Some site changes

This site has been running for coming up to a month. I am going to make some small changes.

If you would like your site to be linked to this one in the blogroll, please either put the URL in the comments below or email it to me at lindagrantblog[at]googlemail[dot]com (I'm sure you can work out that the bits in [] are to deter spam and know how to do it properly) with Blog add in the subject line

If you would like to be emailed a weekly digest of Thoughtful Dresser posts, send your email address to the same address as above, with Digest in the subject line. Nothing further will be done with these email addresses, they won't be sold or given to anyone else or seen by anyone but me.

Finally, I will shortly be making a cautious experiment with Google Adsense. We'll see how it goes.

Some London sample sales

Nicole Farhi sale

Massive reductions on all of the Farhi collections for men and women. Plus shoes by Scorah Patullo.

This is a great chance to stock up on Farhi basics. 28 November (10am to 6pm), 29 November (10am to 7pm), 30 November (10am to 6pm) and 1 December (10am to 4pm); Barbican Exhibition Centre, Hall 2, Golden Lane, London, EC2.

Ghost Warehouse Sale – 28 November to 2 December

Massive reductions on the Ghost range. Current season and past season’s stock available.

28 November to 2 December (11am to 7pm every day except Sunday 11am to 5pm) 20th Century Theatre, 291 Westbourne Grove, London, W11.

Lulu Guinness Sample Sale - 28 to 29 November

Pick up Lulu Guinness handbags and accessories at sample prices...

Plus accessories and home wears at up to 75% off. 28 and 29 November (10am to 7pm); Ground Floor, 87-91, Newman Street, London, W1T 3EY.

Four Marketing Sample Sale - 29 and 30 November

Stone Island, CP Company, Evisu, Superfine to name a few...

Womenswear from McQ Alexander McQueen, Superfine, Evisu, True Religion and C.P. Company. Menswear from Evisu, Stone Island, C.P. Company, True Religion, RAF by Raf Simons, McQ, Fake London and Oki-Ni. Underwear by Dolce & Gabbana and D&G. With 50 to 70% off the retail price. 29 November (8am to 6pm), 30 November (8am to 4pm). 20 Garrett Street, London, EC1Y 0TW.

Frost French Festive Frolics – 29 November

Expert shopping advisors, champers and 15% off any purchases…

The FrostFrench team of uber-stylists will be there to offer top class advice and recommendations for getting the perfect party look. Customers that quote ‘FrostFrench Festive Frolics’ will receive a special 15% discount. Sadie and Jemima may even make an appearance, if you fancy asking them for some shopping tips. 29 November (10am to at least 8pm); 22-26 Camden Passage, Islington, London N1, 70 Burlington Arcade, London, W1, 20 Foubert’s Place, London, W1

Religion Christmas Sample Sale - 29 November to 2 December 2007

Religion, Buddhist Punk, Bolongaro Trevor and House of the Gods.

29 November (2pm to 9pm), 30 December (11am to 8pm), 1 December (11am to 8pm) and 2 December (11am to 5pm). Unit 4-5, Dray Walk, The Old Truman Brewery, London, E1.

Amanda Wakeley Sample Sale - 30 November to 1 December

Samples from A/W 07 at 70% off...

Stock up on Amanda Wakeley classics from past season's and A/W 07 at massive reductions. There will be previous season's stock available at up to 85% off! Sizes range from 8 to 16 so there's something for everyone. 30 November (10am to 9pm) and 1 December (10am to 5pm); The Music Rooms, 26 South Molton Lane, Mayfair, London, W1K 5AB.

Designer Sale UK - 30 November to 2 December

Over 70 designers from big names to up-and-coming starts of the future with up to 90% off...

30 November (11am to 9pm), 1 December (11am to 8pm) and 2 December (11am to 5pm); The Bridge, Atlantis Building, Brick Lane, London, E1 6RU.

UPDATE

Click here for a voucher which gives you 20% off everything at Selfridge's from Friday to Sunday, except cosmetics which is 10% off

UPDATE

The Neiman Marcus designer sale has started with free shipping use the code WINTER

Poll: Can you dress well at any size?

This week's poll asks whether it is possible to dress stylishly, with chic and elegance at any size?

Some would argue that true style comes from within, others would say that the range of clothing offered by the fashion industry is so limited as to restrict larger women's freedom to dress well. Notice, I say larger women, since size 0 women are well-catered for.

I will be returning to this subject at greater length, but for now, just go vote, on the right.

And go and look at the Manolo for the Big Girl

The good stuff wins

This week's Thoughtful Dresser poll asked whether Olay was just as good as Creme de la Mer, and the race ran neck and neck until I started to worry about a Bush-Gore recount, in the end the good stuff pulled ahead to win.

Here are my own thoughts on the matter. Until I was thirty I never wore a moisturiser. Every pot of what I called gunk broke me out in spots. Huge, volcano-like three dimensional objects rose on the right cheek, pulsating with pus. Everything I tried from L'Oreal to Body Shop came to the same end: bad skin.

One day, when I was living in Vancouver, I was wandering through a department store when I saw a Shiseido counter with a gizmo which took some kind of in-depth photo of your skin and what its future would be. Despite the putative spots, my cheekbones were dry. So I bought a lotion thing, put it on, and a couple of days later could no longer stand the feeling of unmoisturised skin. My face felt, somehow, more supple, younger.

When I moved back to London, Shiseido had not yet launched so I went back to Body Shop - spots! - then to Clarins. And from Clarins to Estee Lauder, to Lancome, back to Shiseido and probably every brand in the beauty counter. Periodically I went cheap and cheerful, and each time the same thing happened. I broke out.

My conclusion was that it was not so much the ingredients of expensive skincare that worked for me but the forumulation. Cheap skin creams don't seem to be absorbed properly by my face; they lie there like a greasy layer.

I'd just love to tell you about the reasonably priced, organic skincare secret every British woman in the know only shares with her best friend. If I knew that secret I'd tell you. The truth is awful. Here it is:

My skin has never tried a Creme de la Mer product it doesn't like.

I know. It is hideously expensive, even more in Britain than the US, so I get it brought over for me, twice a year. I use the tinted moisturiser in the morning if I'm not going out and wearing make-up, and the full whack cream in the evening, which you warm between your fingers until it resembles a serum, than pat it on the skin. When you wake up in the morning there's a baby's bottom on your face.

What can I say? Truth hurts.

Thought for the day

It is amusing to observe in every age the ingenuity of dress in changing the human figure. Hannah Farnham Lee 1780-1865

Nature of freedom

I mentioned in a post at the weekend that in the unlikely event of me attending a demonstration I would advise on appropriate clothing. Watching the hundreds of students, Jewish and Muslim organisations demonstrating outside the Oxford Union on this bitterly cold November night, I can say that appropriate dress is a warm coat, jeans, and sturdy boots. Good for them.

Tonight, at the Oxford Union, the guest speakers will be David Irving, the discredited historian, liar, anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, and Nick Griffin, leader of the fringe British National Party (Britain's rough equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan.) There has been considerable debate about whether such a debate itself should be allowed to take place, with fundamental questions raised by others about freedom of speech.

As a writer,I assert that freedom of expression is the most basic principle of literature, without which there is nothing but propaganda. Nonetheless, as I have pointed out to creative writing students, publishers are not under a legal or commercial obligation to print their work. Norman Geras, as usual, sums up the issues forensically.

Norm says:

Fascists are entitled to free speech if we consider this to be a basic human right. Of course, that right is not absolute; there is a limit that prohibits incitement to violence. But within that limit fascists are - and they should be - free to say what they please. The question why they should be when they would deny the same right to others isn't to the point. You don't have to qualify to enjoy rights of free speech. That's the point of treating them as rights.

He then quotes Peter Tatchell:

'Support for free speech does not oblige the Oxford Union to reward these men with a prestigious public platform, which will give them an air of respectability, raise their public profile and allow them to espouse their intolerant views. It is helping them propagate their bigotry. Not offering hate-mongers a platform is not the same as banning them.'

Precisely so [Norm continues]. The same reasons that told against Columbia University's invitation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in September apply in this case.

And that is my view on the matter. You can watch a video discussion on the issue here.

UPDATE
Brian Klug in the Guardian adds:

Either it is the case that Griffin and Irving do not have a right to speak at the Oxford Union, or the fact that I have not been invited constitutes an abrogation of my right to speak.

Unless, of course, a person's right to speak is in direct proportion to the obnoxiousness of their views. No one would consciously subscribe to such a principle, but sometimes it seems as if it has been smuggled in under cover of a noble line from the Enlightenment, usually attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It is almost as if the more I disapprove of what you say, the greater your right to say it. Which we can all see is nonsense. Still, let's spell it out: despite their noxious views, neither Irving nor Griffin has a greater right to be invited to speak at the Oxford Union than countless people whose opinions are decent and humane.

(I could have illustrated this post with a picture of David Irving, I choose not to. That is my freedom.)

Cashmere

Because I work from home, and like to wear fairly simple comfortable clothes while I write, my basic, everyday uniform in winter is jeans and a cashmere sweater. The best quality and best priced cashmere sweaters I have found are from Pure, who do a very wide range of styles from classics to dresses and in exceptionally good colours, because they dye the yarn, not the garment, so you get true, intense pigment.

They have a 25 per cent off special at the moment and the code for that, which you enter at checkout would be PFH204 (at least I hope that is not just for returning customers).

Hadley is coming

British readers will of course will know Hadley Freeman's eccentrically original Monday style column in the Guardian, Ask Hadley. Here she is today:

Women love shoes: we all know and - for the purposes of making a highly generalised argument in a relatively truncated space - accept that. Having realised that they were on to a highway to wealth here, designers have been making increasingly crazy shoes for some time, with prices going up accordingly. For example, I know a young woman - a charming, delightful, sparkling, witty and, frankly, brilliant young woman - who has been so brainwashed by this whole shoe mania that she has found herself in possession of three pairs of ankle boots with all manner of ridiculous buckles and chunky heels and different-coloured piping details, and when I say "three", I obviously mean "four" and when I say "young woman", I quite possibly mean "me".

Visiting my publisher's last week I was pressed back against the wall by an a black-suited figure sweeping along the corridors with her considerable entourage behind her: it was none other than Cherie Blair, for whose autobiography Little,Brown has just signed the usual six figure sum. Bringing up the rear was her agent, who managed to shout out as she passed, 'Linda! Can I send you a proof of Hadley's new book?'


So it was that I spent the weekend enjoying such gems as:

. . .one should never look for style guidance from a French woman: it would be liking hoping to pick up some mental arithmetic tips from Stephen Hawking. . .

I can't begin to tell how many pleasures are contained in the pages of The Meaning of Sunglasses: A Guide to Almost All Things Fashionable and the only way you're going to find out is to wait patiently until February when it comes out, though obviously ordering your copy on Amazon right now, to avoid disappointment. Though I notice that her book and my book come out on the same day so you'll want to order mine first. You can do that right now, just by clicking here

Thought for the day

To wash one's hair, make one's toilet, and put on scented robes; even if not a soul sees one, these preparations still produce an inner pleasure. Sei Shonagon c. 966-c1013

The It-Bag Parade

The Telegraph also has an informative piece by Judy Rumbold tracking the development of the It bag, from the Fendi Baguette to the present (the YSL Downtown). As she points out:

They transcend tricky divisions to do with weight, age and social status. In short, bags are not just for skinny bitches. There is no such thing as a size-zero bag.

I have two of the bags she mentions, the Baguette (actually, I have two of these, one in red and one in purple suede) and a Leulla Giselle. When I bought the latter, a couple of years ago at a Vogue sample sale in aid of Turkish disaster relief, I was dithering between the Giselle and a Marni, until Alexandra Shulman, editor of UK Vogue, and my oracle at all times of hesitation, came over and told me what to do. 'That bag's a classic,' she said, pointing to the Giselle,'I've got the Marni, the clasp broke.'

I don't use the Giselle all that often but I agree, if you buy a classic bag, even if it once was an It bag, it will come round again. I am not too proud to carry my little suede Baguettes at parties, they are the perfect evening bag, sitting snugly under the shoulder. I just cannot see the point of the bloody clutch. I already need two hands, one for the glass of champagne, the other for the canape. I know you can wedge them under the arm clamping the thing against your rib cage, but that's just more Chinese foot-binding, as far as I'm concerned.

Lanvin

My piece on Lanvin is in the Telegraph today:

When Alber Elbaz took over as the head of Lanvin in 2002, marking a sensational comeback for the half-forgotten house, few people remembered that during her heyday in the 1920s Jeanne Lanvin had rivalled Chanel. The name conjured up for me an expensive, decorative sophistication. I saw her as a designer who clothed women of a certain age. Hers was a label you might aspire to but never quite reach. In fact, I have, unknown to me, been wearing a dress based on Lanvin's landmark shape, the robe de style. My version is by Ghost, but the silhouette is more or less identical. It consists of a dress with a full skirt gathered from a slightly dropped waist, with flat panels at front and back, the hem falling a little above the ankles. Softly feminine, universally flattering, it acknowledges that a woman has hips and a stomach she doesn't want to exaggerate with bunched-up fabric. The robe de style was the look of the 1920s for women who could not wear the tubular lines of Chanel. Move the waist up, and it prefigures, by a quarter of a century, Dior's New Look, launched the year after Jeanne Lanvin died. And, of course, in fashion there is nothing new under the sun. The robe de style was itself based on what had gone before, Infanta frocks, Camargo frocks, picture frocks, portrait frocks - all those bouffant styles are what a woman needs who wishes to conceal the flaws in her figure. . . . Read on

Thought for the day

Paloma Picasso

Fashion can make you ridiculous; style, which is yours to control individually, can make you attractive - a near siren. Marianne Moore

What to wear come the revolution

Back in the 1970s a few people brought back from their trip to the Middle East a keffiyeh, the black and white scarf worn wrapped around his head (reputedly in the shape of Mandate Palestine itself) by Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Arafat wore his as headgear; on the streets of London it was wound somewhat sloppily about the neck and had the same sartorial signification as Doc Martens in that period. Don't mess with me. I am anti-fashion! Fashion is for superficial materialists! I have bigger things on my mind!


In this period, I have to concede, I was wearing a man's jacket, its lapels covered in badges announcing my allegiance to the Ant-Nazi League, CND and various other causes, over a 1930s tea-dress which smelled of mothballs and old stains, bought at a stall on Portobello Road market, Mary Quant green or pink tights, and Converse All Stars. This get-up was to indicate that you wouldn't catch me in Chelsea Girl, oh no. I didn't have a keffiyeh because I wouldn't have known where to get one, and to be honest, I knew next to nothing about international relations. And if I were to wear a keffiyeh, and were my mother to have found out what it meant, she would have poured a pot of boiling chicken soup over my head. Much later I discovered that you could buy a keffiyeh at that time in blue and white, decorated with stars of David, to symbolise . . . something else.

The keffiyeh continued to be worn as an emblem of political defiance and international solidarity with the Palestinian cause until about a decade ago, when they started turning up tied around the necks of motorcycle messengers in London. I was surprised that so many of these knights of the road had such an elevated political consciousness, until I read that they were sold in biker shops as 'desert scarves,' advertised for their warmth, when hurtling through London traffic on a cold wet day.

And then they started to be worn by teenagers. A few weeks ago, at the local farmer's market, I bumped into a woman I know from the gym. We sometimes go to the Designer Warehouse Sale at Kings Cross together. She's South African, Jewish and spent some time in Israel. Her daughter was wearing a keffiyeh. Do you know what that means? I asked her. No, she replied. She bought it in Top Shop, where, I now read, they knock them out as a Tablecloth Scarf.


Over at Faking Good Breeding Meg writes:

. . . last year TopShop and Urban Outfitters began stocking and promoting the scarves, causing a backlash that forced the stores to pull the items. Ironically, considering the item's contentious message, Urban Outfitters titled the product "Anti-War Woven Scarf". . . Interestingly, each color and pattern represents different political sympathies. The black and white pattern is generally worn by members of Arafat's Fateh [sic] party, the checkered red is the signature of the radical Leftist PLO factions and the green is often worn by Hamas,* the Islamic terrorist organization.*

In the Guardian today, Jess Cartner-Morley announces a new development, the Balenciaga £3000 keffiyeh. Such is the long journey between an act of political solidarity with the Palestinian people and the high street that Jess provides us with universally useful advice on this season's way of tying that Balenciaga scarf, or indeed any scarf:

Having got the right scarf, please try not to ruin it by wearing it the wrong way. The doubled-over-and-looped-through technique is no longer an option unless you are a French exchange student. The tucked-under-the-lapels technique suggests that you're concerned about draughts. The authentic catwalk look is triangle-fronted, like a baby in a bib. It looks slightly less ridiculous if you leave a gap at your neck, to avoid the Desperate Dan effect. But, to be honest, if it cost three grand, you probably want to wind it as tight as possible. Oh, and try not to leave it on the bus.

It is the opinion of The Thoughtful Dresser that whenever fashion designers try to enter the political sphere by Making A Statement (cf Katherine Hamnett and her t-shirts) they invariably wind up devaluing whatever it is that they wanted to say in the first place by the muddled thinking and airy conceptualism of those who spend all day designing mini-crinis. Would you want Jamie Oliver designing your little black dress? Or Karl Lagerfeld in charge of upcoming negotiations at Annapolis? No?What you wear on a demo is a separate question, and one I'll deal with in the unlikely event that I go on one, but fashion is a business, a capitalist business and it will absorb any influence and drain it of its original meaning. There is nothing more pathetic than a £3000 keffiyeh, and nothing more dispiriting than designers who think they can cast off their reputations as coke-fuelled bird-brains by throwing them down the catwalk along with the eight-inch platforms. And nothing sadder and more deluded than those who think that the teenager who was forcing her sausage legs into skinny jeans last year, or exposing her slab of goose-pimpled midriff in a crop top and low rise jeans the year before that, has now discovered a political consciousness by wearing a Top Shop keffiyeh.

* This is not a political blog so any discussion of the aims and methodology of Hamas will have to take place elsewhere, and not in my comments box.

Thought for the day

'I like the way old Grover dresses,' Captain Charley said. 'He dresses like he means it.' Joseph Mitchell*

*whose book Joe Gould's Secret, is one of my favourites.

Don't.

Crocs are so fabulous and Uggs are even cooler, so why not just combine the two like this

Then everyone will know that you have absolutely no taste.*

* If you live in North Dakota and you are wading through slush along a . . . no, my vocabulary is giving out, whatever it is you've got there . . . then sure, buy a pair of these, just as long as you know that their sole purpose is to keep your feet dry and warm. But they are not, I repeat not, a fashion statement, and no, they are not cute as scarlet puppies, and yes, people will look at you funny if you wear them in the city, just as you would look at me askance if I tried bringing in the steer to the . . . something . . . in Christian Louboutins.

Fit for purpose, fit for purpose.

Thanks to twollin in the comments, I have just discovered something much, much worse. I just didn't know. I'm going away now, to drink some alcohol and look for drugs that erase bad visual memories.

Things I like

Larry: Bald asshole? That's a hate crime. We consider ourselves to be a group.

Police officer: I'm bald and I'm not offended.

Larry: With all due respect, Officer Berg, you are not bald. You've chosen to shave your hair and that's a look you're cultivating in order to look fashionable, but we don't really consider you part of the bald community... with all due respect.”

The end of the book

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, has just put on the market an electronic book reader, which will signal the end of the bookshelf, and the book.

The print revolution started by Gutenberg has held for half a millenium, and now it's over. The new device is called the Kindle, it weighs 10 ounces and . . .

. . .boasts electronic ink-screen technology so the words look like they are printed on paper. Better still, they can be made smaller or larger and are no harder to see when viewed outside in bright sunlight.

Aside from being light, it is about the size of a paperback and much thinner. Unlike rival electronic readers, it has built-in wireless capacity, using cellphone technology, so material can be downloaded without cables or other computers.

. . .Downloading a book will take only 30 seconds and 90,000 titles are apparently already available.

I've been hearing about readers for several years, but the impediment has always been weight, and the inability to read it in sunlight. I'm not sceptical. I was an early adopter of the internet, and if kids think that books aren't cool but electronic gadgets are, then fine, it's the content that matters, not the package it comes in. I just want people to read, and to think.

Yet for those of us who are old enough to have spent our time at university using album covers as flat surfaces to roll joints,* it's another nail in the coffin our our lives.


* But that was us, and look how badly we turned out, so kids - just say no.

Thought for the day

This morning came home my fine camlet cloak, with gold buttons, and a silk suit, which cost me much money, and I pray God to make me able to pay for it. Samuel Pepys

Designer lingerie

A male reader of The Thoughtful Dresser emails me to enquire:

. . . when does The Thoughtful Dresser expand into the area of clothing hitherto untraveled: I mean the lingerie department, with detailed analysis and pictures.

And I don't mean the low level common consumer schmattes of Victoria's S. but rather more refined designer stuff.

Happy to oblige with some Donna Karan knickers

Found in translation

The greatest Yiddish-language writer of the 20th century features on a list of 100 books chosen to inaugurate a daring, long-term project to bring landmark foreign works to Arabic-speaking readers.

The Collected Stories Of Isaac Bashevis Singer, by an author who was raised in Poland but for decades dominated Yiddish writing in New York, will join titles ranging from Sophocles and Chaucer to Stephen Hawking and Haruki Murakami among the first selections of the Kalima translation programme.

The Kalima (meaning "word" in Arabic) project aims to revive the art of translation across the Arab world and reverse the long decline in Arabic readers' access to major works of global literature, philosophy, science and history.

"The choices reflect what we consider are the real gaps in the Arab library," said Karim Nagy, the founder and chief executive of the project, which was launched yesterday in Abu Dhabi. "We shy away as far as possible from best-sellers."

Boyd Tonkin in the Independent