The London Edit: Kensington Palace

As we are fast approaching the one year anniversary of my move to London (where did that time go?!) I realised there are lots of things and places in this big ol' city that I love, and want to share with you, whether that be a restaurant, a park, a shop, a street, whatever. Enter stage left, the London Edit. The newest regular feature on my little blog! I'm hoping to do this once a week, but maybe less, depending on how much time I've had to go exploring. But I hope to share a little slice of London, my life, what I'm wearing, and what I love doing, with you guys through these posts.

So, introductions out of the way, I thought I'd show you what I got up to on Monday!

 When it's hot in central London, the last place you want to be, is central London. As soon as the mercury creeps above 20, that's it, I'm off to the nearest open space, to lie in the shade and moan about the fact it's not snowing (yes, I'm one of those strange people who hates summer and loves winter). So when my weather app was telling me that at 9am Monday morning, it was already 26, I rounded up the boyfriend, packed a picnic, my camera, and an army of heat proof beauty essentials, and headed, armed with Tesco Days Out vouchers, to Kensington Palace.

 Kensington Palace is astonishingly beautiful. The high ceilings, fabric lined walls, beautiful paintings, crystal chandeliers and intricate golden crown moldings only reaffirmed my lifelong belief that I should have been born into Royalty. It's pretty history heavy, but to be honest, I was too preoccupied with the building itself to be paying too much attention to how King George got the ladies to go back to his quarters (yes, really). 

 

One of the main reasons I had wanted to visit the Palace was the current Fashion Rules exhibit. To be honest, it's not really worth a visit unless you're interested in seeing the rest of the palace, since there are actually only 12 dresses in the exhibit (a little disappointing) and none of them are from particularly important occasions, but if you're fashion hungry like me, it was quite interesting. The top dress was worn by our lovely Queen, way back when, before her hair turned grey, and the dresses in the bottom photo were all worn by the late and great Princess Di, and lets face it, who doesn't have a soft spot for her? 

 T-shirt: Zara

Skirt & Belt: Primark

Shoes: Office

Lipstick: MAC Lustering

After exploring the (extremely hot) palace, the boy and I retired to the gardens for lunch, where we sipped white grape and elderflower cordial, ate fresh bread, ham and cheese,  soaked up the sun, and admired the view.  Kenisington Gardens are really lovely, so much more open space than Hyde Park, much quieter too. There's a carousel (that the boyfriend wouldn't let me go on), big open lakes, and lots of trees to find shade.

I went with a maxi skirt for the day, since I wanted to keep my legs covered (I hadn't quite had enough time to fake bake them up!) but still be cool, this is a relatively new one that I picked up for a tenner in Primark. I love maxi skirts, and I'm really loving cobalt blue everything at the moment, so I just had to have this one. The quality is suprisingly good too, for Primark, it's very heavy which I like! The top was a Zara sale bargain, £5.99, I love it because it's big and loose fitting, and the ying and yang symbol on the front is really detailed. My shoes are last years from Office, not massively comfy, but cute and keep your feet cool!

 So there we go! Sorry for the photo heavy post but I hope you enjoyed it! You can see more photos from our visit on my instagram, which you should go follow right now!