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.

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.

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.

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.

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.