Best casting and styling ever from Haider Ackermann’s first menswear show. Early trends coming through for menswear ss14 include structured tunic tees, 50s Harrington jackets, post-pop graphics and sloganeering, lots of leather, extreme trouser shapes (super-wide peg at Topman Design, meggings at Gucci, culottes at Jil Sander) and more wonkiness following aw13. Plus on the hair front, lots of fabulous quiffy dos!
Today sees the relaunch of London-Boutiques.com, the London-centric marketplace that does a similar job to Farfetch but on a London-wide scale. You can shop by product, store or designer, plus the editorial has been boosted with insider contributions from London tastemakers and the store owners themselves who recommend their favourite local haunts and finds.
I have kicked off the blog with a piece about biker jackets. Not just your classic black leather biker but all the newer, lightweight permutations too. The West London biker of choice is a creamy wool or khaki cotton biker shrugged over neutral cashmere and denim or a vintage faded-floral dress. You can read the whole piece here…
In line with more and more etail sites, London-Boutiques offers free returns, picked up from your address by DHL. If there’s one thing that puts me off online shopping it’s the faff of returning unsuitable items, so this is a point worth flagging up. Here are some of my favourite biker-style buys from London-Boutiques …
Clockwise from top left:
Helmut Lang jacket/MIH shirt/IRO jacket/360Sweater cashmere jumper
…And finally, the concept of pre-collections makes perfect sense. Landing in store any day now, the pre-fall collections (AKA the collections that take up an increasing slice of a buyer’s budget) consist of the wear-all-year pieces that have become the mainstay of British wardrobes. (more…)
“My intention was to take them and adorn my customers with them in a way that made someone wearing one of my garments feel cool, giving them that sense of “I’ve arrived!” I wanted to really make my customers stand out so that they felt like a celebrity in one of my pieces.”
Dapper Dan on his excessive custom-logo-ed hip hop garb, in conversation with Mandi Lennard on the LOVE blog
[Image: Dapper Dan with LL Cool J]
