Ethical fashion directory

People Tree

The Guardian has just rolled out a very impressive new searchable ethical fashion directory.

Check it out here

In days of yore

For the past few days I have been doing this newfangled thingy called a 'wardrobe edit.' I hauled everything I wasn't actually wearing at the moment into a rail in the spare room at which it was revealed that I actually had far more clothes than I thought I did because I could actually see them. The envisaged scenario is that at the end of summer I'll do another edit and rotate some things back in again.

It seems that our dear Princess Anne has also just done a wardrobe edit, observing this summer's trend for florals:

Let's not for one minute suggest that Princess Anne's decision to dig out the dress she wore to her brother's first wedding in 1981 for another family wedding 27 years later was remotely connected to thriftiness. Anyone who can afford a designer dress, and has the space to store decades worth of posh clothes in palatial wardrobes, isn't too concerned about her bank balance. No, Anne's decision to recycle - or, to use the appropriate fashion parlance for this phenomenon, to repeat - a floral print piecrust-edged wrap dress is actually a common fashion practice.

However, as Imogen Fox points out in the Guardian, if you wear what you wore last time this fashion was around, you have to do it with a leetle bit of a modern twist if you are not to look in the miror and recoil with shock and disgust at how old the neck has got above the collar.

In 1981 she wore the dress with a yellow floral and net hat, and accessorised with pearls. Fast-forward to this weekend and she's wearing the same hat and yet another pearl choker. This isn't just a sartorial aberration either - the princess has form in repeating outfits without imagination. A blue-and-white dress worn to a film premiere in 1986 was trundled out again with the same white gloves 14 years later. A bonnet was worn twice 17 years apart, each time without irony.

Excuse me, you're on a hiding to nothing if you're looking for irony from a member of the Royal Family. Particularly Princess Anne. Isn't irony what they put on the horses' feet?

Anyhow, what with the Goth look coming back this Autumn, we're all warned against hauling out the gear from our early Eighties Madonna phase. Imagine that stuff on Madonna herself, with her weird reptile face and creepy arms. No, what we do is gesture to the look, gesture. I hope that's straight now.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Rage, rage against the pursed mouthed puritans who tell you can't wear a patent leather mock croc shearling flying jacket, like this

Paul Smith on How To Be Dapper

The Thoughtful Dresser brought this interview with Paul Smith to my attention. ( Read it here)

What he says is wise and rings true. It's fair to say that he has thought more about menswear than I , so I am delighted to find that I agree with him. Particularly when he observes that  ' It is harder to dress casually and still look stylish especially with the trend for sloppy polo shirts and cargo pants.'

The sort of person I am not like . . .

. . . but wish I was.

A woman develops a methodology to store her scarves.

I will spend years thinking about doing this, without actually doing it.,

Another ebay item

A Nicole Farhi shearling jacket lined with rabbit fur, size 12

Yet more Roberto Cavalli!

Roberto Cavalli has a lot of love to give. It spills out of him indiscriminately like an overflowing fountain. As he walks through the rooms of his sprawling Tuscan villa, a paean to the decorative qualities of animal fur and trailing purple orchids, it is difficult to find anything that does not provoke a new burst of passion.

He loves his blue-and-yellow macaw, which is quietly minding its own business on a large gold birdstand in the dining room. 'I love you I love you I love you!' Cavalli shrieks ecstatically, as the bird squawks. He brings his face up close and tries to kiss it. The parrot swipes its beak perilously close to Cavalli's nose.

Outside, sitting down for lunch on a leopard-print garden chair, he professes ardent devotion to the pine nuts in his bowl of fresh pasta. 'I love them - the taste! I love the small things,' he continues, breathlessly plucking a white flower from a nearby trellis. 'What you see in one flower is so fantastic. The detail on this one leaf ...'

But most of all, the 68-year-old Cavalli loves women. 'I love the skin,' he says, clasping my arm. 'I love to be watched from beautiful eyes.' He gazes at me intently through reflective sunglasses, leaning forward so that his unbuttoned black shirt gapes open. The giant diamanté crucifix he wears round his neck bangs gently against the table.

But as well as loving women, parrots and pine nuts, Cavalli has developed another outlet for his considerable reserves of passion: he is about to launch his own red wine. 'I love it,' he says, not entirely unexpectedly. 'I drink only this and nothing else.'

and so read on!

Really, I implore you, just stop whatever it is you're doing, make a cup of coffee, situate a box of tissues near your screen so you can wipe the tears of laughter from your eyes and Enjoy. Because I can't just paste up the whole thing so click the link. Guaranteed to bring minutes of reading pleasure.

How to work out what to wear

The wedding invitation's in her bag

Harry set off with his linen suit and his Martin Margiela shirt in a suit bag yesterday, to attend a social event. He was anticipating  being the only dressed up man there. If anyone called him on it, he said, he was going to tell them that he'd decided to be Italian.

Of course, what he was wearing was exactly the right kit for such an occasion. 

We spend a lot of time wondering what other people will be wearing, terrified of being under or overdressed. Harry and I agreed that we should turn this on the head and ask ourselves - what is the appropriate dress for the occasion. Wedding: jeans and t-shirt? No. Barbecue: black tie? No. It's fairly simple, really.

For example: mid-week post work party in garden of publisher - linen Nicole Farhi dress, structured jacket. Sunday evening drinks party in Central London flat: LBD and statement jewellery.

And if the other guests don't have the wit to understand what they're suppose to wear, that's their problem. You know you're wearing the right thing.

There is something wrong with this Anglo-Saxon culture which buys clothes for special occasions, instead of buying clothes you can dress up or down so you can look fabulous every day, but that's another subject.

More politics!

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

Politics

It has always been my intention to keep politics well away from this site. We are here, regardless of nationality, religion, or what we vote, because we are interested in clothes. I may relax the rule slightly as we get nearer to the upcoming US elections, but certainly not at the expense of alienating readers who come here to get a fashion fix. There is nothing I dislike more than the flame wars of the political blogs (though I am sometimes guilty of indulging.)

But from time to time I have something to say about something in the news and I prefer to park those as guest posts at the site of my good friend Norman Geras, who first introduced me to the very concept of the blog, as it happens.

So if you are interested in my views on a recently released murderer, you will find them here. And find out what I do in my spare time when I am not being irritated about people who won't dress up at parties. Or writing books.

Ebay corner

I have up for sale a pair of barely worn Marni shoes, size 39 (UK six, I believe) if you can take walking in another woman's shoes.

Every time I take them out of the box I hope that they will have grown a quarter of an inch since I wore them last, but they never have.

Which is odd, when you consider how many clothes shrink in the wardrobe.

The woman who spent £3000 to get a flat stomach . . . read on

from the Times

I remembered an article I had read by a journalist whose similarly stubborn belly was “melted away” by Smartlipo; she'd had it done in the lunch-hour in New York. Two weeks later, she wrote, she was patting her “concave” belly and flaunting herself in a new bikini. After a week's deliberation I booked a consultation at a private clinic in London, one of the top British places for Smartlipo. While waiting for my consultation I was handed a cuttings book full of similar testimonials. It was going to cost £3,000, but even before I saw the expert, I was sold. Yippee, I thought, I'm on my way to a concave belly.
. . .

One would have thought that after not one but two sessions of Smartlipo, and fat removal, my stomach would resemble Keira Knightley's. Alas, no. Perhaps it is my age. Perhaps it is my lifestyle. You know how debauched journalists are. Well, maybe, but I spent six months training for, and ran, the London Marathon this year. In under four hours.

What a silly waste of money

Perhaps it is my genes. Anyway, what a silly waste of money; and what a potential risk, having an intrusive procedure done to my healthy body that was deemed necessary because I deemed it thus. I put the experience behind me and resigned myself to loving my tummy. Then I went on a press trip to St Tropez, where, lo and behold, I bumped into the journalist who had written the original Smartlipo testimony that had so encouraged me. And do you know what, she wasn't wearing a bikini.

“Oh, Smartlipo! It didn't work for me either,” she laughed. After I had picked myself off the floor, I asked her what she would suggest instead of Smartlipo. “There are cheaper, less invasive ways of getting a flat stomach. Do Pilates and yoga, and stop eating so much sugar and drinking so much. Then spend the £3,000 on a holiday!”

How to make yourself look short and fat

This girl called Alexa Chung went into Russell and Bromley and bought a pair of black loafers and now Agyness Deane has a pair too and so we all have to wear them.

In my own quest for shoes I could walk in, I tried a pair on a few months ago was too depressed by the vision of myself in the mirror to buy them.

My legs+flats=low self-esteem.

Jess Cartner-Morley has also given them a whirl. She points out that if we must suffer to be beautiful, we also have to suffer to be fashionable. With sky-high heels the suffering is physical, with loafers, its psychological. Which is worse? The pain of heels is temporary, mental anguish can scar you for life:

If ballet flats can feel a bit twee and mousy, loafers have about them a strident air of the fifth form prefect. They make my legs and feet look about as delicate as hockey sticks. But this season, fifth form prefect has come over all sixth form common room cool. Hey, you have to suffer to be beautiful; you have to ditch your vanity to be comfortable. For once, it all makes sense.

Pass.

Now here's a woman I'd like to go shopping with

Philippa Gregory, author of The Other Boleyn Girl

Do you use shopping as a distraction?

Oh yes. I think writers use any kind of distraction possible.

Tell us your favourite shopping memory.

Wedding-dress shopping with my daughter. I'm a rather unwilling shopper, so she had to tell me where we were going for lunch to keep my spirits up. But it was a wonderful experience. I cried when I saw her in one of the dresses and she decided that had to be the one.

What is the best thing you've ever bought?

My trusty suitcase recently gave up on me and I got a new one from Louis Vuitton. I won't say the price, because it was more expensive than the clothes that go in it, but every time I see it I go "Ahhhh".

And the worst thing?

I got overexcited in the 80s, along with the rest of the country, and bought a patchwork velvet skirt with a jagged hem. I thought I looked like the cat's whiskers in it, until one day I saw myself in the mirror. I never wore it again.

Do you have any shopping tips?

If you buy something that costs £1,000 and wear it once, that's what it will have cost. If you wear it a hundred times, it works out at £10 per wear. That's a bargain.

Have you ever felt guilty about something you have bought?

I do like to fly first class. I used to feel bad about the money; now it's the environment. When you're on expenses, you get a taste for a lifestyle and then, tragically, it's very hard to go back.

What can't you get through the week without?

Clarins moisturiser. That's compulsory. And Cadbury's Fruit & Nut. I eat it in the evenings with a glass of wine. I get my five a day that way.

So here it is, Merry Xmas

Today I was invited to a couple of Christmas press show previews, at Jaeger and Selfridge's.

I did Jaeger first, picking up a coat-dress which has just come in, which I spotted at the AW08 press show a few months ago. For once, they actually have this on the site and that's it above. Very mid-Sixties. To wear with a ribbed sweater beneath and wide-legged trousers and very high heels.

I really like the cashmere travel sets they had, which include suede-bottomed slippers, socks, an eye mask, and a blanket. What they probably give you when you travel BA First Class, but of course I wouldn't know, would I? Still, the frequent traveller can heavily hint to their spouse. Even better it's only going to be available on line so they don't even have to go into a shop full of frightening female things to get it. It will cost £199, but who can put a price on love, as the Mastercard ads are always telling us? There were also lots of snakeprint silver things, Swarovski make-up mirrors. A shoplifter's paradise, in fact.

The Jaeger London collection was extraordinarily cohesive. You saw all the work paying off, and the creation of a collection out of the London Fashion Week show.
And this was the piece that the fashion press this afternoon was oohing and aahing about from the forthcoming collection. The top is cleverly cut to resemble the front of a tuxedo. Difficult to see from the pic but a very good dress.

After that I somehow managed not to make it up the other end of Oxford Street in the last week of the sales when it was raining, to Selfridge's press preview. And missed a £43,000 teddy bear with emerald eyes and a solid gold nose. Or so I read in the Evening Standard on the tube. And was quite glad I had. Because in another part of the paper was a piece about children in London who can't go to school because they have no shoes.

63-year-old woman in a bikini

Goddess

Appeal to well-read readers . . .

Can anyone kindly identify which Edith Wharton novel this passage comes from? House of Mirth perhaps?

She had a few handsome dresses left- survivals of her last phase of splendour. . . as she spread them out on the bed, the scenes in which they had been worn rose vividly before her. An association lurked in every fold: each fall of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in the record of her past. She was startled to find how the atmosphere of her old life enveloped her. . . She put back the dresses one by one, laying away with each some gleam of light, some note of laughter, some stray waft from the rose shores of pleasure.

Invisible man

Martin Margiela has never given an interview. He has never been photographed and almost no-one in the fashion industry knows what he looks like.

Since he started out, in 1988, the designer has never agreed to a single interview or been photographed for any magazine, however respected the title. Particularly in a climate where the superstar designer – from Jacobs to Prada, and from Tom Ford to Vivienne Westwood – might hardly be described as backwards in coming forward, one could be forgiven for thinking that Martin Margiela is a figment of the industry's imagination. And that's just fine by him. Suffice it to say that Martin Margiela makes Greta Garbo look like Victoria Beckham.

Both cheap and ethical

You can't see it very well in this picture but above is a cuff in tiny checks. A larger photo which came to my email inbox shows it better but won't copy.

The cuff is from People Tree, the ethical fashion company. This is who made it:

There is a dark side to the jewellery industry: The cheap, spangled jewellery that is all over the high street is often made using child labour in India because it's cheaper and children's small hands are more suited to creating intricate jewellery. However a Delhi child labourer will be routinely forced to work 12 hour days, working, eating and sleeping in the same cramped, poorly lit and ill ventilated workshop.

Even though jewellery is major business in India it is difficult to form labour unions because it's usually created by small producer groups. This means that the producers are rarely able to bargain for a fair price and are at the mercy of a long chain of middlemen.

Tara (Trade Alternative Reform Action) defends the rights of the poor, employing only adults, offering them advance payments so they can buy materials, and giving them the security of long term contracts.

They run campaigns against child labour and have established sixteen schools and vocational training centres for children from poor families, which over 700 child labourers have attended to date.

Mosim, a jewellery maker from one of TARA's beading groups said she puts her money in a savings account, which she is saving to put towards her dowry. The project allows her to learn a professional skill, earn an income and spend time with people her own age in a country that rarely allows women to leave the home. Mosim even made her first visit to Delhi recently to participate in Tara's annual producer meeting.

You can support Tara's work by buying the unique jewellery created by Mosim and the other TARA artisans.

It is reduced from £10 to £7 in the People Tree sale, about the price of lunch at Pret a Manger.

When I said wear a scarf, this isn't what I meant

Not tied round the head, for godsake.

Celia Walden in the Telegraph tries one on and does not like it.

According to Dennis Nothdruft, curator of London's Fashion and Textile Museum, this headscarf resurgence is about a new sense of chastity in fashion. "Before peasants used them to keep their heads cool, women wore headscarves in medieval times to maintain their modesty," he explains. "But it is also symptomatic of the economic downturn. If you can't afford to have your roots done, wear a headscarf to cover them up. Sociologically, it's about escapism."

Given that the fashion world likes nothing better than provocation, isn't it also a nod to Islam? "There's no doubt that we have a huge Muslim clientèle," agrees Alexander. "But this is more about a return to that elegant Grace Kelly era than anything else."

So, will this strange amalgam of royal homeliness, Muslim chic and proletarian pretence ever take off? Come autumn, will we be seeing women ambling down high streets or queueing at the cold meat counter in Waitrose, looking like Russian peasants?

"I do think we will be seeing a fair amount of headscarves around over the next few months," says Gaia Geddes, executive fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar. "But the fashion may be better suited to young girls, who will be able to pull it off with the right tongue-in-cheek manner."