Life on tour is not always easy… break downs, smelly feet, dog poo etc are just part of the journey… and without them, the trip would simply never be as much fun!

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Quiksilver Women spent the day with stylist Beth Jones at The Standard Hollywood. She picked her favorite pieces from our Fall 2010 collection to create a look that is both dressy and casual.

One of my favorite things is to see other people’s personal style, how they wear something and put their own spin on it. As is the case with Rachel from That’s Chic. She took a one hot Quiksilver Womens swimsuit and turned it into one glamorous poolside get-up.
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The Warner Beach Swimsuit got the Rachel treatment this summer, and now I am dying to prance around the pool in my own little styled up look.

Quiksilver Women spent a day with stylist Beth Jones at The Standard Hollywood. She picked her favorite pieces from our Fall 2010 collection to create a preppy, tomboy chic look. Check out the video below.

We caught up with Charlotte as she cruises the surf towns of the UK with her acoustic band in a 1970’s VW campervan. Get a peak into this mad adventure in the video below.

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Summer it HOT, and I mean blazing.. sweaty.. HOT! A perfect time for effortless, easy dressing. A simple jeans and tee.. but not your ordinary jeans and tee – the Iron Clad Skinny jeans get distressed and made to look worn in and wonderful and paired with The Gig Cropped Tee is makes that final “devil may care” statement.
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Don’t let the heat get you down – just simplify.

In the UK alone over 1.2 million tonnes of clothes are thrown away each year, with most items still in perfectly wearable condition - what a waste, don’t you think? And the planet thinks so too!
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A well-known way to reduce wardrobe waste is to donate unwanted clothes to charity shops, which are always a great place to pick up one-off items at a bargain price too – just ask my friend Holly, she’s the Queen of charity shops. However, India Knight’s “The Thrift Book”, which I also often refer to as ‘my bible’, is full of other great ideas for reducing, reusing and recycling unworn and unwanted fashion.
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First up, Knight suggests opting for quality not quantity, investing in those classic items you’re going to wear again and again, such as the QSW Outside Line Dress or the 4am Sweater Coat from the Fall Winter 2010 collection. Lets face, it we all have all fallen victim to buying arms full of ill-fitting dresses just because they were cheap, but these days I would much rather save up and buy one fab dress that makes me feel truly special over and over again, rather than a heap of ‘wear-once’ items that are just going to end up at the back of my wardrobe.
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Knight’s next suggestion, and my personal favourite, is to hold a clothes swap party! It’s easy; just get a bunch of your mates together at your place one night with a couple bottles of wine and everyone’s castoffs then swap away, and anything left over at the end of the night goes to charity. Also, look out for public swapping events in your area, which will usually be held in a local bar or café or you can try swapping online, try whatsmineisyours.com.
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Another fun way of putting your unwanted wardrobe to good use is to take part in a clothes sale such as ‘Granny Would Be Proud’, the vintage and craft fair I took part in recently. I was selling a selection of lovely dresses I don’t seem to wear any more, along with kitsch kitchenware and a few crafty bits’n’bobs I’ve been making recently, whilst other sellers were offering everything from cakes to handmade jewellery and I picked up a couple of timeless pieces while I was there. The aim here’s not really to make money, but to have some fun, pick up some bargains and meet some likeminded people, so whether you’re buying or selling they’re a great day out.
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Last, but not least, if you’re practical minded learn how to patch a hole or fix a broken zip. But what’s more, If you like getting crafty, you can always have a go at customising and refashioning old clothes, which you can either then wear and make all your friends jealous, or you can sell them on at a fair like the one I just mentioned – there are always people out searching for unique items. Try altering clothes so they fit perfectly, changing the buttons on an old sweater or chopping up an old t-shirts to give them a new neckline.
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But most importantly, look after your clothes. From the person who grew the cotton to the designer and the people who stitched it together it takes time, effort and a lot of the Earth’s natural resources to make the clothes you wear and the last place a dress wants to end up is the local landfill.
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the Granny Would Be Proud vintage and craft fair

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Just back from the Relentless Boardmasters festival in Newquay, Cornwall and had a lot of fun! Boardmasters is held on a stunning cliff top location over looking Watergate Bay where 12,500 people attend the South West’s biggest live music event. Dave and I played on the view stage, which is their new acoustic stage.
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Good old English weather threatened to pour down until an hour before we played but then brightened up a little bit. Not quite the scorching hot day we were hoping for but lots of lovely people still came to see us and support us!
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Being non drinkers and non caffeine intakers we didn’t partake in the drinking of any Relentless drinks or vodka on offer but found a very cute little tent with free red current tea which was put-on by a lady who lives in Spain and self teaches her 3 kids in a house without an electricity generator which she has done for 15 years! She was very cool!
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For the rest of the evening we were loving the sets from Plan B, Xavier Rudd, Seasick Steve and Newton Faulkner.
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The beaches are gorgeous in Newquay so we made the most of it the following day by making sure to do some surfing with the Quiksilver surfing school and walking through the more quiet secluded beaches-avoiding the nuts magazine Bikini contests and the like where on 2 occasions I saw pink liquid coming out of some poor guys mouth! Oh the joys of alcohol- not!
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This weekend we met some really lovely people at this festival. So thanks to Katy for booking us, those on Facebook who came along to support me! Really appreciate it!! Hope you had an amazing time! Thank you to Ady Webb for the brilliant photos of us playing the gig and Jen White for the videoing and Stacey for recommending them to me. Video/audio to follow asap. Bye for now,
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Lots of love,
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Ellie xxx

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We have big dreams when we are kids. I, for example, dreamed of being a beauty queen. Miss Switzerland or something, which, yes, doesn’t really speak for me as a child. Today I blame this emotional fuddle on the black incisor that I got from a gross-motor incompetence incident. I managed to fall in a supermarket and hit my jaw right on a shopping trolley, which ended in a black milk incisor. My childhood friends took advantage of my clumsiness and made me take over the unpopular character of the ugly old lady in any role-playing. «Who’s playing the witch?» they would say, «Let’s have Ela be the witch, she’s got a black tooth…» Kids can be bastards, and you might want to call it a cheep excuse, but I do blame this black tooth and my mean childhood friends for my infantile beauty queen trauma.
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Luckily I got to reconsider my rather pathetic beauty queen dream when my second set of teeth brought me a new and shiny white incisor. My black-toothed ugly duckling days were over, and the beauty queen dream went out of focus. Looking back today makes me realize that I might have changed my dreaming to something – let’s call it – slightly more intellectual, but in its essential features it stayed the same. I dreamed of being an adult and I dreamed of being able to do what I wanted to do every day and all day (such as talking of world peace all day long in my beauty queen years… No need to understand!). No more orders from teachers, moms, dads, siblings or any other kind of person of authority… I remember I spent days fantasizing about this one moment that would stand for freedom, this one moment I would finish school, say good-bye to teachers and exams and tests of any kind. I dreamed of how great it would feel, of how much the world would belong to me, and of how much I would enjoy it…
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Now what if this moment comes and all that happens is nothing? No scales that fall of your eyes. No irreplaceable feeling of relief that clears all your unanswered questions at once. Nothing, that happens, but your clock ticking like it did for the past twenty something years? Well, I finished my studies a week ago. I said good-bye to my professors and tutors. I said good-bye to exams and tests of any kind. I said good-bye to the University building knowing I’d never enter it again. But all that happened was nothing… Tough cookies!
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I don’t know if it should have frustrated me that the day I had been looking forward to for most of my life went down my history as just another day, it sure was a little ironic. I had spent my days dreaming of this one moment and when I got to experience it, I forgot what exactly I thought would be so magic about it. Instead, I couldn’t help having my mind wander back to the moment all the dreaming started and thinking of how nice life was when all these authorities were taking care of any and all kinds of decisions for me…  I guess our perspectives on things change, and things we dream of might no longer be all that dreamful once we achieve them. But if it’s only for dreaming keeping us going, if we dream, we have to dream big!
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Ela

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If we dream, we have to dream big! Ela in the San Felipe Creek Skirt and the Salt Creek Cami (photo: Timo Jarvinen)