The Recap - July/ August 2025
All the things I’ve been indulging in, learning, lusting after and grateful for this month.
The Recap! …
…My top ten each month. Everything I’ve been wearing, listening to, been motivated by, what has given me comfort. The things I’ve been indulging in, learning, lusting after and grateful for. This month I give you a glimpse at my hen do, our family camping trip and of course the outfits that saw me through both, I chat about the magic of women, a digital detox, reseting my body after stress, and the independent brands I shopped with on my travels ...
1- Wearing - It’s been a high-low kind of time of late… glam and sparkle, frills and frivolity for hen-dos and then low-key practicality for a city trip to Bath followed by camping in Cornwall.
Here’s what it looked like, we’ll start with the low-key…
The Ice Cream Cocoon Jumpsuit cannot be beaten. For a hot day in the city, it’s perfect. No waistband, loose, easy, the colour is sublime and this shape feels great.
Camping trips (clothes-wise) are about simple, comfy, non-precious items, for me, but I do still want to feel like myself (I’ve not sold my soul entirely to the cause just yet.) We made a bunch of linen/cotton jersey XL oversized tees about 6/7 years ago (see below.) I have three. I wear them on every holiday I go on, but they really excel when camping- loose & breezy, proportionally they work well with a short-bottom which is perfect for hot weather, they wash really well and I’m not at all precious about them. Have made a mental note to source more of this fabric ASAP.
The shorts I’m wearing above are these.
Beach days looked mainly like the below: I’m a bikini and sarong gal. I favour SZ Block Prints and Dilli Grey. For bikinis, my all time fave is one by Indigo Luna (I also really rate their underwear, although after a quick glance online, I’m not too sure if they make either any more- sad times.)
Don’t look too closely at the crossword answers, most of them were filled in by the boys…
So far as cover-ups go, if you’re doing British beach, you can’t really do better than this robe from Finisterre- we all wore Sam’s at some point every day this holiday.
For the rainier days (and really just to have for camping in general, in this country) I wear a secondhand waterproof (below.) I actually think it’s a military-issued one, (someone stopped me on this trip and enlightened me to that fact) we bought ours (it’s communal!) second hand and it’s amazingly warm and lets no rain in whatsoever.
…and on a trip to Scotland earlier last month…
…
The sartorial-flip-side of the last few weeks has been many a wedding-related-celebration.
20 of my nearest and dearest joined me in Edinburgh for a long weekend of hen-do euphoria.
For the trip up on the train- and the photo below is the only one I got in this outfit and the best I can do- I wore the Birthday Dress in White Voile and felt super special. You can discover more ways to style the Birthday Dress in this article. Crown courtesy of my sisters (rest assured, Jude sniffed it out and commandeered it within minutes of my homecoming- that boy can sense sparkle from a mile off, takes after his mother.)
I changed into the Crinkle Shorts in custom White Crosses for the evening:
…they’re part of the below set which I wore for a separate celebration earlier last month, you can simply email me to order, they were a custom-make (customerservice@stalf.co.uk)
For the big gals night out, I wore secondhand sparkles, head to toe!
2- Soundtrack - This is The Kit.
Strictly speaking, we’re talking about Sam’s soundtrack here. He puts on absolutely anything by this band when we all need a little peace, calm or familiarity. The boys sing along. It soothes.
There were two moments recently when I re-entered the house after time away and the soundtrack to those moments was the below album. I opened the front door to soft, distant family commotion set against the backdrop of this band and instantly felt at ease.
3- Motivator - Motivator and Comfort are linked this time round, and it’s about knowing in your gut what’s right for your body.
I have this thing where I get really tired and stressed and over stimulated and I have to run. It’s often the LAST thing I actually want to do in said moment.
My internal chat goes: “it’ll make me feel more tired if I go for this run… best stay in bed… but I do feel stressed and I know that this is the way I like to reset myself… but what about staying in bed…*puts on trainers*… let’s just do 4k, or a walk-run… you can stop as much as you like…*makes it out of the front door and puts one foot infront of the other- generally leads to running.*”
There’s this thing I know: when I am stressed I need physical exertion to literally shake the stress out of my body. I’ve felt this for a long time and yet it was only yesterday that I learnt that this is actually a scientific thing.
I always knew that physical exertion (as in, pushing your body physically, whatever that looks like for you) triggers the release of endorphins which block / allow you to move past the stress you feel, but it was only yesterday that I made the connection between that and the simple fact that I’ve always felt the urge to run when I’m low/stressed- as in, my body always knew this fact, but I just wasn't always listening.
For me it has to be a pretty aggressive exertion in these moments. I like to finish said activity and be red faced, sweaty, at my limit, out of breath, on the brink of emotional release. I can appreciate we don’t all like those feelings, this is just the way I do it that feels good for my body- I’d say I’m pretty intense as a person, in general.
My point is, most of us already know the things we need to help to regulate our own bodies, our own hormones, we know our own unique disruptors and medicines. My needs look different to the things my friends need.
The trick is to pay attention, for regulation.
Which brings me onto…
If 3- Motivator- was about physical regulation, number 4- Comfort- is the mental side of things…
4- Comfort - The thing I love about beaches in Cornwall (see below for full break down of our recent trip) is the absolute and total lack of phone signal.
It’s not to be underestimated- totally unplugging from the digital world.
No social media is the obvious one, but also… not immediately googling things you spot whilst you’re minding your own business on the beach (“lime-green-leopard-print-wetsuit”, and suchlike) not receiving (or sending) any whatsapp messages (aaand exhale!) not being able to casually browse the wild and endless abyss of options we can realistically choose to overstimulate ourselves with at any given moment of any hour of any day.
How wild is it that we have access to all this stuff all the time, anytime, on demand?
And the important thing for me is that the disconnect was not self imposed, connecting was just not an option. Gone. Taken from me. Forcibly so. For hours (even sometimes days) at a time. Bliss.
A detox, perhaps?
Either way, unplugging completely, and bathing (both metaphorically and literally) in the joy of it has been a total comfort over the past 10 days away.
I lean a lot into how I can consciously help to regulate my own hormones (see point 3. Motivator) and the ways my phone (my phone is my main suspect) disrupts this regulation is something I’m really aware of. Ten days of isolation (not total isolation, but for big, main chunks of the day) was hugely helpful in resetting my perspective and regulating my head.
I’m onto something for myself here. I’ll report back.
5- View - Another month, another camping trip. This time Cornwall.
For those of you that have a paid subscription, keep on scrolling. For those who don’t, a peek at what the chat is below the paywall: I talk magical women, my recent Pinterest saves, the UK beach trip of dreams and the gems I bought from independents on my travels…
