The Clerkenwell Vintage Fashion Fair is happening this Sunday, 21st February. Following on from several successful fairs last year, forty dealers from all over the UK and Europe will be selling affordable vintage menswear and womenswear, accessories and jewellery from 1800’s – 1980’s.

Whether you are looking for something truly original to wear to London Fashion Week,  find something fit to wear on a night on the town or simply spruce up your everyday attire, it’s worth taking a trip ‘daahn the Eastend’ to check it out.

Oh, and there will be a pop-up tearoom from Vintage Heaven on the first floor of the charmingly Art Nouveaux building so shoppers will be able to indulge in a refuelling a cream tea or slice of lemon drizzle cake in between finds . Splendid!

We have managed to blag 5 pairs of tickets to the event – all you need to do is email me at editor@metrotwin.com (after reading the terms and conditions below, naturally!) First person to reply also gets the special prize of a cream tea for two at the Vintage Heaven tearoom!

Terms and Conditions

Photos from clerkenwellvintagefashionfair used under a Creative Commons License

Note how I have resisted the urge to shoe-horn ‘New Year’ into yet another blog post, and instead wonder at the slightly different and slightly greater layout we have on the blog!

I’ve also had a highly productive couple of days sorting through the huge amount of places you lot have suggested for addition to the site (who says working from home in your pajamas with only repeats of Jeremy Kyle for company is ineffective?). Here are the latest places I’ve put up… often I’ve only had a couple of sentences to go on, so if you think I’m hideously off base please comment, either here on the blog or on the recommendation itself, which you can do by simply registering on the site if you haven’t already.

The Crescent Champagne Bar – sparkling, darlink.

The East Room – the OTHER supercool East London member’s club

The Landau – beautiful views, beautiful food.

The Royal Horseguard’s Hotel – anyone for a spot of tea and harp music?

Grosvenor House Hotel – It  IS Park Lane.

The Chocolate Society – for the coca aficionados who would rather eat mud than Dairy Milk

Clever Wally’s Raw Pizza – cook-it-yerself gourmet pizza.

Le Relais de Venise l’entrecote - The best steak in London and literally nothing else.

Coburg Bar – a modern twist on the classic hotel bar.

St Martin’s Lane Hotel – If Philipe Stark made hotels..

Keep ‘em coming guys, me (and my crack team of experts) post up more as I get them!

Photo by Katey Nicosia and lilitu93 used under a Creative Commons License

As you will notice from the right-hand column of this blog and the many great recommendations on the site, we have a lot of cool people who contribute to Metrotwin, experts who know and love their cities… but how much do you know about them? The Metrotwin 15 is a new, occasional feature where we will profile contributors on our blog and ask them fifteen fundamental, searching questions about life, the universe, London and New York. And all things being equal, I thought I would kick things off by having a little chat with myself.

Name: AnyaD

Profession: Website editor, professional rambler (in the literary sense, the closest I get to rambling itself is walking home from the tube)

Neighbourhood: Crouch End, London (a.k.a ‘Near Finsbury Park? Arsenal? North London?’)

Favourite city smell: The launderette at the end of my road.

Favourite bagel filling: Brie, watercress and honey.

Tell us a London/NYC pop fact: Stephen King wrote a short story where Crouch End is a portal to hell. He clearly never went to North Finchley.

Opinion of pigeons: Pretty irritating, but then I always get a pang of sadness when I see a dead one.

Currently reading: Palestine by Joe Stacco and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Oh, and Chat magazine for a bit of light relief and tips on how to make lovely photo frames out of old crisp packets and bits of string.

Skins or Gossip Girl?: The Inbetweeners is a view of teenagers I most relate to.

Law and Order or The Bill? Law and Order, although the spinoff all about rape I find a tad disturbing. That it exists, mainly.

Items that are always in your grocery basket: blue cheese, hot cross buns, really horrible cheap fish pies and popcorn.

Favourite building/monument/statue/tree/shrub: Alexandra Palace (see below) Liberty’s and the magnolia tree in downstairs’ back garden.

As you might remember, on Tuesday we gave away tickets to ‘A Cloud in Trousers’  Samantha Bloom’s one woman show at Wilton’s Music Hall.

WELL.

The feedback we got was so good from all and sundry that we managed to get some more tickets for TONIGHT, so as before, first five to email editor@metrotwin.com win a pair!

Rather literal image by Dev Null used under a Creative Commons License

Let’s just imagine for a moment that this cake doesn’t say ‘Jom’,  and that the whole world of soft launches  doesn’t mean that a website’s birth is more like an intense six month labour without an epidural than a glorious pop into existence… This week is Metrotwin’s first birthday!

We didn’t mention it before because we are so hideously modest and a lady always subtracts at least two years from her age which would make us but a twinkle in the milkman’s eye, but as we have now gained a sibling and even written a new list in recognition, we will open up our arms (for presents) and share:

Metrotwin Mumbai has launched! Check out our little sister, she twins places in London and Mumbai and is contributed to by some of the citys’ finest bloggers *ahem*

The new London City – New York route that British Airways are exclusively running means we have created the ultimate Metrotwin Business List for those company funded trips. Where to stay, drink and visit during your stolen afternoon of ‘down time’. It’s all here.

So happy birthday to us, it’s been a fabulous year and now onto the next…

Photo by thomwatson used under a Creative Commons license.