I’m not sure what to make of the news that Maison Martin Margiela has launched a home collection. Is it selling out? I do love Margiela’s all-whitewashed utilitarian house style but ready-made and boxed up for people to buy off the rack? I thought I wanted it, but now I’m having second thoughts. (Fickle, moi?)
Even more confusingly, I find myself strangely drawn to the Diesel furniture shown at Salone in Milan last week – it’s just so un-Diesel! In fact, it’s more Margiela than Margiela!* All this interiors talk brings me neatly to a new book I browsed through in Topshop yesterday on my way to the Mywardrobe press day.
A compilation of creatives’ live-work spaces in London, Paris, Barcelona, New York, Berlin and Tokyo, it comprises the dwellings of Nicola Formichetti, Julie Verhoeven and Gary Card among many others. Conclusion? A creative is not a creative without a higgledy piggledy mound of magazines and/or books taller than Trellick Tower (guilty!), an Hermes box or ten for storage and display (I have that too!), an abundance of cheeky retro toys (yup) and a carefully considered hotch-potch of found-in-skip furniture (check!). Hang about, why the hell aren’t I in this book???
*PS: yes, I know they’re owned by the same company…
The first week of press days is nearly over – yippee! Prevailing trends so far have been the shaggy fur outsize gilet (one in pretty much every collection I’ve seen), thigh-high fetishy boots, Obama yellow (a kind of mustard-meets-chartreuse) and shit-loads of cashmere.
Funnest venue
Did I say I don’t like press days in showrooms? I take that back. French Connection’s showroom was bedecked in hundreds of giant blue balloons like a Tim Walker/Shona Heath shoot set. Bloody brilliant!
Best catering
Agent Provocateur’s cupcakes and fruit tarts
Best goody bag
Phone charms from Swarovski and Tatty Devine appealed to my inner twelve-year-old but were pipped to the post by the Jo Malone gift box at B2B Media.
OMG moment
Stumbling upon Tatty Devine and Charlie le Mindu’sactual work in progress. (They’re working on a collab together, what fun!)
Wow, what a marathon day of press days. All the big agencies decided to show on the same day (thanks guys) and even worse, three of them were on the same block so I hit the ground running at 10am and just kept going, and going and going.
Best venues
There was an arty theme running through today with Relative PR showing at the Elms Lester painting rooms where the walls are daubed with creative sploshes and Halpern PR relocating from their usual home in SW3 to the Royal Academy Schools. It was novel looking at sunglasses and knickers surrounded by easels and artists’ statues but there’s no doubt that an interesting environment helps make the press day more memorable than riffling through endless rails in a showroom.
Best discovery
Halpern came up with the goods twice. I got chatting to the charming Lisa Tstang whose luxury label LisaT is on a mission to use cashmere for every area of living and keep it (relatively) affordable. I loved the understatement of her tunic dress with all-enveloping detachable scarf.
Meanwhile, I’m finding myself fascinated by eyewear at the moment and opticians Auerbach & Steele were a new discovery for me, even though they have been in the King’s Road for 15 years. Barton Perreira is a new sunglasses name to know from two Oliver Peoples veterans, while an unusual pair of Alain Mikli visor-esque shades are evidence of their avant-garde taste. Auerbach & Steele only sell the limited edition Miklis so it’s worth a look if you’re ever in the area and fancy something different from the usual Raybans and Guccis.
Finally, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I clapped eyes on the WANT, Les Essentiels de la Vie travel range at the Harvey Nichols press day. I have some sort of weird fascination for masculine, minimalist man-baggage and these bags, ipod cases and laptop cases have all the necessary elements – slender proportions, neat compartments and classic colours – to pique my interest.
Best micro trend
What the hell is going on? In two days I’ve seen a bunch of these retro helmets in three different places – at Diesel, G Star and Bally. If that’s not a mirco trend I don’t know what is…
Best fancy boots
Now there’s no way I could just pick one so I’ve picked my top 4:
1) Raf Simons’ metallic Dr Martens are a stroke of sheer genius
2) These Willow boots are just so ugly, I love them! And I know they’d look killer on (if you could get them on, that is)…
3) These See by Chloe boots are apparently only £100. Go figure…
4) “I can’t believe I’m photographing a pair of Versus boots and liking them!” I exclaimed to my friend A, until she pointed out these jodhpur boots are the ones Christopher Kane designed for Versus. Oh.
Best Jim’ll Fix It jacket
Gotta love this Wrangler bomber – isn’t it camp?!
[Pics: Top to bottom
Elms Lester Painting Rooms
Royal Academy Schools
LisaT
WANT
WANT
Diesel
G Star
Bally
Raf Simons for Dr Martens
Willow
Chloe
Versus
Last Thursday I attended the Fashion Business Club talk where Vogue.co.uk editor, Dolly Jones interviewed Vogue editor, Alexandra Shulman. Shulman is under intense pressure to deliver a magazine that’s still relevant in the current climate – challenging when your target reader is the person being hit hardest by the recession and advertising revenue is in the doldrums. Yet the lady seated in front of us did not look stressed at all. In fact she came across as extremely likable, good at her job and knowing of her audience, despite having never edited a women’s magazine before arriving at the helm of Vogue 17 years ago.
I’ve condensed her most insightful answers into soundbites, but you can read more here.
On getting the Vogue editor job 17 years ago: “It was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do.”
On fashion as a scapegoat for the world’s ills: “Fashion has become a whipping post for everything from body image to celebrity culture to the economy. The media picks on fashion because it can use fashion pictures to illustrate their stories. A fashion picture looks good so makes you more likely to read the story.”
On how the recession affects Vogue’s shoots: “The emphasis has moved to styling as opposed to photography. I have a great team and their styling tips have become more useful for our readers.” [This is so true, I loved the styling feature in the current issue…]
Tips for up-and-coming designers and what a small business needs to survive: *Product is key – make your message clear *Be consistent in your offering *Press is important but needs to be focussed, it’s not necessary to get celebrity endorsement from the outset *Find a business partner to work with (“if you are going to be a designer, it is a business. You can’t just be an artist.”) *Accept it takes time
On supermodels: “They became too powerful. When the models were getting more attention than the designers, the designers started sourcing Hollywood”
On interns: “I can’t tell if an intern is good at styling or writing from just seeing them around the office but the successful ones are smart, efficient and make an imprint on you without getting in your face and being irritating.”
On the future of fashion magazines: “There’s a lesson to be learnt from what’s happening with newspapers – they’ve killed off the papers in favour of putting content online, yet online isn’t making the money.”
On the magazines she reads: “I read the New Yorker for unbeatable journalism and I love interiors magazines. I get all the magazines so I don’t need to buy them but I look at them to see who’s copied us! I noticed Grazia used our ‘More Dash Than Cash’ idea but called it ‘More Dash, Less Cash’.”
On LOVE: “We were very competitive with Pop so when Conde Nast took on LOVE I wasn’t sure how it would play out. But it’s very different. Its focus is fashion and celebrity, it’s industry-insidery. Ad-wide they’re a lot cheaper than us, but our circulation is 220,000 and they’re aiming for 40,000 so it’s very different.”
On the importance of fashion shows: “Fashion shows are a good marketing tool yet different clothes work in different ways. Sometimes doing catwalk collections sends things on the wrong tangent. It drives me crazy, putting clothes in the magazine that people can’t actually buy.”
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All this interiors talk brings me neatly to a new book I browsed through in Topshop yesterday on my way to the Mywardrobe press day.
