Daisy, Camille, Ines, oh my!







The new US Gap pics are out and of course, they’re looking better than ever. Lovely to see Gap continuing its use of non-celebs like The Sartorialist. The European pics are equally stunning featuring the likes of Daisy de Villeneuve, Ines de la Fressange and Camille Bidault Waddington alongside Giles Deacon and Clemence Poesy (wot, no Susie Bubble?). Whether this will get us buying more Gap, who can say? As much as I love a chino and a bit of grey marl, I haven’t seen the new collection to decide. Let’s hope it’s a goodie.

[Pics: Top to bottom]
Camille Bidault Waddington
Daisy de Villeneuve
Clemence Poesy
Giles Deacon

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Oh Domenico and Stefano, what have you started?







I know I’ve been going on about autumn’s silk headscarf look for weeks but the trend is just getting out of control and it’s not even September yet. Only this weekend I saw a muslim girl in Oxford Street rocking some sort of Amy Winehouse-derived beehive shrouded in a logo Fendi scarf and oh my gosh, it looked scorchio! Maybe it was the flawless skin and Sharpie-style eyeliner flicks but the fact can’t be ignored, this silk scarf thang has a mind of its own.

Latest news on the silk square front is from Hermès. It has hooked up with the Josef Albers estate to create a limited edition (read: highly collectable) range of scarves* based on his famous Homage to the Square series of abstract paintings. Each scarf is printed in an edition of 200, numbered and sold in a special presentation box. They arrive in the UK this week but brace yourself, they cost £1,600 each!

[*Clarification: The pics above are examples of Josepf Albers’ paintings, not the scarves themselves…]

Pics: Google Images

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Let’s hear it for good service!



If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s bad service. Whether it’s in shops, restaurants, banks or the local council, if you’re dealing with the public I think you should enjoy being helpful, otherwise don’t do it. In my student days I had a Saturday job selling ‘ladies separates’ at Debenhams and I was very good at it. It wasn’t always fun, sometimes it was grindingly boring but I would make the most of it and go out of my way to be helpful – after all, that’s what I was paid for! Customer looking for their size? I would make a great show of checking in the fitting room and even in the stock room several floors down, just so they felt they were being looked after. Customer wanting another department? Nothing’s too much trouble madam! I would escort them so I knew they’d got there safely, rather than waving vaguely in the general direction. Not only was it helpful to them, it made my job less dull and of course, customers appreciated it.

Today I experienced two separate incidents of excellent service. The first was in Paul Smith, a shop with such a sterling reputation for service, I wouldn’t be surprised if the staff are trained by Mr Smith himself. Unbeknown to me, my dear D had been trying to track down this Paul Smith T-shirt for me after I’d expressed an interest. The poor soul had tried both the London branches, online and a branch in Nottingham all to no avail. Luckily, this being Paul Smith, his contact, Ebony wasn’t from the ‘if it’s not there we haven’t got it’ school of salesmanship. No, she did some investigating and managed to pin down the elusive tee, forwarding it to our local branch in Portobello. Result? Two very satisfied customers.


A hop and a skip from Paul Smith, we ambled past Alice’s Antiques, but doubled back after a set of junky canvas chairs (ex-Wimbledon!) caught our eye. £5 each and perfect for our impending barbeque. This shop has been around forever but I don’t think I’ve even been inside. It’s knick-knack heaven! While I eyed up the old hat stands, piles of canvas suitcases, vintage tennis racquets and gently-ravaged Union Jack flags, D went off to enquire about the chairs. By the time he came back two minutes later, we’d got ourselves a deal of seven chairs and a galvanised metal tub for the garden and a lift home in the owner’s van there and then. How can you top that? When it comes to good service it’s really not difficult, it’s all about showing an interest in the customer and the reward is that customer will not only come back, but tell all their mates. Which is why I’m telling you. So now your turn…who’s delighted you with good service this week?

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Fashion in the Mirror



It’s taken me ages to write my critique of the Fashion In The Mirror exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery which I saw during my whirlwind day of action last Thursday. Truth be told, I wasn’t that taken with it but for what it’s worth, here are my thoughts.

Fashion In The Mirror is a small photography exhibition curated by the people behind the Hyeres Festival. The blurb promises this exhibition will ‘undress the theatre of fashion and question the creation of perfect beauty. Revealing the fashion industry’s secrets and undermining its glamorous illusions, the photographers in this exhibition create work that exposes this world from within.’ The exhibition charts how over the decades, fashion photography has chosen to document itself more and more. In the 1950s, photographers panned out Wizard-of-Oz-style to reveal some of the paraphernalia of the shoot itself – Lights! Colorama! Crew (how dapper the crew were in those days)! I love this fold-out cover of Harpers Bazaar.


By the ’60s we were seeing the photographer himself in action, adding to the energy and ‘Blow Up’ spirit of the time. The ’60s also saw the ‘model as personality’ come to the fore as witnessed in Twiggy Parade by Melvin Sokolsky – similar to William Klein’s recent Karl Lagerfeld shot for Harpers Bazaar, no? And come the nineties, the designer became the focus of the shoot as well as the clothes on the model while the noughties was the turn of fashion editor as model, as evidenced by ‘Anna Wintour’ in French Vogue.






Much as I enjoyed the visuals, I didn’t feel the exhibition fulfilled its potential – it just didn’t excite me. The Photographers’ Gallery is a small space, perhaps that’s the problem. An exhibition that suggests it will reveal the inner workings of the shoot (because that’s what ‘exposes this world from within’ suggested to me) would really benefit from some added value – Polaroid books, notes, contact sheets (remember those?), retouching equipment – to complement the framed works. Kooky as it was, the umpteen-page Steven Meisel ‘Models In Rehab’ shoot, displayed in a long glass cabinet, didn’t quite cut it for me. Criticism aside, it was a good excuse to take in some beautiful photography and subject-wise it’s interesting to note how fashion photography seems to have become more fascinated with itself.

The good thing about the Photographers’ Gallery is its diary of events. To complement this exhibition, there is an evening discussion with the curators Raphaelle Stopin and Michael Mallard, photographer Jonathan de Villiers and Penny Martin from Showstudio on Tues 2nd September at 7pm. Now that will be worth attending.

Fashion in the Mirror, 18th July -14th Sept 08, Free

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