Garbed

Kate Middleton's wedding dress

2011-04-30T12:58:00.003Z

The wedding dress that Kate Middleton wore yesterday fit in to an aesthetic that was very clever. When they talked about austerity in the run up to the wedding day I imagined that they would refrain from spending but actually it translated to the entire wedding. What we saw yesterday was an aesthetic that invoked English folklore, the trees in Westminster Abbey coupled with the Bride's dress were reminiscent of Maid Marian (or Queen Guinevere if you lean toward a less traditional view of her). The delicacy of the material was obvious. The lace at the top of the dress appeared modest but fragile and coupled with a veil that was not hoisted away but actually clung to her face it spoke of nature and a romantic ideal of ancient Britain. The cut of the dress may have reminded people of Grace Kelly but it also brought forward a notion of medieval dress that we consistently see in movies. She was not given a cleavage and this made her seem sedate, collected, without pretension. The dress was conservative, befitting of someone who will go on to have a certain level of duty and responsibility but it also allowed us to see a woman whose privilege is of a more conservative kind. This dress was subtle and clever as was the aesthetic of the wedding and the message to everyone watching was clear, this is an old, ongoing institution that this woman understands. This country is old, ongoing, has weathered many storms. Yesterday they attempted to aesthetically marry folklore to the aristocracy and it was very interesting.

Co-operative textiles

2011-03-16T10:43:00.003Z

Ayrshire Weaver's recognised as world's first co-op- "250 years ago, 16 Fenwick weavers signed a document, promising to support one another, work honestly, and charge fair prices."

Magnus & Bella

2011-03-07T13:30:00.000Z

This is the wedding ring made for me by Magnus & Bella

Oh the bias of the press

2011-03-06T23:30:00.007Z

Galliano's Fashionable Beliefs is a remarkably arrogant article by Laurie Penny who is usually rather more prone to writing articles that I have sympathy for. Instead of letting my fury have full reign, with that sympathy in mind, I am going to attempt to dissect the problems with her New Statesman post a little more calmly than I generally would.

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. I'm ignoring the headline and byline since she probably had no part in writing them and getting straight to the meat of the post. The first thing Laurie does is launch an assault on the fashion industry. She gives no indication of whether she discerns the breadth of the industry or the difference between a designer, buyer, model, agent, independent dressmaker, gentleman's tailor and High Street retail assistant (to name just a few jobs in an international industry) but rather accuses everyone involved of unexamined prejudice. If it's a joke it's a particularly insulting one and if it's not then I'm sure I don't need to enlighten you all as to the logical flaw because in writing about prejudice in fashion she has made a statement that suggests rather a lot of it.

In the third paragraph she makes a little jibe about fashion being about appearance rather than clothing. This would sit better if she had either revealed a better understanding of the industry's breadth initially or described the section of the industry she was finding fault with. She goes on to point out that the fashion industry, specifically modelling, is racist but doesn't tackle the issue of racism in the industry sufficiently, doesn't discuss complications or how it might be resolvable. Then Laurie points out that "model agencies recently suggested that perhaps consumers just don't like looking at black people" but gives no source for this piece of information. If you have read other pieces on this blog you will see that I can find no fault with the statement that racism is inherent in modelling. I disagree with the recent statement by Alex Wek that it isn't racist but Laurie's criticisms are undermined by her blase attitude to specificity and an obvious misunderstanding of the importance of describing the section of an industry that you find fault with. This is also a separate issue to Galliano's alleged anti-semitism because while Galliano is a well known and influential designer he does not run modelling agencies and is not a magazine editor and conflating all of those issues together is too simplistic. Even if few black supermodels are present on the runway (catwalk) that does not mean they should automatically be ignored by magazines but open a copy of British Vogue and it's clear that there's a problem across specific sections of the industry in terms of modelling. It is unclear whether Laurie lacks the clarity needed to write on this issue or if she is ignorant of what she's describing but her article doesn't quite crack the issues she alludes to.

The fifth paragraph essentially shrinks the entirety of the fashion industry down to one man: Galliano. The sixth discusses misogyny but yet again Laurie uses hyperbole when she says that fashion has an "apparent conviction that any woman with the temerity to do more than silently starve herself is abhorrent". This would be a minor exaggeration if Laurie was describing fashion models but again she is not, this time she uses the term "fashion culture" so anyone involved in the culture of fashion has that conviction which presumably means that I believe I am abhorrent. Well, as a 5'7" 10 and a half stone woman I can tell you quite emphatically that I eat 3 meals a day, snack inbetween, eat dessert very regularly, am a feminist and think Laurie Penny has just insulted me and some other lovely people rather horribly.

The Model Agency, Channel 4

2011-02-23T23:01:00.005Z

It's been a while since the fashion industry has been represented in a thoroughly cold, calculating light on the TV but The Model Agency on Channel 4 tonight reflected the saddest aspects of it.

It was never going to be easy to portray modelling sympathetically because it's the most enraging element of fashion for most of us. Female models are usually very young and the women and girls who are chosen to be models are picked purely for their appearance. That in itself is quite shocking when taken in terms of everyday western existence because appearance may be prevalent but it's rarely the only criteria that has a bearing on our opportunities. The decisions made by the fashion industry (editors, agency bookers, designers etc) keep the perpetual cycle of young, tall, white, rake thin going and individuals usually maintain a denial of their complicity in that perpetuation of norms. That denial is possible because so many different people with different jobs are involved in giving models work that no one can claim to be responsible. Designers need specific (types of) models because they're fashionable, agents need to provide the models designers want, editors need to reflect the catwalk, sell magazines and put models into magazines that readers want to see or emulate or aspire to be.

When it comes down to bare facts a programme on a modelling agency was going to be controversial for many reasons but surprisingly my usual criticisms, the flaws that I already perceive to be verging on unforgivable, weren't the aspect of the show that grated the most. The worst thing about The Model Agency was how very childish the staff at Premier seemed to be. I suppose it's possible that a trick of editing misrepresented the bookers at the agency. It was clear that the remit of the documentary was sensational rather than mundane but quite why it was necessary for so many of the staff to reflect the behaviour of the 16 year olds that they work with was the main question left in my mind. Why was a grown adult who claimed responsibility for the well being of a teenager crying down the phone when the model had clearly had a difficult time alone abroad? Is it regarded as normal in that sector? That she was left to approach the problem in that way when she was obviously as distraught as the model and that the other staff felt it was appropriate did not reflect well on the agency or fashion in general.

GSK Contemporary 2011

2011-01-28T16:30:00.000Z

Aware Art Fashion Identity is the GSK Contemporary exhibition showing at the Royal Academy of Arts until 30th January 2011. I went to see it last Sunday and it was quite interesting but there were a couple of odd display decisions. The worst element of the exhibition was without doubt the decision to place Grayson Perry's Artist's Robe in an alcove on the stairs. It looked good there, I understood the impulse, I just don't see why it wasn't defeated by logic. You couldn't walk around the garment, felt that you couldn't linger beside it, couldn't take time to look at the cloth properly. I stopped to look at it and felt psychologically hurried because I was standing on the stairs and there was no other artwork in view. Later on in the exhibition an Alexander McQueen garment was given so much space that 5 people could walk around it standing next to each other which felt oddly insulting to Perry's work. The choice of display for the robe befitted a grand house opened to the public by the National Trust but it wasn't a great choice for a textile exhibition.

In spite of that criticism the content of the exhibition, particularly the first room was interesting. Claudia Losi's jackets made from the cloth whale were extremely interesting. Helen Storey's Say Goodbye was a really intriguing concept, the Roma blankets that had been made into coats (Sewing Together) by Maria Papadimitriou can be viewed at Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution and were a fascinating insight into the textile tradition of a culture that suffers from so much negative characterisation. In short I got a lot from the exhibition, it felt like it could trigger many interesting paths of discovery and made it clear that textile art is strangely undervalued in London's galleries because there were so clearly many different approaches to different subject displayed here. Hopefully we'll see more of this kind of thing.

Textiles-Exhibitions-Art

2011-01-27T16:47:00.003Z

I've always been more concerned with garments than fashion. A piece of clothing constructed by someone I've never heard of with a clear genesis and context is as of much interest to me as a Vionnet dress so the Imperial Chinese Robes from the Forbidden City exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum was a must see. It's very difficult to put into words the response to so many robes, so beautifully woven, that are from a culture that is so at odds to the one I live in. That kind of couture is invaluable because we all encounter it so rarely in our day to day lives. Unless you're lucky enough to have a family member or close friend who can create such intricately detailed clothing this exhibition presents you with a craftsmanship that you might not have met before. Having researched weaving in the last 12 months it was quite compelling to be able to understand the method of creation. It's a shame that the robes could only be seen from the front (this is such an enduring pain for me- that clothes are displayed like paintings rather than as sculpture) particularly since the backs are no less detailed than the fronts but it's an exhibition I would consider visiting again because it was such a pleasure.

Magnus & Bella

2010-09-12T20:16:00.005Z

Magnus Jarlson and Isabella Day are making a ring for me at the moment. They specialise in bespoke jewellery that is designed to the specification of the client. I've asked them to make me a ring that features leaves in the arts and crafts style and I'm expecting a prototype in the post at some point in the near future. It's very exciting!

McQueen

2010-02-11T17:24:00.004Z

Is there anyone who loves clothes who didn't have a slight yen to meet Lee McQueen? Even if I had met him I couldn't have uttered a word because his work was wonderful. It wasn't just the clothes that were stunning, quite a few of the shows were unexpected and intriguing. You can read about McQueen as a designer with an eye for complete detail rather than a simple outfitter on the Design Museum's website.

His final walk has been posted on Youtube and the BBC has placed some photos onto their news site. It simply remains to say goodnight Lee Alexander McQueen and thank you so very much. Thank you.

Lee Mattocks

2010-02-08T00:24:00.005Z

I just want to link to this blog post about Lee Mattocks at Inspire the Starling. I popped into an MA Fashion Artefacts show at the Mall Galleries on Pall Mall (in central London) this week. A lot of the work was interesting but Lee Mattocks' bags repeatedly drew me back to take another look. This type of repeated examination is always a clear sign that I particularly like an artwork or garment and although taxidermy is an odd attraction it worked spectacularly well in the context of the pieces. I felt it was far more original and unusual than any of the other work on display so take a look at the link.

2010-01-25T08:32:00.000Z

Thinking about beauty yesterday has left me considering the difference in the fashion photoblogs that are on my RSS feed. The Sartorialist favours a very polished style of dress. When he takes photos they tend to be of people who have spent a lot of time perfecting their faces and bodies as well as their clothes. Styleclicker features people who dress far more casually and generally seem less preened. The clothes tend to be more accessible and less expensive. I think I like Hel Looks the most because I'm less likely to actually encounter the style of clothing that is featured on the blog. It has a really Scandinavian focus and that results in a set of photographs that endlessly fascinate me because the shape of the clothes are so unusual in London. I don't think Scandinavian clothing is admired enough or lauded for its difference to the clothes in our part of Europe. I can aspire to the clothes on The Sartorialist because I can't afford them, I can wear the clothes on Styleclicker if I can pull myself together to make my outfit work (and if I bought a proper full length mirror) but when I look at Hel Looks I can see something that seems a bit magical.

2010-01-24T11:38:00.000Z

(via http://icanhascheezburger.com/)

When I was around 13 years old I had a conversation with my nan about supermodels and she told me that "models are quite plain looking people" and it's true. It would distract from the clothes if truly beautiful people were wearing them (which isn't to deny the simple perfection of the average supermodels face).

Tanya Gold

2010-01-23T07:24:00.002Z

This is an interesting article by Tanya Gold. You get the impression that she's attempting to write an anti-fashion article but are left with a sense that she doesn't understand that fashion and clothes are synonymous with each other. Most people wear clothes that have been fashionable or are fashionable that they chose because they liked them (well most people of my acquaintance). They don't go to the shop and choose something because it's in, they choose it because they want to wear it and the trend element is coincidental. Gold doesn't seem to be connected to that idea, she talks about Harvey Nichols and other clothing shops as if she was somehow compelled to buy and that indicates someone who had an addiction to shopping rather than someone who chose clothes to wear. In light of this central theme the other anti-fashion argument seems out of step with what she's expressing about herself. How is the addiction of consumerism linked with a girl dying in an accident on a train or a model describing her dislike of her job? The article doesn't make it clear, I suppose that's the point of something so anecdotal. In a sense it could be argued that the heels led to a train death or that the fashion industry results in bad circumstances for workers but no one writes about the atrocious pay of administrators in London offices and their working hours. Gold doesn't tackle in the context of normality and the norm is an expectation that young women (and men) are the dogsbody in all working environments. Nor does Gold seem to be calling for 6" heels to be banned because they're a health and safety risk so she's invoking the example of the train only for its dramatic effect. In her mind the fashion industry kills people, it is worse than all other industries.

I too dislike 6" heels and it's annoying when the shoe shops only seem to sell shoes that I wouldn't want to walk in but the compulsion to buy those shoes when you already have many pairs is the real focus of this article and that's not the fault of fashion. Sometimes it's necessary to resist things we like (or don't like) to do because we live in a culture that allows us access to many unhealthy things.

Gold says that "You can get so fat they don't actually want you in their clothes." The question is who she's referring to because it's true that a lot of designer clothing is made in small sizes but mythologising this to the extent that you can't name the job title of the people who are restricting the size of clothing isn't a critique that I can engage with. That's not the quote that makes me sad though because when Gold states "I can look at the clothes on the catwalk now and laugh at their imbecility. They are not for me" it is sad. Tanya Gold is writing off a design industry, not simply the consumerism that accompanies it but the hard graft of craftspeople and designers that conceived original work that is displayed on catwalks. Sure not every designer does this, some are extremely derivative but again that's not a reason to tar an entire industry with the same brush. This is a sad, unexamined article and it's a shame because it contains snippets of truth that should be discussed more.

2010-01-22T11:38:00.003Z

Recently I've been thinking about our relationship with garments in portraits. It seems that they are usually viewed as objects of significance, an example of wealth and status, an indication of broader trends within the fashion of an era. How do you separate a representation of a garment from the context that an art historian or curator of paintings places it in? Perhaps we can start to think about these images in the context of clothes that are worn rather than objects that were owned. This is easier said than done because we live in a society that values possession so much. Most people when thinking about garments, when looking at adverts for designer clothes, see something that they like and contemplate what it would be like to own rather than wear such an item. There are schemes that allow you to borrow designer garments and accessories for an evening or two but these exist because the items are out of people's purchasing capability. This focus on buying and possessing now makes it more difficult to consider the act of wearing clothes in the past. Status is always a pressing concern when examining portraiture because those types of paintings (as opposed to representations of religious, historical or fictional scenes common during the Renaissance or in the Pre-Raphaelite movement) are so often portraits of the rich or aristocracy but this should not dissuade people from considering the act of wearing such clothes or thinking of them as garments on bodies because even one off coronation clothes have been worn once.

2009-03-27T17:42:00.002Z

I am going to start collecting links to children's clothing companies that I think are interesting at Outfitting Kids. This is partly because I know this blog isn't getting updated at the moment but also because I want to keep a comprehensive collection of the companies that I come across by accident somewhere more interesting than Delicious. Having images and links in one place allows everyone to see at a glance the type of clothes that are available from a specific site.

2009-01-29T13:49:00.005Z

Apparel manufacturers in the US are trying to adapt to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act with varying degrees of success at the moment. If you put CPSIA into google you get all kinds of information on the act that comes into force in February. My main source on the subject has been Fashion Incubator. Kathleen Fasanella is a pattern maker and has had a really consuming series of months as she has tried to explain why the legislation is so negative for businesses.

The reason I'm writing about this is it strikes me as something that should be understood by people who are interested in clothing internationally as it is clearly going to limit consumer choice. While everyone wants children to be safe the appropriate resources have to be provided when you bring in new legislation. If a government demands increased product testing it has to ensure that testing can be done at a reasonable price without bankrupting an industry. If that can't happen then legislation should be brought in step by step for different sections of an industry. If a government demands that more police should tackle drug crime it can't expect as much time on other types of crime or it has to provide money for policing, this is called common sense and the problem with the CPSIA is that it doesn't employ any.

Chalayan Exhibition

2009-01-27T14:37:00.004Z

The Design Museum is currently showing an exhibition of Hussein Chalayan's work. The content of the exhibition is good, it has some pieces that can best be described as seminal and some newer work that I have never seen before and really liked. I felt that the space wasn't big enough though, I would have liked to sit down on a bench to contemplate the odd design and a little more division between exhibits would have allowed me more head space. If you've never seen any of Chalayan's pieces you should definitely take advantage of this opportunity.

2009-01-22T18:30:00.002Z

I am having a baby in July and have started to window shop children's clothes online. It's become apparent that we enforce gender on children, babies can't choose their clothes but most of them fall into a gender category. Take the Adams site, they have clothes for baby girls in pinks and reds and cream, clothes for baby boys in blues and greens and oranges and clothes for any baby in cream and beige. It's pretty deplorable, I love the colour blue but apparently if I have a newborn girl I'm not meant to dress her that way? It's exactly the same at other large retailers like Mamas and Papas and Mothercare is only a little better. Thank you then world for giving me Nordic Kids which creates clothing for all children in the brightest, best colours with lovely patterns! What a relief!

2008-12-04T16:59:00.002Z

I've been enjoying the sketches supplied by designers for Michelle Obama's inauguration outfit. There are 32 images to browse on WWD.com and they're all quite different. I really enjoyed the LaCroix suit and the Marc Jacobs dress, which surprised me a little. I suspect the Oscar de la Renta dress is high in the running as it really connects with her style in a way that some of the other outfits don't seem to.

2008-10-12T23:26:00.003Z

I've been looking at Fashion Cultures edited by Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson which is a fashion theory reader published in 2000. It contains a few different essays that I fully intend to read. There's a piece on patriarchy by Pamela Church Gibson and Fiona Anderson's Museums as Fashion Media that are definitely on my reading list and in the back of my mind there's a voice telling me to read the whole book. I am desperately trying to listen to that voice but some of the pieces sound like I'm going to encounter some internal anguish. Can I manage a chapter on Fitzwilliam Darcy or Gwyneth Paltrow in a fashion reader that takes a cultural stance? Darcy perhaps but I suspect I'm going to abandon poor Gwyneth Paltrow. The interesting thing about the reader is that it feels dated enough that a lot of the subject matter and discourse has been very present over the last 8 years but not so much that it's interesting from the perspective of history. A case in point is an Angela McRobbie essay that opens with a discussion about the No.10 Cool Britannia party. If I were a little younger then that might be compelling because I would feel that more time had passed but there has been so much analysis of that episode of British history in the last 8 years and specifically what it meant culturally that I'm tempted not to read the work. Perhaps I'll just skip the first page and see where she's gone with it!

2008-10-05T11:01:00.003Z

Images from a Chinese fashion spread. I think this is really interesting from the point of view of photography but it also has a cultural value because we see so many fashion spreads everyday that only contain caucasian models.

2008-10-04T14:07:00.004Z

Notes on excerpt from Backstage Antwerp, 2002.

Statement III from Thimo te Duits provides the biggest challenge for me in the sentence "fashion is not art because it has no pretensions to autonomy". Does this equate with the notion that fashion is always within some cultural context as a living craft or at the very least in the context of the human body. Enjoy Judith Clark's "Historical reference in dress has never been about evolution, continuity," these two quotes well read together because Thimo te Duits' point can be taken as something other if Judith's position is not kept in mind.

2008-10-01T17:13:00.002Z

I haven't really liked Gareth Pugh's collections over the last three seasons. The combination of very dark shades and cut that I've found intrusively aggressive has not made me a fan but I like the work he's just shown a lot more.

There are images like the one below at style.com

I'm reading Lou Taylor's Study of Dress History, I've only read the introduction and the beginning of the first chapter so unsurprisingly it's all been a bit obvious so far but pleasantly, intelligently obvious and that usually means compelling reading.

2008-09-30T21:50:00.002Z

Naeem Khan is a designer whose work I almost like but seems to fall short in some way that I can't quite grasp. The dress below if from the current season A/W 2008 and it has all the hallmarks of a good piece of clothing. The textures play well against each other, the materials aren't flat and drab and it looks like a dress that would be exciting to wear but it's not quite right. Personally I think that the neckline lets it down, it makes it too vertically symmetrical because the neck and hem are the same shape. If a designer doesn't see that or if he thinks that it's appropriate then he's not the designer for me.

Shall I tell you a little secret? The first collection that Stella McCartney has ever produced that I have liked is this winter 2008 line. I can't help but feel that this is because a lot of the silhouettes remind me of Nicolas Ghesquire's Balenciaga dresses from S/S 2008 which were undoubtedly my favourite pieces from that season. What bothers me about Stella McCartney's clothes is that they seem as if they've been made for the more emaciated among us but they aren't costume, they're definitely outfits to be worn on the street. They're the kind of loose that only the slender can wear because they look like a tent on anyone who carries weight, even if it's around their collarbone and that bothers me. Look at this S/S 2007 outfit, it makes the body straight and imagine if the model was a UK size 14...

2008-09-30T18:05:00.002Z

Incidentally there are videos of Thom Browne's catwalk shows online and they are interesting events. His site has a show on it here but doesn't seem to be working particularly well. There are some images and a brief review of the S/S 09 catwalk show here and here. I think that it's important to regard this kind of work through the lens of decades of haute couture and catwalk theatre. The line between clothing and costume is always up for discussion and is hardly a new subject, just look at the work of Poiret.

2008-09-30T17:28:00.003Z

Last year I set up google alerts to relay any links that featured the phrase "fashion week". This resulted in a huge swathe of unmitigated nonsense hitting my inbox and eventually I cancelled the alerts because I wasn't reading the summaries, never mind following the links. People are very interested in fashion week and write about it all year round but their words are often related to a celebrity sighting or some aspect of fashion that ignores clothes.

Considering my interest in fashion it seemed ridiculous to ignore the benefits that I could reap from the alerts system so I decided to try again and this year I began to receive links that featured the phrase "fashion theory" instead. This proved a to be a better term and the majority of the information is actually useful or amusing so this is what I've got recently.

28th September- How to calculate your clothing budget from the bmw blog.

27th September- Zetoc alert for a Malcolm Barnard piece.

26th September- A newspaper article on Valerie Steele's Dark Glamour exhibition
A bookseller article on Bloomsbury's purchase of Berg, the company that publishes the journal Fashion Theory.
A link to this blog that linked to a blog post about Thom Browne.

2008-09-23T15:52:00.002Z

Duro Olowu's collection for Spring/Summer 2009 was shown at London as usual. Generally I prefer the Autumn collections but Olowu creates beautiful summer designs.

2008-09-21T17:06:00.002Z

Last night a friend who takes a lot of quite interesting and sometimes beautiful photographs told me about foto_decadent which is a livejournal community that collects fashion spreads. I really use livejournal as a very vague place to socialise online so I've never considered looking for these kinds of communities and that's a shame because if I had I might have found foto_decadent a little sooner.

Fashion photography is a subtle art, sometimes fashion spreads in magazines are so overcomplicated with props that they lose the clothes. It's one of the reasons that I'm not that interested in a lot of the independent fashion magazines because art and clothes overlap but the ability to miss the notion that the clothes are the art happens all too often. A lot of photographers that are observed as focusing on fashion, Tim Walker, Annie Leibovitz are dramatic photographers who focus more on scene than fashion and that's fine but they aren't the people who should be creating shoots for fashion magazines. Fashion photography can be an unhappy marriage of two conflicting art forms. (Divorce can be painful but sometimes it's the right thing to do)

2008-09-11T22:16:00.002Z

I went to Borders on Charing Cross Road today to look at the fashion magazines. I really wanted to look at something Russian but my only option was Vogue and it had most of the same adverts as the October edition of British Vogue. This made me sad because I feel like there's an international homogenisation of fashion going on, like the cultural influence that should be evident in clothing from different places is dissipating and flowing away. I really would like to get a tangible sense of Russian design. In my head there's a small but clear working knowledge of Asian design and Middle Eastern design but I don't have that type of compass for Russian design that came before modernism and Soviet imagery. I suppose that's what is striking about political dominance from the perspective of cultural image, when I think Middle Eastern that essentially means Byzantine Empire. There are obvious differences between designed silhouettes in Italy and Sweden and Japanese designers all have something in common even if it's just that they're surprising to my english eyes but could I make the same statement about Russia? Not right now but hopefully that reference will make itself apparent later.

2008-09-11T12:02:00.003Z

Items I quite fancy wearing this season:

Balenciaga

Camilla Staerk

Ermanno Scervino

Yohji Yamamoto

2008-09-09T22:31:00.002Z

Onagono is an ethical fashion company operating out of East London. There are loads of these companies around but this one has a particular geographical lucidity to it, the clothes fit the area that the designer operates out of. Nice T-shirts too.

And why isn't Georgina Goodman making these shoes for the all grown up among us. Jesus, what's a girl got to do to get a decent pair of flats around here?

2008-09-09T16:27:00.002Z

This month's British Vogue looks a little more interesting than the last couple of issues. The prize quote has to be from Nicolas Ghesquiere on page 103 describing Balenciaga's collection, specifically a pair of trousers: "I made a sandwich". I knew there was a beautiful mind behind those clothes.

Incidentally anyone with £2,527 should consider buying a dress from Ermanno Scervino this season. I wish I was planning a wedding.

2008-09-05T18:11:00.003Z

Although I popped into the Fashion V Sport exhibition at the V&A yesterday I didn't take a notebook with me and that means I'm going to have to revisit it at a later date. It lacked a few details, it could have done with a more comprehensive explanation of the advances in textiles that have taken place, the problem wasn't the complete absence but the tantalising hint of that kind of information provided in the exhibition literature. There wasn't a real sense of the brilliance of this area, I wanted more on the speedo suit, a bit on Gore Tex. Why was the modular jacket placed so far from the viewer that you couldn't see how the modules attached to each other and why wasn't there any explanation of it if they had to place it that far away? I don't want to simply go and look at some pretty clothes, I want to learn about the individual items, what they're made of and why it's interesting that those materials were used. This exhibition focused a little too much on the aesthetic side of things and not enough on the broader picture. It needed to be bigger and more informative than it was.

It worked better from a fashion perspective because so many of the actual items were conceived of by designers. They featured a piece from Yamamoto's 2001 Three Stripes collection that just never gets old. I can't find a picture of this because the Internet seems to hate this collection and Japanese designers don't have the following that you would expect online. What looked like this piece by Sonia Rykiel was exhibited and I really appreciated it because I loved this collection when it appeared on the catwalk. A Prada Linea Rossa outfit from 1999 was also on show and I will talk about it properly if I revisit the exhibition as it requires a little more detail and again I can't find any images of clothes from that line never mind the individual garment I'm thinking of.

2008-08-30T00:50:00.003Z

It occurred to me the other day that I might want to start keeping the exhibition guides that I pick up in galleries. I have always done this for a short period of time but they tend to get lost in the other, more serious records that I keep. Anyway I went shopping and bought an A4 portfolio folder, nothing fancy just a little plastic file from Muji and I've just put the catalogues I had lying around into it. I've opened most of them up so that you can see both covers and some of the content, this works well sometimes but not quite as well for the smaller, less standardised guides. At the end of the year I'll put up a list of the exhibition guides that I thought it was worth keeping.

2008-08-23T13:27:00.003Z

These are the books on fashion (or related to the subject) that I own:

The Art of Lee Miller by Mark Haworth-Booth. This is a very informative coffee table book with 5 colour plates and 175 duotone illustrations.

Big Book of Fashion Illustration by Martin Dawber. You can take a look at some of the pages inside this book on Amazon. It is very comprehensive and was a present. I wanted to grasp more about external parts of the industry and one of the ways of doing this is checking out the different types of illustration available.

Nineteenth Century Fashion in Detail by Lucy Johnston. Reading this and examining the pictures was a good way of grasping how clothes were made pre-industrialisation. It's also a good book for nineteenth century trends.

Historic Costuming by Nevil Truman has description of dress through different historical periods including the Romans (509BC to 324 AD) and George II (1727-60). If I have a sudden urge to understand Tudor daywear in court I look it up here.

Couture Culture by Nancy Troy.
This book is basically about modernity and the beginning of the commodity culture. It's very interesting and begins with a section on Poiret who is a designer that everyone has an extreme stance on.

Adorned in Dreams by Elizabeth Wilson is probably the staple. If you're interested in fashion history and theory and haven't read it then you probably need to go and get hold of a copy.

The Empire of Fashion by Gilles Lipovetsky. A book about the industry and culture rather than clothes. Ready to Wear as democratic revolution, advertising on the offensive, this book is about clothing as a cultural weapon and it gave me a good understanding of the complications of clothes.

London - after a fashion by Alistair O'Neill. This book examines the relationship between nineteenth and twentieth century London and fashion. It's incredible for fine detail, full of surprising little facts.

Fashion Dictionary by Guido Vergani. This literally is a current fashion dictionary.

The Fashioned Body by Joanna Entwistle. This is a lovely book that was incredibly helpful to me when I first started reading about this subject and it's summed up very well in the first chapter, the social world is a world of dressed bodies.

The History of Underclothes by C. Willet and Phillis Cunnington is a good education if you're interested in everything that people wear.

The Fashion Book. I forgot that I even had this but it sits alongside the Fashion Dictionary very well as a reference guide.

2008-08-21T09:28:00.003Z

KM Stitchery is based in Brooklyn and she hand cuts stencils of feminists that are then printed onto recycled clothing.

The image above comes from KM Stitchery's blog and the clothes can be ordered from her etsy store. This strikes me as a good way to sport idealism and cottage industry craft simultaneously.

If you like a smattering of '50s style and prefer to buy organic clothes then Small Axe Clothing has been touted on Tree Hugger recently. There first fashion show is on their site but they're American so not exactly carbon friendly for the UK consumer.

2008-08-20T13:14:00.003Z

Links-

Styleclicker
What I Wore

Tech-upgradation leads to mass scale textile recycling in Japan
Nanotechnology in Textiles PDF
The Laundry- send your rubbish to a better place

2008-08-19T21:31:00.002Z

Skin and Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture

Todd Eberle's photographs of the Prada Aoyama Epicentre should have been the first images I saw as I entered the Skin and Bones exhibition at Somerset House. A marriage of architecture and fashion is immediately clear in the two images of the building, demonstrating that two parallel practices can be attuned to the extent that they perfectly compliment each other. Instead chronology was given precedence and the exhibition was introduced by 1980's media images. Consequently I wandered through the ground floor in some confusion, the description of the symbiotic relationship between these two forms of design did not seem to express the same sentiment of creative practice as the initial images. The media is ever changing, 20 years has produced a startling visual difference in magazine photography and the work in the exhibition seemed to be at odds with this. Only when I climbed the stairs and discovered Yeohlee Teng's 1982 'Cape' was I parted from this vague feeling of unease. The black hooded bowing garment brought me back to the aesthetic delights that characterised this show. My particular favourites were Teng's Infanta Two-Circle Dress, Junya Watanabe's garments made of cotton and metal wire from Autumn/Winter 1998-99 and a number of pieces from Maison Martin Margiela. Split into 17 sections with titles like geometry, weaving and suspension the exhibition gained clarity through the main body of design presented and ultimately achieved its original purpose to examine parallel practices in fashion and architecture.

2008-08-19T15:07:00.002Z

I love American Apparel, although I wouldn't buy a lot of the clothes they sell I have two Cotton Spandex Jersey Bandeau dresses that see me through the seven days of English summer that our climate achieves each year. I am not sure that we can forgive them for this, oh sure they may call it the Unisex Thermochromatic Sheer Jersey T-Shirt on the website but I remember when Marks and Spencer sold hypercolour T-Shirts in my youth. Even in Junior school I thought they were fashion crimes and even if you think a good half of American Apparel's stock is weird, they don't generally reach the hyper-horrifying heights of hypercolour. It's unsexy.

In other painful news the smock top still hasn't died out. It's a trend that keeps going leaving us with a reduced ability to shop. My nightmare catwalk vision is probably a hypercolour smock top worn with six inch heels and three quarter length leggings. I thought fashion was meant to change with the seasons but apparently that notion is beyond the High Street's buyers?

2008-08-11T21:02:00.002Z

How do you express a response to a visual science that is transformed into a visual art? I'm finding it difficult. I went to see From Atoms to Patterns this weekend, an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection that had reached its last weekend and finished yesterday. Mutable Matter gives an overview of the exhibition so I won't try to do the same.

The modern era feels like magic to me, there were instances of unity between science and art that created motifs that are unforgettable, the geometric patterns of the Russian avant garde movement, the crystallographers haemoglobin and insulin and the textiles industry was at the centre, the bridge between ancient craft and industrial production. We wear science on our bodies everyday but clothes pre-date our understanding of science, they are a craft that is ancient and there's an exciting juxtaposition there. The ability to wear scientific motif makes me feel enthusiastic because it feels like a recognition of advancing humanity at the beginning and in the present day so perhaps this is something I would love to have, a dress showing insulin or haemoglobin to the world.

2008-08-06T20:02:00.002Z

I've been reading an article today by Heather Marie Akou that discusses the terminology we use to describe fashion, the problems with the word western when it applies to areas that are simply not in the west but fit into the description as it relates to specific types of society. Akou proposes that we adopt a specific sociological semantic system to describe the way that fashion fits together so it looks as if I am going to branch into reading sociology at some point in the near future.

On another note I finally gave up on the vast majority of the high street and bought shoes from Clarks the other day. I am sick to the back teeth with the trend for heels dominating every shoe shop, no one wears the fucking things on a daily basis and haven't those flat ballet pumps worn themselves thin after a decade dominating our shops?

2008-08-05T20:46:00.003Z

It's International Blog Against Racism Week and while the google links I have found seem to focus heavily on fandom icons I'm not going to go there. Racism is so apparent in the fashion industry, not only are there far more white models, a view that is widely recognised but it's apparent that the entire business of fashion rests on the disparity between the wealthy white, western countries and other generally non-white nations where the body of the manufacturing of clothing takes place.

There should be more black and Asian models in our magazines and on our catwalks but the fashion industry is weird about physical appearance. It's biases run far beyond the ethnicity of models, it's a thoughtless industry and this is demonstrated in all kinds of ways. Here is a link to a blog post from Threadbared about racist language online and the way it ties into height.

I don't really know what else to say about this, I want to nod my head to IBARW and the importance of the message, particularly when we're talking about international industry, particularly where clothing is concerned because it functions on a foundation of racism, of presenting people in incredibly negative ways and treating them badly. This isn't a surprise, it's bad that it just keeps happening, it's bad that it can't be stopped and it's bad that it's propped up by the various media that cover fashion. Why continue in this vein? Sort it out fashion industry.

2008-07-31T17:34:00.002Z

I read a fashion magazine in two stages. I go through the entire magazine when I first open it without reading a word. I take in every picture, including the adverts and I decide whether I like each piece of clothing. Usually this takes about 15 to 20 minutes, most pieces are easy to judge but sometimes I need to think about a garment for a while or go back to it and there are a lot of photographs in fashion magazines. Once I've done this I allow myself to read the articles but this takes second place to the feeling I get from the clothes. This process tells me that there are shapes and textures that I like and others that I dislike and even more that I like in some contexts and dislike in others. Jil Sander's Autumn/Winter R-T-W collection is a good spread of clothes that I have this response to.

2008-06-29T22:35:00.002Z

Eco-fashion round up:

Topshop wants your rubbish, the past week has been Topshop's 'rubbish' week.

via Treehugger Horny Toad buys the Nau brand.

In other news Karl Lagerfeld promotes cycling safety.

2008-06-26T18:45:00.002Z

The Viktor and Rolf exhibition at the Barbican is the best exhibition I have ever seen. The quality of their work was wonderful, the individual pieces that were shown offered elements of their unique and original style. They were complimented by the catwalk videos that served as a backdrop but also as a demonstration of the movement of the garments. It was a remarkable show and the doll's house at the very centre of it with little dolls wearing miniature versions of their work made the exhibition for me. I took some photos though I suspect I wasn't meant to:

2008-06-15T21:08:00.003Z

A quick eco-fashion round up:

The US company Sears is selling a clothing line called EcoGir manufactured by Bagir who have produced a suit made entirely of recycled materials such as PET plastic bottles.

Did you know that the clothing company Patagonia has a footprint section on its site? This section explains why specific products are greener than their alternatives and how detrimental it has been to create them. The level of carbon dioxide emissions, waste generated and the distance the product travelled are recorded.

Finisterre won the fashion prize at the 2008 Observer Ethical Awards. If you want outdoor clothing that is environmentally sustainable this is a good place to start in the UK. Hopefully they will expand their range of styles and the variety of product lines they turn out in the future. This is definitely a positive beginning.

Cultivate Kids produce environmentally okay children's clothes. They're lovely outfits and T-shirts but they are made in the US so if you're not there then they're not quite as sustainable as something manufactured closer to home like Polarn o.pyret's eco line.

Perhaps you'll be interested in Pamoyo who use organic cotton, manufacture in Berlin and are releasing patterns for some of the pieces on their site.

If you're looking for accessories you can find bags at Terra pax who have a practice of industrial ecology or Osprey Packs who have a line of bags made from recycled materials.

2008-06-11T17:40:00.002Z

Birds Dress Agency is a vintage clothing shop on Malpas Road in Brockley. It opens from Wednesday to Saturday and looking through the windows the other day I caught sight of McQueen and Prada shoes sitting elegantly near the door.

While I was looking at the shop yesterday Paul the hairdressers whose shop is next door came out and had a chat with me. Apparently Birds has been open steadily since 1965, you can see from the shot of the window that a range of hats are also available. The name of the shop speaks to me, there's something very between-the-wars about the word agency when applied to a shop, it's quite exciting. It's clear that I'm going to have to go inside at some point but I think I'll need to take a more experienced vintage shopper with me in case I don't want to buy anything.

2008-06-10T22:45:00.003Z

I have just finished watching Imagine Annie Leibovitz: Life through a lens on BBC1. The programme covered a lot of the personal moments in her life and the photos that she took, photos of her partner Susan Sontag and her father after they had died. She had taken photos before of corpses in Sarajevo and while it didn't really scratch the surface of her response or the way that she experiences the world, it was interesting and really showed off the body of her work and her skill at creating a narrative with her photos. It was also interesting to watch her claim that she does not capture personality through photographs, if anything Annie Leibovitz constructs a more melodramatic existence for her subjects through her work and I got the impression that she really understands that in a way that her audience doesn't grasp. That more than anything gives us an impression of her brilliance as a photographer because few people can construct a whole story from a single image and moment.

2008-06-10T14:59:00.004Z

The Sartorialist has some beautiful photographs of a jazz age lawn party on his site at the moment. This is my favourite, as it really speaks about the link between female independence and the cut of those dresses that really broke a barrier between male and female attire.

Fashion Hire allows people to hire designer handbags. Primarily this site seems to have been built for people with very specific lifestyles, primarily women who attend events and want to match their accessories to a dress or outfit. It is also a site for people who want to try handbags out before they purchase them and in that sense it's a useful service because these items are incredibly expensive. I'm sure that there is a market for it but I'm unclear as to how large that market is, I have always assumed that a need for handbags, shoes and other accessories was a need that existed mainly for people who like to hoard and keep consumer goods close to them. While handbags of different shapes and sizes are appealing they are not something I've allowed myself to indulge in too thoroughly but part of the reason for that is obvious to me from the website: most designer handbags strike me as ugly and overcomplicated.

2008-06-03T22:15:00.003Z

A short picture essay on Victoria Beckham and Roland Mouret is currently available on the Guardian website accompanied by Germaine Greer's text. It's worth taking a look at, even if Germaine was a bit slow to realise that Victoria Beckham is more than a woman that the papparazzi photograph. Fashion is a cultural discourse for those who can read images and Beckham writes an essay with her outfits. One thing is clear, if you're going to have a fashion icon and you want to understand dresses then images of Victoria Beckham are a very good place to start.

2008-06-03T14:10:00.000Z

An interview with Julie Walters on her experience playing Mary Whitehouse leaves us with an impression of the reasons for the change in female body shape since the 1960s.

Did you have to bulk up for the role because she seemed quite a matronly woman?

I wish I did! Mind you, we wear the proper 'foundation garments' - these surgical truss things all in one with suspenders and girdles. Actually I have a waist when I'm her.

Since this is 2008 I'll just link you to some information on the girdle.

2008-06-02T15:20:00.003Z

Yves Saint Laurent died last night, here are some links to obituaries which say it better than I could:

Women's Wear Daily with some quotes on his influence from Marc Jacobs and Vera Wang among others and a quote from Yves Saint Laurent from 2002, “I always served women and I did it without compromise until the end, with respect and love.”

The BBC points out that "he changed forever what women wear, introducing trouser suits, safari jackets and sweaters".

The Guardian reflects on his role in the industry. "He was the last of the Paris couturiers in the tradition beginning with Charles Worth in the 19th century and the first designer to invest his talent in what became the 21st century global market for mass luxury."

2008-05-25T21:19:00.002Z

If you know anything about talismanic shirts and could recommend some literature on them please leave a comment.

2008-05-25T20:23:00.003Z

Scandinavian fashion usually has a loose, relaxed feeling to it that contrasts directly with the tight silhouette of Italian style. It is interesting to compare women's fashion from the two regions because they really impress upon you a difference in culture between Northern and Southern Europe.

I want to draw a direct comparison between Massimo Dutti, which is owned by a larger Spanish company and Pudel which is Swedish. Ignoring the practicalities of the websites (sorry, Dutti has a flash website) there's a clear difference in the clothing. Pudel creates looser, less buttoned up garments while Massimo Dutti provides very tight, quite tailored clothes and it's characteristic of what can be broadly expected from the two regions. Why is there such a gap? It's so unexpected in fashion, which is essentially a global industry. You expect differences between designers but not necessarily ranges in accordance with their location. However there are definitely tiny details that continue to characterise regional clothing and they are are only obvious when you really look at clothing coming out of companies that provide slightly higher price high street fashion. Is it weather, politics? This would be my PhD subject if I chose to do one.

2008-05-24T23:10:00.000Z

There are websites built to sell products, sites that express personal opinion about the industry, critical and positive sites, basically online fashion spans a huge distance in intention. Although I've spent time criticising individual websites I don't attempt to critique the broader approach to fashion as it exists online because it's difficult to get the right initial perspective to even start to do that. The industry has thousands of commentators that come at it from different angles. Take the Sartorialist, his views are expressed mainly through image, his personal taste is definite and the photographs are a compilation of the quirks of style he favours. Many other sites take the same tack, on my RSS feed I have Hel Looks which also has a selection of fashion photos taken on city streets. I favour the site because the style preference translates so well to the medium of photography, Just Glitter Lust is another street snaps website though I don't view it as often.

There is also a big online trend towards taking photos of yourself in clothes that you've bought. Style Bubble features its author regularly as does Kingdom of Style. I don't like the politics of Kingdom of Style very much. Michelle can lean towards a type of criticism of people's bodies that honestly I don't like, mostly because I don't think anyone needs to be an arse about people's imperfections and size. That attitude reeks a bit of living in Photoshop fantasy land. In reality it's impossible to eliminate every poor feature of an organic body but she does point out good design regularly so I keep her on my feed. Fashion and humour, particularly fashion that focuses mainly on pictures and not words doesn't really do humour that isn't cruel and I'd rather just read about outfits. I've cut a lot of bad journalism out of my RSS in the last couple of months, fashion isn't about fame and I don't want to read about a dress just because it's worn by a celebrity. I avoid the Glamour blogs in the US and UK for that reason (and because the writing kind of sucks). If I want to read a gossip column that occasionally comments on frocks I'll go for something so outrageous that it is funny, Perez Hilton basically.

There are the few unique websites that do something completely different, my favourite is Fashion Incubator, it's a good read, enlightening, interesting, actually teaches me something about the fashion industry and the importance of basic skills like pattern cutting. I haven't found anything as relaxed and honest about fashion on the Internet. I also read Kuwait Style because fashion is as interesting globally as it is here, spotting the similarities and differences is fascinating. I intend to write about Ovatus Fashion in the near future.

I would like to read more about fashion theory online but there's a lack of it about I think. Perhaps those just aren't popular sites though so they're more difficult to find.

2008-05-23T10:26:00.001Z

LINKS.

Ponystep
Iconique

Bobbins bicycle accessories

2008-05-19T19:13:00.002Z

Finally we witness the fashionable commodification of cycling helmets with the work of Natalia Brilli (this picture brutally lifted from Susie Bubble) and Sawako Furuno.

Cycling has always had its own unique fashion, understandably based on functionality, there has been a kind of space age, lycra, streamlined chic that has suited men but looked a little stranger on their female counterparts. The Natalia Brilli helmet above manages to combine that sleek elegance with a powerful, feminine edge. The Sawako Furuno helmet sits at the other end of the spectrum, light, sweet with flower motifs, it does something completely different to the merchandise that is usually available to cyclists.

2008-05-14T10:33:00.000Z

“The term Tipping point describes the point at which a slow gradual change becomes irreversible.” Leggings. The trend has peaked and we have reached the moment that the fashion media has been dreading. The nation has been wearing leggings for months to the extent that those with the confidence of shapely legs have abandoned them and we are now left with an irreversible trend that is sported, mainly by people who look rather foolish in this second skin.

I love leggings but they are unforgiving, they reveal every ounce of fat, every peculiar turn of the lower leg. If you’re dressing up and your legs aren’t naturally athletic or your feet turn out at odd angles or your legs are kind of scrawny then you should probably opt for a different trend, one that looks a little more glamorous and conceals your flaws. It’s not that anyone cares, it’s simply that a lot of people could look better than they do in leggings. All people have flaws and clothes ideally balance them out to make us more beautiful. Skinny jeans are just as tight, quite similar to leggings but a better material for women who carry bulk on their legs, tights are thinner and pair better with skirts for the majority of the population. Women and men should not wear clothes simply because they are in fashion and they like the trend, style equates with clothes that suit you as an individual.

At some point leggings are going to disappear into the sportswear department again but at the moment they have reached a height of fashion that means swathes of young women, regardless of their shape have put them on their legs. Like all garments they are not suitable for everyone and it isn’t related to weight, some women have short, round legs and look excellent in leggings, some have long, slender legs and look absurdly like fawns. How do trends get to the point where people who can pick exciting patterns and well cut dresses make their legs look less than they could? I suspect it’s a combination of laziness and delight. Essentially no media group, no stylist and no retailer has ever been able to take away the one, absolute truth, leggings are fun.

2008-05-13T12:27:00.004Z

I'm quite interested in Butcher Couture an ethical fashion company that was founded by Babou Olengha in October 2007. It specialises in organic bovine leather but it's incredibly difficult to get a sense of the clothing online. There are a number of reasons for this, the first is that the website has been written in flash, that means that when you use the label as a search term in google it only picks up the front page and a breast awareness PDF press release. Oddly the site is titled launcher rather than Bucher Couture on google so it's not obvious that you're going to the correct page unless you look at the URL.

The use of flash means that you get an immediate sense of the brand, the marketing aims of the company but not of the products that Butcher Couture is producing. The introduction, as with all flash sites, is long and boring, it takes an age to load up and tells you very little if you are there to look at fashion items. You then have to navigate through more windows until finally you can look at the Autumn/Winter 2007 collection. Whether there is a Spring/Summer 2008 collection cannot be discerned online so it's possible that Butcher Couture no longer exists and is simply a name floating around the Internet. The site isn't finished, the Archive and Track and Trace features do not work, you cannot exit from the equation feature, news is somewhat out of date specifically because the site is a season behind.

This is an honourable idea, it's been branded well and obviously got some attention in the latter half of 2007. Even now the pink wedding dress that Jemma Sykes created for the label is getting some attention online but I can't discover anything about the clothes in a broader sense and that strikes me as odd. The brand, the name, the ethic is interesting but what about the garments, shouldn't they take precedence?

2008-05-13T11:47:00.002Z

This decade has seen an entire sector of the fashion industry built up around eco-fashion. Perhaps the best example of this is People Tree which, despite having no retail outlets on the high street has achieved an enviable level of brand recognition, and yet in spite of the popularity of well known ethical clothing companies such as People Tree, Howies and Terra Plana it is still difficult to predict whether the sector is stable enough to survive the next 10 years. Ecological fashion is expensive. The production of clothing can cost a lot: paying workers a living wage, using materials that are good for the environment and dyes that don’t cause harm pushes the cost of clothes up. After all of that hard work, the method of delivering clothes is still going to be slower and the turnover less quick than high street retailers because it is destructive and unethical to fly clothing from one country to another. An ecologically minded fashion company that uses planes should surely have its credentials questioned? The media is discussing the rising cost of food, the sense that we’re in an economic downturn is prevalent and the question of whether an expensive, ethical trade can be sustained, whether the market focuses on the right demographic for this to be possible, must be at the forefront of people’s minds. In the last few weeks Nau has shut up shop, a thoughtful clothing company that couldn’t achieve a viable level of funding. The question is as always whether people who are not wealthy can be expected to consistently spend more on clothing, particularly if they are already spending more on food, cleaning products, cosmetics and other items that they perceive as ethical because there are no cheap, ethical products. The association of price and luxury exists because spending more on any item equates to buying luxury goods. When we buy a more expensive version of the same basic product, whether it is food or clothing, we are buying a luxury item regardless of any external gain for wider society or our own bodies. Then there’s the argument that cheaper clothes fall apart and out of shape more quickly but I don’t see a foundation for it, particularly not in my own experience. My People Tree skirt is not in better shape than the skirt I bought from H&M a few years earlier so the choice to buy more expensive clothing is an ethical and intellectual choice, not a practical choice.

British supermarkets have tried to adopt eco-fashion with mixed results. Lucy Siegle’s blog post on the relationship between Katharine Hamnett and Tesco reveals the expected tension between ecological ideals and big business. If you’re interested in the status of larger retail chains with regards to worker’s rights the Clean Up Fashion report from War on Want is an interesting, informative place to begin with a section in the PDF summary dedicated to How Companies Fared.

2008-05-09T23:03:00.004Z

This week I found a flyer for Fashicon in a cafe local to my workplace. Fashicon is a site that sells branded menswear. Its identity is extremely masculine, defined images in quite muted colours with silver buttons that convey the menu visually. Rather than simply relying on the buttons the descriptions (T-shirts/Polo etc.) still sit next to them, making it clear that the buttons are links. That menu structure sits to the right of the page even when you're browsing items. The front page is simple and easy to read, a portal to draw the audience in and make the purpose of the website clear, it doesn't try to sell too much to the customer which is a relief when you're used to flash sites that are poor, time wasting and difficult to navigate. I am never going to buy clothes from Fashicon because I don't buy clothes for men but the experience of the site and discovering the items that it supplies was fulfilling.

The closest women's site that I can think of, off the top of my head, belongs to the high street retailer Oasis. When comparing the two sites it struck me that while Fashicon's homepage was built to allow your vision to be drawn to the menu on the right hand side immediately, the menu was obscured by the fashion illustration on the Oasis site. The last thing that I see is the menu structure and I want to shop using that system. Clearly it is a good site and built along the same, consumer-orientated lines as Fashicon. It's also better than many other fashion sites, one example being the Topshop site which pushes all kinds of nonsense on to you and then mixes up the categories on the left hand side so that even the myriad types of clothing and accessories aren't grouped together.

When I browse clothing online I am not browsing a concept, I want to see what a shop has and where I can go to try it on. Even though I am not an online purchaser I am a scout for clothes that I could potentially buy if they are available. If a site takes too long to navigate and leaves me bored and tapping my fingers while page after page loads I lose respect for the company. Only real concept brands, labels that sell to the very rich, should have flash sites even if they don't sell through their websites. You need to allow people to see the clothes that they could own. Generally fashion as an industry is starting to get the hang of this but even the best sites don't get it quite right, the Oasis website carries your eye from the illustration to the right when you should see the menu structure as an immediate second object. The narrative is wrong but I can't see why.

2008-05-01T14:16:00.003Z

In 1926 an economist called George Taylor put forward the view that hemlines fall with the markets. I was reminded of this by an FT article written by Vanessa Friedman in March. The idea was also referenced and a brief history given by Claire Brayford in the Express in February. It's certainly a common theme for columnists who want to throw something cultural into financial articles or surprise people with an unusual idea that holds some authority. Catherine Valenti also had an article on this subject published on the ABC News money site in January. In this particular article Taylor's theory is debunked by Valerie Steele, the Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, who is quoted as saying "it's a kind of functionalist theory of fashion that doesn't work... hemlines were starting to come down in '27 and that was two years before the market crash." Her choice of words is significant, when asked to define functionalist google tells me that theories in particular rely heavily on the notion of realization to explicate the relation between consciousness and the physical. This probably isn't the definition that Steele is referring to, she is more likely thinking of the idea that all elements of a culture are functional and so people attempt to assign a correlation between two separate parts of our culture to make them function together. I think that the definition of functionalist works well in this context, the idea that people's economic fear, their consciousness is written in what they wear is very present in Taylor's hemline index.

The idea in the press seems to be that there are too many conflicting products to derive any specific ideas about the economy. Many skirts equates with many hemlines so how can you make a cultural judgment? Trends allow for differing hemlines, the point is in the majority of popular skirts. Nevertheless the argument promotes the idea that the hemline index was ever viable and that's very spurious. Clothes do not necessarily follow a pattern that relates to the rest of society unless your conclusion is that after a decade of bland, beige clothing people might want to wear bright, acid colours. Fashion and the economy are linked but the specific part that is linked is not the creative process, it's the business side of the market, the selling of clothes to customers. In order to gauge the effect of business on design and creativity you have to go through a chain of influence that differs depending on the organisation that makes the clothes, in some parts of the industry buyers have more influence than in other parts of the industry. Some retailers, Topshop immediately springs to mind, are orientated heavily on cost, the same pattern will have details added to it many times and the economy directly influences the clothes sold in the stores. This is not as obviously true of fashion houses. Essentially then the question becomes whether fashion today has a life as a whole or only as a series of separate entities, that is always the question, whether you're looking at various catwalks around the world or at independent shops in Camden.

2008-04-30T14:07:00.007Z

It felt a bit fortuitous to find, on the kitchen table this morning, a book open on a page about silk. I am unclear as to whether it was deliberately left there or if sheer chance worked its magic but I've been thinking about silk and the silkworm recently. The book, which I haven't read all the way through is called The Rise of a Hungry Nation: China Shakes the World by James Kynge. Silk is an animal by-product. It isn't particularly glamorous to define expensive materials as by-products, food is more likely to be classified in this way and at first glance there's very little similarity in the status of milk and silk but this post isn't about workers, pay and labour, it's about the history of that by-product.

The silkworm does not appear to exist in the wild, it is an animal that is domestically farmed. Silk is made from the cocoon that worms build in order to become moths and the only definite historical fact that is known about the domestic silkworm is that it comes from inland China. The cocoon is made of a single continuous thread of raw silk and a minimum of 2000 cocoons are required to make a pound of silk. Presumably the price of silk has dropped in the last hundred years because of intensive farming methods. Generally silkworm cocoons are boiled while they contain the creature and this allows easy unravelling of the cocoon to farm the thread. There are questions about the work, silk farming is common in India and China, as the book I found in the kitchen explains the industry in Como, Italy has been declining for two decades.

The discovery of silk is attributed by the Chinese to Leizu, the wife of the Emperor Huang Di, who found a cocoon in her tea and on picking it out unravelled the cocoon so that she held raw silk in her hands. The Zhou Dynasty (11th century-256BC) created an administration to oversee the breeding of silkworms and the production of the material. During this dynasty the Silk Road was also set up to carry the material to the Middle East and Europe. Breeding and production techniques were taught to other countries and silk became more popular.

There are all kinds of questions about silk and the ethics of wearing the material that I have never really encountered in the way that I have fur and leather. Essentially a vegan or vegetarian should not wear this material unless it comes from a source like the one in this treehugger article.
PETA do reference silkworms but don't appear to have much publicity surrounding the information, which interests me quite a lot as this is clearly an animal rights issue that is often overlooked. Stella McCartney may not use fur and she may support a host of animal charities but she does use silk...

2008-04-29T20:37:00.003Z

The last few years have felt like a shoe wasteland. I have searched high and low for a pair of flats that are formal, elegant and can handle my poor, useless feet (falling arches). There have been many pairs of pretty flats, unfortunately they have been made of soft leather or canvas, rather than holding my broken, size 8's they have creased and bowed within seconds of placing them upon my feet. It's been tragic and ridiculous and extremely disappointing. So listen, I want to express my anxiety properly, I want to talk about high heels. Gwyneth Paltrow has started a small storm on the Guardian site this week by sporting 7" heels at some premiere or other and a conversation about shoes made me think that I should discuss my dislike of heels.

Heels. They look nice, they lengthen the body, the leg, stretch the ankle, compress the heel, place pressure on the ball of the foot. Heels burn. I admit that the occasional pain is worth experiencing to look a little bit glamorous but 7 days a week? Why go to such lengths? Why not wear flat shoes, you pop them on and you can walk for miles, there's no tottering, maybe a little plodding, the potential for a lengthy stride, if you want to run you can do it without flailing your arms about. Oh, you want to wear nice shoes? You want to buy something that looks interesting that you can wear in an office? That's a bit unusual isn't it, sorry the shops can't do that sort of thing.

I am resigned to trying Camper again although they never, ever have my size in stock. Women with flat feet don't buy shoes online because they just end up sending them back.

2008-04-27T16:15:00.003Z

Where did our waists go? asked Mimi Spencer in 2005. It's an old guardian article but interesting to read and a demonstration of a prevailing view of women's bodies over the last few years.

My problem with this article is quite simple, it is the same problem that I have with the prevailing view of women's bodies, there appears to be a general assumption that women once had naturally occurring waists that naturally nipped in. People really believe that the hourglass figure was an average, natural phenomenon. Well, I don't mean to offend but I honestly doubt that this was ever the case. I will now select some of my favourite quotes from this piece and address them:

In 1951, the average British woman had a 27.5-inch waist. Now, she boasts a 34-incher. That's a growth of more than an inch a decade.

This was not because we are excessive now, this is because food was rationed. This is not something we should extol the virtues of, I'm certain that rationing sucked. Additionally corsets, commonly used as waist training devices fell out of practice in the 1910s, only 40 years earlier so many older women may have worn them from adolescence up until the first world war. If this was a true average than it would have been hugely effected by both of these factors. I don't doubt that the points raised in this article are true to an extent but the notion that expanding waistlines are a cultural problem for women specifically is a little absurd. If they're a problem then they're not an aesthetic problem, men are still going to want to reproduce with women, there's no need to preserve a crazy and hungry waist in order to get laid/married/kissed. If an expanding waistline is a problem then it's a health problem for men and women and god, I wish people would stop trying to make women conform to absurd physical ideals by comparing people (who should be happy and feel normal) from London and Leeds and Aberystwyth to a painting from another century.

When Emma Stiles says The waist-hip ratio has changed over the past 100 years because of a change in the macronutrients in our diet our response is simple, it's happened to all of us so the playing field remains level. Apparently Kylie can't even achieve a tiny waist and she's probably got a personal trainer and nutritionist.

And as to sitting in Starbucks all day with a laptop and a cappuccino was a joy unavailable to our grandparents' generation... I work 8 hour days in an office, is this meant to make a job that I find lacks anything profound sound like a leisure pursuit? Mimi Spencer has not simply put a gloss on the past but has also polished up our dull, working lives by suggesting that we have time to sit in Starbucks all day, drinking coffee and typing. After that she finally starts piling the pressure of healthy eating on but it's too late because she's already shown me that like the rest of the fashion industry, she has a weird attitude towards women's bodies. She isn't thinking about reality, she's thinking about popular culture. It's too late to say Empowering? Or demeaning? Like it or loathe it, "restraint" is a hot word in fashion right now. The author already believes that women should restrain themselves and sadly that seems to be common.

2008-03-18T11:58:00.004Z

There is a piece about Hillary Clinton's dress sense on The Guardian site at the moment. Hadley is very fair to Hillary Clinton but I think she underestimates the bile felt by the press and a significant proportion of the US electorate towards Clinton. For instance an article in the Washington Post refers to Clinton as if she were a person lacking confidence rather than a politician attempting to be President: With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private.

I really enjoyed this comment on Media Matters that Clinton often wears bright colours. This article on Reclaim the media is definitely relevant.

Most importantly looking at pictures of Hillary Clinton online you get the impression that she does like clothes, she has a sense of style. She likes quite fussy, feminine clothes and they're not the type of power outfits that she is necessarily expected to wear.

2008-03-11T14:24:00.003Z

An awareness that I've been absolutely useless and failed to update this space for over a month has spurred me into some semblance of action. Here are some links: the London Fashion Week website holds catwalk reports for each of the designers, among them are Allegra Hicks, Ben de Lisi and my favourite Duro Olowu.

The Times currently has images from Japan fashion week on its fashion front page and they also have an article on fashion and the economy that I intend to write about in further depth later today.

2008-02-04T16:27:00.000Z

I am definitely going to this on the 9th March. A collection of fashion films for Birds Eye View, a creative platform for women filmmakers. I'm hoping to see something genuinely interesting.

2008-01-25T22:34:00.001Z

Having glanced over the Paris couture shows, not with the depth that I would like to because I've moved house and attended an open day this week, I have come to the conclusion that my favourite of the Spring 2008 haute couture was from Givenchy. Rather than trying to express this in words I am going to opt for visual language:

This is the kind of clothing that I am always drawn to, it reminds me of the best Ann Demeulemeester, a focus on cut and silhouette that makes you want to run in a mad dash to the designer and weep into their hem begging them to make you a nice coat. Sadly the black wall behind the catwalk made the photos difficult to decipher.

Unexpectedly I also really enjoyed the Valentino hats, especially the one below:

2008-01-25T12:16:00.000Z

Yesterday I went to the London College of Fashion for an open day and by the time I exited the building I was sold on Fashion Curation as an MA. I expect that I will get the usual run of questions from people, questions like "what are you going to do with it?" The answer will be, work hard and use it or simply enjoy the process of allowing my brain to take in something new and interesting. The prospect of creating in this way after sitting behind a desk and being involved with politics and journalism for two years is utterly joyous, being in that environment made me feel very cheerful very quickly but also quite committed to working hard. I would like to feel passionate about work, passion always makes difficulty feel less permanent. When I got home and looked up the course I realised that I had just met Amy de la Haye who edited Defining Dress, one of the first fashion theory collections I ever read. I would say that it was a factor in my decision but I had already emailed my undergraduate course tutor asking for a reference so the decision had been made. At first glance it might seem odd that I didn't know the name of the tutor but I wasn't considering Fashion Curation before I walked into the room at 5pm, I had been sure that I wanted to do the history course. The problem is that dry academia has never been my thing, I love organising, the practical aspects of life appeal to me, I am good at administration and filing, tidying things up and moving furniture around, creating intuitive spaces for other people. There is an interview with Judith Clark about curating a fashion exhibition here that will perhaps bring that sense of ideal and organistation across. I haven't yet watched it in full but the first half is very interesting, the narrative of her work is particularly intriguing and you get a shape of the process of the way she has approached the idea of the exhibition which is helpful to understanding this type of job.

My first fashion exhibition was Addressing the Century at the Hayward in 1998. I was 17 and sold on clothes as an artform as soon as I walked through the door. I had no idea that I could find garments so exciting and it really woke me up to a world I hadn't been aware of. It was curated by Peter Wollen who as it turns out has written an article entitled The Concept of Fashion in The Arcades Project. I would very much like to read this because Benjamin's work regarding fashion interests me but is sometimes difficult to take from its context, especially with The Arcades Project which is so large. Since then I've been a bit of a staple at the V&A exhibitions. I think I'm going to be kicking myself for missing The Golden Age of Couture for decades.

2008-01-19T00:17:00.001Z

What do I know about clothes? I know that clothes start from the vulnerability of being a woman or man without any clothes on. That clothes are our cultural skin. I know that we build ourselves and our confidence and our approachability and protective shell through our outfits. Imagine for a moment the difference between clothed and nude, the line and the difference in where it exists for different people and then, importantly the cloak of fashion in opposition to other types of nudity. The extension of fashion photography as a form of clothing emphasises the idea of clothing as cultural construct.

Gok Wan on How to Look Good Naked teaches women, not to look good naked but to put on clothing even when they're wearing very, very little. I'm currently reading It's So You, a collection of essays by women that focuses on their personal experience of fashion and clothing. I think I have failed to do this a little, in a sense this site is more a critical examination of the very periphery of fashion, of the popular conception of it in magazines and newpapers and the misiniterpretation and lack of clarity on the subject. It makes sense because I want to clarify what fashion theory is and should be but perhaps more motivation to write about my clothes and experiences would be positive.

2008-01-17T21:38:00.001Z

A week ago I had seen very few images of Michelle Obama and most of them hadn't presented her particularly well. I had assumed that her interest in her appearance was focused on her role as a politician's wife because she seemed to be a very conservative dresser, prone to pearls and roll necked tops. Then I found out that she was listed as one of the best dressed women of 2007 by Vanity Fair magazine and I thought it was worthy of investigation. I couldn't believe that the photos I had seen could represent the wardrobe of someone on such a list.

Michelle Obama has style and her designer of choice is Maria Pinto who is based in Chicago. Her clothes are beautiful but sadly her website isn't up to date. Pinto's marketing spiel says that she is known for matching the finest European fabrics with modern American design, I'm unclear as to what modern American design actually means, probably clothes designed by an American citizen in America but Obama seems to have made a good choice and it's pleasant to see a democrat dressing so well and providing some competition for the Bush family.

2008-01-16T10:53:00.000Z

I recently had a brief conversation about a Russian interior design magazine that has led me to think about the advantages and disadvantages of international fashion. Someone had brought the magazine into the workplace of an acquaintance and she was struck by the colourful, foreign opulence of the photographs she encountered. The style was entirely unexpected in western kitchens but aspirational for those of a different culture. The sudden culture shock of an aspiration that is at odds with an underlying expectation is rarely discovered in fashion. Although clothes shock they usually do so in the moral sense rather than in a structural or aesthetic way, it is expected that contemporary clothing will push boundaries. Reference to culture is appropriated with such regularity that often features created in one society cannot be traced to an individual nation with any ease. We are used to photographs of men in large hats wandering through Red Square and that is our vision of Russian clothing in the west.

It is initially surprising that clothes created by Russian designers can be read with such easy familiarity. The designs are similar to those we see in ready to wear fashion and the more expensive high street shops. At present the most readily available and most heavily publicised brand is Kova&T, stocked by Harvey Nichols and gaining a lot of press attention at the moment. The clothes are co-designed by Dasha Zhukova who is of Russian ethnicity but went to school in Los Angeles and her work has clearly been influenced by international fashion rather than her home culture. In a sense that is what makes Sunday's Observer article so odd. Nationality in 2007's fashion industry is an extremely ineffective way to group and explore the designs that are being produced. Designers are generally influenced by their own industry, the trends of a specific season, the success of a fashion house, the designer or house they have worked for, only in rare cases do specific cultural norms come into the frame, that is why Olowu is so exciting. In that sense it is to be expected that there is very little to link the clothes of Kira Plastinina with those of Dasha Zhukova. That their fathers made a lot of money is their common ground and as The Observer points out Plastinina - dubbed the leading light of the new 'spoilt bratski' generation - opened a chain of shops last year with a gift of £50 million from her father.

Kira Plastinina's website is written in Russian rather than English. Her clothes are reminiscent of Harajuku or Topshop rather than the muted tones and stylings of Kova&T, this makes them no better or worse but it does suggest that even in simply looking at the clothes the suggestion of national background is useless.

Viv Groskop’s article basically tells us that people in a geographical area are emulating and aspiring to be designers and the fashion industries darlings. Igor Chapurin is apparently Moscow’s Tom Ford and his clothes are built by people in the media, lawyers, bankers, the same type of people who buy this price range in the UK, so shoppers in Moscow spend money in the same way as people in London. Alla Verber was a buyer and now she’s apparently bringing luxury to Moscow but I’m not sure how because it’s never clearly stated. Groskop has penned three articles and slapped them together, one about designers of Russian ethnicity, one about consumerism in Moscow and one about fashion culture and the way it’s changing in Russia’s cities. I would like to know what Verber does, more about the clothes that Zhukova and Plastinina design, anything concrete about Chapurin but this is an article that doesn’t work because it is about the Russian fashion industry. There is no Russian fashion industry, at this kind of level there is only an international fashion industry with Russian designers, buyers and journalists and the way that this is effecting the consumerism in some parts of the country.

Incidentally a cleaner article, lacking a lot of the assumption inherent in the Observer's and bringing across similar points was published in The Times and apparently written by Donatella Versace today.

2007-12-27T23:37:00.000Z

Yulia Tymoshenko is possibly best known for her highly fashionable wardrobe. It is unusual for her type of clothes to be worn in a political environment and this has given her an international notoriety that most Eastern Europeans certainly never achieve. I think this has afforded us the space to reconsider the approach that is taken towards dress by most female politicians. The accepted baseline is always conservative clothing, nothing too risky, kept as close to menswear as possible in order to accentuate the more masculine elements of personality. People who reveal themselves as too feminine, Theresa May, Jacqui Smith, are more likely to be criticised than regarded as fashionable. It often feels like female politicians are opening themselves up for a world of sexist pain if they dare to wear half of the clothes available in Marks and Spencer, never mind any other shops. However the perception that they have pushed it too far in order to look good is wildly inaccurate, if they really were wearing tremendously fashionable clothes, the type that can be recognised by the most incompetent among us then they would clearly come in for less criticism.

Tymoshenko's clothes are better, more exciting and beautiful than any British female politician's. Even the younger women who go into politics don't bear any comparison and that's not because they have less money. They just don't seem particularly interested in the way that they look. Political hair among the women of this country is dire, even those with good haircuts like Sarah Teather lean towards the thoroughly conservative. Tymoshenko takes great care of her appearance generally, she would never allow her hair to be styled like Theresa May's, she clearly has her fingernails manicured. Originally I wanted to write a comparison, unfortunately the only viable and consistent comparison on the level of dress seemed to be with Laura Bush (who does not have a career as a politician), who also has an ability to choose clothes cut to a very high standard.

Hilary Clinton is perhaps the next best comparison to make. Again she has hair problems, women appear to get to a certain point in their lives and western hairdressers start giving them very specific haircuts with matching colour jobs. Clinton has always had atrocious hair, in no way does it stand up to the record set by Tymoshenko whose hair has never been objectionable, even if it sometimes comes across as boring. Clinton does know how to choose her jackets though, they fit well and they often have good collars, which is true of Yulia Tymoshenko's jackets as well.

There aren't any competitors in English politics, tidying up Theresa May is the best option available and although she will never be as glamorous, as well kept she will choose interesting clothes. The press should stop criticising female politicians for wearing what they enjoy, it's difficult to choose items that are formal, interesting and suit bodies that are not as petite as Tymoshenko's and some of our politician's have been doing an okay job of it, even if their garments aren't as enthralling as I would like.

2007-12-16T00:27:00.000Z

Any attempt I make to buy clothes at this time of year tends to be scuppered by the December sales season. As if shopping wasn't already a tragic, unpleasant event, marred by the sheer number of people on London's streets, the shops now make the experience reminiscent of hell by making clothes shops, our last bastion of peace on a Saturday afternoon Oxford Street as bad as everywhere else. I have not been been shopping this year and I intend to buy the meagre five presents that I owe to people I love after work sometime in the next seven days. The notion of spending my weekend in the shops at this time of year is one that I am rejecting more actively as I get older, usually I like clothes shops even when they're full of people but the clothes shops trot out the most gruesome elements of their stock for every sucker in the country in December. Shoe shops, specifically Office are the worst, they don't seem to have sales, they appear to make a line of horrific shoes that don't fit properly to sell to people at cheap prices. Have you ever tried buying sexy, appealing shoes that fit okay with size 8 feet? It's not fun, it's stressful, competitive and tiring and I don't do it anymore. If I could abolish one single thing it would be the December sales, save it until January and let us buy what we need in peace when we can't avoid shopping.

2007-12-11T13:28:00.000Z

A different colour and cut of dress and less eye make up will expose the subjective perception of fashion writers everywhere. Keira Knightley's collarbone, the top of her chest, jaw and arms are exactly the same size but when she puts on a dress with a full skirt that doesn't expose her rib cage the credulous will happily believe that she's healthier than she was a few months ago. That's not to say that I think she's unhealthy, I'm aware that if I stopped eating meat, cake and other sweets, the odd roast dinner and fried breakfast and exercised regularly I could probably be the size of Keira Knightley within a couple of months and I would be healthier than I am now. All media is fickle and a little ignorant of clothes.

2007-12-09T17:18:00.000Z

The University of Southampton has decided to close the Textile Conservation Centre. "It is understood that an endowment of £5 million could still save the centre". Read about the situation on Times Online and please sign this petition if you are a British citizen. As The Guardian points out The only comparable centre in Europe is in Switzerland.

The official website for the TCC is here and as it points out the Textile Conservation Centre is the leading international organisation in the field of textile conservation research, education and practice, it should be saved because our clothing and an incredible amount of textile design is not simply comparable to art but is art. Who will restore William Morris patterns, the Bayeux tapestry, the textiles of the royal palaces if no one has the skill to do so, should we just let every artistic industry die?

2007-12-07T12:08:00.000Z

It took me a long time to understand why I disliked the negative commentary concerning Gwen Stefani's harajuku girls, the discussion of racism seemed fundamentally racist, as if the presence of harajuku girls was making a comment about all Japanese people rather than celebrating the strides in fashion made in the style district of Tokyo. It felt to me as if prejudice towards Japanese women already existed and was betrayed by a sudden violent but flippant reaction to some dancers who were not caucasian.

I'm having the same response to the discussion of the recent injured idol trend. One person interviewed commented that the bandage trend made it easier to pick up men and as a result this has been picked up online almost uniformly as an anti-feminist style. Even the feminist blogs have run with this notion despite it clearly being quite sexist, for instance if you interviewed a man on the street in London and he remarked that he wore pinstripe suits because they made him taller and women find taller men more attractive I doubt that he would be labelled as sexist. It's the idea that this is linked to bondage, that styles linked to those things are a little dubious, that women wear clothes that men like that's being responded to. This is all mixed in with the idea of exoticism, of men exoticising women of different racial backgrounds to themselves but to make that link unconsciously and carry it across the Internet in response to a style of clothing, no matter how weird, is both racist and sexist. It seems important to remember that people who really think about their clothing do so with the primary intention of looking better from the perspective of other people. If the motivation is linked to your sexuality it's not surprising and I rarely hear an argument that tackles this basic idea in a practical sense.

2007-12-05T15:29:00.000Z

I rarely come across a collision of fashion and chocolate so I was pleasantly surprised to find that Lindka Cierach has created a Lindor dress. Linzi Stoppard was photographed in the dress this week, it's made of that striking red chocolate wrapping that's immediately recognisable and Swarovski crystals. It's a bespoke gown that cost £3,500, amazingly the chocolate appears to actually construct the skirt, how she isn't actually eating it while wearing the dress is completely beyond me.

Cierach's clothes are very striking, she shapes the female body in a really specific way and that makes her work surprisingly distinctive. While the Lindor dress is a novelty item it carries the characteristics, the cut of her clothing very well and it is difficult to envisage disliking her clothes because they make bodies look so interesting.

2007-12-03T00:13:00.000Z

Things that I'm specifically interested in: menswear and the way that the media engages with it, the emergence of the three piece suit as standard clothing in the 19th and 20th centuries, haute couture as a relatively new and passing phase as framed by Charles Worth, the parallels between corsetry and cosmetic surgery/injections as forms of acceptable body modification, the supermodels as representations of the ideal fashionable body.

2007-12-01T15:05:00.000Z

Men's fashion writing is quite simply excrutiatingly humiliating. While women's fashion writing isn't exactly the height of intelligence it doesn't quite manage to be as derogatory, doesn't force as many unoriginal novelty pieces into a space that can't hold them effectively. If I begin with examples than perhaps my position will be clarified easily. 8 Men's Fashion Mistakes to Avoid is the most obvious of these. Mistakes include socks and sandals, novelty ties and underwear and 'blaring' designer labels. The author Daniel Billett, who I would guess is a career writer rather than a person interested in clothing, then goes on to start insulting practical measures that a man might adopt. Apparently carrying a backpack to the office is a fashion mistake and wearing loose clothes is wrong. Now I would say that any man who actually thinks about the clothes that he wears avoids at least 6 of the "mistakes" that Daniel Billett took the time to think up, possibly while watching television, eating his dinner and typing with one hand. It seems fundamentally insulting that this could be published as advice anywhere. If "he understands what wearing clothes for real life situations is all about" than why is he focusing partly on the foolish and partly on perfectly acceptable but clearly personal dislikes? His work is embarassing because it's so simplistic, despite being a man he treats other men like incompetents by putting this kind of thing together and god alone knows who else thought this was an ingenious article.

Men's Flair is a little better. It treats men as if they are people who are interested in the clothes they put on rather than incompetents who need to be told not to wear Homer Simpson ties. I think it can be taken as read that if you're wearing a novelty tie you know it looks silly and feel good and confident about that. Men's Flair does occasionally churn out nonsense, here is a piece on male fashion icons. The chosen two are JFK and George Clooney, both are well dressed and will always be perceived in that way but the site fails to indicate why these men are style icons rather than two interesting celebrities. Men's Flair needs to go into more detail, the writers need to sit down and think about the exact reasons why they would choose brown boots over black boots, George Clooney over Denzel Washington and really highlight what it is about certain subjects that make them special. This is almost the opposite of Daniel Billett's problem, he treated his audience like they understood nothing, the writers at Men's Flair seem to think their audience understand their motivations without explaining them. The writing is certainly of better quality, this isn't a gimmick, the people who write here are motivated to write about clothes even if it's not fleshed out properly. I wouldn't pick this site out as a good example of online fashion writing but it's not appalling and doesn't assume that men know nothing about items they encounter everyday.

Of all the sites I've looked at in the last few days I would probably pick Stylezilla by Chris, which unfortunately is updated rarely. It's American, most menswear sites appear to be and it's purely about clothes. The run down and commentary is pretty good, it's clearly aimed at men who work in smartly dressed environments but what it does it does well. The entire site isn't an advert, it isn't trying for masculine irony, generally you could read it and feel like you were engaging with someone who has an honest enthusiasm for fashion.

2007-11-28T09:44:00.000Z

It's been 60 years since we experienced all-encompassing textile restriction and that lack of restriction allows our clothing to be significantly more adventurous and creative than it would otherwise be. In Britain in the 1940s one of the most prominent wartime slogans (there was a slogan for everything it seems) was Make Do and Mend. The industrialisation of clothing production, a method that the country had adapted to in an extremely short space of time was withdrawn because there was little available material. Clothing manufacturers were put to work constructing military uniforms and as a result many people unpicked clothes and household materials and converted them using different patterns. The rules were stringent; The government limited pleats and hems because they consumed material and men's trousers typically had turn ups. Coupons were issued that restricted the amount of new clothes an individual could purchase. It is difficult to envisage the difficulties involved in rationing. The romanticisation of wartime Britaitn is something I don't want to engage in, I feel that it is mistaken to idealise a time period with restrictions that you cannot envisage. It sounds like it was difficult, oppressive and frightening. The majority of us cannot conceive of living with absolutely no luxury but going to shops and purchasing clothes, stockings, cake is luxury in the context of that time.

In 1942 the L-85 restrictions were adopted in the USA. These restrictions weren't rationing in quite the same sense. Pantyhose, tights and stockings, were banned because the nylon could be used for military purpose but the L-85 restrictions were put in place to save 15 percent of domestic fabric production and 40 million to 50 million pounds of wool. The length of jackets and the width and length of skirts was limited leading to the enforced popularity of the pencil skirt. In addition buttons, pleats and trimmings were restricted. Cuffs, double yokes, patch pockets and attached coat hoods were all banned because they were perceived as features that used extra, unnecessary fabric. These rules worked to suspend fashion and preserve the same styles throughout the 1940s, the fashion industry in Europe had been suspended indefinitely and the US slowed down in accordance with that area of the world.

Ultimately the fashion industry snapped back quickly and immediately moved towards using extraneous material in clothing, a subject discussed in the British press over the last few months with the coverage of Dior's New Look. I don't think that the reemergence of the fashion industry is as interesting as the engagement of the public in retaining style with very few new clothes and very little material. I'm not talking about a fighting spirit but rather the development of a very specific skill set, a generation of women who could sew regardless of their social status because the majority would not have been able to retain any staff or employ dressmakers. If you would like to see some wartime clothing patterns you can take a look here.

2007-11-27T11:31:00.000Z

I am not obsessed with eyebrows but they are quite clearly extremely important if you are interested in fashion and appearance. The shape of the eyebrow restructures the face, this is never more clear than when you look at photos of Liz Hurley. Even if she's had work done (which is neither here nor there) her eyebrows make her face look different.

This is not about Liz Hurley though, this is again about political fashion and I specifically want to talk about the eyebrows of the Chancellor, Alastair Darling.

I wouldn't want Darling to dye his hair and eyebrows to match, they make him recognisable when so many polticians are forgettable, but in a world where women are constantly criticised for their appearance it seems rather unfair that he escapes with so little comment on his decision. Indeed many male politicians are given a get out of jail free card where their appearance is concerned while their female counterparts are roundly objected to. Jacqui Smith apparently shows too much cleavage, this is reported by The Times, The Sun and The Daily Mail. Alastair Darling's eyebrows don't match his hair but this only comes up (affectionately) on the Labour website and Yahoo Answers. Google gives me one national media reference and it is in a column that Darling wrote himself. I really think that if we're going to comment on the physical appearance and attributes of politicians, actually comment on their bodies and the choices they make about dressing and adapting them then it shouldn't be restricted to female politicians but broadened. In fact I would appreciate it if there was a little more commentary on just how boring and disenchanting the clothing of male politicians is, they may spend on suits but have you seen their casual wear?

2007-11-26T17:34:00.000Z

If you want to listen to people utterly manhandle the idea of appearance and plastic surgery, ignore the entire human history of body modification and make a series of moral judgments made on the basis of spurious opinion that the individual members of the discussion group already held than I suggest the 21st November edition of BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze. They make an absolute pig's ear of discussing the issue, barely scratching the surface and utterly failing to recognise the modification of the body as a social norm, more importantly a social norm in the United Kingdom. Once again I'm referring to corsetry, which changed the shape of women's bodies to make them more beautiful for over a century. These people are paid to think and discuss on this programme and they really fail to do either.

2007-11-23T09:51:00.000Z

Last night I flicked the TV on to Question Time and I was a little confused by the clothing, make up and hair choices made by Nicola Sturgeon. Obviously Nicola's appearance wasn't my main focus although Westminster politics is such a load of showmanlike drivel that the way the panel look may as well be a major selling point.

Before I really take apart the appearance and adornment of one person I want to explain why I look at politician's clothes, hair and their faces. Once upon a time these things tended to show allegiance to political parties and groups, some politicians would look more monied, wear more conservative clothing but now there seems to be a merging of appearance. Labour have even started to wear red ties again, I noticed David Miliband wearing one the other day in a shot of the House of Commons. If you take a look at Theresa May and Harriet Harman you're hard pressed to place them on the political spectrum:

What was wrong with Nicola Sturgeon's appearance? Primarily I'd like to point out that this is nothing to do with her gender, I have an equal opportunities response to the way people dress and fundamentally having examined her last night I feel that she would have looked infinitely more amenable and approachable if she had done absolutely nothing to her face. Her eyeshadow was the exact colour of her hair, which completely bleached her face out and made her look slightly yellow. Her hair clashed with her red (pink based) jacket and her eyebrows were darker than her hair, this confuses me. Does she dye her hair or colour her eyebrows with pencil or is this natural? My eyebrows are darker than my hair but my hair isn't blonde. The problem is with the general effect that all of these things produce: that she has a kind of half arsed approach, that she cares enough to do put make up and follow convention but not enough to actually really think about any of it. Basically her approach to make up and clothes is a bad political decision. It would be far more respectable to forget make up altogether, keep everything natural and wear very dark grey (bordering on black) trouser suits that gave the appearance of someone intent on serious politics. So here she is looking okay (a far better jacket), this photo gives me the impression that someone was trying to open her eyes up by jaundicing her eyelids, a grave mistake:

2007-11-15T11:57:00.000Z

The F Word is engaging in a debate about the positive and negative aspects of Trinny and Susannah (there are three posts, I have linked to the last one). There seems to be a real drive to identify whether their behaviour is actually beneficial to women or whether it propagates an unhealthy image of womanhood but the debate begins from a point of naivete. Firstly the initial criticism of Trinny and Susannah polarises people into gender categories, although the word "woman" is constantly reiterated it's used in the cultural sense rather than in the sense of sex and sexuality. Thus the proposition is that culture greatly effects the way that people are culturally constructed by culture. The notion that women not acceptable in their natural state is absurd but not quite as absurd as the idea that women have a natural state that is practical in the British climate. Our clothes perfectly represent our culture and in November we have no alternative but to wear them. Regardless of what you wear you make a statement about the way that you interact, if you wore a hemp jumpsuit it would be read by those around you because people read symbolic cultural signifiers. Since women and men cannot live in their natural naked states, the only possible natural state, they have to engage with culture on this level. From there it's a very short step to adapting your body, adjusting the amount of hair visible to the outside world and changing the shape and visual impact of your body. This is not a new thing and every human community has developed cultural significance around the adornment of the body. The F Word bloggers are polarising genders because they are focusing so strongly on the idea that this practice is negative for females but rules of dress apply to all people, men cannot wear skirts, if they're not suitably masculine they cannot wear tank tops in the same way that women cannot display a certain level of hair. This is unfortunate and something that society needs to tackle because the symbolic significance is a little too focused on these instances but it's not a femininst battle in and of itself, it's also not that broad-ranging. Despite a love of clothes and style I wear make up about once a month, the emphasis on feeling vulnerable without make up is not about women or females, it's about individual dependence on culture to make yourself feel okay and that trend is present in all types of people, to focus on such a trend on a feminism blog and to apply that label to women is to generalise them. It is not a feminist action.

Trinny and Susannah are two women on a television show. Primarily they're part of the culture that we see around us everyday but more importantly they advise people about clothes. They're not a problem, they're not a solution, they're TV presenters and they're neither trailblazers for feminism nor anti-feminist. They probably target women because their viewer demographic is made up of women. At no point do they give us their opinions on what makes real women, they focus on femininity because they are feminine and they like it. There is absolutely no way that we can escape the wider culture that we live in, even if we departed from the UK and started a new society a visual language would likely grow and evolve and it would probably differentiate women and men because our bodies look more different than similar. That doesn't matter and the sought after femininity and masculinity of our community doesn't specifically matter either, it does matter that people don't feel pressured into the parts that they don't want to accept but usually there's something that you do, so the confidence to know you can choose is fundamental. If you shave your legs you don't have to pluck your eyebrows, if you wear skirts you don't have to wear heels, you can opt for what you want and it makes you no less a woman or a man and it certainly makes no difference to your sex.

Fundamentally what I want to say here is this: feminist literature often emphasises a cultural neurosis about womanhood rather than revealing it in a startling new fashion. It also sometimes appears to polarise rather than work towards the equality of treatment and opportunity that is desirable. This especially comes across when reading a criticism of fashion or high heels or make up, things that people opt into rather than things that they're forced into (like a lower pay scale). The argument that women are forced into looking a certain way is inaccurate, I'm 26, I wear flats 90% of the time, I rarely wear make up, my eyebrows are fully intact, I barely practice hair removal, I watch my weight and food intake because it makes me feel healthier and happier. Women are not forced into responding to cultural demands about appearance, performing these actions means that quite a lot of them feel more comfortable in the state that society prefers but that is a choice, it's a choice open to everyone in our society and while we can support women's choices to live outside that cultural dictat we cannot make value judgments about people who "prop up the system". They are not doing anything particularly because they like removing all that hair and being incredibly feminine or masculine, that's the rub when you want the choice and not to have a society that leaves some people behind.

2007-11-11T13:51:00.000Z

The exhibition of Matthew Williamson's clothes at London's Design Museum makes it clear that he designs outfits for people to wear rather than parade in. The influence of Zandra Rhodes is obvious in his work, in the colour and style but he retains a easy humanity that her garments sometimes lack. Here are some snapshots:

2007-11-07T18:05:00.000Z

Fashion timeline

This is a timeline for couture/ready to wear contemporary fashion.

1858: Charles Worth establishes his haute couture fashion house in Paris

1881: Cerruti, a producer of woollen fabrics, is founded

1906: Paul Poiret opens a fashion house and is the first couturier to launch a perfume.
Guccio Gucci opens a small, family-owned leather saddlery shop

1909: Chanel opens a millinery shop, 'Chanel Modes'.

1913: "Prada Brothers" is founded by Mario Prada in Milan.

1918: Adele Fendi establishes a fur business in Rome

1920: Elsa Schiaparelli starts selling her clothes

1936: Salvatore Ferragamo moves his shoe business from the US to Florence

1938: Gucci opens a boutique in Rome

1939: Chanel couture house is closed. Boutiques sell perfume and accessories only.

1941: Textile rationing in England, silk stockings unavailable in Europe

1943: The U.S. government passes the L 85 Restrictions, limiting the use of wool and silk in clothing manufacture

1947: Dior creates "New Look"

1950: The marquis Emilio Pucci opens his couture house

1954: Cristobal Balenciaga introduces "semi-fit" dress
Chanel couture house opens again

1955: Mary Quant's boutique, Bazaar, opens on the King's Road, London

1957: Death of Christian Dior; his successor is the 21-year-old Yves Saint Laurent

1959: After work as general design assistant at Guy Laroche's, Valentino Garavani returns to Rome to open his own atelier

1962: Yves Saint Laurent opens his own couture house in Paris.

1968: Ralph Lauren creates menswear line

1975: Giorgio Armani Company is founded

1978: Miuccia Prada inherits a leather goods business from her grandfather
Gianni Versace opens first Versace boutique in Milan

1983: Karl Lagerfeld becomes Chanel's house designer

1985: Dolce and Gabbana produce their first women's line.

2007-11-05T13:26:00.001Z

Occasionally the fashion blogs report Vivienne Westwood as having made some kind of controversial statement. In September a Telegraph interview with Lesley Thomas reported her as saying "There's this idea that somehow you've got to keep changing things, and as often as possible. Maybe if people just decided not to buy anything for a while, they'd get a chance to think about what they wanted; what they really liked." This seems less a controversial statement and more an accurate judgement of consumerism. The problem that she's perceiving isn't specifically at the top of the industry, it's more prevalent on the high street in outlets like Zara and Topshop, which constantly roll out new stock. You can't go into a store, take a look and return a week later to purchase a piece of clothing after thinking about it because it's likely that the garment won't be there anymore. Westwood is identifying a problem with the way we have to shop rather than making a generalised statement.

Then in another Telegraph article by Roya Nikkhah, Westwood tells us that fashion magazines propagate racism because they use less black models than they should. While Jo Elvin makes the absurd claim that "There are fewer black women who are big enough stars to sell Glamour" (Hi Jo, I'd like to suggest Tyra Banks, Naomi Campbell, Alek Wek, Ajuma Nasenyana or Yasmin Warsame) Michael Roberts who is the fashion director of Vanity Fair supports Vivienne Westwood's comments.

On the 28th October PETA stated that Vivienne Westwood was the latest designer to go fur free. I was surprised that she was still using fur, it seems a little backward to stop using fur in 2007 when all of the fashion houses have had ample opportunity to phase it out in a fashionable way over the last 20 years.

Basically there doesn't seem to be any controversy here, perhaps the controversy is that someone as political as Vivienne Westwood still using fur as an acceptable material. Ultimately she has been a designer for a long time, certainly enough time to make factual statements about the fashion industry without dressing them up in polite terms. It is a shame that the only press that seems to be giving her coverage is the Telegraph, she deserves a broader audience, if her statements seem obvious it's worth remembering that most of them deserve a level of societal focus that they are not receiving. We should not be wearing fur, there should be more black models in and on the front covers of our fashion magazines, we should buy less clothes but more that we love.

I leave you with the beautiful Ajuma Nasenyana, the only photo of her that I could find and use from google image search.

2007-11-02T16:14:00.000Z

Peculiar fashion trends generally filter down from the catwalk to high street shops, currently you can find Balenciaga's hologram leggings amongst those trends. I'm definitely a Balenciaga fan and I find Nicholas Ghesquiere's clothes incredibly exciting so I was quite interested and amused to find that these had leaked into Topshop.

Urban Outfitters appear to be snagging the concept for one of their shoes from Tashkent NYC at the moment. There's been some outrage about it on the fashion blogs. Presumably that's because the price difference isn't particularly large and Tashkent NYC is not a major fashion label that makes a lot of profit. However if you knew about both of these shoes and could afford either pair (and had any sense of aesthetic) the clear favourite would have to be Cheyenne's shoe on the right, which is interesting, elegant and appealing from a design perspective.

2007-10-31T15:30:00.000Z

People should dress their bodies rather than their genders. It seems an obvious and rational statement yet it is in direct opposition to accepted behaviour.

In many countries clothing is sorted into three definite consumer categories: male, female and unisex. Most people automatically opt for clothing that fits into their gender description. They position their bodies in line with the binary categorisation that consumer culture provides. The actual shape and silhouette of their bodies is placed within that structure regardless of what it actually looks like, whether it’s actually the right shape for the clothes.

Even if a specific body would suit the clothes of the opposite gender from an aesthetic perspective, even if different clothes would accentuate masculinity or femininity more people tend to stick to the correct category. Shopping outside of those consumer definitions is regarded as subversive by those that consider it and not regarded at all by a huge number of people. There’s a tendency to listen to the bureaucracy rather than the shape of the body that you’re dressing and that is related to cultural pressure, the need to be more female or male, more in line with culture than self. Occasionally a woman who buys jeans from the men's section will pipe up about it but rarely will you hear of other instances of women buying men's clothes and the suspicion is that those women come from a culture of light cross-dressing, are backed up in this choice by their peers. Gendered departments are usually viewed as a rule rather than a guideline.

There is a better school of dress to subscribe to. People who have choice should disregard the gender categories that consumerism provides and think about their bodies, what fits them, what they look good in and most importantly the ways in which their bodies are naturally structured. People need to think about their hips, their shoulders, their thighs and chests and waists and garb themselves according to the rules of their bodies and not wider society. It’s difficult, not least because you have to see yourself and clothes and it is tough to think about what suits you as well as what you like, hard to find clothes that do both. Even more so when you’re breaking taboos. But what is this foolish gender divide that we allow society to infringe on us? I hear the refrain “Men and women are different” all the time but I’m a little more concerned with similarities, particularly those parts of our gender construction that were written centuries ago. If we’re so different why create more difference? If it’s already there we don’t need to mark it out, that happens naturally so the suggestion has to be more freedom to wear what we want, the clothes that make us more beautiful, that emphasise the strengths we have individually.

2007-10-28T23:58:00.000Z

Fashion snubs older women. This is a very interesting article to read from a British perspective because I often feel like I'm surrounded by shops and labels that I really look forward to trying out but that I'm too young to buy from at the moment. Shops like Hobbs which provide beautiful clothes for women who can wear a really certain style and cut and Jaeger, which produces beautiful garments that can be worn with confidence by people who are well into womanhood. Fenn, Wright and Manson provides clothes that sometimes look too mature on younger women because they often aren't the right shape or style for them but actually makes women in their forties and onwards look sexy and interesting. When I think about clothing the possibility of ageing is a positive and exciting thing and I'm surprised by this article as a result. I notice these clothes without looking for them- I can't wear most of them despite occasionally trying them on and realising that I'm not enough of a woman to wear them yet. There appear to be all kinds of clothing possibilities, perhaps there's market to be cornered overseas that no one has targetted yet, maybe we need to export some of our clothing brands!

2007-10-28T13:43:00.000Z

The aim for a fashion theorist, as with everything else, has to be to understand the subject from a starting point of unity. There has to be one concept to work from and to me that appears to be cultural construction. How do people construct themselves through their clothes? What impression does clothing leave the spectator with? What can we do with our clothes to make the best possible version of ourselves?

We begin with basic consumerism, fashion as functioning across tiers of availability. In the UK we begin with markets that sell clothing that creates false labels and emulates high end fashion so fake Burberry, fake sportswear. Then we get to the High Street, which holds a number of tiers from Primark to H&M, Marks and Spencer, Urban Outfitter, Warehouse, Jigsaw, Juicy Couture, Karen Millen, Agnes B. Then ready to wear designer clothing such as DKNY, Chloe, Paul Smith, Ferretti and then couture, a dying art that is made by a limited number of design houses such as Chanel, Givenchy and Versace. There begins an understanding of how the industry works. From that point on a fashion theorist has to conceive of how these different tiers of the fashion industry can be mixed together to create a more equal view of fashion theory and from there a broader concept of fashion theory can begin.

To understand fashion it is necessary to look at its history with an abstract eye, fashion is full of patterns that revolve around the human body and the various ways in which society is framed. Even now there are condemnations of social class that take place through the perspective of clothing choice. Look at the word "chav" which is so prevalent in the British media and on close examination you are left with "I do not like the way that person dresses. I think they are inferior because of their clothes". Ignorance of another groups social structure equates with judgement of their clothing but it's also a comment on money and the social background and choice and privilege of the person uttering the comment. They are probably on the outside of the social group they are criticising and do not understand the neccessity to dress like someone elses peers despite possibly having done so themselves in the past. Why is this important to fashion theory? Well it provides an explanation for some of the odder mainstream, wide ranging clothing choices. Dick Hebdige wrote about this phenomenon in The Meaning of Dress but it tackles a very limited period of history. Can we not extend the idea of dress and clothing beyond small groups of people. Why were corsets worn so widely for such a long period of time? Why has the suit proven an enduring fashion item, a fashion uniform if you like? These are the questions that a unified theory of fashion should seek to answer, we should move beyond subculture and gender perspectives and discover clothes as more than function, as an item that allows us to construct ourselves in culture beyond our peers and the dictates of designers and consumerism.

2007-10-27T22:48:00.000Z

Laura Ashley's archive collection provides original designs and prints from the 1970s to its customers. This strikes me an an idea that's ingenious, there are so many things that have been produced over the last century that people would like to see emerge in their original form rather than adapted for the current fashion climate and these clothes in particular have a prim and unique feeling that can't be created in any other form. Even if you're not interested in buying them the concept is work checking out on the information page because it's so interesting but I would I think there's something about these clothes that makes me want to purchase them. It's the combination of cut, colour and pattern that you can only find in vintage shops. In 2007 there's something undoubtedly hip about Laura Ashley's 70s dresses.

2007-10-26T12:14:00.000Z

Liselotte Watkins is a fashion illustrator and has been working on the H&M Cavalli collection. You can see a selection of her illustrations on the Lundlund website. She has also worked with Miu Miu recently but apparently her clients have included The New Yorker, Vogue, Elle, Net-a-porter, Vagabond, MAC Cosmetics and Anna Sui. I recognise her illustrations from an Anna Sui advert or campaign though I can't recall how long ago I was exposed to them.

I always find it interesting to think about all of the people whose work we're exposed to that we wouldn't recognise. It's such a repetitive world. In fashion there's a constant feeling that there's always someone whose work you have seen but have never heard of.

In case you really like Liselotte's work there are some animations here that do work but might take a little time to load up.

2007-10-26T08:41:00.000Z

There's quite an interesting piece on Tokyo Fashion and specifically the Tokyo Look Book on Style Bubble.

2007-10-23T11:38:00.000Z

Bella has owned these shoes for about 15 years. At first the most striking thing about them is the colour, emphasised by the gleam of the material but actually I think the shape, the round toe and that great rectangular heel draw me to these shoes more. If they were made of dull black plastic than I wouldn't like them very much so I suppose it's really the overall effect but the more I look at the heel the more I'm drawn to it.

Tall women who don't wear shoes with big heels often make the mistake of thinking that people choose them because they make them seem taller. Heels are about posture and the shape of your legs. In heels women seem more confident because they have to adjust their shoulders and hips to the height of the shoes, they have to compensate for the shift in the centre of gravity. It's a very good way to appear to be a different type of person, perhaps a little less shy than you actually are.

2007-10-22T16:12:00.000Z

A Delhi based fashion designer has died after two months spent in hospital with burn injuries. Two men poured kerosene over Mona Suri in August but no one has been specifically identified. The Times of India has the story here.

2007-10-18T10:36:00.000Z

The paparazzi provide us with images of fashion that consistently compete with the shots that photographers take on location and in studios. From this type of photograph, taken on the move or at large events, has arisen an industry that overlaps celebrity and fashion, creating outlets for such images. Traditionally the society pages of magazines like Hello employed such techniques to present an ideal of glamour but now the media has grown to encompass all kinds of photographs and magazines aimed at different demographics. We can reel them off; Heat, Grazia, Closer, all aimed at a specific market. Some are more respectful than others, using different paper, presenting images in a variety of unique ways but all with a focus on the visual image that is editorialised in a specific way. What do we gain from these photographs as consumers, not only of magazines or the aesthetic that pictures present but from the clothes that we see? Is it easier to create styles for ourselves or do people viewing these celebrities, dressed generally in expensive clothes merely give us something to mimic?

I think that the abundance of paparazzi shots on the shelves has allowed people to dress with more originality and feel a confidence in combining their clothes in surprising ways. This seems prevalent among people in their 20's, a confidence in consumerism that allows them to wear clothes that in other circumstances could be a little over the top. Whether that's new is impossible for someone of my age to judge but the awareness that it is not happening within specific subcultures marks it out as different. This is not a group following a trend set by musicians, it's predicated on individuality, not a significant stride away from the everyday but a touch here and there of something a little bit chic. Good quality clothing is more affordable than it was and that lets people dress well but there is also an ability to mix everything up and find things that work. When you see teenagers walk down the street they often look as if they've pulled collections of clothes off shelves that match, the older people get the less they do this. Instead they match clothes to their bodies. The amount of media we consume has definitely opened people up to looking a little sillier and indulging in creativity with their clothing.

It doesn't ultimately matter if Kylie is wearing Gareth Pugh or Marc Jacobs, the subjective judgment in people's heads discounts the designer and focuses on her appearance in a dress. The question for the person gazing at her is definitely based on a comparison of Kylie in the latest photograph and Kylie in the last five shots that they encountered. Most of us have an eye for what we like and as we consume more and more photographs of fashion, see more clothes on other people, we make more decisions about what does and doesn't look good. This is inevitably applied to ourselves, the construct that we are really building is the image of the character we perceive our individual self to be. Part of our thoughts on Kylie's dress are to do with our feelings about the material, colour, cut as it relates to our body and character as well as hers. The paparazzi have made this process quick and easy. Hand in hand with consumer capitalism, which makes it so easy to pick up machine made, mass produced clothing, the process has been completely normalised in western culture. That we judge appearance and relate it to ourselves is not surprising, that we do it with figures that would have once been idols, that we can reduce photos of this type down and forget the enforced glamour is.

The avant garde Russian female artists who were so engaged and entranced with mass textile production certainly never conceived of it as something that would work so well with capitalism. However it is clear that it would be tough for them to argue that it hasn't been an equalising force in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Those photographs though as nasty, reprehensible and disrespectful as they may be make all those icons and idols come down to our level, they give us the choice to dress in any way that we want to, just as all people do because today Marilyn Monroe would be photographed looking really sloppy.

2007-10-16T11:34:00.000Z

Walking around Plitivce National Park in Croatia it struck me that I could not tell the difference between German and American pensioners. They were wearing the same kinds of clothes, the style, cut, colour, functionality were the same and only when really focusing was the ability to recognise nationality apparent. Not only does that lack of difference make it clear that people construct identity through their clothes, link themselves to culture and all of its excesses and practicalities but it also seems to say something about the generational attitude toward function over appearance. British female pensioners are far more likely to wear skirts than German or American women of the same age. A loose guess would be that those particular women who wear skirts regularly grew up when they were specifically in fashion, that the skirt was always seen as a popular, attractive fashion item and moreso than in the States where trousers were more normal in the 40s and 50s. German culture has had to undergo such upheaval that a different course of cultural events seems to have led to a similar conclusion. It's clear that people in their 50s and 60s now are far less likely to wear skirts more regularly than trousers, even if they are British women because they grew up with trousers as normal, functional clothing.