125 years of Jaeger

Here's my piece in the Telegraph on Jaeger's 125th anniversary

Jaeger was for women who wanted sophisticated, quality clothes – the tweed suit and little black dress – but who could not afford to go to Paris. Its flagship store on Regent Street, opened in the 1930s, was a cathedral of plate glass and chrome modernism. Like Viyella and Windsmoor, it occupied a middle-class niche. The ideal customer was the wife of a home-counties stockbroker. Self-made men and their spouses (like my parents) aspired to Jaeger, the next best thing to a Savile Row suit. From 1956, when Jean Muir joined the company, the label started to attract a younger clientele. Muir was one of several British contemporaries, including Mary Quant, who were beginning to move away from Parisian couture towards what would become the archetypal British fashions of the 1960s, more casual and more geared to what was then called 'sportswear’.

As a teenager in the 1960s I was caught between Carnaby Street and Jaeger’s innovative label, Young Jaeger. My mother was always guiding me into its Liverpool branch offering to pay for separates modelled in the advertisements by Jean Shrimpton and photographed by David Bailey. They were urban and chic, more Yves Saint Laurent than Granny Takes a Trip, an antidote in her mind to the hippie excesses of the velvet bell-bottoms and Afghan coats I was wearing. Young Jaeger, she believed, would put me on the path to adult smartness. And it was difficult not to covet Jaeger in the 1960s because it gave provincial young women (and men) a scent of sophistication.

Some women

The Guardian has a slideshow of Obama's women. Above is Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor. There's nothing I like more than seeing a woman who looks like she's been round the block a few times, giving powerful men a piece of her mind.

Change from top to bottom

I was impressed by Hillary's first appearance as Secretary of State and particularly with the appointment of George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East. Drinking in every word of his speech, particularly this:

"Conflicts are created, conducted and sustained by human beings - they can be ended by human beings. I saw it happen in Northern Ireland," he said.

"I believe deeply that with committed and persevering, patient diplomacy it can happen in the Middle East."

While listening attentively to the briefing on CNN, which also appointed Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, I noticed two things - the number of times all parties used the word diplomacy, and um, Hillary's very very good hair colour.

In the hand

At both the Booker and the South Bank Show awards, I carried a loaned sample Anya Hindmarch Pipkin from the SS09 range. It come in gold, silver, black and white and I have the gold on order.

I'm not normally a fan of the clutch but with evening wear, there's something about a tote or a shoulder bag that looks wrong. You need to learn to clamp under the arm.

Now here we have an outfit

I was completely unaware until this morning that amongst Michelle Obama's cousins there is a rabbi

And his everyday workwear takes some beating, let alone what he wore to the inauguration

And so we turn to the junior members of the party

You can't get the coats just yet. The double-breasted blue coat Malia wore, and the light pink one Sasha wore, both accessoried with satin and velvet ribbons tied around the waist, were specially designed for the girls by the American chain J Crew. This company has been a favourite with Michelle Obama - the green leather gloves she wore to keep out the Washington cold were also from the label. In the week it was revealed that Sarah Palin had been given a $150,000 wardrobe budget for campaign outfits, Michelle appeared on Jay Leno's show in an outfit from J Crew, thereby endearing herself to millions of Americans with her choice of safe but stylish - and, crucially, affordable - clothes. The company says that "highlights" from the girls' outfits will be available in its 2009 autumn collection.
Emine Saner

Malia looks like she's ready to set the world on fire already, and she's only ten.

Who needs a crown when you have a hat?

American monarch

(The cloche, decorated with a Swarovski crystal encrusted bow, cost $179 (£129) and came from Mr Song Millinery in Detroit, the Motor City, where Luke Song has been making hats for 25 years.)

Childish but . . .

Rahm Emmanuel gives his personal send off to the Bush presidency

Once upon a time in America

It's all here

Gershwin knew it was coming

Close analysis of the outfit

Personally, I wasn't crazy about it because I thought it was a little matronly but here's what others have to say:

Here is a bolder woman, a serious woman from Chicago and Harvard who is not afraid to express herself with fashion, and it is the kind of confidence that many women will recognize in themselves. Her clothes tell us that she has an adventurous spirit, as well as a sense of humor, and if some of these garments have almost an old-fashioned womanly quality, then they tell us that she is indeed not your average fashionista.

Her inaugural outfit, designed by Isabel Toledo, was made of Swiss wool lace, backed with netting for warmth, and lined in French silk. Mrs. Obama also wore a cardigan over the sleeveless dress, as a buffer to the cold. She had on pale green leather gloves and a flat, latticelike necklace with clear stones.

Long considered a designer’s designer because of her attention to craft and her sensitivity to unusual detail, Ms. Toledo said she made the yellow outfit especially for Mrs. Obama. But until she saw the new first lady on television leaving Blair House for the trip to the Capitol with her husband, she did not know positively whether Mrs. Obama would wear the clothes or something from another designer. There has been a fair amount of secrecy around Mrs. Obama’s inaugural wardrobe, and even the designers who were asked to make clothes for her said they were not told in advance which outfits she would choose.

“I wanted to pick a very optimistic color, that had sunshine,” Ms. Toledo said in a telephone interview from her studio in New York. “I wanted her to feel charmed, and in that way would charm everybody else.”

Interesting that she's now worn two Cuban-American designers (Donna Karan, Oscar de la Renta and Ralph Lauren must be spitting tacks) - perhaps signalling an end to the absurd US trade policy with Cuba

What I wanted to hear

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

Sir Tom, me and that hat

To the Dorchester for the South Bank Show Awards lunch in which the literature award was won by me, presented by Sir Tom Stoppard. I kissed him. Twice.

Then over to American friends watch the inauguration in which the show was stolen by Aretha Franklin in that hat

Everyone crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man

More later.

Mattel's Nigerian Barbie

As Barbie turns fifty this year, her protean qualities are revealed

Lots more here

Contrary to WASPy appearances, by the way, Barbie is Jewish

Donna Karan Barbie

Dior hats in the 60s

Before size 0

The V&A is just about to republish a delightful little book called How To Dress For Success by the Hollywood costume designer Edith Head. First published in 1967, Head meant it to be a manual for ordinary American women, both housewives and 'career girls'. It is a riveting period piece but what I noticed was the chapter in which she adviseds women on how to dress according to their size. The smallest sizes she cites are US 6, 8 and 10. There is no 4, 2 or 0. This tallies with my recollection of Britain in the 60s when only teeny, birdlike girls could fit into an 8 and most of were 12 or 14, or 10 if you were small. No-one I knew had an eating disorder (lack of central heating in most homes made eating salad in winter inadvisable). No-one was on a diet. . No-one ate fast food or ready meals. No-one was overweight. We now seem to be striving for mythical sizes. It's all in our heads.

Groomed within an inch of his life

Mickey Rourke shows the girls how to do it*

*For further explication, see here

and by special request (see comments)

What shall I wear to the party?

Lacroix sketch

Not me, my invitation to one of the many inaugural balls has unaccountably been lost in the post, though I do know someone who is going. Her husband appointed Obama to the position of president of the Harvard Law Review.

But what about the soon to be First Lady? Not an Oscar dress will have more attention this one, heavy with meanings, as Lisa Armstrong points out in the Times:

Bottom line, she's a good-looking woman who knows her way around upmarket labels (in the past year she has worn, among more predictable names, Thakoon and Rodarte, both up and coming darlings of New York Fashion Week). Fashionable, in a user-friendly way, she even made it onto Vanity Fair's 2008 Best Dressed list. She can wear just about any colour and she's the first First Lady since Jackie Kennedy who can anoint trends and sell out a dress (viz, the black and white sundress she wore to guest host ABC's The View). As Peter Som, another New York talent, says: “What she wears has a huge impact on fashion. From day one she has shown her own modern style that many women can identify with or aspire to.” For an industry reeling from the recession, what's not to like?

They'll find something. Because ultimately these outfits are sartorial landmines waiting to happen. They must transcend class, colour and financial barriers. Ideally they should impress, endear and unite. Really it's like asking a blanket to bring world peace, and be fascinating at the same time. On a slightly more attainable level, Letitia Baldridge, a former social secretary to Jackie Kennedy recently noted of Mrs Obama: “It would be wrong for today's First Lady to go around like a princess all the time. But I think it would be very wrong when she's on an official job to be dressed too casually. She's always got to be a bit above.” In short, if her husband is President, “she always has to watch everything ”. And you thought it was just a dress

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Mary Quant

Mary Quant, now in her seventies, is interviewed about her mini skirt being commemorated on a Royal Mail stamp as an example of 60s design.


There is one way to age gracefully, retaining your style without the facelifts. Love too the upper class accent from an earlier era

I do not like pockets

We are supposed to replace bags with the newly fashionable pockets, ruining the line of your clothes . And what's with those pockets set directly inside the side seam so you look like a chicken trying to get your elbows into them, and bulging out your hips?

"I'm obsessed with pockets," says Anita Borzyszkowska, of Gap, a store that has been at the forefront of the pocket revival on the high street, from hoodie-style pouches on sweater dresses to Chanel-style patches on cardigans and invisible slips sewn into the side seams of dresses. Borzyszkowska - whose personal pocket tally for the day is seven (jeans plus a boyfriend-style cardigan) - cites Gap's collaboration two years ago with the designer Roland Mouret as the turning point. His collection of 10 dresses, much lauded at launch for its jolliness of colour and blousy styling, was in fact conceived with something else in mind. "One of the goals," says Borzyszkowska, "was for everything to have a pocket."

I tried on those Roalnd Mouret dresses and the pockets was the reason I didn't buy one.