All Posts By

Stacey

Work

Financial Literacy: The New Frontier of Banking CX

Why Financial Literacy Is the New Frontier of the Banking Customer Experience

 

Money is awash in the market, so why are so many consumers so financially unhealthy?

Despite the proliferation of financial services, platforms and tools in the marketplace, consumers are more vulnerable than ever. In the U.S., a Federal Reserve survey finds that 36 per cent of consumers can’t cover an unexpected $400 expense with cash or its equivalent. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter say their finances are worse due to job layoffs and other issues caused by the pandemic.

European consumers are experiencing similar issues. Some 48 per cent of residents report that their wellbeing declined in 2020 due to COVID-19, and one in five say they are going into debt to cover everyday spending.

As governmental help in the form of rent subsidies, mortgage payment holidays and enhanced unemployment ends around the world, consumers are at greater risk than ever. And they want help: In the UK, 93 per cent of consumers say that education has failed to prepare them to handle their finances, and 43 per cent believe that it’s their bank’s responsibility to do so.

Consumers are constantly making choices that improve or harm their finances, and many have long-term consequences. For example, taking on excessive debt can lead to high interest rates, crisis-based living and bankruptcy. Failing to save anything for retirement, as 45 per cent of U.S. boomers have, is now plunging the elderly into poverty with alarming regularity.

Adding to the complexity of the challenge is that self-serve financial tools, seamless digital switching and easy lending terms make it easier than ever for consumers to get credit and loans or gamify services they know little about – and they have. Recently, Robinhood made an undisclosed settlement to the family of Alex Kearns, the 20-year-old novice options trader who committed suicide when faced with suspected losses of $730,000. This story should serve as a chilling case in point that institutions share the risk of financial literacy issues with their consumers.

Banks can make more money from servicing wealth, not debt 

For banks, financial literacy is a challenge that can and should be faced head-on. While banks have historically made their money by servicing debt, low and sustained low interest rates have cannibalised that source of revenue. Now, banks make more money by helping consumers grow their wealth. Given that huge swaths of the population around the world are living in financial peril, banks’ current and future revenues and profitability are also at risk. So, what can banks do to help consumers learn about – and master – their finances?

Why investing in financial literacy is in banks’ best interests

Delivering an exceptional customer experience is no longer just about offering great products and services; it’s about helping consumers navigate the choices, small to large, that affect their financial well-being and mental health.

When banks assume a role as educator and mentor, they can help consumers reduce and eliminate debt and manage their ongoing commitments, such as mortgages and loans. They also help consumers increase their wealth over time. Banks win by deepening customer relationships and increasing profitability while reducing bad debt and collections costs and freeing up funds for ongoing digital investment.

Here’s how banks can help consumers improve their financial well-being now:

Learn from the competition:

Fintechs have driven innovation in the industry, with simple, user-friendly interfaces; user tools such as AI-driven chatbots; and insights such as nudges, alerts, spending breakdowns and data visualisations. These tools can be applied across services, including cash management, payments, lending, insurance and more. Banks can either replicate these features or buy tools from fintechs directly.

Nudges and alerts can help consumers monitor such items as outstanding balances, loan payment terms and due dates, and more, improving their credit and helping them reduce debt. Modelling tools can help explore the implications of decisions, helping consumers better experience their consequences.

In the U.S., Zoggo Finance is teaching Gen Z how to make better decisions, using games and incentives. Emma helps consumers track finances, eliminate wasteful subscriptions and use recommendations to save money. Betterment and Wealthfront provide robo-advising that simplifies investment decision making, while Coinbase makes cryptocurrency investing accessible.

Develop deep customer insights:

Banks can learn how consumers make decisions, including those that aren’t in the best interests of their financial well-being. Teams can conduct qualitative and quantitative research and apply design thinking to these challenges.

Teams can conduct innovation sprints, using insight-driven tools and techniques such as user personas, pain mapping, inspirational case studies and new technologies to explore new opportunities. They can then align the best of these opportunities to their target customer experience, by developing a growth strategy; commercialising new business models, products and services; and aligning their technology roadmap and investments accordingly.

During the early days of COVID-19, Sparkler executed fast-paced research to learn how UK consumer beliefs and attitudes were changing. As an example, Sparkler found that among 18- to 34-year-olds, 37 per cent needed more credit to pay for essentials, 45 per cent were interested in alternative ways to invest money and 38 per cent said they needed greater guidance on managing pensions, insights banks could put to work.

Become a data-driven business:

Banks can improve data gathering, analysis and segmentation across the customer lifecycle. They can then use this data to design personalised customer journeys across digital channels, where financial education is delivered both just-in-time and on an ongoing basis. By deploying cloud-based tools to better predict behaviour and risk, they can offer financial content and intervention to support customers’ decision making.

Banks can use AI-driven chat and other tools to guide consumers through products and services and help them make the right choices. Similarly, brokerages can break down and demystify options, stock and crypto trading, while putting appropriate checks and balances in place to avoid harming vulnerable consumers.

Ageas, a leading insurance company in Europe and Asia, is building analytics solutions at scale, to offer personalised services and automated processes across its life, non-life, and accident and health business lines.

Deploy modern strategies and architectures:

Banks are moving data to the cloud, using microservices to build flexible services, and creating end-to-end solutions using APIs. By so doing, bank teams can gain access to near-real-time, accurate data for decision making. They can then use advanced analytics to predict financial difficulty, model the affordability of new loans and automatically trigger interventions for vulnerable consumers.

But they’ll have to move faster to keep pace with the market. Banks are adopting agile ways of working to speed up innovation and reduce risk. Schroders, a global investment manager, has trained 600 professionals on agile processes, accelerating the speed of project release by 20 per cent in just nine months.

As consumers struggle with finances, they are looking for a helping hand. By intervening early and often with personalised financial literacy tools and services, banks can create customers for life. As financial services leaders know, keeping, servicing and growing customer relationships can be more profitable than constantly marketing for and losing them, or writing off bad debt due to ongoing loan and credit losses.

This article was first published in Global Banking & Finance Review 

1st September 2021
Work

Digitally enabled, customer-centred approaches in banking

Human problems, personal solutions: digitally enabled, customer-centred approaches in banking

The UK faces a looming crisis in personal debt. Even before COVID-19, the Money Advice Service, an independent organisation set up by government estimated that 8.3 million people in the UK were over-indebted. 10 months after the first lockdown in March 2020, 14 million Britons experienced a direct negative impact on their income, 4.3 million fell into arrears with utilities, council tax or rent and 2.8 million used high-cost credit to make ends meet.

The UK Government’s Debt Respite Scheme (Breathing Space) will help many, however as furlough schemes approach their end and mortgage payment holidays begin to expire, many borrowers face a potential cliff edge. The scale of the problem could be huge; press reports suggest that over 4.7 million payment deferrals have been granted for UK mortgages, personal loans or credit cards.

Vulnerable customers are particularly susceptible to harm from debt. Key drivers of vulnerability often overlap and can include negative life events, deprivation, low financial resilience and ill health. Vulnerability also correlates strongly with mental health problems. Our analysis shows that vulnerable customers are not simply a small minority of sub-prime borrowers. They number in the millions and include the temporarily vulnerable, such as individuals or families affected by unexpected economic shocks like illness or job loss.

The expectation-reality gap

These potential challenges create an opportunity for lenders to build on the goodwill generated during the pandemic by treating vulnerable customers fairly, constructively and with empathy. At the same time, lenders need to ensure they meet much tougher regulatory requirements than in previous credit downturns. The FCA’s emergency COVID-19 regulations include an increased focus on vulnerability, and new guidance requires firms to actively manage persistent debtors and prove that vulnerable customers are treated fairly.

Unfortunately, there is often a gap between these expectations and lenders’ available responses to distressed customers’ common pain points. Typically, interventions are blunt instruments that treat the symptoms of excessive debt without curing the underlying causes. They rarely consider customers’ financial understanding, mental health or wider circumstances. And all too often they push customers towards phone-based interactions. This not only increases costs but makes it hard to provide seamless service, due to a lack of joined up systems. Phone conversations also can impede effective engagement, since they expose many vulnerable customers to feelings of embarrassment, awkwardness or harassment.

Delivering better outcomes for customers and lenders

To close these gaps, lenders need to move fast to develop customer-centred responses that allow them to gather customer information faster, analyse risks and behaviour more effectively and intervene earlier. The ultimate goal should be to engage effectively and proactively with vulnerable customers, achieving better outcomes for customers and lenders alike.

To deliver this standard of service, lenders need to combine a human-centred design approach backed up by a digitally-enabled operational spine. Accelerating customers’ ability to use modern data-enabled digital services will help lenders to deliver customisable, timely and flexible interactions. That will encourage greater self-service by customers, taking pressure off contact centres and ensuring that – when they do take place – personal interactions are valuable to both parties.

Such an approach is not without its obstacles, especially for established lenders reliant on legacy technology or with customer information divided between databases and organisational silos. These barriers, together with over-reliance on manual processes, can make it hard to provide seamless experiences – let alone tailored, insightful interactions.

To overcome these hurdles, lenders should follow five key patterns for success:

  • Leading by design: Applying design thinking to business strategy can help bring customer-centric products and processes to market quickly. Developing a clear user-centred North Star based on target customer experiences will align technology, data and operations, creating value for customers, lenders and staff.
  • Transitioning technology: Overcoming the limitations of legacy technology infrastructure, for example by replicating data to the cloud and using new microservices, will help lenders to innovate quickly and easily. Integrated technology allows vulnerable customers to build relationships with individual staff over multiple interactions, ensuring fair treatment and making specialist support readily available.
  • Being a data-driven business: Creating modern data strategies and architectures is critical to digital improvement. Providing ubiquitous access to actionable data in-house and to approved partners is the goal. Reliable, timely and machine-readable data allows lenders to use advanced analytics to predict financial difficulty, model affordability and trigger interventions for vulnerable customers.
  • Embracing the platform opportunity: Developing platforms that can be integrated into broader value chains will mean lenders can deliver whole ecosystems to customers. The ability to quickly share data across the organisation and beyond will allow firms to offer tailored interventions when and where they’re needed, significantly improving how vulnerable customers access assistance.
  • Using automation for advantage: Using robotics, the cloud and the Internet of Things will make processes and experiences faster and more efficient. Building flexible multi-component solutions can be more valuable than end-to-end automation. For example, integrating chatbots into experiences can automate the initial steps of all journeys, but with manual interactions available on request.

Identifying and designing target customer experiences is a key enabler of these patterns of success. Focusing on prioritised elements of target experiences makes it easy for organisations to make progress at pace, improving incrementally rather than investing heavily in ‘big bang’ transformations that take a long time to make a difference to customer experiences.

Furthermore, improving customer experiences quickly will also deliver early, tangible returns on lenders’ investments all the while delighting their customers. Better experiences allow lenders to reduce operational demands, lower customer contact costs, reduce the costs of sales and reduce staff turnover – all of which strengthen financial performance. Our experience shows that a one per cent improvement in customer satisfaction is typically matched by a five per cent reduction in operating costs.

Integrating user-centred design with modern digital engineering holds the key to lenders’ ability to achieve strong alignment between vision, implementation and returns on investment. In turn, that will ensure not only vulnerable customers are treated fairly, but that lenders optimise their own performance and affirm their role in society.

Originally posted on paconsulting.com.

12th August 2021
Play, Work

Lockdown Pub Quiz

Like most people during this weird time, we’re trying to find ways to stay in touch and have fun with our workmates. I saw a post on Twitter from @rossbreadmore a couple of weeks ago about running a pub quiz, with a link to some instructions so I unashamedly used his format as the basis for the Inaugural Stay Inn Pub Quiz last night.

I thought it might be useful to expand on the original by Ross and post the structure and materials we used for ours.

On our What’sApp group I asked everyone to let me know their quiz names in advance, so I had a list of the names and numbers before we started. This helped me to shape some of the questions, and get the scorecard ready.

We used a Premium Zoom account which enabled people to see both eachother and the questions, which I’d prepared in a PowerPoint document. This helped a lot for the image and music rounds.

We structured 5 rounds:

Round 1: Basic general knowledge – 10 questions to get everyone warmed up.

Round 2: Location, Location, Location – we screen-grabbed 6 images of well-known locations (one was our office address) from Google Earth and asked people to guess them.

Round 3: Supermarket sweep. The teams had 3 minutes to grab 6 specified items from around the house. 3 minutes was too long, everyone was back in 2 – so you could shorten this bit.

Round 4: Quantine Partytime. We prepared 6 music intro’s – grabbed from Spotify, cut into music files and embedded into PPT – and played each 3 times in a 30 second segment.

Round 5: Playing to the Audience. I found 11 questions that covered all the areas our players were from.

We put a 5-min break in after round 3 – so people could top up their drinks and at the end of each of the first 4 rounds there was a bonus question. I’ve taken those out of the file, as they were a bit personal – but you can add in some fun ones about the host or players. You can download all of the other questions and answers.

We had really good fun, and it was something nice to look forward to. I even put some make up on for the occasion and a game of bingo is being planned too…

Enjoy quizzing 🙂

 

 

11th April 2020
Design

Mary Quant at the V&A

The hot fashion ticket in London this year is the Dior exhibition at the V&A, but I when I was looking for somewhere for a Birthday treat for my Mum, the quieter and smaller Mary Quant retrospective stood out to me as the one to book.

I didn’t know much about Mary Quant – and I was really pleasantly surprised how much more to her story there was than just the famous Sixties miniskirt. In fact, the show content is broader than just that period – covering from about 1955 to 1975 – and featuring fashion, make-up – and my personal favourite, the Daisy dolls.

Quant moved into the toy market in 1973 with Daisy, the ‘best-dressed doll in the world’. This enabled the next generation to connect with her brand, buying miniature versions of the designs for the jet-setting, independent doll. The launch at the Harrogate Toy Fair featured models dancing down the catwalk wearing life-size versions of Daisy’s wardrobe.

I loved these brightly coloured swinging rain capes – which came in yellow, pale pink, hot pink and orange. I’d wear one of these now.

Quant designed a range of these bold rain capes for Alligator Rainwear in a rainbow of the season’s ‘snappiest shades’. The paired-back and fun design in showerproof cotton canvas features slash pockets, a central zip front, metal studs and Quant’s signature colour contrast top stitching at the hem. The advertising proclaimed ‘Quant girls take shelter under this swinging cape’.

And getting a glimpse behind the scenes at the creative process was great – this storyboard featuring Quant’s make up products is ace.

At the heart of this collection though, are the stories of the women who wore Quant’s clothes – which were fun, accessible and gender-boundary pushing – at a time when women couldn’t even wear trousers into a restaurant. A lot of the pieces were sourced from the public, via a call-out from the V&A last year and there’s a charming video display of personal photographs and snippets about the pieces, from people that bought them, or their families.

The exhibition runs until February next year – so there’s plenty of time to go and see it. I’d highly recommend you do 🙂

15th June 2019
Live

Beach to 5k

167 days since I first laced up my old gym trainers and attempted a run, I’ve hit my 5k target.

We were in Spain on Christmas Eve when I decided to strap on my old gym trainers, download Couch to 5k and go for a jog along the seafront. I’ve never run before, or been remotely interested in running before. But I had decided that I needed to get fitter and 2019 was going to be the year for it.

I’ve struggled to stick to anything fitness-wise since I gave up martial arts in my twenties. Since then I’ve had random spurts of joining and going to a gym or going to random classes but nothing has ever really stuck. That lack of motivation, combined with the 3-hour commute each day means that having no time to exercise is an excellent convenient excuse not to do it. So I realised I need something that is easy to do wherever you are, that doesn’t involve getting home and having to drive somewhere else and something that I can do at my own pace.

That first ‘run’ lasted just under 15 minutes. And nearly killed me.

But I went out again that week while we were in Spain, and since then I have either been out most weeks or gone for a run in the gym. I’ve run in Marbella and Malaga. I’ve run in Sussex and around Smithfield in London. I’ve run in the evenings and in the mornings, in the cold and in the warm. I’ve dumped the old trainers and bought shiny new lightweight ones, and a ridiculously bright pink jacket; and I’ve even bought a couple of copies of running magazines. My Mum and Dad have joined in by buying me some gloves to keep my hands warm and Madge regularly buys me fun socks that make me smile whenever I put them on. I’ve stopped using the the Couch to 5k and app and started listening to podcasts and I’ve had oodles of encouragement from friends – in person and virtually – and every single bit of it is utterly, totally appreciated.

Looking back on the last 6 months makes me very happy – and a little bit proud of myself that I’ve stuck to it. According to Strava I’ve run 94.78km!

The biggest revelation hasn’t been that, yes I am a bit fitter, and yes I look a bit slimmer – the biggest revelation has been how good I feel when I’m regularly running.  How much it helps my head. A quick run at the end of the day is the perfect way to offload work-day stresses, which at some points in the last 6 months have felt almost overwhelming. Mid-way through, around Easter time while we were in Spain (again) I read ‘Eat, Drink, Run‘ by Bryony Gordon. It tells her journey to help tame her anxiety through running – how running saved her mental health and how through it, she set up her mental health support group ‘Mental Health Mates‘. Even if you don’t fancy donning your trainers and going out, I’d recommend it as a pretty inspirational, honest and heartfelt story.

I’m not making any big plans or ambitious goals for the next 6 months. I’m just going to keep on keeping on, running because I enjoy it and maybe adding some other activities to it a bit more regularly. I talked about the difficulty of finding time to do it with my coach, and he reminded me that if I don’t put myself first, no one else will. It’s up to me to stop prioritising other things (mostly work) above the things I want, or need, to do – like exercise. So keeping that in mind, I’m going to crack on and see if I can beat my 5k time over the next 6 months.

 

9th June 2019
Live

Out of the darkness

The clocks have gone forward, the weather is milder and it’s nearly Easter. So, spring is here and we can finally goodbye to winter. A new beginning.

I haven’t written for months, despite my aim to do so regularly from the start of the year. All of my brainpower has been taken up with work, and it’s sapped pretty much all of my energy for creative hobbies and desire to sit in front of a computer when I’m not there! It’s been an all-encompassing 3 months since the company I work for was sold, with lots of new challenges and opportunities rapidly opening up, in equal measure. I’ve worked in largely similar types of organisations in similar ways for a long-time, so this new world is making me think differently and try new ways of working. There’s great excitement and healthy nervousness in that, but I’m out of kilter; working long hours, getting stressed and not spending time on the things I enjoy.

It’s felt right to focus on work for the first quarter, but going forward I need to make some adjustments. That pace is fine for a period of time – it’s necessary when you’re getting used to something new, adjusting to change and have to put extra effort in, but it’s not sustainable. I need to do more prioritisation and make active decisions about where to put my effort.

I’ve signed up for some personal coaching sessions which should really help and fortunately, it’s nearly time for a holiday – my first days off since December, and I can’t wait. Holidays are such a good time for re-calibrating and taking stock. I’m fitter (and a bit slimmer) than I’ve been in years and that’s making me feel good, and I’m really enjoying life in our new home. There’s tonnes of work to do in the house but it’s been dark and miserable so I’ve hibernated and ignored it. Looking forward to thinking about interior design projects and what to do with the garden over the coming months. I’m also looking forward to cutting back on working evenings and weekends, to allow time for exercise, writing and photography.

In the past few weeks the universe has reminded me how important it is to stop and take a moment to breathe. There’s so much you can’t control. Happiness, uncertainty, stress, death and illness have all been present recently and the only thing you can control is how you respond to things, but I know that to do that well I need to achieve balance by making time for the things that help me to stay healthy in mind and body.

31st March 2019
Live

Embrace your comfort zone

When I was 13 I worked in a video shop on Saturdays. Every week pretty much the same people would come in and rent the latest VHS movies. Most customers wanted to watch the new releases, but what always fascinated me were the children. Rather than being tempted by the new films, the kids wanted to see something they’d seen before. Something they were comfortable with. Something they knew. Right down to being able to recite all the words. Epic tantrums followed when Mum or Dad tried to get them to try something different.

I didn’t know it then, but apparently this is not unusual. There are many and lengthy physiological explanations for why we are drawn to the things we are most familiar with, even from a very young age.

Fast-forward (pun intended) a few years and I’ve realised that actually, now that I am presented with more choice that ever, I also keep returning to the things I know and bring me comfort. We’re all accustomed to the the over-used term ‘comfort zone’.

I never thought I’d be ‘one of those people’ who go on holiday to the same place – yet that little piece of Andalucia that I adore to visit, with the restaurants I know and the beach club I love, brings me as much joy as any new adventure. The sense of peace I feel when I look at those familiar mountains, basking in the pink evening sky; the surge of joy when I see the beauty of the blue Mediterranean sea, the happiness of going back to places where we’ve had so much fun before is something I look forward to with something close to actual longing. It’s the place I go to in my head on a wet, cold Monday morning, and it’s the reason I go back there at least twice a year.

So, is this a lack of imagination on my part, an aversion to trying new things, or a genius strategy to make the best use of limited holiday time and budget? The truth is, it’s probably a number of things. A comfort zone is described as “a psychological state in which things feel familiar to a person and they are at ease and in control of their environment, experiencing low levels of anxiety and stress.”

Who wouldn’t want that on holiday?

But in truth, it’s not just holidays. I’m the same with books and films – I love to re-read or re-watch something I already know. I look up the ending of a film before I watch it. I have a set of favourite restaurants and tend to choose one of these for a night out. I love re-watching old boxsets, and I listen to much, much more old music than I do new. Oh, and I categorically hate surprises.

According to Psychology Today magazine, ‘ familiar things – food, music, activities, surroundings, etc. – make us feel comfortable. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that familiarity breeds liking. Generally speaking, things that are familiar are likely to be safer than things that are not. If something is familiar, we have clearly survived exposure to it, and our brain, recognising this, steers us towards it.’

Makes total sense. Yet, paradoxically, I’m not against trying new things – I’ve moved house 13 times in my adult life, I’ve started a business (well, 2 actually), changed jobs multiple times, rarely stick to traditions, have a pretty variable daily life and have travelled all over the world. So, actually, I think that the peace and soul calming headspace I experience from a trip back to that familiar part of Spain is less about hiding away in the ‘safe’ and more about recognising that it’s nice to be able to rely on instant relaxation and a guaranteed good time. While travel undoubtedly broadens the mind, getting to get to know a place deeply – exploring it bit by bit and peeling back the layers brings a calmness and satisfaction that’s hard to beat. And it works brilliantly for a short break. I never get bored, because it’s never totally the same, and neither am I. A trip to that special part of Spain is a tradition I won’t ever tire of.

So for me, it’s about balance. A couple of trips a year back to Andalucia, complemented with new experiences and destinations is the perfect mix.

 

 

2nd September 2018
Play

Summer fun

“Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-browed night;
Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night…”

It really feels like the weather has turned, and Autumn is on its way but it’s only the end of August. I’m hoping for a late surge of sunshine into September, although I’ll (hopefully) be getting my Vitamin D top-up next month with two holidays planned.

Before the weather turned though, I’ve managed to fit in some fun things this Summer. A  trip to the theatre to see Chicago, starring Martin Kemp, was probably the surprise hit. I think you can always tell a good theatre experience when you don’t notice the time to the interval or the end, or the tiny seats; and I never expected it to be so good.

We were lucky enough to be in the second row, and my 14-year old self was loving it! All the performers were brilliant, the musical raced along and all too soon it was over. I always think that I don’t really like musical theatre that much, and then love it when I’m there.

I also got to go to Secret Cinema for the first time. It’s pretty safe to give the venue away now, as the run of Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo and Juliet finished on Saturday.

Staged in Gunnersbury Park, this was the largest event that the company had put on, so it probably wasn’t very representative of many of the others before it. We were told to meet at Acton Town tube station, wearing our ‘Montague’ colours of blue and white, and themed as per the film. We also had to take with us various items, such as a mask and a peace offering.

Luckily, we had a perfect Summer evening – not too hot and sweaty and amazingly, no rain. We got there about 6.45 and having learned our Montague dance moves we wandered round, getting cocktails and food from the many bars and stalls and enjoying a gospel choir, a dance-off and a rave in a petrol station. All great fun and really well done. Then at 9 it was time to take to the picnic blankets and chill out and watch the film. I won’t give too much away, but there always seemed to be something going on and it was great fun.

I’d like to try one of the indoor events – while we were lucky with the weather, it wouldn’t have been half as fun if it had rained – there was literally no cover anywhere – and the venue did feel just a little on the too-large size for the amount of people. That said, the festival vibe was fun and you ddin’t have to queue too long for anything. It was nice to get dressed up in the theme and I’d urge anyone going to do this to get into the spirit of it, but it’s also great that it wasn’t full-on fancy dress – you can get as dressed up as you feel comfortable with.

In between the theatre and the cinema, I also went camping for the work weekend away. I really don’t like camping, and this didn’t do much to change my opinion about the tents and the nature bit, but it was fun and we did have a lovely afternoon tea and got to shoot some clay pigeons.

Roll on September, my favourite month…

 

27th August 2018
Design

McQueen

A bit late on this one, but I couldn’t let it pass. Of course I was going to go and see the film and I expected to be dazzled to see the seminal catwalk shows on the big screen. What I didn’t expect was just how brilliant, immersive and emotional the whole (almost) 2 hours would be. The footage from the Highland Rape, Voss and the Spring 1999 No 13 show are stunning. Kate Moss as a hologram, Plato’s Atlantis. I want to watch it again, right now.

Such a fierce talent.

24th July 2018