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Inspiration London Read This Travel

Collected / Back to Basics

posted on September 1, 2019

All right. Here’s another “look what I’ve been up to, surprisingly it’s something” Collected post. The first part holds a TW for death and implied suicide ideation. Take care of yourselves, guys.

My grandma died. Condolences to my mother are welcome; condolences to me are frankly wasted because just two days ago I had a nightmare where she didn’t and yeah… the nightmare was that she didn’t. I keep my room. I don’t have to run away. This is callous and I’m just so so very familiar with death as a concept that I can’t feel bad, because I’ve been so close to it so many times. My room is mine now — for good. My mom cleaned it while I was away, and I haven’t tidied but I intend to.

I was away because I was invited to do press at Hyper Japan. This is more my sister’s thing, generally, but the food pavilion was my thing. I had the sake experience, and I’m still waffling over whether I’m too ignorant to give opinions, but I could? Would you want me to? It was wonderful, I had thoughts, I would love to share them. I also tried wine, and some poke, and a few other things. I brought back soups and pasta for when it’s not 35C. I’m really glad I went. I’m really glad I had someone to go with me.

The whole time — almost three weeks — I stayed with my friend Leish. It was wonderful. I detoxed. I got sushi, we ordered in sometimes, we got weird burgers. I was in Bow and I liked it so much more than I expected to like somewhere in East London. They — I am also they; I came out as agender after my grandma’s death — were hospitable and incredible and I am so, so very lucky. They took me to the Tate Modern, which they love, and I dragged them to the Royal Academy, which was less newly free than it announced on the website.

I borrowed a crop top, and dungarees. It was one of the best trips of my life. I mainlined Schitt’s Creek and fell in love.

Also I’m obsessed with this Clothes Horse shoot. The color palette is exquisite.

I took my gorgeous nightgown from UK Lingerie and failed to shoot it, but I wore it once, and took a couple of bad bad pictures for IG stories. I think it’s time for a little wishlist slash must shoot this sometime, which is what Collected means. This is what a week in summer calls for:

summertime dresses and fashion

sundress / navy shorts / black flats / janira chemise / suede sandal / leather bag

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Travel

How to Sleep in 9 Beds in 8 Weeks: A Timeline of my Summer Travels

posted on September 12, 2016

How to Sleep in 9 Beds In 8 Weeks

Step 1: Flee home

Have an annoying family member or friend room with you. Said family member needs to not let you sleep at all at night, to the point that for two weeks running you fall asleep at sunrise on a daily basis. Want to hit things. Decide to remove yourself from the situation instead.

Step 2: Get on a train. Get on another train. Get on a plane. Get on a car. Get on a bus. Be picked up by a darling blog acquaintance who offered to host you for a bit.

Bed #1: Woolwich. Double mattress on the floor. Soft-firm. Skylights. Uncomfortable for doing things but excellent for sleep. First night’s sleep in a month. Brain barely remembers how to have nightmares, it’s so tired.

Step 3: Continue to use kindness of friends to stay the fuck away from home.

Bed #2: Taplow. Double in a guest room in a cottage. Wiry but comfy as fuck. Comfy armchair downstairs to do things. Middle of fucking nowhere. Weird dreams just the once. Must leave because unexpected construction on listed building’s façade. So long, estate cat.

Bed #3: Brixton. Double bed with a duvet that does not even remotely cover the mattress, somehow. Homemade decals of London things on the walls. Pretty cute from afar.

Step 4: Get on another bus and another bus and another train and another plane and another plane and another bus to meet your best friend and crash with her.

Bed #4: Tallinn. Cot in best friend’s room that her parents got for the occasion. Thank you, her parents. Soft mattress that moves around a lot on the structure, but comfortable nonetheless. However, as it’s a longer stay and I get to relax, so does my brain and I start remembering my weird dreams and nightmares again. I even have one of my recurring dreams about this girl I knew in high school and me fumbling towards a relationship, which is one of the only 100% good dreams I ever have, and one of the few that make some modicum of sense outside my sleeping head, which is why I submitted it to Adjustamatic for their Dreams Explained campaign. I don’t know if they’ll get around to it, but it’s always nice to be asked about your dreams, seeing as how no one ever wants to hear about other people’s (including me).

Bed #5: Friend’s sofabed when she visits her parents because it’s bigger. Bigger. A little hard. I get to stretch my legs, though, so a+. The weird dreams remain.

Step 5: Take a job somewhere else and spend the weekend there, in two different places, one of which you stayed in before but it just so happens you’re staying in a different guest room this time.

Bed #6: Taplow. Single. Tall as fuck but also very comfortable. Estate cat greets me in the morning with mud. Good times.

Bed #7: LHA London’s Bowden Court. A single. Makes a weird noise when I move in a certain way, but otherwise perfectly adequate. Not into the shared bathroom at all though.

Step 6: Go back to best friend for four days. Have a nightmare on the second day that you wake up at midnight, which is only a terrible thing because you know that feeling as it has happened before, when your sleep schedule was significantly more screwed up. Find a flight towards your next crash pad that arrives so late you can’t continue your journey. Book hotel in city.

Bed #8: Bremen. Novum Bremer Haus. Sweet basic hotel, reminds me where I stayed with my parents in Valencia in 2006. Clean and tidy and comfortable. Hot, though, and I got bit by mosquitos. Slept excellently though.

Step 7: Take bus to original destination. Be picked up by a longtime friend and driven to their flat in Leeuwarden.

Step 8: Hit week 8 in their guest room, with one of their cats on bed #9.

Post in collaboration with Adjustamatic.

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Madrid Spain Travel

Travel / 8 Hours in Madrid

posted on June 16, 2016

8 Hours in Madrid, Spain / Lix Hewett

When I went to Barcelona in March, I had to deal with the dearth of direct trains from there to my hometown of Ciudad Real. In the end, I decided to take a train to Madrid, stay there for a few hours, and then take one of the many, many Avant trains back home. It was a smart financial decision, and I knew I could easily camp out at a Starbucks near Atocha for the time it took to wait for a train, even if I couldn’t arrange a meeting with anybody!

Camp out I did, but I also got to see someone I hadn’t since I’d studied for a whole three months at university in Madrid in 2007 — a fandom friend who took me to see lovely book stalls (I could have bought things, but I’m always happier shooting them!) and have a nice tea at a little hidden bakery nearby. This is a photo diary of those eight hours — 1 PM to 9 PM — I spent in Madrid between trains.

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Travel

A Pop Culture-Infused Travel Wish List

posted on May 18, 2016

travel-wish

(You could call it a bucket list, but I don’t think I would like the pressure.)

Have you ever tried to remember how you became interested in a place? I figure remembering when you learned of it is a lost cause for big cities, and most of the places I think of when I think of places I want to go are exactly that. I find my brain works in a bit of a pragmatic prioritizing way — if you asked me where I look forward to going to in the near future, I would rattle off European capitals for as long as you could bear to listen to me, and then I’d be like, “And when I’m done with that, if I have the money and I can get a passport, then I guess we can start in on the United States?”

I took a different tack for this list because it turns out that most of the European cities I want to visit got on my list by being pretty and near. Meanwhile, my feelings recall US states along with flashes to TV and movies and books, because at my geeky core, I am basically made of stories. That shit runs deep. So let’s talk about it.

Paris

The other day I came across someone pointing out how many restaurants in Paris have café gourmand on the menu, which is, I kid you not, coffee plus four mini pastries. Is that the greatest thing in the world or what? I must remember this.

Paris is obvious and a pop culture favorite, and to tell you the truth a lot of what it makes me think about is sort of muddy and hard to pin down — the feeling of spring and hearing music coming from a few buildings away and reading fanfic that wasn’t even set in it.

But then there’s things like Anna and the French Kiss, with its inclusion of Notre Dame; Ratatouille and its illustrated views and music; the streets of Paris as drawn in Tomb Raider; and all the interior spaces in Julie & Julia.

And then I could get swept away to Monte Carlo, and it would be like the movie Monte Carlo, and I would be a happy, happy girly-ass geek.

New York

Ah, the capital of American TV. The only show I’m currently watching is set in Brooklyn, though the setting barely registers most of the time since it’s a workplace sitcom.

But many shows go to town with the landmarks and architecture. There’s Gossip Girl, obviously; I want to have lunch on the steps of the Met. I want to walk around Central Park and I want to pose around the brownstones in Greenwich Village. I want to go to The Strand, because Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares started out painfully relatable — Dash is a snob just like I was at seventeen — and became a true delight. I want to reread Princess Diaries and take note of everywhere she is and goes.

I want to experience Manhattan, mostly, because I am still a little bit like Dash. But it’s also just the kind of place you have to go at some point. And I know so very many people who live there, including my she-may-not-think-we’re-friends-but-I-say-we-are, Jen Hsieh, and my new accountability partner who has absolutely sold me on Brooklyn via her blog.

Savannah

Truthfully, this is a healthy mix of pop culture influences and blogging and Pinterest; it seems the perfect nucleus of that Alabama/Georgia/Mississippi appeal. I’m working hard to interrogate my interest in the area and its architecture because of its links to slavery and the Civil War, and/but/so I’d really like to visit. On top of that, there is Hart of Dixie. Which is set in a fictional town in Alabama with frequent mentions of Mobile, and oh does anyone remember Ashley Tisdale’s character on Hellcats? She was called Savannah! Yeah, sometimes I reach a bit.

Seattle

This is a mix of fandom and Grey’s Anatomy. And maybe a little bit Twilight, which I only watched the movies of because of the setting, so I must have had a connection to it before that that I can’t quite pinpoint! I imagine it’s the rain and the greenery and my friend Katie, not that she lives in Seattle, but she’s close enough. And Seattle culture sounds very much like the kind of place I would be happy in, with all its indie bookstores and whatnot. It’s one of the US cities I’ve wanted to go the longest.

San Francisco

For reasons far beyond my understanding, the Princess Diaries movie is set in San Francisco instead of New York, and it is an absolute delight, though not any more delightful than it would have been if set in NYC as the books are — it’s been thirteen years and I’m still just baffled. But I’ve got a reason similar to one of my New York ones here, and that reason is Lola and the Boy Next Door. That’s by the same writer as Anna and the French Kiss, and I had similar trouble getting into it as with Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, because Lola is a bit of a special snowflake. But San Francisco is painted with love, and I kept flashing back to the Princess Diaries movie, and now I want to go there.

Copenhagen

Ready for an absolutely guilt-free pleasure? Watch The Prince & Me. More of it is set in Wisconsin than it is in Copenhagen, but the movie – being American – gives Copenhagen the Rome montage treatment, with Paige pointing out buildings from her taxi, and you put that next to my love for modern royalty AUs in fanfic and I am thoroughly ensorcelled. (Choice of word entirely due to BBC Merlin fandom, where said stories – set in Britain, and the reason I most want to properly explore Covent Garden – abound.)

Santorini

I wouldn’t think much of Santorini – the architecture hits oddly close to home, in a bad way – if it weren’t for the emotional link to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Lena spends much of the books and movie around the steep streets and white houses, in sundresses, with the sea surrounding everything. It’s gorgeous, and every time someone I know goes there, the photos they come back with make my breath catch.

—

So, that’s the pop culture side of my travel interests. What’s yours? What cities do you want to visit because of a movie? Do you associate any of mine with a different TV show? Tell me in the comments or on twitter!

Post in collaboration with Travelbag.

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Barcelona Fashion Life + Style Outfits

Style / Fuzzy Flare

posted on April 22, 2016

Style / Fuzzy Flare

Flare jeans: the elusive love of my life. As I understand it, they’re coming back into fashion, but my hometown in Spain remains three years behind the rest of the world, so it’s still incredibly hard to find good pieces. Back in the January sales, however, I was determined to find a pair I loved… and I did. It was twice my budget for jeans, but it was beautiful. It fit perfectly. It looked amazing.

So I checked a few other stores, went home, thought it over, and came back that evening for them so I wouldn’t feel bad about my purchase. In hindsight, this was some A+ decision-making on my part, method included. Go Lix.

(I could do this during sale season because, see, Esprit? Not popular in Spain. The shop? A little ways away from the main chain store cluster. I was concerned, to be sure, but I knew I could risk it. The shop itself however may be gone already, and I am very saddened by this turn of events.)

I wear these jeans on a weekly basis, and they were one of the two pairs I took to Barcelona last month. For my second day there — a long walk around the city, hitting some architectural spots, a museum of modern art and, unbeknownst to me, the Cathedral of Barcelona, as well as a weird art gallery and some bits and pieces from my leisurely photo walk back to the hotel I’ve yet to identify — I paired the flare jeans with a beautiful pair of flats from Yull, thick Pimkie socks that matched my cardigan and helped me pretend I was not breaking in a new pair of flats on a major city walk, a fuzzy cardigan I was sent last year by Blue Vanilla, bless them, and one of my many standardfare long-sleeve cotton t-shirts, this one from Sfera, which, believe it or not, has some real gems if you look hard enough.

(I wouldn’t call anything in my collection of long-sleeve t-shirts a gem; I’m talking about other pieces. But I rely on long-sleeve t-shirts to be comfortable, and I have an identical shirt to this one in a sweet dark blue-green color. Both were on sale, both are comfortable as all get-out, both I wear so often I am wearing this red one again today.)

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Barcelona Fashion Life + Style Outfits

Style / Seaport

posted on April 15, 2016

Style / Seaport / Barcelona - lixhewett.com

I’ve wanted a floppy hat since I started watching Pretty Little Liars — all the way back in 2010. Spencer wore a burgundy wool (felt?) hat in an episode and looked hot as burning, and a floppy hat in another episode (the first was a cloche, if I recall), and an obsession was born. Justifying the expense of a hat is hard for me for two reasons: a) I know myself, and I know I’ll rarely wear it no matter how much I like the look, and b) it’s kind of hard to find hats that don’t engulf my entire tiny head, face included. There’s a reason most of the hats I own are custom knits.

But just days before my birthday, there was one available in multiple sizes at Pimkie, and they sent me a voucher because I have a loyalty card, and the rest is history.

Actually, the rest is: if that hat had been in my mind for a long time, this location? Was getting there. Back in September, I visited Barcelona with my best friend, and we ended up hitting Maremagnum for a quick t-shirt shop on our last night there. Maremagnum is a mall situated on one of the long docks parallel to the port by Passeig de Colom. At night, with the streets lit up, the boats moored, the soft summer breeze and the mild resignation that my camera would never capture it well, I just wanted to breathe it all in.

Well, breathe it all in, and come back sometime in daylight to photograph someone in it.

And so it was, predictably, the first place I suggested to Megan when it was time to pick a location for our first outfit shots.

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Barcelona Spain Travel

Travel / Barcelona / Sagrada Familia

posted on February 12, 2016

Travel / Barcelona / Sagrada Familia

I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone to hear me say this place is astounding. It is at times beautiful, at times hilarious, and at times confusing — sometimes all three at once. And of course this was one of the places I really wanted to see in Barcelona, alongside the beach and… yeah, the beach and this were pretty much it. I’m not going to lie and say I’m knowledgeable about architecture, because I’m not — when I studied Art History in high school, my priorities were very clearly painting >>>>> architecture >>> sculpture — but when I first saw this complicated, towering creature of a church, my breath caught in my chest a little bit.

If you first see the Sagrada Familia in daylight, I think the effect might be lessened a little, because you see all the weird-ass shit at the same time as the glorious, intimidating gothic structure, or maybe it was seeing it at night first (no lights) that made it look less imposing in the sunshine. Either way, it is a lot. I hope I can make it back to Barcelona and go inside sometime.

As usual, I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves, as they’re far more eloquent than I could possibly be on this subject.

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Barcelona Spain Travel

Travel / Barcelona / Parc del Centre del Poblenou

posted on February 3, 2016

Travel / Barcelona / Parc del Centre del Poblenou - Lix Hewett

Today I bring to you a collection of photos I took at the parc del centre del Poblenou in Barcelona back in September. Annemari and I stayed at a hotel on the other end of Avinguda Diagonal from all the interesting stuff, and on our walk down to see the Sagrada Familia on Sunday, we took a detour because we, like flies, are attracted to shiny objects.

Much like the London Zoo, however, I have very little to say, and so I’m leaving you to experience this place just as we did: with no explanation.

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Cafés & Eateries London Travel

London / Restaurants / Lunch at La Brasserie, Chelsea

posted on November 25, 2015

Lunch at La Brasserie / London Restaurants / Chelsea

Ah, Chelsea. Home to the loveliest things.

La Brasserie was London’s first all-day brasserie when it opened in 1972. I can’t speak to the iconic status its website professes, but I can tell you all about how delicious the food was, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Annemari and I took a quick tube to South Kensington Station and walked down Pelham Street to Brompton Road. I nearly missed the restaurant because I got stuck on the library sign beside it — a sign announcing something called The Library that is not in fact a library at all* — and Annemari had to point it out to me.

* excuse me while I’m baffled that the Google Maps link led me to a store I found out about this very morning via a post on Park & Cube. What.

After having lunch at La Brasserie, we took the four-minute walk to the National History Museum, because that’s what you do when you’re spending time with Annemari in Knightsbridge. The area is really chock full of things to see (and eat).

So anyway, back to the restaurant.

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London Travel

London / Victoria & Albert Museum

posted on November 23, 2015

London / Victoria & Albert Museum

Like I mentioned in Six Days in London, the Victoria & Albert Museum was the first one Annemari and I visited in September, largely because it was still open when we finished our afternoon tea at Patisserie Valerie across the road. It seemed a lot bigger to me in 2007 than it did in September, though, and that would be because it has “reduced gallery openings after 18.00” on Friday (when it’s open until 10 PM). That explains that! Wow, an explanation for a V&A thing. Color me fucking astonished.

See, the thing about the V&A is that I seriously cannot make sense of it at all. I went to the website and everything just now to try and figure out what in the world the swirl reminiscent of a sea creature that’s installed on the ceiling represents, or where it came from, and I can’t even find that. I found out they have a Diwali installation, though! If you’re into that.

Despite my complete lack of comprehension skills when it comes to this museum, I quite enjoy it. It has a lot of artifacts and types of art, from entire pieces of architecture (like legit house façades) and furniture to ironwork to sculpture, photography and fashion. My favorite thing about this visit was getting to take photos of everyone sketching Rodin sculptures; I’ve decided I’m going to make a point of this whenever I go to art museums in the future (swap out Rodin for… actually between casts and collections, you may not have to). Remind me to take business cards with me next time.

But anyway, without further ado: here are some of the things (and people!) that caught my eye.

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Meet Lix

Welcome to my blog! I'm Lix: full-time graphic designer for bloggers and freelancers, and part-time photographer. I'm an unapologetic cat lady and perpetually angry feminist nightmare. I like attention and pretty things, and that's why I run a lifestyle blog. Learn more.
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