a store yet we thoroughly recommend it! For on trend, figure flattering fashion in size 14-32 it really is the place to be. For further details on locations, or if you want to shop online head to http://www.simplybe.co.uk www.slinkmagazine.com | 15
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STOCKISTS Fashion
www.mulberry.com
Anna Scholz www.annascholz.com
Navabi www.navabi.co.uk
Ann Harvey www.annharveyfashion.co.uk
New Look www.newlook.co.uk
Ann Summers www.annsummers.com
Next www.next.co.uk
Asos (Curve) www.asos.com
Office www.office.co.uk
Bertie www.bertieshoes.com
Osprey www.ospreylondon.com
BHS www.bhs.co.uk
Pied a Terre www.piedaterre.com
Bon Marche www.bonmarche.co.uk
Primark www.primark.co.uk
Chesca www.chescadirect.co.uk
River Island www.riverisland.com
Daniel Footwear www.danielfootwear.com
Simply Be www.simplybe.co.uk
Debenhams www.debenhams.com
Simply Yours www.simplyyours.co.uk
Dior www.dior.com
Schuh www.schuh.co.uk
Dorothy Perkins www.dorothyperkins.co.uk
Style369 www.style369.com
Dune www.dune.co.uk
Topshop www.topshop.co.uk
Excite www.exciteclothing.com
Torrid www.torrid.com
Evans www.evans.co.uk
Urban Outfitters www.urbanoutfitters.co.uk
Folli Follie www.follifollie.co.uk
Very www.very.co.uk
F&F at Tesco www.clothingattesco.com
Yoek www.yoek.com
George @ Asda www.asda.co.uk
Yours Clothing www.yoursclothing.co.uk
H&M www.hm.com___
Wallis www.wallis.co.uk
House of Fraser www.hof.co.uk
Hair and Beauty
Ren www.renskincare.com
Aromatherapy Associates www.aromatherapyasscoaites.com
Revlon www.revlon.co.uk
Beauty Works West www.beautyworkswest.com
Rimmel www.rimmellondon.com
Boots www.boots.com
Sisley www.sisley.com
Brenda Anvari www.visagehouse.co.uk
Soap and Glory www.soapandglory.com
Burts Bees www.burtsbees.co.uk
St Tropez www.st-tropez.com
Bumble and Bumble www.bumbleandbumble.co.uk
Tom Ford www.tomford.com
Chantecaille www.spacenk.co.uk
Yves Saint Laurent www.ysl-parfums.com
John Lewis www.johnlewis.co.uk Maidenform Lingerie www.maidenform.co.uk Marisota www.marisota.co.uk Marks and Spencers www.marksandspencers.com Matalan www.matalan.co.uk Monsoon www.monsoon.co.uk Mulberry 18 | www.slinkmagazine.com
Clarins www.clarins.com Clinique www.clinique.co.uk Cowshed www.cowshedonline.com Duwop www.duwop.com Elemental Herbology www.elementalherbology.com Elemis www.elemis.com Espa www.espaonline.com Guerlain www.guerlain.com
Jimmy Choo www.jimmychoo.com Kiehls www.kiehls.co.uk Lee Stafford www.leestafford.com (Available at Boots – www.boots.com) Leighton Denny www.leightondenny.com Mac Cosmetics www.maccosmetics.co.uk Nars www.narscosmetics.co.uk Philip Kingsley www.philipkingsley.com Pixi www.pixibeauty.com Pop www.popbeauty.co.uk Pukka www.pukkaherbs.com
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Dr Hauschka www.drhauschka.co.uk
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16 Gardner Street, Brighton – 01273 605 577 www.simonwebsterhair.com
5-star boutique salon 4 floors of styling Private cutting room Vintage & contemporary
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“Styling your curves Fashioning your life”