London fashion is... different. Neon is very big here right now. Especially in tights and leggings. I've seen some pretty whacked-out ensembles since I've been here, but the worst was probably what I saw one girl wearing at Imperial College's pub a month or so ago. This girl was wearing hot pink tights under a powder blue tu-tu. Like, a ballerina tu-tu. Except she wasn't a ballerina, and it definitely wasn't Halloween. The guys we were talking to at the time said no, that's not cute. But that doesn't mean there aren't girls who wear that kind of stuff. We actually saw a few tu-tus in Camden. The other horrible thing I saw (a few weeks ago) was in Topshop (a very cool clothing store that's going to be opening in Manhattan! yay!). I'm warning you now to stop reading if you're squeamish. I saw... acid wash jeans. This really scared me, because it wasn't OK the first time around, so it's definitely not OK now... and I'm worried that somehow this "trend" will make it over the pond. Oh, please, no.
Anyway, some of the shops were in what used to be horse stables in the 1800s, and they still have the stable signs up. We walked around for a while, and then headed back. We took the bus to Kensington High Street, which has some more shopping, and I walked along Hyde Park from there to get home. I ended up dipping into the park to walk along the path because it was so pretty and sunny out (and I wanted to enjoy it before the rain comes back, which it most certainly will... tomorrow) and there were lots of cherry blossom trees and bluebells and daffodils and it wasn't just really pretty. Squeeeeeee girl moment. OK, it's over.
Today, the last beautiful day of sunshine, I went to the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. There were, like, a million tourists out enjoying the weather. When I got there, a magician was performing in front of the Gallery. When I left, there was a guy doing yo-yo tricks. I thought that was hysterical -- didn't Jake do those when he was eight?
I just went to a few rooms in the museum because I'm not a huge art person and really only care about the famous stuff and the Impressionism (because it's pretty). It was interesting to see that a lot of the paintings, especially from the 1500s, were in really excellent condition. They can't possibly be just well preserved -- they must be touched up a lot, because they looked perfect.
There was also a lot of pink in the paintings I was looking at by Raphael and co. from the 1500s. It was definitely pink, not red, because there was red in the paintings too, and I thought it was weird to see Jesus and John the Baptist in the color. And I got a bit of London fashion here too. In Raphael's Saint John the Baptist Preaching (1505), there is a person wearing a purple dress/toga-thing with bright red leggings and another person with green leggings. I guess Raphael started a trend, and it just took 500 years to catch on?
One of the most famous paintings they have, da Vinci's Madonna on the Rocks, wasn't there. They were restoring it. Good timing, huh? I guess it's not so awful because I saw the one in the Louvre, which was painted first. da Vinci painted two versions, a few years apart, and it's believed that he actually did all of/most of the one that's now in the Louvre, and apprentices did a lot of the one in London. It would have been kind of cool so see both, though.
I pretty much looked for the artists I knew, but I saw some paintings by a guy named Cornelius Vroom. I thought his name was funny. There was also an Yves Saint Laurent room, which I only looked around because of who apparently donated it.
XOXO
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