puppy love

Anywho, Marc Jacobs Fall 11, Dalmatian loafers bought from Etsy, Unique Fall 11.

I like to tell myself that when it comes to new seasonal trends I can be cool. I can nonchalantly lick my finger and turn the pages of Vogue and be unaffected when it comes to the arrays of all things novel and shiny before me. I can continue deciding what to wear each morning without referencing the runway images that may or may not be floating around my head. But the fact is, I would be kidding myself with a bare faced lie because each season, and usually in winter, one little trend will always gets me big time. It gets me right under it's thumb and I'm like a jelly-legged fool hankering after any item that will owe itself as a little nod to said trend. And I like to think that because I'm not someone who usually goes out of their way to follow catwalk trends, I'm allowed this one little yearly heart pang. I wallow in the desire like the keeper of unrequited love and search with appropriate keywords on eBay or scour charity shops. Last year the crushing centred on Brown and after the camel coats nudged their way into a mass of collections, anything of a Werthers Original hue found its way onto my hit list. There was my winter with dungarees and also the long (and continued) flirtation with leopard print. But during the Topshop Unique show back in February I caught a whiff of my next conquest just as the apt background soundtrack of 'And they call it Puppy Love' blared. 

Dalmatian is in the eyes of Cruella De Vil "cosy, cuddly classic and less trashy" than leopard print and though I'm not really down with the leopard dissing, dalmatian does indeed seem fresher. It's also a pattern that acts as a much needed alternative to the universal reliance on stripes and polka dots which, yes are lovely and faithful but sometimes just bloody well over-done. I'm all for classics but there are only so many times that you can meet similarly striped friends for drinks and realise you could pass for the Annual Mime Artist Meet Up before you start to look for other options. Dalmatian it is.