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:

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.

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.

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.

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.