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Help!



My dear friend Z is travelling in Asia and wanting to get some dresses copied. In particular a MIu Miu dress that she describes below.

“ANYWAY I need your help! I’m looking for a picture of a Miu Miu dress I saw in loads of mags last year but lost the tear. It was in LOADS of mags – last summer I think – Red I remember, and in Vogue India in January (!) – the Gauri Khan cover. Anyway I can’t find a pic of it and wonder if you know what’s a good website to look on as I can’t find it on vogue.com or netaporter, or even if you have a pic of said dress. It’s strapless, prom shaped, made of different cuts of quite heavy fabric around the bodice, and then one fabric for the skirt. It’s pastelly in colour. It’s AMAZING. Does it spring to mind!?!?”

Ugh, no idea what she’s talking about. Any clues anyone? PS, the dress is pink, not red (as I first thought) – she saw it in RED magazine, but It’s PINK!

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Letting the good times roll








In the early nineties when I was a mere fledgling fashionista, there was a huge post-acid London club scene that started me on my road to style-surfing and people-watching. Girls would spend their Saturday afternoons scoring velvet catsuits from Pam Hogg or corset tops from Wit & Wisdom at Hyper Hyper to wear with teetering, towering uber-platforms from Vivienne Westwood. Boys would sport leather trousers from John Richmond with Vivienne Westwood’s orb necklaces, perhaps topped off with a second-hand mink coat. Rankin would pitch up to Love Ranch – a club in a naff venue in Leicester Square – with his tripod and black sheet and set up an impromptu studio where he’d take snaps of creative club kids to publish in his new magazine, a foldout affair called Dazed & Confused.

Fast-forward fifteen years to a rainy Wednesday night in a naff club next to The London Palladium. Sixth form club kids are pouring into Movida to celebrate Henry Holland’s new night, complete with nineties soundtrack – Alison Limerick! FPI Project! The place is packed tighter than a Wag’s suitcase. The girls have peroxide hair, ruby red lips, body con dresses. The boys have curly quiffs, painted nails, kooky headwear. Hang on, is that a photography ‘studio’ set up in the corner? Why yes it is!

Some things it seems, never change. Each generation thinks it invented clubbing but at the end of the day what does it matter really? Last night these kids on a natural high (no gurning faces in sight) had it going on with their hi-energy dancing and agonised-over outfits. All they cared about was looking hot, showing off and letting the good times roll. Isn’t that the coolest thing?

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New York bloggers – a date for your diary



Cathy Horyn reports that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is organising a fashion bloggers discussion on Sunday March 30th at the Met as part of its Blog:Mode exhibition. The discussion panellists are Scott Schuman, Diane Pernet and Cathy Horyn. How cool is that? If anyone’s going please can they report back!

PS: Questions I would like to ask Scott:

*Does everyone at fashion week know who you are now? And if so do they try to take your photo?

*Do many people turn you down?

*Do you ever miss a shot?

*Are you doing a book?

PPS: Question for Cathy Horyn:
*Don’t those really loooong, serious commenters do your head in?

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The celebritisation of fashion




An article on Salon.com suggests our love affair with celebrity may be coming to a (long awaited) end. Sales of trashy American weeklies (Star, People, In Touch) are down while Rupert Murdoch has ditched his Pagesix.com website after only 3 months. Readers are fed up with the monopoly of no-listers (mostly reality TV graduates) claiming celebrity status and as for the number of celebrities encroaching on other careers – celebrity-as-model, celebrity-as-magazine-editor, celebrity-as-designer, well is seems enough is enough.

The celebritisation of fashion is the part that has pained me the most. It must be said that the noughties haven’t really given us much else, if we think about what the past decade will be remembered for fashion-wise what have we got? A load of revivals of previous decades – ’70s (think Sienna-style Boho and Kate Moss groupie chic), ’80s (Marc for Marc Jacobs’ indie fangirl , PPQ’s cocktail frocks), ’90s (House of Holland’s Nu rave), ’50s-’60s (Luella’s prom dresses and modwear), ’20s-’30s-’40s (any vintage romantic look) and on it goes. For a while we had the Atomic Kitten look – over-straightened hair, the low-rise-jeans-with-sparkly-top uniform – that was kind of new but do we really want this to epitomise the start of the twenty-first century? Or there’s the ‘challenging’ look – Prada/Marni-style sacky silhouettes in weird colours with a panoply of ugly shoes. Let’s face it, there’s not much in it. The fact is, the noughties will belong to the likes of Victoria Beckham, Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton – vapid, no-talent celebrities who court paparazzi attention and use the fashion industry to launch their own brands and keep their faces in our weekly issues of Grazia and OK. Admittedly, the fashion industry has used celebrities too – a Vogue issue with a model on the cover is a rare occurence – and why else is Victoria Beckham the star of Marc Jacobs’ latest campaign?

As with anything, when something’s been done to death there’s no other way to go than the opposite direction. As even ASOS.com starts to distance itself from the ‘As Seen On Screen’ tag that spelt out its original get-the-look USP and heads up-scale with premium brand designers, the question is, what will take its place?

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