The Ethical shopper confounded

Made in Italy? Not really.

I have a long piece in the Guardian today about the perils of buying ethically and the assumption that if you pay more you will automatically get better quality, and why so much production has moved to China, and why the major fashion houses are telling us their goods are made in Italy when they are not.

The abysmal high-street Christmas sales figures, together with predictions that we are facing recession, has led some fashion writers to wonder if the craze for fast fashion is coming to an end. It is time, it feels, to return to a more prudent and ethical way of shopping: not to forsake fashion altogether - God forbid - but to shop more wisely.

I had begun my autumn resolution with a jacket from Armani Collezioni, which cost £495. As I walked out of the shop and down Bond Street, I experienced a lightheaded elation. I had moved on and up to a higher plane, taking me closer to the source of style, and further away from mass-production.

Then the thread on the buttons started to unravel. How could this be? This was Armani, and not cheap and cheerful Emporio Armani either. Not quite couture, but, I assumed, lovingly made in a Florentine atelier by a raven-haired beauty who took a 90-minute lunchbreak to eat a three-course meal followed by espresso and adultery, and carried her paypacket home across the Ponte Vecchio in a Fendi Spy bag.

But then I met Dana Thomas, Newsweek's Paris fashion and culture correspondent, who had just published a book (Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre), which exposed the illusions of the luxury market. There are, she told me, only a very small number of companies still producing goods that live up to their own advertising. The Hermes Birkin bag costs £3,500 and has a three-year waiting list because it is made in exactly the same way as it always has been, by hand. A Chanel dress will be much the same quality today as a Chanel dress produced under the guidance of Coco Chanel herself in the 1920s. But the huge demand for designer luxury goods, initially fuelled by Japanese consumers in the 1980s, means that there are not enough skilled Italian and French craftspeople to make them, and most designer clothing and accessories are produced in China and other countries in the Far East

.

Read on

Asking for the moon

I want a dress.

I don't want a dress that comes above the knee
I don't want a tunic dress
I don't want a wrap dress
I don't want a smock dress
I don't want a sleeveless dress
I don't want a clingy dress
I don't want a shift dress.

In other words I want an A line dress with sleeves, and which hits just below the knee. Preferably not black.

But I think I'll go and look for the formula that turns base metals into gold, a cure for Aids and peace in the Middle East instead. No point chasing impossible dreams

Shopping in Egypt

He climbed on board a pick-up truck, one of a dozen passengers wedged into the back, each paying 20 Egyptian pounds (£2) for what would have been a brief 20-minute drive along the main road. But to avoid the now frequent police checkpoints the truck took a tortuous journey along Bedouin tracks through the desert for two and a half hours. Twice the truck became wedged in the sand until Shuber, 30, and his fellow passengers got out to push.

Once in El Arish he found, to his dismay, that the police had closed all the shops and restaurants in an effort to send the hordes of Palestinian shoppers home.

"I don't know where I'm going. I just came to have a look," said Shuber. "I was hoping to buy some electronics, maybe a food mixer for the kitchen or something for the children. But the prices have gone up and most of the shops are shut."

. . .

Some had put up with long and difficult journeys. Sara el-Masri and her son, Ahmad, 12, had been made to walk through the desert for three hours on Saturday to bypass the checkpoints. She returned only with a handful of gifts from a friend she had visited. "I wanted to come for the adventure. In Gaza we have nowhere to go," she said. "I just wanted to see something different."

Rory McCarthy in El Arish, Egypt

When you can only buy one thing, what should the one thing be

Thinking about the advice that a Valentino evening dress will last a girl forever, I am inclined to think that were I to spend a great deal of money on a single item, would it really be an evening dress?

The problem with spending so much on a statement dress is that if you wear it only five or six times a year, at grand parties (and I have far more use for cocktail dresses than evening dresses anyway) then whenever you go to a grand party, you will always be wearing the same dress. Back in 2000 I bought an evening dress at Liberty and wore it hard but finally it went to the charity shop for someone else to wear. I felt like every time I made an entrance, people were thinking, here she is, in that dress of hers. I haven't replaced it with another long dress, long having been out of style except on the red carpet for some years now.

In the Autumn, I saw an Armani Collezioni coat which made my heart stop. It was in my size and its price was £895 which I most definitely could not afford, having a couple of months earlier bought a Collezioni jacket. I didn't even dare try it on in case it stuck to me, as if I were a girl in fairy story, the cloth burning my skin. But if I had bought that coat, yes, I would have worn it for the rest of my life. Of course it would have to endure a few dark lonely seasons alone in the wardrobe, but out again it would come, eventually. If you can only buy one stand-out, knock-down, blow the overdraft garment, I'd buy something which can be accessorised. Something not made to be looked at but to make you look as if you have everyday elegance and style.

But don't let that stop you buying me Valentino dress.

UPDATE

Ten minutes later, I'm starting to think I'm being a bit boring and I should go for the Valentino dress after all. You only live once etc, and to walk into a room in a Valentino . . .

A couple of London sales

Hermes - 24 to 27 January

Up to 80% off Hermes womenswear, menswear, accessories and homewear.

24 to 27 January (10am to 6pm) 26 South Molton Lane, London, W1K 5AB.

Secret Sample Sale - 1 to 3 February

Studio/catwalk, showroom samples and clearance stock at to 80% discount

Studio/catwalk or showroom samples and clearance stock from London's designers, agents and retailers for men and women at up to 80% discount from retail price. Designers include Gharani Strok, Anna Rita N and Alchemist along with accessories from Jimmy Choo, Prada and Tods. 1 February (12pm to 7pm), 2 February (11am to 6pm) and 3 February (11am to 6pm) T2 , F Block, Old Truman Brewery, 1st Floor, 87 Brick Lane (opposite Woodseer Street)

At the sales

I went to the hairdressers' today at Sloane Square which is a brisk, ten-minute calorie-burning walk to Harvey Nichols so I dropped in to look at the final reductions in the sales. Since my resolution to stop buying cheap clothes my spending has dropped away to almost nothing, so with signs in the window saying up to 70 per cent off, I was well within my rights to see if they had anything I liked.

I tried on an Armani Collezioni jacket, at 60 per cent off, but it wasn't special enough to win a place next to all my other black jackets.

I tried an Anne Klein cocoon-shaped black wool coat, which was original, but the mark-down wasn't that great and I don't think the cocoon shape is a trend with any legs. And I have two black wool coats already.

I tried a DKNY short mac in a sensational yellow but it was too big.

I tried a Donna Karan slate jersey dress reduced from £1995 to £675 but thank god it was too small because I couldn't afford it.

And looking round I thought how utterly uninspired I felt by everything. Far too many of the dresses were too short, there was a world of black and beige and stone everywhere you looked. The clothes depressed me. Either they were ugly or they were unwearable. I looked in at Zara and saw a scrum of women fighting over tat, black tat.

Fashion has lost its bearings. The fad for cheap disposable style has revved up the speed of design, so trends come and go in a heartbeat, there's an air of desperation. There is nothing with authenticity and confidence, and nothing at all which issues that old siren call . . . wear me. Clothes have little relation to the bodies that they are supposed to dress.

Perhaps this is why there has been a retail slump. No-one wants to buy the stuff.

The Anglo-American relationship

Over at the Bag Snobs, they are talking up a pair of Louboutins available at Net a Porter for $730. Checking Net a Porter UK, I note that exactly the same shoes sell for £400, that's $800. Why the difference? There are issues about exchange rates, of course, ansd the strength of the pound against the weak dollar, but the rule that clothes and pretty much everything else are cheaper in America than Britain has held whatever the exchange rate. Why? One explanation is the sheer size of the US market. Stores like Saks and Neiman Marcus can negotiate aggressive discounts for their customers on the grounds that they will simply sell more of any product.

The American market is an exceptionally insular one. Neither Gap nor Banana Republic will ship outside the US and Canada and nor will the giant shoe sites like Zappos. The sheer size of the American market makes it impervious to the outside world. It sets its own rules. Zappos simply has no UK equivalent though increasingly high street stores like Marks and Spencer and upper end ones like Jaeger are making their stuff available on-line. But the difference is this: in America it is entirely possible to live hundreds of miles from any major shopping centre while in Britain, unless you dwell in the North of Scotland, you're never likely to be more than an hour's drive from a a concentration of: M&S, Jigsaw, Reiss, Hobbs, etc. And a swathe of the Midlands and North have Selfridges and Harvey Nichols.

So we have in Britain excellent access to high quality fashion, but we must pay often a third as much again as in America. This is why New York shopping trips have become the new vacation.

Five things to wear so you know it's 2008

1. Belts. Every wardrobe requires a repertoire. Last year’s were wide and blingy; this year’s are thin and understated.

2. Shoes. Bright colour and chunky are the bywords here. If there’s a new way to waft, it’s to do a semi-waft by toughening up pretty dresses with aggressive-looking shoes.

3. Bags: they’re definitely getting smaller. Some could even be classified as small.

4. If you’re bored with necklace mania, take heart. Now there’s bangle and cuffs mania.

5. Not just full, but really full skirts – the antidote to last year’s drainpipes. Wear with ballet pumps.

courtesy of the usually right Lisa Armstrong

Net a porter sale - up to 75 per cent off

From tomorrow, there's 75 per cent off many items at the Net a Porter sale. They are also adding to the sale stuff from Chloe, Stella McCartney, Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu, Roberto Cavalli, Burberry Prorsum and Alexander McQueen.

Check it out here NET-A-PORTER Homepage

H Nicks online

Not my kind of thing

Harvey Nichols has launched online handbag shopping amongst other items

Fortunately they are not, at present, offering any designers I particularly like apart from Lanvin

Not my new year resolution

A nobler person than The Thoughtful Dresser spent 2007 buying no new clothes.

Resisting, you see, is empowering. You feel as if you are carving out your consumer choices rather than giving in to the same desires that drive everyone else. As for what I wear, I’ve not once felt defeated by a lack of choice. Oddly, that happened more before I stopped shopping. Perhaps now I give more time to it, thinking about various outfits while in the shower, or eating breakfast. I spend evenings every month going through my supply, pulling forgotten numbers from the bottom of the wardrobe and teaming up different bits and pieces. As with food or travel, a degree of constraint can make you more creative.

London swings

Online sales

Net-a-Porter (UK and US), Pure Cashmere, Yoox (international) and Figleaves now have sales on this site.

It's a shop

Why some clothes last longer than others

I spent this morning with the design and management team of a UK fashion house for a story I'm doing. At one point the conversation turned to the high street, and whether the public was tired of cheap, disposable clothing.

I mentioned that I had bought a couple of Zara dresses that had fallen to pieces, and finally replaced them with a Vanessa Bruno dress which cost more than twice as much. I was told the reason why they fell apart. The label said machine washable.

A jersey dress that costs £49.99 will lose its colour when it's machine washed, particularly if it is black. The cheap thread and slapdash stitching will come undone in the rough and tumble of the spin cycle. The zip may slightly lose its placement and become difficult to do up. So why does it say machine washable? Because the high street knows that people won't buy a cheap dress you have to dry clean. More expensive dresses often have dry clean only on the label, and can in fact be machine washed, but the designer won't say so, because a machine washable designer garment sounds cheap.

We moved on to the baffling story of a pair of Zara trousers. I tried them on but didn't buy them. Changing my mind, I came back the next day and finding the same size on the rack, bought and paid for them, thinking that since I'd tried them on the previous day, they would fit the next. When I got them home, they were too small. This is because Zara allows for say 2 cm of 'slippage' ie the same item in the same size may be up to four cm different in size. On top of that lax quality control means that clothes will always get through that are out by more than the slippage limit. So the two pairs of trousers I tried on could have been six or eight cm different in size.

London sales

London sales date here

Hello Armani Collezioni.

Lingerie again

Many thanks to all of you wrote about your appreciation of the half slip. The industry has been fixated in the past few years with the changing shape of knickers - bikini to boy-short, not to mention control pants (what our mothers called 'roll ons,' 'foundation garments', or, bluntly, corsets.) But I'm inclined to think that we are in for a revival of the slip, which I have hitherto regarded as old lady wear. I suppose young women abandoned them in the Sixties because the ones on offer were too long to wear under a mini-skirt, and the whole point of clothes when you are 20 is how quickly you could get out of them.

The vest has been revived, in different form, those garments I wear under a top that's too low-cut or see-through for my taste. I had a look at Figleaves (see ad on the left) and they have lots of full-length slips which they call chemises, but no half-slips, apart from a couple of Spanx control ones. I wore the Vanessa Bruno dress with the half-slip last night, and it worked like a dream. So I'm even thinking along full slip lines now. Sleek 'n Chic offers vintage lingerie, but not sure if it's pre-worn. Yuck.

Shopping: online, and not.

Liverpool girls wait for the shops to open

As you can now see, there are several advertisements on this site. I have tried to keep them as unobstrusive as possible.

At the bottom you will find a large display ad for Net-a-Porter. You can choose to order from the UK or US site simply by clicking the change currency button in the top left-hand corner after you've clicked on the banner. Even if Net-a-porter is way out of you league, go and feast your eyes, anyway.

Today, at Cricket, I saw a row of Lanvin dresses, and ten £1000 Balenciaga handbags just lying on a shelf waiting to be bought. Round the corner where the Cavern Club used to stand, where the Beatles started out, is a whole Vivienne Westwood store. You could stay at the about to be completed Hard Day's Night Hotel - ie live inside a Beatles song, and then go shopping. Liverpool redux!

Nails and slips

On the matter of how much it costs to maintain one's grooming, the prices some readers have been coming up with manicures and pedicures in the US have been making my jaw drop. I recently made the mistake of having a perfectly ordinary manicure at Harvey Nichols, which cost a whopping £40 ($80) but my neighbourhood salon, where I have a monthly pedicure, charges £25 or $50, and once again, for nothing special. And you have to make an appointment.

My colonial cousins, you do not know how lucky you are.

Meanwhile, here in Liverpool I have noticed that one sign of the city's regeneration is the number of serious handbags you're now seeing on the streets. At the MetQuarter, I walked into Flannels, where you can pick up and fondle bags by Yves St Laurent, Prada, Fendi, Miu Miu etc and hurriedly put back a £785 Gucci dress. I did buy a Vanessa Bruno jersey LB day dress, but was worried about slight cling. The sales assistant gave me a top tip: go to M&S and buy a half slip, she said, the dress will glide over the slip instead of sticking to your bum. The half slip is a really old-fashioned piece of lingerie, and I couldn't believe they still sold them, but yes, they did and as she said, it did the trick.

Forty per cent off

At My Wardrobe until midnight tonight. Enter code Confidential40 in the Promotional Code box after you submit your card details at checkout.

For example

Beatrix Ong - £468 (£280) Black satin peeptoe shoes with swarovski crystal encrusted balls.

I just bought this cheerful John Smedley scarf to enliven a black winter coat, or even a leather jacket