So do you want 50% on a wide selection of the world's finest summer-weight cashmere!
Obviously, you do.
Thursday, 10 July 2008
Pure cashmere half price
Men and their handbags
On the tube today, four suits got on and proceeded to hold a business meeting in the middle of the carriage. Two of the suits were in their 50s and the other two in their late 20s. I noticed that the older suits both carried briefcases while the younger suits both carried small back-packs over one shoulder. Like a shoulder bag.
Harry tells me that the back-pack is the new briefcase and hence the briefcase is the sign that you are out of the loop, style-wise. I never knew that.
Apparently during his career as a high-flying executive, he pretty much pioneered this look.
The Great Outdoors
It's that time of year when London experiences a surge in the number of short term visitors. Tourists used to be easy to spot; garish casual clothes and a camera slung round the neck. Now they are just as easy to recognise, but they seem to take up so much more space.
Their uniform has become that of the great outdoors. Cargo pants with a seemingly infinite number of pockets, weather-proof jackets in space -age materials ( and more pockets), a day sack overloaded with water bottles and technology, and trekking footwear that is at least twice the size of ordinary shoes.
I'm all for dressing appropriately for the conditions. And much of this gear is eminently suitable for striking out into the wilderness. But I am curious as to how this has become the chosen apparel for city visitors. When you see a group of them together they look like a gaggle of mature anthropologists on a field trip.
I guess it may be due to all those headlines about the perils of city life. So could it be that those cargo pockets are stuffed with self defence equipment, distress flares, and emergency rations?
It's not just visitors who have recently stepped off a 747. This also includes indigenous parties who arrive at a London mainline station from the depths of Surrey or Hertfordshire looking like they must have got on the wrong train. Surely, kitted out like that, they meant to end up on the Yorkshire Moors.
Well, it's their choice. But I am left musing whether this is what they wear at weekends at home. Do they dress like this to go shopping?
Pop Quiz! The correct answer
a) Incorrect. There are very few men who can get away with answering yes to this question and they have names like Marc Jacobs, Paul Smith, Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, and with the exception of Mr Smith none are like to find themselves in the scenario envisaged. Unless you can nip into the spare room, get out the sewing machine and whip up a little couture number for your beloved which will correct the appearance of fatness, leave this one alone
b) Incorrect. On the face of it, a bald no might be seen as get out of jail free card but most women will see through this obvious ploy. A No can be pulled off if, through a great deal of practise, the Man gives the Woman a studied and authoritative gaze, as if he is making a finely-judged assessment a. But she'll still feel like she's being looked up and down like a sow at the fair. She does not want you to have to look her all over, she wants the answer to be obvious.
c) Absolutely incorrect. This answer will quickly be decoded for its true meaning: 'Listen, chubbychops, we all know you look like the back of a barn and no-one at the party but me could possibly fancy you, so let's get a move on.'
d) Correct. Notice what happens in this brief response. In part A of the sentence the Man gives the Woman what she was actually after, an instant reward for all her labours in the bedroom, Wow. But notice Part B where, before the Woman can begin to ask supplementaries, he adroitly changes the subject, putting HER on the defensive. At this point the Woman will point to her wristwatch and say, 'Never mind that, will you just put that silly book away and get your coat on, or we'll be late.
After utilising this simple gambit two or three times, the question will cease to be asked.
This may on the surface seem to be an aid to men in their war against we sisters, but actually, I think that asking a man if you look fat is a hiding to nothing because you will never get an honest answer, and if you did, would you actually want it? Best to have gone to a really good shop to buy the dress in the first place, where they will not have let you leave with a party dress that makes you look fat.
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Cat in a hat
Not for the squeamish, or cat lovers
says a devoted admirer of Cruella de Ville's working the black and white look
Pop Quiz!
Two people are going to a party. One person, let's call him, for the sake of convenience, the Man, was ready 40 minutes ago and is sitting in the kitchen listening to the radio and enjoying working through his Bumper Book of Sudoku puzzles.
The other person, who, also for the sake of convenience, we'll call the Woman, has bought a new outfit for the occasion, but having tried it on, takes it off again and tries on four other outfits before reverting back to the one she started with.
She finally comes down to the kitchen and says to the Man: I need a completely honest, unbiased answer, do I look fat in this?
Is the correct answer:
a) Yes
b) No
c) Darling whatever you wear, you will always look beautiful to me
d) Wow, you look absolutely fantastic but how much could that have cost?
I will provide the correct answer in a future post.
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Skin deep
In a long piece in the Indie yesterday, on how badly tv serves the question of beauty and women's relaionship to it (apart from the scientific exposes of bad cosmetic surgery) the author shares my distrust of some make-over shows. I was fan of Trinny and Susannah when they did What Not To Wear, in part because of the observation, or rather, the penny that dropped with most viewers, that the biggest single change you can make to your look is a good hair cut and colour and some well-chosen make-up.
I am strongly opposed to progs like Extreme Makeover and Ten Years Younger because of their reliance on cosmetic surgery and cosmetic dentistry. I'm not against, in principle, cosmetic surgery, at least for other people, if they want it. I'm certainly not against cosmetic dentistry.
What I am against is taking women on low incomes, drilling down their teeth to give them £20,000 worth of veneers at the programme's expense and then leaving them to fend for themselves when, five or ten years later, they need replacing. The make-overs (which rarely involve the simple application of a decent diet and some exercise) are the equivalent of a fashion shoot where the dress is held together with bulldog clips and the teenage model's spots are airbrushed away. It's a con, and a nasty con, at that.
Not mention the fact that the make-overs turn them into simulacrums of real people, little replicas of the hot look. And when the hot look is over?
Unless on a beach...
......grown men tripping about in plastic flip-flops is this summer's fashion faux-pas.
So begins a Guardian review of a range of men's summer footwear ( otherwise known as sandals).
Well, at least they agree with Harry, but some of their selection seem to be far closer to beach wear than appropriate for the city.
Monday, 7 July 2008
I have nothing further to add
Ask Hadley
Chic without sweatshops
Hadley Freeman can ease your fashion pain
Monday July 7, 2008
The Guardian
I was so shocked by the revelation the other week that small Indian children made some of my Primark clothes. What can I do to make sure this doesn't happen again?
Mary O'Keefe, LondonUm, don't buy clothes that cost £3 maybe? Before anyone (ie, Primark's lawyers) get upset, I'm not saying that all cheap clothes are studded with the sweat and blood droplets of half-starved children. But to continue buying cheap-as-chips clothes and then to express shock that they are not made by happy couturiers, sewing the pieces by hand while reclining on goose-feathered pillows and chortling contentedly seems - and I really mean no offence, Mary - a touch naive, let us say euphemistically. Someone is paying the price for those clothes, my dear. And seeing as it's clearly not you, and it's unlikely to be the store (most stores tend to be a bit reluctant to sell clothes for less than they paid to have them made - they're funny like that) perhaps it's someone else. Someone around the age of 10, maybe.
It's like those diets that promise you can eat stuffed-crust pizza, pasta carbonara and deep-fried chocolate gateau and still lose weight. People, it just doesn't work like that - well, not unless the chocolate tastes like rehydrated and artificially sweetened seaweed because, well, that's what it is. And a beaded top that costs £2.50 is either going to be very badly made, sewn by people content to be paid 60p a day or has the wrong price tag on it. Guess which makes stores more money?
Of course, if one takes this argument too far then you end up saying that the only kind of clothes people should buy is couture, which really is made by the aforementioned happy couturiers (although even they might not always get to be pillow-recliners). The reason we buy cheap clothes is because most of us are not Dasha Zhukova and don't have boyfriends who buy us £50m paintings on a whim. But just as the best way to eat is to eat a normal-sized amount of half-decent food - not Michelin-starred, not greasy, battery-farmed offcuts - at reasonably spaced intervals, so the best way to shop is to buy the occasional well-made piece of clothing. Not Gucci necessarily, but something that costs more than a latte, perhaps.
And ultimately, I truly do believe it works out cheaper. Buying one dress for £75 that lasts you a good handful of years is definitely more economical than buying a new £20 dress every time you have a party because the last one didn't make it to 10pm without ripping. So, in conclusion, you'll be living with more money, better clothes and without guilt.
I think I just saw a ray of light break beyond those clothes yonder.
Sunday, 6 July 2008
The geatest designer you've never heard of
I have never heard of this man, but clearly, we now need to
The truth is, fashion insiders will climb, probably even crawl, to see Kinder's designs. They've admired his work as the Zelig of fashion for years - he's spent two decades as a ghost designer (the style equivalent of a ghostwriter) creating internationally lauded collections for Calvin Klein, Costume National and at Versace after Gianni's death in 1997 - so news that he's launched his own label has caused a stir. Comme des Garçons's Rei Kawakubo came in person to view his first solo collection in 2007 - and then stocked it at her fashion emporium, Dover Street Market. Madonna has already been seen wearing a dress from his spring/summer 08 debut Aggugini range, as has editor of British Vogue Alexandra Shulman. If you know and love fashion, you know and love Kinder.
Stylist Arianne Phillips, who's dressed the likes of Courtney Love, Madonna and Justin Timberlake as well as receiving an Oscar nomination for costume design, declares herself a massive Kinder fan: 'I find that his creativity, ingenuity and sophistication in fabrics set him apart. I appreciate his wit, style and irreverent classicism.'
'He's got an incredible track record,' says Harriet Quick, fashion features director at British Vogue, 'and he's well known at parties and events because he's fabulously opinionated and discursive. When he left the big fashion machine and set up on his own, people wanted to back that. And his clothes are lovely - they don't date, and the fit is perfect: they show off a woman's body. They don't scream or shout status, but they feel like the real deal.'
I've found his website here, and here's a page of his clothes currently being sold by Bowns in London
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Louboutins overtake Manolos as the Hot Shoe
Which is good, because I have a pair of Louboutins - jewelled velvet wedges I got for half price at a Vogue sample sale.
But perhaps the key to his current success (he’s overtaken St Manolo as aspirational shoe god, for heaven’s sake) is those red soles. Louboutin claims these happened serendipitously. “When the first prototype arrived, it had a big black sole. Dead!” He grabbed his assistant’s nail polish and began painting. “Immediately, the shoe came back to life.’’ He thought he would change the sole each season. “But red is more than a colour. It is a symbol of love, of blood, of passion. It’s like the handkerchief that an elegant woman dropped if she saw a man whom she was attracted to.”
It’s also highly visible, in a way no business school graduate would ever imagine. Every time a woman climbs a staircase, crosses her legs, click-clacks down the street, it flashes away, a symbol – never mind blood, passion and love – of a shoe that cost a fortune. When a model mooches down the catwalk in Louboutins, the audience identifies them immediately. No wonder he eschews obvious logos: that red sole is genius – a status symbol that purports not to be a status symbol.
Friday, 4 July 2008
More shoes I'm not going to be able to wear
At Balenciaga - pretty much the bellwether for trends that the high street masses will be adopting - the gladiator sandals it knocked out last season have been replaced for autumn/ winter by shoes so pointy they will probably double as weapons for the requisite eastern European villainess in the next Bond film.Even Marc Jacobs, who is surely Coco Chanel's successor in his tireless promotion of the sweet and girly look, has pushed aside his beloved mouse pumps (literally, ballet pumps with little beaded eyes and whiskers fixed on the tip) for decidedly more grown-up and less rodenty pointier toes, at both his own eponymous label and in the current collection for Louis Vuitton. Similarly, the Lanvin woman seems to have matured from the pretty, round-toed mademoiselle she was just a few seasons ago to a full-on vamp, with black, sharp-toed teetering heels. "Round toes are on their way out and pointy toes are marching back into our wardrobes!" one fashion magazine gleefully announced this month.
In which a piece of music loses its meaning and becomes something else
The more I watch this, the more unpleasant do I find it. Though I suppose if you were unfamiliar with the music the experience would be quite different. But it can hardly be because McQueen didn't know. There again, it's only a movie sound track.
Thursday, 3 July 2008
A change of heart
A few months ago I ordered a dress from the website of New Zealand designer Karen Cole. I very much liked the design of the Grecian dress and was looking for something in a deep, vivid blue. When the dress arrived it was an exceptionally good fit but there were two problems: first it was the wrong blue (this is always difficult to see online) and second, it was extremely creased so I sent it back. I also felt that at £132 it was rather expensive for what was, after all, a simple jersey dress. I felt rather bad about this as I like small designers who make clothes for real women, but it wasn't what I wanted.
Before I went to Toronto I found the blue dress I'd been looking for in Nicole Farhi and was disappointed in another dress I'd been waiting to come in, having seen a sample, and which was turned out to be smock rather than empire line. So I still had a space for a dress.
I still kept on thinking about the Grecian dress, because it was such a very good shape, and though I need another black dress like a fish needs the proverbial bicycle, I reordered it. This came it came with no creases.
I spent a lot of time last night looking at this dress. Without the creases I could see that the exact weight of the jersey makes it hang incredibly well and that the cut, which appears simple, is actually quite cunning. It outlines my waist while flattening my hips (a bit). Further, the low neckline is perfect for displaying a scarf, as I discovered when I played around. Which breaks up the black.
Karen Cole is now on sale, 20% off if you enter TWENTY as the discount code. And I'm going to recommend it. Which I usually don't.
Haute couture, an economist writes
Do I look a leetle Left Bank?I was halfway through a very interesting and detailed account in the Guardian of why couture is not subject to the credit crunch when, scrolling back to see if it had been written by Jess Cartner-Morley, the fashion editor, or Hadley Freeman, her deputy, I realised that it had been written by neither, but the paper's economics editor, who they'd send over to Paris for the shows. Fact fact fact fact.
Tim Jackson, principal lecturer at the London School of Fashion, says that the last big shock to luxury brands came after 9/11, because people stopped travelling, and a large proportion of luxury goods are bought by the well-off on their travels. There was, he says, a deliberate attempt to broaden the appeal of brands, with the sale of bags, jewellery and shoes that, while still expensive, were more affordable. "These goods have no issues with what's fashionable or size, and the goods have a high mark-up. There is a huge increase in directly operated stores, but they need high turnover to pay the overheads on the stores." Jackson says it will be this bit of the market - not the more exclusive haute couture niche - that will be affected by the credit crunch. The lay-offs in the financial sector, falling property prices and higher inflation are all likely to have an impact.
In Paris earlier, Sassi made the same point. "The issue is not the super-rich, some of whom are doing well out of the crisis, but the people below the super-rich. Haute couture will last for ever. It will only die when there are no ladies who are interested in beauty or feeling unique, or exclusivity."
While this helps explain the durability of haute couture, it doesn't quite explain why business has been so good in recent years. There are, however, solid economic reasons for the upturn. One factor is that the rich keep getting richer, and there are more of them. The compression of incomes seen in the decades after the second world war has been reversed; in Britain, for example, the gap between rich and poor has widened over the past decade, largely as a result of the salaries for the top 0.5% of earners.
Nick Tucker, market leader for the UK and Ireland at Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management, said last week: "Spending by high net worth individuals [HNWIs] and ultra-high net worth individuals [UHNWIs] remains robust. The ongoing strength in both the global art market and luxury industries highlights that the wealthy will continue to spend despite clearly worsening economic conditions and explains why, historically, these industries weather global downturns."
According to a report by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini last month, there are now just over 10 million HNWIs in the world with a total wealth of $40 trillion. To qualify, you have to have net assets - excluding the value of your home - of $4m. Qualifying as an UHNWI is tougher; there are 100,000 globally with net assets of $30m or more.
Wednesday, 2 July 2008
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