Oooooh... Fashion

There's an exhibition of William Eggleston portraits currently on at the National Portrait gallery. Riot and myself both love the Eggmeister so we'd been saving a visit to this as a wee treat for before her Master's begins and her free time is drastically reduced.

As well as some of his more famous pieces (like the sublime 'untitled, 1965-68 (Memphis Tennessee)) , there's some  black and white work, some famous people (such as Joe Strummer and Dennis Hopper) and a selection of nightclub portraits he shot with a 5x7. 

I could look at Eggleston's work all day. If I can one day take a picture even remotely as wonderful as some of his many great images I'd die a happy man.

The rest of the National Portrait gallery was a bit of a buzzkill after such brilliance. You have to be pretty minted to commission a portrait. It doesn't make for a particularly inspiring view of history. 
 
The 20th Century gallery features a predominance of Royal family members and Conservative politicians. I think they should be trying a bit harder to make up for the previous centuries bias towards old rich white men.

Afterwards, we took a little wander up through China town and into Soho.  Soho has changed so much since I first visited London. It's not nearly as interesting now. Totally lost its character. 

Speaking of character, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by characters as we turned onto Brewer Street. I thought we'd wandered into a fancy dress convention, or perhaps they were filming Zoolander 3. Then I saw a sign opposite and realised it was London Fashion week.

It was a real scrum, loads of photographers grabbing shots of people wearing fairly outlandish stuff. We scuttled into the Duke of Argyle to escape. 

Inside I spotted this girl with a Marigold on her noggin. She was a surprisingly down to earth Manchester lass, who told us she'd used her rubber head gear to blag her way into the event currently happening next door and had rinsed them for all the free drink she could. Can only really applaud that kind of brass. Also turned out she was studying styling so she took my card, as I could do with some new contacts in this part of the world.

On our way back home we took a detour into a Bermondsey industrial estate, where Four Pure Brewing is based. They have a bar on site, fairly similar to the one Beavertown have. I highly recommend visiting breweries, as it usually works out a lot cheaper drinking there than it does in the pub...