Flingly magazine

Name: Imogen Roy
Blog: Eight London
Country: U.K. , but now writing from Paris
Style: 2 parts colonial heritage to 3 parts gay disco scene, with a dash of mohair. 
Favorite item: A red lycra leopard print backless dress which cost next to nothing, but has become my signature naughty party dress. If clothes could speak...
Trend forecast: I'm not in the slightest bit interested in trends, but I would like to see more people making more informed and ethical decisions about shopping. I think fast fashion and the waste it creates is one of the most concerning environmental issue of our time. 

What/who is your inspiration, and why? 
Diana Vreeland, legendary fashion visionary and Vogue editor of the sixties. Diana's famous column was called 'Why don't you?' For example:  ‘Why don't you ...have a private staircase from your bedroom to the library with a needlework carpet with notes of music worked on each step—the whole spelling your favorite tune?’ Or ‘Why don’t you … …wear, like the Duchess of Kent, three enormous diamond stars arranged in your hair in front?’ Why don’t you… be an extraordinary version of yourself, and go all the way all the time? For Diana, fashion was more than just the clothes you wore. It was the books you read, the conversations you had, the places you traveled to either in pictures or in real life and the way you danced in the nightclubs you went to with your friends. Diana was often famed, sometimes ridiculed for her outrageously flamboyant and excessive ideas for the magazines she worked for, like suggesting that her readers wear 12 diamond roses of all sizes. But Diana’s points were not to be taken literally, rather they were intended to inspire women to use their own imaginations to think outside the box – to dare to make life a little more extraordinary.

Do you have a speciality fashionwise, and what is this?
I have a strong attraction to the exotic, whether it be a bindi jewel or an Egyptian ceremonial table cloth worn as a scarf. At 21, my financial budget for clothes is low to non-existent so I mainly experiment with weird and wonderful bits and pieces I pick up cheaply in second-hand stores and markets.
 
What are your ambitions within the fashion industry?
I hope for the opportunity to learn as much as I can from some of my most respected icons, and perhaps get the chance one day to share my own ideas on a grander scale than on my blog.
 
What is your uniqueness compared to other fashion bloggers?
I would say every fashion blogger has their own unique way of presenting themselves, but I suppose that my USP might be that I try to tell a story with everything that I post, and give my reader some small and interesting morsel of knowledge that they may not have known before. My posts are very varied, and I try to elaborate on my little realm of fashion with the influences of art, literature and culture as much as possible.

Do you have a favorite color right now, and how to combine it?
I love all colours, all together.
 
What item is a must have right now, and how to wear this?
I can’t drive, so a good pair of chunky biker boots I can wear everyday, as I walk 4-6 miles a day.
 
Name your 3 favorite bloggers, and why they are your favorites

Tales of Endearment by Natalie Joos. A fashion industry insider as a highly respected casting director and consultant, Natalie grants her readers access to the more intriguing personal moments between herself and fellow peers in the industry, in their natural habitats, accompanied by beautiful photos. Through Natalie’s eyes, the fashion industry, which can often seem so lofty and unattainable, becomes much more human.

Clothes, Cameras and Coffee by Rosalind Jana. Roz’s youthful wisdom has been inspiring me since I discovered her blog a year ago. She consumes and challenges cultural history and literature as a high school sixth-former, and applies her findings to her personal style. I am excited to chart Roz’s elevation to lofty heights of success.

5 inch & Up by Sandra Hagelståm . Sandra truly is the most gorgeous style blogger out there. Her photographs are always sublime, and she emits a radiance from the tips of her long golden hair to the toes of those infamous ‘5inch & up’ high heeled shoes. I love to drop by her blog and see what she’s been wearing. 

Which fashion blogger do you want us to interview for next week, and what question do you want answered (give us one question we should ask this person)?
I have always been impressed by the incredibly creativity of Geneva, the blogger behind the DIY blog A Pair and a Spare, and I would like to ask her this question:

“If you had a chance to spend one afternoon with someone you admire and they would teach you one thing, who and what would it be?”

The question from Rosalind last week is:

"Which book has had the biggest impact on you"?

I first read Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald when I was fifteen, having picked it up in a decaying English second-hand bookstore in a forgotten hilltop village in the south of France, as if a character from the book itself had left it there one day. I was immediately sucked in by the glamorous, exuberant, sun-drenched lives of the characters, just like Rosemary, the character of the18-year old girl who falls for them all after a meeting on a ‘prayer-rug of a beach’ whilst on holiday with her mother. 
Through my teenage years, the novel was like a self-help book for life’s complexities. Every few years, I re-read it, and look at it with new eyes and a growing understanding. Dick Diver taught me how to be charming, and spontaneous and outgoing. Rosemary taught me how not to behave when smitten with an older man (I still made the same mistakes, nonetheless.) Nicole Diver taught me how to best hide one’s weakness behind a mask of beauty and composed glamour. And Fitzgerald, he was the first one who taught me how to write from the heart.