Leighton Meester: From Blair to Brilliant

Blair Waldorf is the classical beauty looking stunning in Jennifer Behr headbands, making girls across the world pine for headwear.  In reality the Gossip Girl actress, Leighton Meester can pull off any look.  From casual chic to stunning fashionista Leighton is so often over looked in comparison to her counterpart Blake Lively.  She may have jumped up Glamour's best dresed list, moving up 32 places to the number 4 spot...beaten to number 3 by Blake herself.

It has to be said the Gossip Girl cast know fashion but they can't all pull it off this well.  Not only does Leighton dock the works of emerging designers, such as London's Emilio de la Morena, with the same bravado as if she was in Louis Vuitton (which some days she is) but she so easily pulls off Blair's upper class style one moment before chucking the headband, mussing the hair and emerging as a beautiful rock chic.  That's what's so refreshing about Leighton...her own style is not that of her character.

Glamour mag even compiled a list of  '15 Reasons To Love Leighton Meester' and they are all correct, I think you'll agree...

...from Blair to Brilliant in costume, Emilio de la Morena, Christian Cota and Louis Vuitton!  Click the link above to see all of Glamour's great Leighton pics.

Unique store design...at a butchers!

I'm not much of a meat eater.  I don't like the taste, the fattyness (not in terms of my own diet in terms of the chewy-factor) and I definitely don't like the smell or even the look of meat.  Basically I only eat chicken and only because if I eliminated this I'd have very little left to eat.  I'm picky.  Extremely.

Needless to say, I was amazed when The Cool Hunter highlighted a Sydney based butchers that actually makes meat look worth my time.  Victor Churchill's store utilises rich timber walls, marble flooring, refrigerated glass fronted copper cabinets and a ‘chook cam’ wall (a nod to the recent 2008 Fall Louis Vuitton window display, with multiple video cameras trained onto our daily special within a glass domed display pedestal).

Theatrically Victor Churchill's butchers slice and carve at timber block 'stages' and behind the glass fronted cooler where cuts of meat rotate for viewing purposes.  Of course, "the backdrop for all this is a Himalayan rock salt brick wall that infuses the hanging meat with flavor and sterilizes the air."  The designers (Dreamtime Australia Design) have thought everything through visually and practically...a far cry from the butchers in my village, from which the stench of meat permeates through the sliced plastic door curtain.  Nothing is hidden but nothing puts me off either.  This is reinventing the expected and it's what more brands should be doing!