I unearthed this old vintage Vivienne Westwood Swatch from my archive (AKA a dusty trunk in the bedroom) yesterday to photograph it for a project. When I mentioned it on Twitter it created quite the buzz, possibly because I discovered people are now listing ir for £300+ on Ebay. My watch probably cost about £50 twenty years ago which I guess was still a lot of money ‘in them days’. But I would never sell it. In my eyes, this is a design classic – functional, beautiful and statement-making. I just need a new battery…
This has got to be the season of Missoni madness. From the seen-everywhere AW11 snakeskins to the sell-out Missoni X Target collab, the Italian heritage brand is on fire right now. (more…)
Did anyone go to Fashion Night Out? Wasn’t it a blast? I had so many things I wanted to go to, from checking out Lulu Kennedy’s ‘Honolulu’ at Liberty, to getting my nails did by Sophy Robson at Chanel, to falling whizzing round Rupert Sanderson’s roller disco. In the event, I mostly got waylaid in various spots around Bond Street shooting the breeze with every blogger in town…
Liberty London Girl’s packaging contest judging at Starbucks
Jeanette DJing at Vivienne Westwood
Good to see Phillip Sallon back on the social circuit
Alcohol was served in anything but glasses: punch in a teacup at Moschino, cocktails in coconuts at Lulu Kennedy/Liberty and jam jar bevvies at Harvey Nichols
I spy an Hermes horsebox – with the longest queues ever for ‘bangle bowling’ (bowl a bangle into a scarf-covered riding hat and win a paper bangle!)
Rupert Sanderson was hilarious fun (but not so hilarious for poor Katie Chutzpah who sustained a fractured-elbow-shaped injury). Here’s a photo she took of me doing my best Olivia-Newton-John-in-Xanadu impression.
I loved Netaporter’s idea of a shoppable ‘window’ where punters could win prizes. Here’s my photo from London:
And here’s the NYC version:
And finally, to Harvey Nichols’ fashion fairground, a complete madhouse of London’s craftiest designers customising FNO tees, bags and anything else in sight (J W Anderson even stuck Harajuku stickers on a Celine bag and someone’s boots). My Secret Tees looked great of course and the bids are already stacking up. Feel free to bid if you fancy winning a one-off tee from one of London’s coolest creatives. All profits to Kids Company – yay!)
It’s not often you find out about events like Thursday’s talk at the Horse Hospital. Luckily for me I read about it on Style Bubble just in the nick of time and got my ticket request in fast. Alas, not fast enough as the next day an email pinged back saying the event was massively over-subscribed and entry wasn’t guaranteed, but to turn up anyway and they’d try to accomodate everyone.
We arrived with time to spare, which was good as it afforded us a nice fashion show in the form of the arriving punters. Having expected a pride of pushy fashion students and a few Hoxton hipsters I was happy to see a majority of veteran London dandies and friendly faces from the last forty years of fashion and clubbing. We had quite a lot of fun playing ‘guess who he is’ until the doors opened and we were all ushered in.
The Contemporary Wardrobe at the Horse Hospital in Russell Square is celebrating its thirtieth year as London’s quite astonishing fashion and street-style archive. The event consisted of a very cool fashion show, rare footage of a Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood interview together from 1993 and a talk between journalist Paul Gorman and Contemporary Wardrobe’s owner Roger K Burton. We heard about Burton’s adventures in fashion from his early mod days growing up in the Midlands to outfitting the cast and 300 extras from Quadrophenia, to designing Vivienne Westwood’s World’s End shop.
After the talk, there were drinks and chat as well as lots of photo-taking of the exhibited skinhead, punk, hippie and rocker outfits. I managed to buttonhole Paul Gorman, who gave me the lowdown on the assembled fashion faces who included Mr and Mrs Terry de Havilland, Topman design director Gordon Richardson (how dapper is this man, Phillip Green, please take some styling tips from him!), Soho suitmaker Mark Powell, Max Karie from Shop at Maison Bertaux and Marian Buckley from FUK.
A word about Paul Gorman. If you’re interested in the history of music-influenced street style, I highly recommend his book The Look, Adventures in Rock and Pop Fashion, featuring never-seen-before (by me anyway) photos and insightful interviews with key fashion players. Check out his blog here.
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