Colin McDowell

Rio Fashion Week

2011-01-14T06:36:00.001-08:00

The curtain raiser for Rio Fashion Week is Rio Modo Hype, a showcase for young Carioca designers, which opened the week in lively style. Featuring menswear and women's – frequently on the same runway – it was lively in the way that young fashion should be and even had some original approaches, something becoming increasingly difficult to find with young designers in the Northern Hemisphere. And the boys came out on top, in two senses.

It seems a sensible idea when a designer has men's and women's ranges to show them together on the same runway. Not only does it make the overall creative vision clear, it is much more efficient. With an industry in crisis there can no longer be any justification for separate men's and women's shows, not only from the point of view of the cost, inconvenience (all those air miles as buyers and press jet across the world) and inefficiency, but also to improve the level of design in both ranges. Anyone with half an eye can spot the desperate straining in shows across the fashion firmament to keep the audience's attention through a 'full' show – especially at menswear – when the idea could usually be expressed more cogently in half the time with a half-and-half show. Even the greatest designers are now repetitive – and their message suffers from it.

The other 'boys on top' message that came over very clearly here in Rio was the fact that, on this showing, menswear is currently very much more vibrant than women's at this level. Stars of the night were Alisson Rodrigues (a mix of shiny white parachute silk, sheepskin and big black, blue and white lumberjack checks for butch boys, or wannabes); Julia Valle (draped and pleated womenswear in a subtle palette of greys and pale pastel shades); Lucas Magalhaes (a classic Audrey Hepburn silhouette with complex and very flattering optical prints in black and white: crisp and efficient enough to stand out in any city in the world) and Akihito Hira (very assured draped, semi-abstract menswear shapes in a grey, black and white palette) and one wild card who is definitely one to watch – Martins Paolo, whose edgy, tough glamour, although not entirely original, had a great feeling of conviction about it, with strong colour in plastic against a background of black.

Fashion Rio proper started with a great bang with the Alessa show. Exuberant and extrovert, this collection steered that narrow channel between over-ethnicity and wearability by keeping the local quality just the right side of folksy. The rainbow colours and and patterns, ranging from the immense to the small, all in brilliant Smartie colours, were immediately attractive and convincing, but perhaps more generally commercial were the shimmering surfaces and textures that were reminiscent of dark silver details in elaborate Catholic churches.

Whichever appeals – and both did to me – this was a strong kick-off to the Brazilian show season that continues after Rio (ending tomorrow) in Sao Paulo in 10 days' time.

La Cambre Mode[s]: Fashion Visionaries

2010-07-01T00:57:00.000-07:00

We hear a lot of comment about the stranglehold the big fashion conglomerates have on the fashion business across the globe, so it is encouraging that there are little pockets of resistance to their homogenising effects – and often in unexpected places.

Take La Cambre Mode[s], which will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year. Never heard of it? You are not alone, but it was founded on what might seem not-too fertile ground by a fashion education visionary, Francine Pairon, and is still going strong. Its history is a heartening and unlikely story of determination, belief and vision.

La Cambre Mode[s] remains today where it was originally set up – in Belgium. And if that seems pretty specialist, it gets more so. It was aimed at showing that French-speaking Belgian pupils living there could be as creative – if not more so – as their counterparts in other countries more readily associated with fashion experiments.

Because that was what La Cambre Mode[s] was all about. Its aim was to train young artists and designers in multi-disciplined approaches to fashion design that were not only multicultured, highly original and looking firmly to the future, but also about the culture of daily life and the business of fashion as an adjunct to good citizenship. With La Cambre Mode[s] we are clearly in a world a long way away in ideological terms from everyday couture-salon or high-street thinking. And perhaps it is no surprise that Francine Pairon came to fashion from a background in architecture or that her colleague and successor, Tony Delcampe, studied textile design.

Work at La Cambre Mode[s] has always been about experiment and is based on the discipline of starting the process of recasting fashion from a preoccupation with volumes and their relation to the body; the results are usually more sculptural than related to the fashion of any one time. Heavily intellectualised, it is about ideas more than practicality and its shows and graduates are cannily watched by fashion insiders who also value the outsider (watch the 2006 show here). I am sure that in some design team somewhere not too far away from you will be at least one product of this unusual place: Olivier Theyskens studied there and John Galliano has visited, attracted no doubt by the fact that this is an educational establishment that does not believe in taking the safe and predictable design route, preferring instead to find new values and options.

This is a place that should be much more central to fashion than it is in these over-commercialised days.

Paris: 7 Brilliant Brits at the Hotel Bristol

2010-06-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

The dog days of summer have hit London with a vengeance and there is virtually nowhere in the centre of the city to find a cooling breeze. But it's still not as hot as Paris last weekend, when I co-hosted a reception at the Bristol, the French equivalent of Claridges and, like that cool and elegant restful place, the other hotel where I would love to live. Think how easy it would be to live in a fabulous hotel in either of the two most important cities in Europe: linen changed daily, room service 24/7, taxis always at the door and somebody always on tap to take in mail, parcels and, maybe, presents.

I thought of this on Saturday at the Bristol at the launch of 7 Brilliant Brits, a DVD showing the work of British menswear designers Richard James, Domingo Rodriguez, E Tautz, Oliver Spencer, Gieves and Hawkes, Baartman and Siegal and Hart Savile Row.

All the guests decamped into the garden to drink champagne – or pure, cool water – and eat delicious canapes such as macaroons with a foie gras stuffing or eggs stuffed with peppers and served on mini wooden platters, and tried to ignore the temperature. Life in fashion can sometimes be hell.

It seemed natural after all that to set off up Fauborg Saint-Honoré and hit the shops. My two male companions were in crazed must-have-it buying mood and egged each other on to buy … anything as long as it had a scary price tag, which meant everything, in fact. Respectively they bought a denim shirt and a pair of trainers (at a cost of over €700) and a pair of trainers and drop-crotch pants (close to €1000), all of which will be totally out of fashion in a very short time. Which is what being a fashion person is all about. I know what they both earn and I can tell you they cannot afford it, but we all know they will make themselves afford it.

And just in case you think I am being too holy let me say that before leaving Paris I visited my favourite bookshop and behaved just as dumbly, buying three expensive books I neither need nor can afford.

Self-indulgence is in the blood with fashion people.

Menswear in Paris 2010

2010-06-28T02:50:00.000-07:00

Two swelteringly hot days in Paris, but well worth the discomfort, including sweat trickling down the neck. I was there to do Fashion Fringe @ Covent Garden business, which went very well, but I also managed to see two shows in between. And they made me realise how much I have been missing by not going to the menswear shows now that the Sunday Times no longer covers them.

First up was John Galliano. Entirely briiliant both as clothes and as spectacle. The theme was silent movies and in particular Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. The show began with a mighty rushing wind and copies of the newspaper Galliano Gazette swirling across the runway to set the mood of poor urban life when the movies were the only escape from work and poverty for most of the working classes in the early years of the last century.

Out of the mist rose a vast clock (shades of Harold Lloyd), then came a Chaplin lookalike and we were off into a jerky, high-energy show with the models tumbling out onto the runway and dashing down it at fantastic speed. Chalk white faces, huge Caplinesque boots, top hats and moustaches which changed into an hommage to Monsieur Houlot and his famous cinematic holiday sur la plage. It was all rollicking good fun and raised our thoughts well up and away from the unbelievable heat in the venue.

And, apart from that, the clothes....? A brilliantly young and accessible wardrobe, sexy and able to be deconstructed into a range of looks that any guy would like even if fashion isn't his main concern in life.

It was obviously a hard act to follow but Kris Van Assche for Dior Homme was up to the challenge the day after in a venue even more torrid thn the Galliano one – which had a very senior lady of the press complaining birtterly and at some length about her discomfort. Most of us rose above the temperature and were delighted at how convincingly Van Assche has made Dior Homme his own after stepping into the space left by Hedi Slimane when he parted company with Dior. Minimalist, urbane and full of simple but telling details that made a statement as subtle as the very best (I am thinking of the sadly missed Jil Sander, the total mistress of the perfectly conceived and tailored garment that commands attention in whispers).

Van Assche has the same perfect pitch.

Margiela, Couture and the High Street

2010-06-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

Popping in to see the Maison Martin Margiela show again a couple of days ago, I was even more impressed with its independence and boldness and yet made sad wondering for how long the honesty and originality of the founder's vision will be able to hold put against big business thinking now that he has moved out of the company he founded in 1989. It is now owned by Diesel. Already key figures, unable to reconcile the aesthetic of Diesel with the sensibility of Margiela, have moved on. And that makes me wonder if independence in fashion is doomed to go the same way it has in so many other areas of life. Is the whole world doomed to become one vast shopping mall, hypermarket or supermarket, where standardisation hides behind a facade of variety and individual choice whilst in reality every one is expected to conform to a powerful Big Brother aesthetic? Is fashion going to end up as bland as the perfectly shaped supermarket apple, with all idiosyncrasies and individuality ruthlessly excluded by the style police?

And then my feelings were lifted by the thought of couture, which I will soon see again in Paris. Having been dismissed as irrelevant for so many years, it has made a sort of comeback, although with no obvious direct impact on the fashion thinking of the millions who turn to high-street chains for the latest look. But its influence is very much there. The high street looks for ideas to couture level and always homes in on the extremists like Galliano at Dior or Gaultier, the ones who are given the opportunity to allow their imaginations to run more or less untrammelled by thoughts of economy.

For me, couture is still the wellspring, the source, of true fashion originality where the eternal verities of fashion – perfection, beauty and aesthetic subtlety (or high drama or outrageous humour) – are kept alive in a way that is impossible in most ready-to-wear, conceived to sell at a certain price and to a very targeted market. As the global depression continues - as it must until the great economies find new ways of generating wealth in the face of the collapse of the old – it seems to me that current fashion must change its ground and take on board at least some of the attitudes that are taken for granted at couture level.

Ara Gallant, Forgotten Genius

2010-06-10T23:26:00.000-07:00

Photo from Damianieditore.com

Even fashion followers who were around in new York in the seventies have probably forgotten Ara Gallant, one of the great movers and shakers of fashion at the time. That is why I was so pleased to discover a book about him (Ara Gallant by David Wills, published by Damiani) only recently available in London. He was a bit of an insider's secret even in his heyday but was known as a genius by everyone in New York who knew and cared about fashion, from Diana Vreeland and Richard Avedon to every model in town, all of whom wanted to work with him.

Those were incredibly heady days in New York, the brief period when it was the hippest, coolest and most outrageously exciting place in the world, a magnet that pulled in everybody looking for life at the extreme edge, dangerous, drug-soaked and gay as the proverbial gadfly. Its energy was almost palpable. How, I don't know, because no one ever seemed to sleep and appeared to live for days on nothing other than cocaine.

This was before Mayor Giuliani decided to clean up the city and banish sin in order to make Saturday nights in Manhattan safe for Lutheran families in town from Arkansas, and the Village non-threatening for groups of Boy Scouts from Boisie. Sadly he succeeded in closing down the topless clubs, banished bottomless waiters, banned sleezy strip joints, shuttered the hustler bars – and destroyed New York as a leader in anything, a sorry state it is still in today.

Because, of course, beneath the sin and silliness, the city was bursting with a creativity more vibrant than anything else on earth and, as everyone knows, great cities that lead the world always need sin – and sexual sin at that. Think of Paris in the Belle Epoch or Berlin in the twenties…. Ara, as the greatest hairdresser of them all, once described as a 'fashion holy', was in the thick of it, working almost exclusively for Vogue with Avedon and the superwomen who were models on an altogether different plane from the bourgeois constructs known as supermodels who came later. These were women like Anjelica Huston, Veruschka and Apollonia van Ravenstein, whose energy, sytyle and sense of high drama – they were all larger than life and loved acting – energised the pages of the magazines in a way almost unimaginable with today's suburban teenage models. And the hair Ara sculpted for them was always so extraordinary that it ensured that it was the woman who dominated the shot.

Towards the end of his brief, drug-dominated life (he put a pistol to his head in 1990), Ara became a photographer, doing covers for Interview and L'Uomo Vogue and portraits of stars like Jack Nicholson, Margaux Hemingway and Diane von Furstenburg. But, in reality, he was the star, a creative leader acknowledged by people of the calibre of Andy Warhol and Lauren Hutton as a true original who inspired and motivated everyone he worked with. I am glad this book has saved him from oblivion.

Carnaby Street – Not What It Used To Be

2010-06-09T23:58:00.000-07:00

I live right next to one of London's most iconic streets, known around the world as one of the great symbols of the Swinging Sixties, the period that changed not only Britain but the world. It was the street that said, 'This is London; this is now; and youth is in charge in a new classless society.' It didn't quite live up to its hopes - what ever does? - but it certainly changed the face of British fashion from deference to defiance, becoming the home of young, fun, but not very skillfully made clothes for teenagers of both sexes who were hands-on in forming the fashion and changing it with lightning speed when bored.

And that was Carnaby Street in 1960, when it developed from a louche but formless area of mixed and uncommitted social outsiders to a mecca for young male fashion followers, just as King's Road in Chelsea was initially doing for women, although each sex later joined the other to make the two streets the twin axes of cool fashion for the world.

Soho, where Carnaby Street is, has always been a male area, enjoying its notoriety as a place of brothels and its fame as a haven of acceptance and tolerance for all the byways of social nonconformity, skills and craftsmanship, as it still is today. But go back a century or so and we find that it was also a place where cultural giants lived happily. When I walk out of my front door I am very conscious that William Blake, Canova and Handel were just some of the great figures who lived less than a dozen steps from where I do now.

In 1960, Carnaby Street had a jack-the-lad confidence, even cockiness, as the first place in London to be working class in everything it stood for and yet having a universal appeal. It was also first to take menswear away from the grandeur of Savile Row and create its own look, initially aimed at gays but soon spreading its influence over all mens - and womens – wear.

This summer Carnaby Street is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding and especially its first ten amazing years as a valhalla for youth, freedom and nonconformity; the place where for the first time youth was in charge, the new buzz word was 'gear', and every young guy wanted it. We have had jazz bands, an exhibition and a good illustrated book (Carnaby Street 1960-2010) but nothing that can raise the creative temperature of Carnaby Street to anything that might represent life, let alone the pulsating energy of its brief past as a fashion crucible. Now Carnaby Street is all about cheap conformity with an emphasis on cheap jeans, T-shirts and trainers and is full of tourists hooked on a name long dead in real terms and really barely knowing what has drawn them there.

Carnaby Street now is famous for nothing more dynamic than once being famous. Sad really, I avoid it as much as I can, although it is less than two minutes' walk from my home. AS The Jam sang in 1977, 'Carnaby Street, Carnaby Street, Not what it used to be'. Even less so today, I'm afraid.

Fashion Fringe finalists; forum with John Galliano, Amanda Harlech and Nick Knight

2010-06-08T23:19:00.000-07:00

So the launch party for Fashion Fringe @ Covent Garden came and went – and went off extremely well last Friday, on the first really hot night we have had in London this summer. The proceedings, held at the St Martin's Lane Hotel, began with a forum to discuss the question of the coexistence of creativity and commerce in fashion. To debate the pros and cons we had Nick Knight, Amanda Harlech and, of course, John Galliano, our chair for the next two years. Even though the air conditioning was on the blink (it was supplemented by lots of fans) the comments were lively and there were many questions and comments from the floor – which I always see as a good indication of how things are going. Everything was streamed live and lots in the audience were busy tweeting, which pleased me very much. We are still correlating all the hits etc but I gather we were quite a topic last Friday

Yesterday's Evening Standard had a great picture and a very positive piece about the second part of the evening, which was the all-important announcement of John's choice of the three finalists at our party at The Ivy Club, complete with specially created cocktails and fabulous things to eat.

Although those of us who work on Fashion Fringe – including the pre-selectors – didn't have any say in the final selection this year we did make our own unofficial choice … and we came up with exactly the same three as John. A good omen, I would think. They were Alice Palmer, Corrie Nielsen and Jade Kang. Although they richly deserved to reach the final, I have to say that this time the field was really strong - and that is not just a cliche to please those who were not selected. We saw some very impressive talent this year and, as always, it made me sad that we do not have the funds to be able to help more people. Every year I feel this, of course, and it is mainly because in a fashion field that seems contented to produce endless simple little dresses I know there is so much more diversity and originality than one would ever imagine at fashion weeks or by looking in the shops.

So now we start our mentoring program for the winners and help them to get their collections ready for the show in September during London Fashion Week.

London: St Martins graduate show, Maison Martin Margiela exhibition

2010-06-03T06:05:00.000-07:00

This has been a good week for fashion in London.

Central St Martin's held their graduate fashion show and, as always, it was zany, impossibly over-imaginative and the greatest fun. But this time it was more. As the wild and wacky clothes (concoctions might be a better word) came down the runway, our spirits lifted as we were taken away from thoughts of the lashing rain outside into a world of pure Dada, with wit and challenge put well before any suggestions of practical wearability.

Exactly as it should be at this level… and a timely reminder that there is more to fashion than creating clothes for high-street chains – an approach currently too prevalent in MA courses. The results of this approach are currently being seen across young London designer fashion, which is awash with dumb little frocks and nothing much more. In my opinion, London designers are being encouraged to be over-commercial in the hope of receiving sponsorship and it is killing what this city's fashion should be about. The honest figures for sales of young designers' work are low and their hopes of survival very problematic in many cases. But at least we have St Martin's BA course to give us hope. What I want to know is why all this exuberant creativity so often evaporates on so many MA courses.

No evaporation of challenge and excitement in the Maison Margiela exhibition that opened last night at Somerset House. This is a fashion house that has remained a trailblazer for over twenty years, forcing us to ask all the questions that matter in fashion. What can fashion be? Why do we have fashion? How bold can it be without leaving people behind? Is a place for intellect in this form of creativity?

The extreme originality and bold risk-taking in this company's DNA answers them all with total conviction. I would like to think that the team at Maison Martin Margiela start every day with the basic question, 'Why are we doing this and for whom?' Every time they sit down to design they give form to ideas that take us on an intellectual and spiritual journey that lifts clothing to a level far above the London norm, a journey that feeds our souls.

The exhibition should be seen by everyone who feels that fashion can be much more than merely selling a few tacky little dresses, and should be compulsory for everyone involved with MA fashion courses.

And, in case you are wondering, Mr Margiela did not show – at least, as far as all the guest were aware.

(Maison Martin Margiela The Exhibition continues at Somerset House until September 5th)

Fashion at the Time of Fascism: A New View

2010-06-01T23:53:00.000-07:00

We all love a blockbuster exhibition, conceived as the last word, the definitive statement on a subject. We get them all the time as the major galleries and museums of the world - especially in New york and London- vie with each other to be the biggest, with the largest visitor figures and ticket takings.

But small can sometimes be beautiful, too, as we all know.

And London currently has an exhibition that ticks all the boxes – and at a fraction of the cost of most fashion-related exhibitions. Fashion at the Time of Fascism is based on a book with the same title. Both are a revelation. The book is the first English language examination of how fashion fared in Italy from the twenties, when the country came under under the control of Mussolini, to his downfall in 1943. The exhibition is a sophisticated developments of the book's points and even more strongly its illustration, most of which will be entirely new – and stimulatingly fresh – to most visitors in what is described as a pop-up display, clean and sharply focused to highlight this new ground. One of the most riveting aspects is the video of contemporary footage of fashion shows and the denizens of upper echelon Italians in this shameful period of Italian political life.

Well worth a visit – and entirely free.

The exhibition, in the Fashion Space Gallery of The London College of Fashion, John Princes Street, continues until June 17th but is not open on weekends,

(Fashion at the Time of Fascism: Italian Modernist Lifestyle 1922-1943 is published by Damiani.)

Fashion Photography - We Are All Voyeurs Now

2010-06-01T00:08:00.000-07:00

Exposed, the new exhibition at Tate Modern, is subtitled "Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera". It examines the various ways in which our lives have been influenced and society changed by modern uses (many would say misuses) of the camera as the often-undetected eye spying on us with the full of approval of the governments elected with the mandate to protect our freedoms. Worryingly, we only occasionally feel unease at its ubiquity.

The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue are a powerful statement of the dangers of complacency and the impossibility of turning back the clock when the full implications of a situation are – too late – revealed.

But it is the section devoted to fashion that will most interest all but the most deeply political. The camera is now so enmeshed with fashion that the image of the garment is frequently more potent than the garment itself. In fact it is the first point of call on the path of buying that starts with each month's new magazines and their beguiling pages of slick, tightly focused pages advertising the seasons's must-have objects of desire. And we do not seem to become bored even by the fact that it is largely the same image in all the magazines.

Editorially, there is fractionally more visual variety – and this again, is about the image, as each desperate editor tries to find a new way of arresting the attention of the casual "flicker" at the newsstand, trying to decide which magazine to buy – or whether to even bother. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to force oneself to do so at this point in fashion, where the art of designing clothes has generally fallen so low that editors believe clothes can only interest us if they are worn by this month's fleeting celeb - catch her before the sun goes down or you've lost her for ever.

No wonder that aspects of femininity other than dress are being resorted to by frantic editors ordered to take desperate measures to keep the readers on board. What could be more postmodern (or weeping in the darkness of the night despairing) than to feature nudity on the cover and featured in the pages of a magazine published with the major purpose of selling clothes. You couldn't make it up, you might think, but you don't have to. It is here and now, on a newsstand near you.

But it gets worse – or rather has been worse for some time – with editorial of nude or seminude pictures of models debased and violated for the camera, with the clothes barely in evidence; if they are, almost certainly will be half torn away. Strange antics for magazines meant to make women feel good, confident and empowered. And if you think photographers, stylists and art editors have reached the point when some of them might well be ready for sectioning, I am sure you would not be alone. But, as the Tate exhibition reminds us, we are all voyeurs now – whether we want to be or not.

Isabella Blow: Why Make a Movie?

2010-05-26T23:57:00.000-07:00

News yesterday that there is to be a film about Isabella Blow, the colourful stylist who died by her own hand three years ago, does not inspire confidence. The major excitement seems to be that John Galliano will play himself in the film, which seems to be the brainchild – if that isn't too strong an expression – of milliner Philip Treacy.

Oh dear.

Those of us who knew Isabella, worked with her and found much to empathise with in her life and to admire in her work cannot fail to be apprehensive when nobody as yet has considered it important to announce who will direct this enterprise. Or, indeed, why.

Isabella was a unique character who had many personae, ranging from the grandest of grand – seen only rarely – to the lowlife of London. In this and other respects, she always reminded me of Diana Vreeland. They were both instinctive, could talk with wit and memorable drama and could pluck the essence from cultural and historic moments about which their actual knowledge was hazy to say the least. Both had a filter which screened out the tedious or unnecessary facts and left them with the romantic nugget of gold for which they craved. What if they didn't know their Valois from their Viscontis? Who cared? They always knew what mattered.

Isabella had great zest for the funny, outrageous and shocking, daring herself to go further, to push beyond the limit every time. Her humour was frequently coarse and even cruel and her laugh Rabelasian. She adored extreme fashion, loved to be different and always managed to wear her mainly ludicrous hats with panache. Eccentric? of course not and she was rightly angered by suggestions that she was. Hers was a daily performance, calculated, clever and frequently inspired. Nothing was random or unconsidered. And that was her strength. She was a consummate performer. She needed her public … and she never let it down.

But I think we all knew that there was a terrible vulnerability and insecurity behind it all, something she could not hide. Her self-esteem could dip horribly low. She once summed up her professional life as a stylist as being on a par with working as a trolly-dolly taking food to the captain of the plane. Like a child who cannot grow up, she needed to shock, to draw attention to herself and yet she never wished to be discovered for her real self.

She surrounded herself with young designers, whose careers she promoted with more vigour than judgement in some cases, almost using them as a shield. Their names were a carapace that deflected criticism. Most obviously, she hid behind her costumes and her 'eccentricities', both of which were carefully calculated to obfuscate.

Lightweight and insubstantial as a shimmering dragonfly, Isabella was willful, unreliable and as changeable as the wind, dancing soley to her own inner music, never really heard by the rest of us except as a lingering fairy bell somewhere over the hills and far away. And now this fugitive, vulnerable creature is apparently about to be given 'the treatment', with at least two books rumoured to be coming out this autumn and now the film on the horizon.

Who needs any of them? Certainly not Isabella nor, I would have thought, the reading and film-going public. She should be left in peace, and those of us who have dear memories of her should be allowed to savour them as intensely personal things, to be shared only with those who will understand.

Isabella Blow was a pleasure for connoisseurs, not someone to be shamelessly paraded for the masses to deride.

How Male Fashion Changes

2010-05-26T00:29:00.000-07:00

Talking to some menswear designers and models at a fashion shoot a couple of days ago took me back to when I ran shoots in the eighties. I was fashion editor of Country Life, at that time one of the great weekly publications, which covered fashion in a rather bemused way as if not quite knowing how it had slipped into its august pages. The editorial offices were a cabinet of eccentricities as each writer pursued his own obsessions with total disregard for anything else. How it was ever published on time I have no idea.

Fashion was a challenge, an alien … but I am pleased to say that I managed to get two fashion covers - unheard of at Country Life and the cause of much indignant snorting in the grander counties and quite a few cancelled subscriptions. But we stuck to or guns until probably the least suitable editor in the history of magazines took over and destroyed the aesthetic of a unique publication, making it as bourgeois as any other magazine. Country Life never recovered. She retired abroad but the damage she had done was absolute.

One battle I did not win, even in a magazine with a much bigger male than female readership, was featuring menswear. 'Absolutely not us,' I was told. And in many respects the situation hasn't improved much in any publications except men's magazines desperate to keep going by raking in the men's fashion ads that only come if the editorial pages are already there. And in a way I could see why, looking at the clothes being photographed at the shoot.

Nothing seems to kill the strength of male clothing more quickly than overemphatic design. Subtlety is all. Nothing must ever look 'fashion'. So men's fashion change comes not from the clothes but from how they are worn. Teenage boys took the cheap Calvin Klein trick of showing their cool by exposing the waistband of their underpants and changed it by pulling their jeans so low on their bums that only a ludicrous crablike walk keeps them on at all. And we have the nerve to call women fashion victims.

In fact, as that exponent of uber-cool style, Tom Ford, has shown, the secret is to take existing elements, exaggerate some and diminish others and then never change anything. Then you have a style for life – just as all those rangy old aristocrats who loved Country Life did. Even today, thousands of men want to dress like a lord in the thirties. No modern fashionable woman wants to look like his wife, Her Ladyship, from the same period.

Maybe that is why, in the main, male fashion is still so unchallenging.

Fashion Fringe @ Covent Garden update

2010-05-24T23:53:00.000-07:00

We're getting toward the business end of the FF@CG process. We've just been through what I've heard referred to as the weeding out process of this year's applicants. I hate that expression. There are no weeds in the creative world – although admittedly, they can't all be peonies (John Galliano's favourite flower), because not everyone can be the tops. But I refuse to accept that there are any real duds at this level.

I only sat in on the event, taking no real part except to offer the occasional biscuit (this was a very British occasion and as all Brits know cannot be decently concluded without a few biscuits). The process of actual selection was in very capable hands. Angela Quaintrell, doyenne of fashion merchandising in London, is the woman who single-handedly made Liberty a major fashion player and a firm supporter of all manner of young hopefuls, all of whom receive sage advice born of years of experience. Professor Roy Peach, dean of the graduate school at The London College of Fashion, also has great experience, having been a designer, trained at the Royal College, and now one of the most respected fashion academics in the country.

Both have that rare ability to understand what is good even when it is not to their personal taste – an objectivity lacking in the totally subjective assessments made in this city by people with not an iota of the knowledge of these two. The task was to reduce the field – very large this year – to the finalists whose work was couriered the next day to Paris to our judge John Galliano and his team to decide on the ten semi-finalists – which they are doing even as I write.

When we were having our breaks – much needed with such a high concentration business (more tea and biscuits) – Roy and Angela were talking about the pitfalls that so often catch out young designers. For example, drawings and fabrics that can't work together, because the fabric can't do the things the drawing assumes. As they said, sharp shapes and soft fabrics never work, no matter how good they look in a sketch. They both felt that digital prints had had their day in all but the most skilled hands because they look so flat and lifeless. The same with engineered as opposed to free-form fashion drawings. Again, so dead and giving no scope for the freedom of the hand gesture that has been the essence of drawing since prehistoric humans first daubed a line on a rock face.

One of the competitors quoted Dali on his application, however, and we all heartily agreed. Dali said, "The world needs more fantasy. Our civilization is too mechanical." So say all of us – and until young designers realise this, they and fashion are going nowhere very far, in my opinion.

I can't wait to learn John's ten finalists.

www.colinmcdowell.com
www.assarahseesit.com

Graduate Fashion Shows: What's Gone Wrong?:

2010-05-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

The Spanish film director Luis Buñuel once said that "The opinion of the audience is conformity", by which I suspect he meant that we all like what we know. That's why virtually every TV drama has the same plot with only the regional setting and accents showing any variety. It's also why Oxford Street and every high street in the land are full of clothes which, if not actually identical, are all the same in thought. Of course, this is built into the fashion system. There has always been THE fashion of any one time since Marie Antoinette at Versailles, where the morning's look was totally passé by the afternoon as the quixotic queen changed her mind and her clothes and everyone was forced to follow.

But originality comes from queens no longer. Instead, it stems from two sources: the young and bold with nothing to lose; and the successful and powerful with all the money behind them to enable risks to be taken. On the one hand, students and young designers; on the other, the likes of Miuccia Prada, John Galliano and Marc Jacobs.

The big names can look after themselves. The people I am thinking about here are the graduates leaving college this summer. They are just finalising their collections and the invitations to attend the college shows are arriving on the desks of fashion journalists and buyers about now.

How many will attend? Very few.

Why is that, in people who should be eager to seek out new talent at every opportunity?

Once bitten, twice shy, I'm afraid. Most of us working in the business know that most of what comes down the runways at Graduate Fashion Week or in independent college shows will have a deadly conformity and be little more than warmed-over versions of the big idea of the fashion darling(s) of last season – which has probably already been fully exploited by mass manufacturers.

How does this happen? Mainly because so many – but by no means all – fashion departments in art colleges are staffed by second-hand roses: ex-designers, failed PR people and journalists who rarely go to the top fashion shows or have any conversation with the major designers. So, their sources of information are the same as those available to their students: magazines, dvds and gossip. They are not insiders. If they work north of Watford or south of Guildford, they probably don't get invited to press days or presentations – and almost certainly couldn't afford the time to attend if they were (academics are worked like dogs these days). No wonder they so often fail to stimulate boldness in their students and accept the conformity that Buñuel so disliked; the conformity that, sadly, gets their graduates the job in the current conformist fashion world.

It is time for a long overdue root-and-branch rethink, it seems to me.

High Style at Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection

2010-05-19T11:30:00.000-07:00

The Costume Collection of the Brooklyn Museum is, I believe, unique in that it was set up (in 1903) specifically to provide inspiration for America's fashion industry by allowing visitors to study the very best of world fashion. It is a great collection but does not get the praise it deserves because, well … it's in Brooklyn (as the name suggests), rather than Manhattan.

So it is great news that the museum has joined forces with the Metropolitan Museum of Art – which is in Manhattan – in a joint show that goes on until August 15 in both venues. "American Women: Fashioning an Identity" is at the Metropolitan; "American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection" is in Brooklyn. And it is the second one I want to draw attention to, as the Metropolitan will get plenty of visitors because of its location and also because of the high esteem in which its fashion exhibitions have been held ever since the days of Diana Vreeland in the seventies.

What makes the Brooklyn collection unique? Well, it has always had a collecting policy that comes at the whole question of what clothing is worthy of preservation from a pleasingly oblique angle. That means that, along with all the big names like Vionnet, Schiaparelli and Dior, are lesser-known ones whose importance is absolute in historic terms but whose names have slipped below the radar a little. So, in American terms, think Bonnie Cashin, Mainbocher or Elizabeth Hawes; in world terms think Callot Soeurs, Yantorny or the Fontana sisters. Also, how many of us have had the chance to see the clothes of Arnold Scaasi, Geoffrey Beene or James Galanos? Acquainting oneself with these people is worth the visit alone.

But the great glory of the Brooklyn Museum is its unique collection of the work of Charles James, the irascible Anglo-American designer who in his lifetime was seen by many as technically superior to Christian Dior and certainly the equal of Cristobal Balenciaga – a judgement James would have grudgingly agreed with. The other great strength of Brooklyn's collection is Elsa Schiaparelli, who is well represented and who, along with James and Worth, is central to the show.

Try to get there, but if you can't, you can buy the supporting book, High Style – beautifully produced by Yale to their usual high standards.

Charles James gown and stole from the Brooklyn Museum (pic: NY Times)

Singapore Fashion Festival, DSquared, Henry Holland, Robert Cavalli, Carmen Kass, DSquared, Vivienne Westwood

2010-05-19T00:14:00.000-07:00

Someone sent me a link to Henry Holland's blog on style.com about his visit to the Singapore Fashion Festival. I'm pleased that the reaction to this year's festival has been very positive.

I thought it would be, I have to say. It's my job to choose and bring international designers to Singapore, and I knew we had a strong team. The first up were Dean and Dan of DSquared, who were a lot of fun and gave us a great show. Carmen Kass, their star model, received a hysterical reception – well deserved,

Henry Holland was … Henry. Full of practised charm, he was a great hit in the clubs where he deejayed.

The climax was Roberto Cavalli's show, which was part A/W 2010 and then ended with a bang as his greatest evening gowns over the years, as chosen by his wife and chief designer Eva, brought the night to a close. But not quite. The actual climax came when I presented Roberto with the Singapore Fashion Festival Visionary Fashion Award, which last year went to Vivienne Westwood.

I am already working on next year's event.

Thoughts on Fur

2010-05-17T00:02:00.000-07:00

I have just written a short piece for British Elle about fur in fashion and it has made me start to think (again) about the question of fashion morality – or, as some might think, the lack of it.

A few weeks ago, the popular press was shocked to learn that padded bras and 4-inch heels were being pushed as suitable dress for sub-teen girls. Fashion haters – and there are a lot of them – immediately climbed to their self-created moral high ground, whilst the fashion lovers crassly pointed out that little girls love clumping around in mummy's shoes whilst wearing lipstick. Where's the harm in that? they asked, with that true fashionista lack of ability to think clearly. But most people who are not haters or lovers were able to separate the significance of doing so in mummy's bedroom or the living room from going to school or even a party in heels and a padded bra.

But of course it is the majority – neither fashion haters nor lovers – who are to blame. All those people who sit in front of TV whilst children ape grown-up emotions – love, loss, despair – whilst singing songs the words of which should mean nothing to them, coached and exposed by entertainment entrepreneurs who are interested only in money … and innocence be damned.

Back to fur. Is there anything more sensuous to the touch than mink or, even more so, sable? What is softer than chinchilla, even though it is the fur of the ubiquitous rabbit and in no way exotic? But it isn't the feel of fur that we should be thinking of, but the way it gets to us. As we all know, animals must be killed and then flayed for the process to begin. And, as we sit on our sofas stroking our cats, we need to remember that when we send in an on-line order for a fur trimmed dress.

The same is true of feathers, foisted onto the gullible as the new fur – and without the cruelty. How do we think they are obtained, for God's sake? From a live creature, perhaps, but in most cases from a dead one.

We are very partial in our attitudes to animals. We stop the traffic for new-born ducklings to cross the road. We coo over baby lambs although in both cases we know unless we are very stupid that they will be killed and served up on our tables eventually. We also know how inhumanely they are killed - and some of us remember that even ducks and lambs know fear and pain. And so do rats and mice. But for them we are ready with our double standards immediately. They are vermin, so anything goes. And who would wear a rat-skin trimmed coat? And yet why not? Only, I suspect because the Simon Cowells of the fashion world – and they are there – have yet to find a way to make them palatable to us.

www.colinmcdowell.com
www.assarahseesit.com

Singapore Fashion Festival: Fashion Asia, all dressed up, Henry Holland

2010-05-03T23:07:00.000-07:00

A stimulating day started with a breath of fresh air blown in from Pakistan. Four very different talents under the umbrella title of Fashion Asia came together to show in Singapore. They made me realise yet again how vibrant and original clothes from this part of the world can be when they are not too linked to a stereotype of a national costume. They are absolutely not to be compared with the tired western copies put out by designers who have had an exotic holiday somewhere, and return with surface ideas they've nicked. The point such western designers so often miss is that, just as in the west, good eastern fashion is based on a philosophy of life, not a few pretty primary colours and some beading.

After all, we are all conscious of the fact that all creativity stems from a culture – and often a mix of more than one. In fact, the clothes shown by Maheen Khan, Shamaeel Ansari, Deepak Perwani, and Nomi Ansari with Fashion Asia were far too sophisticated to have the tag of ethnic stuck on them. These were clothes that could fit in many sophisticated women's wardrobes. Not all; not every wardrobe; and probably not in their entirety – but, then, who ever buys a total wardrobe from one label, in any case?

The same is true of all dressed up, a collection of super-sophisticated big city looks created by Tina Tan Leo, famous in fashion for her shop The Link and possibly Asia's most powerful retailer. Like Joan Burstein, she is rightly acknowledged as fashion royalty. Her internationalism shone out in this collection for its Audrey Hepburn minimalism and very cool colour palette … although there were a few wavy numbers and lumpy embroidery in the middle that I could have done without.

And then there was Henry Holland. What does one say about Henry, the cheeky little robin of London fashion, except that his one-stop, one-size-fits-all approach went down a storm with cool young Singaporeans. Likewise his "spinning' at a club later, well into the night.

Singapore Fashion Festival: Musings on Class

2010-05-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

Every time I return to Singapore – on average, twice a year – I am impressed with yet more new buildings, more new top international names in the already exceedingly sophisticated and swanky shopping malls and even more sophisticated places to eat some of the very best and most refined food in the world. This is a totally modern and virtually new-build city that lives on air conditioning and the privileges associated with extreme wealth. So I was amused to notice yesterday a car with a slogan in its window that read 'This car runs on … money!' It seemed a nicely ironic corrective to all the high spending and a gentle reminder that, as in other wealthy international cities, the privileges are for … well, the privileged.

I was reminded of an exhibition I saw last year in Sunderland, in the north of England. It was called Rank and demonstrated how English society had developed as a cohesive policy based on the assumption that everybody had a place in society and should largely remain there. A complex system of checks and balances was evolved to keep them there. But the exhibition showed most clearly that there are no pre-ordained slots if people believe in their worth and are prepared to fight for their place. The exhibition was an engrossing survey of values and beliefs fought for but, just in case it was a little too serious and heavy breathing about individual freedoms and the fight to preserve them, it had a nicely ironic sting in the tail, with car stickers available at the exit reading 'I love Inequality'.

Only for the brave and I didn't stick one in my window, I'm afraid.

All of which makes me think of fashion's split personality as it tries on one hand to keep its distance and create an aura of exclusivity while at the same time breaking its neck trying to find new ways of pulling more dedicated followers into its world. Can a universal force retain any exclusivity apart from that imposed by cost or should fashion, like sport, just accept that making money and being exclusive simply do not tally in these high turn-over times where demand for the ephemeral has never been easier to activate? A couple of top models, a few celeb friends (preferably from the music business) and you are in business as a designer. Or is it rather more complicated than that makes it seem?

Singapore Fashion Week: Men in (Scruffy) Shorts

2010-05-01T04:58:00.002-07:00

Someone once said that if you sit in a hotel lobby long enough, everyone you ever knew will pass by. I don't know about that but I do know that any hotel lobby will give you an instant snapshot of how fashion is actually worn by all the myriad shapes and sizes of men and women who are so far removed from the designer's idealised dreams – and that includes the swanky, expensive people too.

And it is quite a shock.

I thought about this sitting in the lobby of the St Regis in Singapore waiting for Roberto Cavalli, whose private jet had been delayed by bad weather. He and his show are the stars of this year's Singapore Audi Fashion Week at the grand final gala night on Sunday. It will be a high-glam occasion of course – how could it be anything else, featuring as it does Roberto's personal selection of great evening gowns from the past as well as his current collection?

What a contrast to what walked through the lobby in the short time I sat there.

Let me say immediately that, as you might expect, it is the men who are the most criminal offenders. We all accept that America did a lot to casualise men's dress and that it was something well overdue but sadly, the rest of the world – preeminently the Brits – have turned casual, non-status clothes into something so ugly that scruffy is not a strong enough word to describe it. Hideous shorts – and even more hideous legs – reinforce the old saying that men never dress to attract women but only to display a crude contempt and power to other men. The result is that they have all the glamour of a hyena.

The sad thing is that, instead of fighting this movement, designers have followed it. But although their versions are better cut than the cheap ones most men wear (which are probably made under appalling labour conditions), they still flatter perhaps one in thirty men under thirty and nobody older.

I had hoped for some visual respite in London this winter as it was very cold and all normal adults would have changed into trousers. But it didn't happen. Men of all ages continued to dress as if they were postmen and wear shorts even in the snow. I can't help hoping that the cold effects their sperm count so that this particular form of idiocy is eradicated by a process of natural selection.

Singapore Fashion Festival Gala: DSquared, Carmen Kass, Audi

2010-04-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

Carmen Kass, the Estonian supermodel who has opened for more top fashion shows than I can begin to remember – it would be easier to list the very few, and not very important, designers she has not modelled for – is as beautiful off the catwalk as on (and I can tell you that that's not always the case). I was sitting with her and Dean and Dan Caten of DSquared at the Audi gala event that officially kicked off Singapore Fashion Festival last night.

As you would expect in this city of lots of money and quite a bit of class, it was an elegant affair but Carmen still shone. She did it by going for simplicity. In a room full of women in beautiful jewels she wore none. Likewise with hair – artfully simple. And for anyone who still thinks models are dumb (which is so 1990s, in any case), she impressed everyone with her shrewd business acumen in the property world of her homeland. Definitely not just a pretty face.

Dean and Dan are a complete team, yin and yang. Virtually interchangeable. The twins are so close that they claim they never go anywhere separately. They were in great form, entertaining us with their camped-up versions of what we all expect internationally famous fashion designers to be. They even managed to
outshine the two new models (vehicular, not fashion) presented during the evening (to an accompaniment of longing male sighs) by the sponsors, Audi.

For me, the highlight of the evening was helping judge The Star Creation competition to find talented young designers from across Asia. The standard was so high that we decided to give four prizes instead of three.

That's very encouraging for someone like me who believes that Asia has some genuine fashion talent and will soon be making it apparent to the rest of us.

Irving Penn, Fashion Photography and Fashion Illustration

2010-04-26T23:06:00.001-07:00

I was thinking on the flight to Singapore about the Irving Penn exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It has had good reviews. Not that it is any surprise that we have yet another empty exercise in fashionable hagiography at that most shallow of any major gallery. It is entirely appropriate that Penn's portrait gallery of thinkers and creators from the late 1930s until his death would attract its directors. It is equally predictable that critics should feel the need to overpraise it. But, although Penn has left some of the most defining fashion and still-life images of his generation, it only requires a brief look at the portraits of Henri Cartier Bresson (whose work is on show currently at The Museum of Modern Art in New York) or Bill Brandt to realise that what we see at the NPG is portraits by a fashion photographer, not a great portrait photographer … and certainly not a great photographer per se.

It is because fashion is about surface that it is easy to understand. It has no interior monologue, as I remarked in an earlier blog about the new genre of "fashion film". That is why photographs that depict it are popular. But it is an approach that eventually palls. We all know how boring most fashion shoots can be. If we contrast them with the fashion illustrations that animated the pages of the cheap weeklies as well as the top monthlies for most of the 20th century, we see what has been lost. Inherent in the DNA of a brushstroke or a pencil mark is the character of whoever made it. Most fashion illustration of that period had personality because it was almost always drawn from life and was a portrait (admittedly very glamorized) of a woman as well as a garment. Today, fashion drawing - when you can find it - lacks animation because the artist rarely works from a model. What we get again is the feeling of looking at a flat surface rather than something rooted in a seen reality.

Dandies of Lowestoft

2010-04-23T00:34:00.000-07:00

Look at these fantastically cocky young men. Out of the blue, I have learned about one of those fascinating historic byways that so easily get lost and forgotten. Not this time, however. I received a letter from Peter Wylie, an East Anglia native, about a research project he's doing with funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain.

Peter is documenting the remarkable off-duty dress of sailors in the fishing port of Lowestoft in the early sixties. He calls the project The Dockside Dandies of Lowestoft, although at the time the distinctive clothes were known as 'fisherboy coloured suits'. When the fishing boats came in after a time at sea the fisherboys (with pay packets bulging) would go to Lawrence Green, the town tailor, and try to outdo each other by ordering highly coloured bespoke suits to be made ready for their next return to port. Dressed in the latest suit, they paraded the town with all the pride and confidence of Beau Brummel strolling down Bond Street arm in arm with a friend, quizzing all the girls they passed.

The idea caught on and became a craze with young trawlermen, fresh out of school, putting down deposits and setting out to dazzle in their made-to-measure suits in strong colours such as red and purple, which were a little bit spiv, a little bit rocker, but totally one-off creations. Lapels were wide, jacket backs were pleated, contrasting piping and insets of material were the norm and bell-bottoms up to 30 inches wide were considered very cool. For all the OTT style and colour these clothes were in no sense effeminate. Just the opposite. They were a badge of masculinity because only fisherman were allowed to wear them and their gaudy self-confidence reflected the fact that their trade, a hard and dangerous one carried out in all weathers, ensured that nobody would cast aspersions on their manliness.

It is a fascinating piece of sartorial social history and I wonder how many other pockets of fashion originality are waiting for someone like Peter Wylie to uncover and document them before it is too late?

All photos © Peter Wylie

Singapore Fashion Festival: Henry Holland, DSquared and Roberto Cavalli

2010-04-21T22:42:00.000-07:00

Pic source: vogue.com

Don't you just love Henry Holland's t-shirt? It made me laugh out loud (although of course there is more than a little truth behind it – I sometimes find myself praying for the future of fashion).

By the time you're reading this, I'll be on a plane on the way to Singapore, where I'm director of the Singapore Audi Fashion Festival, which starts this weekend. I'm looking forward to meeting Henry – and not just because of his t-shirt. Everyone tells me he is a charming, sharp and funny young man. And, of course, he also designs rather accomplished clothes.

Henry Holland is one of three labels I've invited to this year's festival. The other two are crazy Canadians Dean and Dan, whose label is DSquared, and Roberto Cavalli, who is celebrating 40 years in the fashion business – for most of which I have known and admired him. What I like is that we've brought together a young company with Henry and an established company with Dean and Dan, while with Roberto we have a designer who has followed his star despite the ups and downs of fashion change. Although he may be associated with bling, there's no doubt that Roberto Cavalli is now classic.

What's more, these guys are all great company in their very different ways (not always the case with designers) so I'm really looking forward to spending time with them. The ash cloud has caused a few anxious moments about getting designers, clothes and production teams in the right place at the right time, but everything has come together in the end.

For this week, at least, I won't have to pray for fashion – although you might forgive me praying a little that the ash doesn't come back.

Grace Kelly, Edith Head and the American Dream

2010-04-21T00:19:00.000-07:00

In a comment on my blog on the Fashion Film, Random Fashion Coolness asks if it is possible to be too perfect. That started me thinking about Grace Kelly, who is being remembered at the moment with an exhibition at the V&A. Although we now know that her off-screen persona was not quite the same as her on screen image, nevertheless her image has survived as the sophisticated, always elegant and confident template of the fifties woman.

And of course it was a total fantasy – just like the pages of American Vogue on which her image was based. Unearthly perfection was the mood of rich middle America in those days, where people enjoyed kitchens and bathrooms of an undreamed of sophistication, and drove cars that were years in advance of those on this side of the Atlantic (I remember after driving one on an extended road trip in America, I picked up my own car – by no means an old boneshaker – at Heathrow and less than a mile later I stopped because I thought I had a flat tyre. I didn't. What I had was British car springs – light years behind those in America).

Grace Kelly and Edith Head. (Pic: Moderateinthemiddle.files.wordpress.com)

The American dream was a reality and its goddess was Grace, as in film after film her immaculate appearance mesmerised filmgoers across the globe. And in many movies of the time, the genius behind the looks was Edith Head, who in her years at Paramount and Universal Studios dressed nearly all the great actresses of the forties and fifties. In fact she worked with Kelly only twice - on Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955) but that was enough to fix in the world's imagination the idea of the elegant, coolly-knowing, high-class broad that her name still conjures today. Her appearance was perfect but she always undermined it by an ironic sense of humour, especially in sex. The trouble with A Single Man and I Am Love is the fact that there is not a hint of irony or self-mockery in either.

When you take yourself too seriously you stop producing something that keeps the viewers' attention and becomes as boring as a flick through a glossy magazine – and as quickly forgotten.

www.colinmcdowell.com
www.assarahseesit.com

Giles Deacon: Off to Ungaro?

2010-04-20T05:06:00.001-07:00

Picture source: My Fashion Life

Vogue.com this morning is reporting rumours that Giles Deacon has been approached to take over at Ungaro. That gives me pause for thought. It would be awful to see one of the most loved designers in London, and surely one of the most charming anywhere, get his fingers burned.

Ungaro has been in trouble for some time. Indeed, one could argue that its troubles began when the founder himself stopped designing. Emanuel Ungaro had such a strong personality and distinctive fashion approach that, as is also the case with Pucci, it has proved difficult to modernize the label. Giambattista Valli had some success, but Vincent Darre and Peter Dundas both came and went too quickly to have any lasting effect. The house has lost its way. But that still doesn't explain the ill-considered decision to hire Lindsay Lohan as "artistic adviser" to work with Estrella Archs.

It seems that Ungaro is so unsure of its direction that it no longer has faith in its designers. The Lohan debacle did enormous harm to its credibility as a serious fashion label. What it also proved is that no-one designs clothes better than trained designers. They don't need input from celebrities, accountants, the family of the founder, the woman on reception, or any of the other tinkerers who seem to get involved in the creative process at some houses.

That's the challenge facing whoever takes over at Ungaro. They have to move the label forward and for that they must be given control. It was rumoured in Paris before Christmas that Matthew Williamson had been offered the job and had turned it down because he felt that Lohan had too much influence on the creative process. Now it seems that Giles may be about to take on one of fashion's poisoned chalices. If that's the case, then good luck!

A Single Man, I Am Love: A New Film Genre?

2010-04-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

Fashion is about surface. That's why it is easy to understand. It has no interior monologue.

It strikes me that we have a new manifestation of fashion surface standing between us and reality: films that seem to have as their main point an emphasis on appearance above all else. Flowers, buildings and, especially, clothes are lovingly portrayed: I begin to wonder if we are on the verge of a whole new genre that could be called The Fashion Film - not a film about fashion, but a film made with the same surface obsessions that occupy fashion magazines and their stylists and art directors.

A Single Man by fashion supremo Tom Ford was praised for its perfect but very mannered mis en scene, in which every shot seemed to have been contrived to have the unreal glamour and high-gloss perfection of a publicity campaign for a men's cologne. Now we have the film I Am Love by Tilda Swinton (another fashion figure in many ways), which again seems to elevate the photography way above the realities of plot and acting, as if it had been styled rather than directed. It is beautiful to watch but in a very seventies way. What makes me think we may be on the verge of a new visual approach is the praise both of these films have received from visually aware movers and shakers, both in and out of the fashion loop.

Are we going back to the seventies, when films like Elvira Madigan, Bo Widerberg's story of doomed love, ravished our visual senses with blurred close-ups of plants and insects as a means of ravishing our spiritual senses? That movie was criticised for suffering from the 'Swedish flaw of tastefulness' - for which read triteness.

Is the fashion film doomed to be as coldly perfect as the average fashion shoot? Does the medium have to be the message?

Reflections on Christian Dior

2010-04-19T00:34:00.001-07:00

I've been reading up on Dior in the sunshine over the weekend (while also wondering how the volcanic cloud must be impacting on Planet Fashion, where it always seems like a quarter of the people are in the air at any one time).

Dior's past rang two bells. One was a tea I had with Joan Burstein, owner of Browns, at her beautiful Hampstead home in the delightfully named Vale of Heath, which has a view to die for. The City in the distance looked like Camelot in the late afternoon sun. I was there to take tea - a gracious occasion with this most elegant of women - and to interview Joan about the fortieth anniversary of Browns coming up this year. Mrs B told me how exciting it was in 1947 for a young woman just married, as she was then, to be able to dress in Dior's New Look, which was unveiled that same year - even though the fabric needed for the huge skirts was way beyond the coupons allowed in those days of post-war rationing. But Joan's new husband sold fabrics, so.... It was the beginning of her love affair with clothes that has lasted for over forty years with her shop in South Molton Street.

The other thing that occurred to me was how much the influence of a couturier prevails years after he has gone. I am spending quite a bit if time at Dior in Paris researching a book. The atmosphere is still very Dior, even though Christian Dior himself died in 1957. Soft grey was his favourite colour - because he was a great anglophile and it reminded him of England - and it is still the colour of Dior decoration. He loved big armchairs painted white with grey cushions - and they are still there too. I remember a famous story about a young fashion artist in the fifties who went to the Dior shownroom to draw some clothes for her magazine. Dior was the grandest fashion house in Paris, so she was very nervous. As she waited for the first model to appear, she unscrewed the top of her black Indian ink. Her shaking hands dropped the bottle and to her horror the black stain spread across the pale grey fitted carpet.

Don't you just burn for her, even fifty years later?

Male and Female Fashion Divide

2010-04-13T23:59:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking about the recent poll in The Radio Times that came up with a discrepancy between men and women in their choice of favourite female screen actresses. In a survey of 2,000 readers, most women chose Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's while the masculine choice was Ursula Andress in the first Bond film, Dr No, in 1962. Apart from what this tells us about the likely age of the readers who took part – Breakfast at Tiffany's is only a year earlier than the Bond movie – it shows the great gap between sex and glamour that dominated fashion in the fifties and sixties. Nice girls didn't; confident women did. Women wanted to be the gamine young lady; men wanted the sexy vamp.

Such a survey carried out with younger men and women would almost certainly have a much closer result in that young women and men tend to admire the same icons, whether it is Angelina Jolie or Scarlett Johansson. Which makes me wonder - not for the first time, even in this blog - if the sexes are drawing closer in taste and therefore fashion than ever before. Certainly, their lifestyles are very much more similar than in the past and so are their attitudes to freedom and sex. The pill, the changes in laws concerning sexual freedoms, behaviour and beliefs have increasingly revealed that women like the male lifestyle, even if men are at this point only beginning to come to terms with the female element in their sexuality. No more hunter-gatherer, weaver and cook divisions, in Western society at least.

I hate to use the word unisex but I wonder if Courreges and Cardin were not on to something valid for the future with their fashion statements in the sixties, even though they were laughed at or simply ignored at the time. At a time when female fashion is desperately trying to grind every last ounce out of styles popular in the recent past, and when menswear is almost totally static, maybe it is time for a little more creative cross-over to kick-start creativity again. We could start by asking what dress is actually for in a modern context.

Buying Chanel in Rue Cambon

2010-04-12T23:58:00.001-07:00

One of the nicest ways to spend a day is in helping somebody else to spend money, so they say. And I think it may well be true, having done so in Paris a couple of days ago with a friend who asked me to take her to the holy-of-holies, the Chanel boutique at 31 rue Cambon. Mission: to help her choose a classic Chanel suit, something she has wanted for a long time.

As we popped out of the French end of the Channel Tunnel, the conversation turned to Chanel - and likely prices. My friend had decided on couture. A quick call to the London Chanel office and she thought of couture no more! The basic, standard cost of a couture Chanel suit is apparently around £30,000. 'It can go up much higher, of course, depending on the embroidery', the voice at the other end of the line cooed emolliently. So my friend, a businesswoman and highly pragmatic, did a quick bit of refocusing.

We arrived at the shop – all cream carpet, chrome and mirrors, with black-suited guards placed at strategic points – browsed the racks and at the exactly appropriate psychological moment when we had established our right to be in such grand surroundings, at least to our own satisfaction, a vendeuse glided up as if by magic. She had probably been watching us on closed circuit TV, deciding whether or not we were the real deal or just time-wasting browsers. Although my friend looked very elegant and even soignee, I am sure my beloved old duffel coat and cords probably threw the watchers a bit. But not for long.

As gently and unobtrusively as Mother Teresa, we were taken in hand and gently prepared for the kill. It felt a little bit like a Wagyu steer being massaged with beer to soften it up ready to be a Kobe steak: nice at the time but deadly in the end. My fiend is half my age, so the vendeuse (calling her a saleswoman would be as inappropriate as referring to Jensen Button as a guy who likes driving) assumed that it would be my credit card and included me in everything. Of course, I was slowly – and oh, so gently – cast adrift as 'not wanted on voyage' as it became apparent where the financial power actually lay.

Ninety minutes later, we were drinking a glass of champagne (on the house) whilst my friend's credit card was being processed for a bill just slightly over £10,000. For that giddy sum she had bought a Chanel tweed suit (not couture), a black Chanel jacket and a Chanel tweed sleeveless dress. All of them were classics … as were the black shopping bags. The stiff black Chanel version carries not only one of the world's most prestigious names but, at this level, is actually decorated with a famous white Chanel gardenia.

Over lunch, we agreed that we had not been shopping but, rather, performing in a one-act play in which we were briefly the stars, the vendeuse the director, and the author none other than Mademoiselle Coco herself. And there were at least six other plays being performed around us at the same time. No wonder they don't give discounts – as if anybody would dare to ask!

Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood

2010-04-12T00:20:00.001-07:00

When the history of the cultural development of the last fifty years is written, will there be a mention of Malcolm McLaren? And how much? A chapter? A paragraph? A sentence? Or a footnote?

My view is that it will probably be the last. Reading the obituaries makes me realise that his own creative achievements were very slight; his talent was in enabling others to achieve rather larger things. He was a catalyst, not a creator; a Max Clifford rather than a Diaghilev; a fixer more than an originator. His antecedents were the fly-boy and the spiv, guys who would sell you anything and had the patter to convince you to buy, if you gave them enough time. More importantly, he had the self-belief that convinced him that every idea he had was automatically a good one. And he persuaded a lot of people he was right.

The most important thing in McLaren's expression of his own creativity was his well-known association with Vivienne Westwood, to whom he was the fairy godmother whose magic wand (or was it the Prince Charming kiss?) transformed her ambitions if not her creativity. When she was with him, she assumed the same raffish cockiness and embraced the enthusiasm he felt for shattering 'the system' and pretending to be an anarchist. In fact McLaren was behaving like a cultural barrow boy. He was happy to compromise and conform in order to sell his wares (pre-eminently the Sex Pistols and Westwood, and later hip-hop) not on ideological grounds but on the traditional capitalist principle that the only thing that matters is finding a way to convince the punters to buy (it's revealing that Glenn Matlock of the Sex Pistols says that McLaren was never really interested in the music, and that others report that most of the records he actually owned were of show tunes). His methods were the traditional ones of shocking the timid and exciting the inexperienced.

Vivienne Westwood survived the break-up with her Svengali and, once free of his influence, blossomed with a creative strength that he could never have matched. Her triumphs over the past twenty-odd years have served to demonstrate just what a minnow her one-time creative support actually was by comparison. More idealistic and principled, although just as intellectually eclectic, she has soared like an eagle on the currents of her own convictions to become a serious figure in a field still considered by many as trivial. He, left behind like an eager little sparrow, popped up occasionally - and, to me, each appearance seemed sadly more trivial than the last.

Fashion Fringe: Weekly Update

2010-04-07T09:43:00.001-07:00

So, the general election campaign is underway – and so is this year's FF@CG search for a new designer. Since we made the announcement that John Galliano is going to chair and judge Fashion Fringe for the next two years our website has had 228,000 hits and more than 1,300 application forms have been downloaded. The closing date for applications is April 30th and I am hoping that from such large numbers we will be able to give John a good shortlist from which to choose the finalists and then the eventual winner, who receives £100,000 to start a business.

I can't help you win FF@CG – the final decision will be John's alone – but I can help you not to lose before you even start. I hope that we have made it clear that we are not looking for fantasy but for flair; not craziness but originality; not costume but entirely new forms of cutting and shaping that can be used as the basis for looks that can eventually be worn at high-street level. We don't want to see hundreds of outfits only suitable for Lady Gaga. As John, Hussein Chalayan and Vivienne Westwood have shown – not forgetting Rick Owen, Helmut Lang, Azzadine Alaia, Rei Kawakubo and Junya Watanabe – great clothes with real ideas come from a philosophy … and young designers can't start figuring what theirs is soon enough. Otherwise they become, not leaders, but followers; part of the flock that spews out of colleges around the world every year and has no affect on fashion at all.

So, to potential applicants I would give this advice: Remember what the job of a leading designer actually is and study the approaches that put the ones listed above where they are today.

www.colinmcdowell.com
www.assarahseesit.com

Erdem: What's Next?

2010-04-06T23:26:00.001-07:00

All of us at Fashion Fringe @ Covent Garden are thrilled with last week's announcement that the first British Fashion Council Vogue Designer Fashion Fund award has gone to Erdem, who won our second Fashion Fringe competition in 2005. Since then, it has been gratifying to follow his progress not only as a designer but also as a fashion businessman growing his own label with a single-minded sense of purpose. The injection of £200,000 that the award will give his business will enable this talented and ambitious young designer to really develop a business plan to enable him to survive over the next few years.

If 'survive' seems a rather apocalyptic word in this context, it actually isn't. It may seem paradoxical, but it is when fashion careers are in their third or fourth year, with a degree of sales success and press loyalty behind them, that they are at their most vulnerable. It is then that possible cracks begin to show and serious questions are asked. Is this designer a one-trick pony, doing the same thing over and over? Is he only a scrabbler after the new thing without any firm design base of his own? Has he got the staying power that will eventually truly reward the loyalty of press, stores and customers? These awkward questions demand answers when a fashion business is at the delicate point that Erdem has reached. As nearly all questions and cavils can be answered by money and the opportunity it brings, I have no doubt at all the Erdem will use this award to take his talents to increasingly higher points in the years to come – and I look forward to enjoying it.

Platform Shoes: A Fashion Fixture?

2010-04-06T00:02:00.000-07:00

When something in high fashion is out, it isn't just out, it is damned-to-perdition out to such an extent that nobody can bear to think about it a moment longer. In normal worlds that would be considered a sign of shallowness, but not with fashionistas. Look at how quickly the grotesque shoes of last year have bitten the dust. No regrets, no mourning, no sentimental looking back.…

Or so we might hope. But there is a nagging thought in the back of my mind that says,'Wait and see'. It is over twenty years since Vivienne Westwood first showed her platform soles and 7 inch heels to great applause and laughter from audiences who never dreamed that such extremes could have a life away from the catwalk and be actually worn in all seriousness by women who were not supermodels. But it happened … and I am just wondering how long these shoes will be in eclipse before they return and join denim and jeans as perennial fashions that most women have in their closets, to be worn not when fashion says but when a woman feels like it.

If we were talking about men, the answer would be 'never'. But then again, something as grotesquely dangerous and uncomfortable would never have become a male fashion in the first place. Women are much more inclined to put up with pain and discomfort than men would ever be, as long as they are part of the coolest, latest fashion. As a fashion editor who is known as London's greatest shoe fetishist once told her husband, 'You just don't get it and you never will because you are not a woman. They are my blisters and bunions, my backache and sore ankles, not yours. So just shut up. You are a man and couldn't possibly understand how important fashion is to women!'

In Milan With Dolce & Gabbana

2010-04-05T01:45:00.001-07:00

The hangman's knock, traditionally just before dawn, was replaced by a strident alarm ring to start my long day in and out of Milan in order to interview Dolce & Gabbana for The Sunday Times Style. But this time it was slightly different. This was an interview to camera, ready for the Style website that will start in May. So it seemed that it might be worth travelling for eight hours for one hour of chat.

And, of course, it was. Just to be in the baroque scarlet and leopard-skin room furnished with imposing 19th-century Sicilian furniture and lots of large, sloppy dogs was worth any early call for its tongue-in-cheek high-camp kitsch, quite apart from a heavy gilt frame containing a black bra and a red rose that I found strangely compelling. Operatic is the word for this stage-set of a room, which is referred to in D&G parlance as "the Office".

But it was the Boys, as Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce are always called, who were the real enchantment. Sitting close together, their body language and the way they included each other in every answer, both by gesture and comment, made it clear that this partnership, despite the fact that they now go their own ways sexually, is still the love relationship that began so long ago when they first met as young men. Stefano, tall, angular and voluble; Domenico, smaller, more considered and less dramatic. Together, they spun a fine story of their work, pleasures, problems and triumphs. I wish all hours went as quickly. As you'll be able to see for yourself in the early summer.

Photographers, Models and Exploitation

2010-03-29T02:46:00.001-07:00

It must seem a bit rich to many people that a model has accused a photographer of exploitation, but it has happened.

The photographer Terry Richardson has blogged that he is really hurt to have been falsely accused of 'insensitivity and misconduct' by the model Rie Rasmussen.

The view of the man in the street would presumably be that models make the decision as to how far they will go in a photographic session and the photographer decides how far he will ask them to go. End of story … if the playing field was level.

But it rarely is. Many models at the beginning of their careers are young, insecure and possibly even virginal. Photographers are some of the very few men in fashion who might be straight. And certainly there are predators among them, wishing not just to sleep with models but also in their photographs to patronise and possibly debase them. And their allies in this are the people who should be protecting models: the agents, stylists and editors who work with them.

And I am sure that many do offer protection but, in the desperate efforts to be 'edgy' and shocking that most of these people seem to feel are essential for commercial success, others seem to inch closer to blatant titillation almost daily. Nudes on the covers of fashion and lifestyle magazines are the cheapest form of selling through sensationalism, and yet they succeed; simulated highly sexual scenarios – a genre introduced by Tom Ford at Gucci several years ago – do the same for top brands through their advertising campaigns.

Revealingly, the main culprits are the not-yet-household names (and probably never likely to be) in photography and the titles that will never have the general clout of Vogue, Harpers or Elle. In other words, the ones that try to keep afloat by inventing a type of 'cool' that speaks only to the young, few of whom can afford the magazines or the clothes they feature and would probably find few opportunities to wear them.

I often feel that fashion has become an incestuous maze of crazed and immature imaginations trying to grab attention by being naughty. I certainly know that the stylists, editors and photographers who create these pictures live their lives well removed from the things they promulgate. And that doesn't just give credibility to the accusations of exploitation; in the way it patronises, it robs anything they produce of any claims that could be made for its creative value.

Designers and the Press: Lessons from the Past

2010-03-24T07:39:00.000-07:00

This morning I've been reading the answers to questionnaires I sent out to the top designers as part of a piece I am doing for 10 Magazine. The idea's very simple. Ten designers get ten identical questions and send me their answers. No interview; no extra queries to elucidate their answers. Just them, their thoughts and an e-mail back to me. The results are fascinating: they each reveal their thinking by their choice of question to elaborate on.

I am always amazed at how accessible designers make themselves and how they are – in all but a few cases – prepared to be honest and speak the truth. I am conscious, of course, that cynics will say that the questionnaire is immediately handed over to a PA or PR to answer, with the designers only signing it off at the end. That could be true, but designers tend to have egos far too large to let anybody else to speak for them, no matter how close that person might be. They are also aware of how important any reference to them or their attitudes is these days, in whatever form of media. And I include blogging and Twitter, for which most designers have a healthy respect (tinged, I suspect, with a little fear of a medium whose power is still not entirely understood by many).

I can't help wondering what Chanel, Vionnet, Dior or Balenciaga would have felt about the 'open access' game that designers now have to play, no matter how private their private thoughts still remain. I think we know what Balenciaga, who hated the press and for a few seasons actually banned them all from his shows, would think. He rarely if ever talked to journalists, believing that making clothes for his customers was a sacred bond to be discussed with nobody but the woman concerned. Of course, that could happen naturally in the days of couture when fashion was an individual pleasure with customers and designer working together in shared knowledge and taste.

Now, of course, designing clothes is no more personal than designing cars or screwdrivers. The designer has no interchange with the woman who buys what he designs. Balenciaga would have thought that that made the whole process so impersonal as to be pointless, but I can't help feeling that the other three, all of whom were highly commercial, would love questionnaires … especially the in-your-face women – Chanel and Vionnet, both so tough their lineage could probably be traced to Attila the Hun or Ghengis Khan.

Dior (a more subtle and gentle self-publicist, but with a very healthy ego) would have been more diffident but certainly would have said his piece. After all, he is one of the few designers from the fifties who wrote a (ghosted) biography and put his name to a dictionary of fashion, as well as lecturing and giving interviews at a time when the old guard thought such things shockingly vulgar and commercial. Dior really understood the value of publicity and, like Vionnet and Chanel, realised that the individual relationships of traditional fashion could not survive the expansion of markets and customer types.

All three were correct, of course. Now the individual relationship is not between customers and designers but between customers and those who bring clothes to their attention (the press) and those who exemplify their dreams and wishes (stars and celebs in the front row).

But I still think that Balenciaga had something of worth in his attitude – something we should try to recapture. Maybe the current lot at that once-austere house think so too, and feel that banning the editor of French Vogue from shows is sending a positive message. It is, although for me not the one their crazed press office imagines. But as the history of many fashion houses shows, designers come and they go, taking their foolish minions with them – whilst good editors tend to have very long working lives...

The Age of Fashion

2010-03-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

One of the sharper comments I received about my blog concerning the age of some members of the judging committee for the CFDA Awards has brought up an interesting ageist point that has caused me to think rather about the future of fashion (but then I would, wouldn't I?). The writer points out that I am a fine one to talk if I believe that FASHION FRINGE IS FOR DESIGNERS AGED AROUND 27 and yet dedicated to nurturing YOUNG talent. The clear inference for a lot of fashion followers is that the age of fashion credibility is slipping ever lower.

It is a sobering thought. If people in their twenties are no longer considered young in fashion terms, does this mean that designers will also soon be teenagers? After all, there is a sort of logic in people from the same age group as the buying public being the ones who know the market best. Certainly, I think fashion that spans a wide age group – ie most of a woman's life – is doomed. The high street is already showing us this, because one of the characteristics of youth and age is that we all think almost entirely in our own age group and ignore or dismiss those outside it. It's hard to imagine a teenager designing clothes for a woman over 35 living an affluent life; in fact, it's just as hard as the septuagenarian designer in Paris or Milan trying to capture the mood of the streets … and we all know how disastrous that is. Even more worrying is the fact that, by definition, most teenage designers will be without any training at all. Give or take a once in a lifetime chance, how many good designers is that likely to produce?

But even using the word good begs the question. What we consider good design at this point is trained in us by looking and wearing clothes designed in a certain matrix with which we are all familiar. And that can certainly change.

What does all this mean? The death of designer fashion as we know it (and maybe even as an entity at all, I think), as young women begin to view the way they dress exactly as young men have for the last twenty years, as something that owes a lot to groups – often ethnic groups – and rarely influenced by the catwalk. In fact, the opposite. Knitted beanies and jeans hanging off the butt were copied from the runways, not conceived on them, after all. Urban clans, already strong among young men across the globe, are being joined by girl gangs. They're by no means all aggressive or anti social, but in both cases how the group dresses is as esoteric and crucial as the way women followed the daily fashion changes at Versailles. And for the same reason. The obsession with minutiae is a sign of the disengaged mind.

So what of the young professional woman? Where will she dress? Increasingly in the high street, and more cheaply, surely. Why spend a lot of money on status products when the real status is wearing a uniform that shows you belong?

So, in different clothes, the punk parade of conformity will continue until the arbiters of taste are so young they aren't even able to articulate their opinions. Now that's democracy for you – or the horror of the Brave New World.

The CFDA and the Bloggers: Why?

2010-03-16T00:27:00.001-07:00

We all know that fashion is changing at an unprecedented pace. I don't mean fashion styles but fashion as an entity. Since Worth opened his salon in Paris 1858 and effectively created the modern dress designer, the mechanics and even the aesthetics of fashion - design, presentation and also clients - have changed little from his original concept. Throughout the twentieth century, clothes remained remarkably static. Hemlines rose or fell; some of the underpinnings loosened up; nylons, hairspray and synthetics made things easier and cheaper; but the only major change was that women began to wear trousers, not as a protest or as fancy dress but as a permanent and acceptable way of dressing. And that's about it, really.

But the secret snake was at work in the garden, ready to destroy it all, just biding its time … and gently hissing 'the world belongs to youth.' It was able to be ignored for a very long time because, although youth's power grew with every generation, it didn't become truly empowered as a fashion force until it began to have its own money. That changed everything. The age of fashion consent – or at least, understanding – began to slide dangerously low. And it has continued to do so until we have come to our present state: the reign of the know-nothings, where front rows at fashion shows are crammed with stars and celebs who are rarely over thirty and, if they are bloggers, are welcomed as young as thirteen. Is it a self-inflicted wound on the fashion body or merely an acknowledgement of the inevitable?

Let's look at some facts (as pointed out by the comment on a previous blog that in many ways prompted this post). The CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) has included two young bloggers in its invited list of judges (I've been one for years) who annually select the best designers in various categories of the U.S. fashion business. No prizes for guessing. Tavi and Bryanboy are both up there with the cream of the industry who have in the past been chosen with great care as people with expertise in the field, people whose judgement is trusted as being based on wide-ranging experience of the fashion world. People who know.

Doesn't matter any more. What counts now is who sells clothes and to whom. And that is all that fashion blogging and Twitter are for, as far as the fashion – and especially designer – business is about: capturing a new and ever younger market. Of course nobody at the CFDA respects or cares about the opinions of the likes of Tavi and Bryanboy. The designers who have crammed their front rows with footballers, movie stars and TV stars don't care either. All that fashion cares about now is enthusiasm and that can be as uninformed as you like. Everybody in fashion knows is that it is enthusiasm and excitement, not knowledge, that sells clothes. At least for a time. And that is why the very young are so important now.

One of the saddest aspects for me of all of this is a professional one. I worry about all those still-young fashion editors who started this movement and think they know the story but who are, in fact, already too old to feel the pulse at first hand. They are already obsolescent, no longer able to keep up with currents being driven by fifteen-year-olds. They will be old beyond their time and will probably have to end up selling jeans to ten-year-olds in order to scratch a living as they watch that coveted front-row seat being handed over to their younger sisters. Even Charles Worth knew that fashion was a tough world.

www.colinmcdowell.com
www.assarahseesit.blogspot.com

John Galliano: New Chair of Fashion Fringe

2010-03-14T00:57:00.001-08:00

Today is a very exciting day for me as founder and creative director of Fashion Fringe @ Covent Garden – it's the day we announce our chair for the next two years. Following on from Tom Ford and Donatella Versace, we have John Galliano, who I know will build on the foundations they laid and help us take Fashion Fringe to a new, more extreme and daring level.

Anyone who knows anything about fashion knows what an honour it is to have John once more involved with London fashion, not just for FF@CG but also for London as a crucible for exciting and even iconoclastic fashion revolution – a role that has been largely lost sight of since the time when John worked here. That is why I am so happy that the man who I believe is the only fashion genius of our time has agreed to give back something to the city that enabled him to nurture his extraordinary talent. What he will offer us all is inspiration and guidance towards the sort of totally unique extreme daring and originality that his runaway always has, the sort of excitement that makes the whole world sit up and take notice, just as he has done ever since his graduate collection which said so clearly that a new force had arrived in world fashion.

Daring, boldness and strength are what make fashion leaders. Self belief, too. But we must be sure of what we are expecting from John's influence and example. And what we are not. It is as easy to grab attention and cause excitement in fashion as it is in any other creative field. But that is not enough by itself. Nobody needs crazy things that merely amuse for a minute or two. Whoever gets to be one of the four finalists will have to prove to John – who is the sole final judge – that thy are not only about fantasy. Good clothes, no matter how extreme they appear, must have a focus and a practical purpose. And that is to excite women to want to buy into the designer's aesthetic. Even if few things on the runway seem able to be worn under normal circumstances, the winner will have behind them an understanding of how to turn them into real clothes for real women. Anything else is merely a self-indulgent waste of time. What John will look for is not mindless craziness. That is too easy and totally pointless. He – and Fashion Fringe @ Covent Garden – will want to see a strong aesthetic that comes from a belief in fashion as a discipline as strongly creative and original as any other artistic endeavour … one that will help redraw the fashion map, just as John always does.

So, if you are thinking of applying, remember that it is self-belief and self-discipline that create the revolutionary. As Diaghilev said, "Astound me." It's not an easy call, but the watchwords are extreme boldness, experimentation and inspiration, tempered by a belief in the possibility of true personal originality.

Will we find another genius? Only you can determine that, but John and I are hoping so.

Alexander McQueen: A Month On, the Future of the Label

2010-03-11T14:30:00.001-08:00

It is exactly one month ago today since the news of Alexander McQueen's death. In that time there have been outpourings of grief and much speculation about the future of the McQueen label. The Gucci group have issued a statement saying that the label will continue but, not surprisingly at this stage, have given no details. These are perilous days for the future of Alexander McQueen's label.

The major problem is what could be called the Margaret Thatcher–Tony Blair fall-out factor. It is a quirk of history that powerful figures almost always leave a strong after-wave when they are no longer in power … or even alive. It is the old principle that small trees cannot thrive in the shade of big ones. After any strong character falls, there is confusion while weaker ones vie for the leader's crown. In the case of a politician we end up with an interregnum until a party regroups and finds itself a new leader. But creativity isn't like politics. Whereas policies are always able to change, the creative zeitgeist of a designer label is the sprit of one man or woman, and it is very hard to change it.

We all remember how hard McQueen found it at Givenchy – he left rather than remain in an artistically alien role. The same awkwardness is now hovering over his own label. Gucci want it to continue, presumably with McQueen's team. But a team without a leader can never retain the spirit of the original. So, does Gucci find a young talent to take McQueen's place? Perhaps the question should be, what young designer would take on such a poisoned chalice that will almost certainly end in failure? It is hard enough to take on a long-dead fashion name, but one whose memory is so vivid seems impossible. Who would want to be compared with Alexander McQueen, knowing that he or she will always be found lacking?

I can think of only one possible name. Gareth Pugh alone has the right spirit and aesthetic to give it a try. But why should he take the risk?

Lakme Fashion Week, Mumbai: Generation Next, and a Way Ahead

2010-03-08T23:43:00.001-08:00

Generation Next: Sabah Khan

Indian fashion has always been at a disadvantage because it doesn't have a winter season, or so several journalists to whom I've been talking suggest. I don't know if they are right but, if they are, then it was a sharp move for Mumbai fashion week to rebrand itself as a resort event. There's no end to the number of little dresses, kaftans, ponchos and pants that can come down the catwalk under that title. And no need to tailor anything at all if you don't want to. So, with that one word – Resort – Mumbai stops fighting for a place with the major Western capitals (at least for the time being) and pitches for sales on a much more level ground.

By competing not with Paris and Milan but with Miami, Rio, Sydney and other fashion weeks favoured with almost perpetual sunshine, Indian designers can begin to show the West what they have to offer. During this week I have already seen cruise clothes that would perfectly fit the West's need to push away the midwinter blues. But there is still a lot of traditional fashion, and not only the sari but also the sort of elegant sophistication in evening wear that can come from it. I try to imagine some of these jewel-encrusted items on backs in the West and, fabulous as they are, I can't. Nor can I see fifties' resort shapes that rely entirely on colour being worn at the beach instead of the tried-and-tested Pucci formula.

It seems to me that the way for Indian fashion to go is the Generation Next route, but even then I think that fresh young(ish) talents should be … well, fresh; and for that one has to look at the art colleges. What I am saying is that India has a long and exciting visual history and it isn't evident enough on the runways of Mumbai. And it should be, and I am sure it could be. Young designers have to be carefully chosen and then given very specific nurturing and mentoring. I started this in the West when I set up Fashion Fringe @ Covent Garden which is an initiative to find good young London-based designers. Step one is finding the talent, but more crucial is step two: to build these strong young talents into real businesses that can be supported as they grow. Now, mentoring and sustaining talents has become part of the young fashion scene in London and the British Fashion Council and other independent bodies have found considerable amounts of money to do so.

There is very much more money in Indian fashion manufacturing than in the UK, so I see no reason why a similar approach tapping this vast wealth would not work here. With a fashion world focused on the West and with world fashion currently totally dominated by huge conglomerates and mega brands it seems to me that the best hope for keeping Indian fashion alive and moving is by helping good talent to get a foot on the ladder and then start climbing. And that means organisational and financial support.

Frankly, fashion weeks are useful profile raisers but they are only part of a complex mix of support and development required to build a national fashion industry, much of which often brings little or no immediate return on investment. It's about having faith not only in the future of designers but also in one's country, surely.
Generation Next: Vipin Batra
Generation Next: Sukhwant & Aastha
Generation Next: Sougat Paul

Lakme Fashion Week, Mumbai: Little Shilpa, Lecoanet Hemant

2010-03-07T23:41:00.000-08:00

Little Shilpa

Little Shilpa is not a name that would get you very far as a designer in the West, you might think, but here this physically tiny designer (hence the name) has a cult following. Ostensibly a milliner (she trained with Philip Treacy), her skills stretch much further. She creates jewellery and accessories but she should really be concentrating on sculpted and architectural works. Her show of brightly coloured perspex headpieces based on bikers' helmets and native American headdress was exhilarating but, in fashion terms, pure fantasy. The accompanying jewellery was predictable. There seems to me to be valuable talent in the wrong bed here. Her work should be in galleries, not on catwalks. Such a waste.

Another label showing here with a Western connection is Lecoanet Hemant, a half-French, half-Indian duo who have moved to India after many seasons of showing in Paris. Their clothes are traditional but not in an Indian sense. Just not what is currently seen as fashion in the West. But their handwriting is strong and their techniques show their background. I wasn't at all surprised to learn that they have factories spread across Asia. They balance the luxe of Paris with the richness of India to make clothes in which wealthy, worldly Indian women – and there are a lot – feel at ease. Their design approach goes some way towards resolving the eternal conundrum for women across India (and the millions across the globe) who want the dreamable to be wearable as well.

At the end of the second day of Indian fashion week, there are questions. Foremost is how far can Indian designers go? Is it worth the risk of weakening – and probably eventually destroying – a vibrant, ages-old culture of dress merely to jump on the roundabout of international fashion? Is it possible to keep the essence of that culture and still create clothes with an international appeal? Should ethnic be seen as a synonym for obsolescent? Only India can decide that. But, on the evidence I have so far seen, if the designers showing in Mumbai are hoping to break into the bigger pond they have to be much better prepared than they are now. A designer label comes with certain expectations, pre-eminently that the designer has his or her own point of view independent of what others are doing and wishes to present it at the highest level possible. He or she must ensure that fabrics are good quality and the manufacture is to a high standard. I have seen far too many very cheap fabrics on the runways here – the quality that students buy in Berwick Street – and more uneven, badly sewn hemlines than would be acceptable in a woman's sewing group in a sheltered accommodation home.

The taste level is a much more problematical question, linked inextricably to mental and cultural attitudes. Here in India, I feel it might reduce to a straightforward clash between the social and the cerebral. I don't think any outsider has the right to comment on that except when the designer is working in an ostensibly Western framework. But standards of quality are universal and must be addressed by all who are interested in making an international mark for themselves. I just have the feeling that there are few designers in the gentle middle-class world of Mumbai fashionable life who are really interested in the fashion world beyond. And why should they be? They are making money in a rapidly growing internal market that they understand. Why risk stepping out of their own limelight into unlit territory where the only certain thing is the level of competition?

Lecoanet Hemant

Anupamaa

Shrivan Narresh

Lakme Fashion Week, Mumbai: Sabyasachi

2010-03-07T07:03:00.000-08:00

Sabyasachi is not a designer well known in Europe or America, and yet his was far and away the best and most coherent design statement of day one here in Mumbai. It was entirely individual and even understated compared to all the colourful exuberance of the rest of the day; it was wintry in feel and it included some jackets. So, we can say that he is facing West. And so is his aesthetic. As I watched this beautifully judged collection unfold I was taken back to the early work of Dies van Noten, Romeo Gigli and even Bill Gibb and early Laura Ashley. It was soft, gentle and understated. It was about dressing women so that it is not the dress but the person that makes the statement. It had a pleasantly nostalgic feel whilst being totally of today.

Small floral prints, rich combinations of pattern, subdued colour, a narrow silhouette: there was a real aesthetic at work here, and it was based on the possibility of real women wearing real clothes for real lives. You won't find the blockbuster show-stopper on the runway of Sabyasachi. What you will find is a wardrobe for an attitude of mind and a way of life.

And this designer scores because he has learned that hardest of all four-letter words for a designer to learn. It begins with an e and ends with a t. Editing a collection is second in importance only to designing it, in my opinion, and yet very few designers realise that on a runway less is always more. The shorter and sharper the statement, the greater its impact. That is why Sabyasachi's runway presented such a clear and concise statement of his thinking and had those who know about fashion, rather than blingy dresses, all saying, 'Yes. That was it.'

Sabyasachi's aesthetic appeals to the individual because it has the confidence of a creator who has, at the risk of sounding pretentious, a design philosophy – a very different thing from just sending a few commercial looks down your catwalk. This designer deserves a wide audience.

Lakme Fashion Week, Mumbai

2010-03-06T10:15:00.001-08:00

A lot can happen in fashion in four years. That's how long it is since I was last at Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai. And there have been big changes, including a growth in confidence, efficiency and organisation, paralleled by a big step forward in design terms. Although by no means turning their backs on their heritage – why would they when it goes back very much further than most western ones? – the designers here have taken on board the need to satisfy a growing need for westernisation of their creativity, as much for the modern young Indian customer as for the rest of the world. But they haven't lost their colour sense, I am pleased to say, whether subtle or bold. Although, rather sadly, I saw a lot of sophisticated, wealthy Indian women in a smart restaurant last night and what was the prevailing colour for those wearing western fashion (the majority)? Yes, black.

But this is still a fledgling industry and there is a way to go before India can take its place as a world fashion hub, although I have no doubt that it will. Meantime, I have already seen on day one talents that at many times could hold their own with those of the West in the area of floaty beautifully coloured dresses that would look right any where around the Mediterranean or even at an English garden party, depending on how exhuberant you want to be. At times, as in the West, it is weighed down with the sort of embroidery that Josephine (of Naploeon and Josephine) would have loved but, by and large, colour and pattern save the day.

In a country where winter is a few chilly weeks in Delhi, there is no real tradition of winter clothing here, which means that tailoring heavy fabrics is not yet an Indian strength. Here the tradition is for draped fabric. So the cutting and make of a lot on the runways is not strong … but that does not mean universally, by any means.

The wedding is the great event in India that makes many designers very rich. The wedding season, from September to March, is worth $12 million, which is not surprising when you think that on one day recently there were 30,000 in Delhi alone. And when you remember that these are five-day affairs where all the family and principle guests (600 to 1,000 for a society affair) dress up differently every day, that is a lot of dresses. Then add Bollywood and this is beginning to look like a serious business. And it is. Not just for clothes either. At the label Rocky S the finale consisted of a ruby and diamond necklace that would have had Elizabeth Taylor gnashing her teeth in envy. It almost upstaged the clothes.

Sabyasachi

Shyamal & Bhumika

Krishna Mehta

Vizyon

As Sarah Sees It

2010-03-06T02:34:00.000-08:00

As anyone who has been reading my blog since I started last September has probably guessed, I like to tell things as I see them. Not the same as how they actually are, of course, but I like to express my opinion as clearly and directly as possible. But there are areas of fashion that I have few opinions on, even though they are a vital part of the Planet Fashion mix.

So, I have asked a colleague whose opinion I trust and respect and whose writing I always enjoy reading to create a blog a couple of times a week to complement mine. She will be talking about high street style, beauty and who knows what. I've left the details up to her.

So do have a look at As Sarah Sees It, which you can access from the main web site. I know you will enjoy her intelligent, fresh take on things. She'll be a worthy addition to your blog roll.

Milan Fashion Week: Anna Wintour is Right

2010-03-02T23:23:00.001-08:00

Is the fashion world imploding or does it just seem that way?

Milan is over and it would seem that designers put a lot more effort into worrying about Anna Wintour's squeeze – trying to reduce the days that Milan has to show – than into the rather more creative business of designing clothes. Everyone is sore at being told that Italian fashion doesn't merit the space it did in its glory days, but they are missing another point.

Simply, Milan costs too much money for magazines and newspapers to spend too much time in. The limos that are essential in a city where every major designer insists on showing in the label's own HQ, usually long distances apart, cost thousands of euros. And, as every traveller knows, the taxi situation in this city is even worse than it is in Paris. So, Wintour is right. Better to have two days featuring the labels with an international reputation than to end up with no days at all because everything is too spread out and too much money goes on simply existing.

Of course, if the designers cut their advertising budgets – clearly a less and less effective means of getting the story out there – they could easily afford to subsidise the limos, hotels etc that London pays for to keep foreign buyers coming. That would bring the costs down and maybe keep the coverage up.

Not exactly rocket science.

London Fashion Week: A Wish List

2010-03-01T00:13:00.001-08:00

One more visit to London Fashion Week, and then I'm done.

For far too many runways, it was the same deadly story this season as last. Is there some central pool of ideas that is feeding the 'creativity' of our young designers? I can think of no other reason for the similarity of what we saw over and over again – or so it seemed.

Here's my list of things I hope not to see again for some time and certainly not next season (do feel free to make any contributions of your own):

• Pleats and peplums sprouting everywhere.

• Mindless draping. We are not talking of the sublimities of Madame Grès here but the cop-out of people who do not know enough about either dressmaking or tailoring and who believe that wrapping one bolt of fabric around another and roughly tacking it can be called an evening dress.

• Endless minis. As Mary Quant, cleverer in every sense than any young designer in London today, realised: they are as easy as falling off a log and always sell, but it takes more than that to make them into a fashion statement.

• Inserts of fabric – especially stiff shiny ones.

• Leather-capped shoulders.

• Short flirty skirts with little kick pleats.

• Panels and half garments.

• Coiled and twisted ribbons of leather, satin, wool… or anything else the desperate designer could lay hands on.

• Shapeless furs – or any furs at all, really, in these enlightened days.

Enough already. The fashion world is not a kindergarten. Let's try to remember that next season.

London Fashion Week – Burberry

2010-03-01T00:07:00.000-08:00

Last season, the first in which Burberry showed its collection in London, was a publicity triumph for the company even if it left buyers puzzled as to how they could actually sell much that came down the runway. This season, there was no such question.

This was a totally bankable collection in which everything appealed. Christopher Bailey gave us a statement of good, solid looks that women across the world will be buying eagerly. Everything was classic English, and the tailored coats and jackets were not only beautifully cut in rich materials but flatteringly familiar. We had retreated from the avant garde and, appropriately enough for this label, revisited tradition – army and navy tradition, with fine wools in khaki and navy and enough shiny brass buttons to keep both the Duke of Wellington and Lord Nelson happy. It was all refined and perfectly proportioned clothing with an impeccable English accent. No wonder the buyers had smiles on their faces.

(I couldn't help noticing that Anna Wintour in an interview at the show kept referring to the label as 'Burberries', which seemed odd, given that its correct name was everywhere; then again, I'm guilty of having spelled Hakaan's name wrongly in a previous blog - thanks to relying on a BFC handout, I hasten to add, rather than checking myself – so it's clear that nobody's perfect.)

All Burberry photos © Jason Lloyd-Evans

London vs Milan

2010-02-28T23:42:00.001-08:00

Computer troubles have made me fall behind on London and now Milan is almost over….

I will say a little more about LFW now that I have read what other journalists have said but, before I do, I expect that you, like me, have been following the Italian shows. And I wonder if your views are the same as mine?

I have always believed that planet fashion is truly international, and that no area of it is deserving of special treatment or extra kindness just because we happen to live in the same country as the designers. In Britain, we are always told that Milan fashion is good because designers have a great deal of money to help them get the effects they want. In contrast, of course, poor little London …

It is rubbish, of course. Creativity never relies on money. All money can do is make things happen quicker, not better. We are in a global market and if our designers can't cut it, then we ultimately do them and London as a design centre a great disservice. Reading some of the London reports and blogs by people who are very familiar with the quality of Milan and Paris takes my breath away at the double standards they use. They praise designers in London who they wouldn't even mention in Milan if they were showing there. They seem to think they are helping London in having such a blatant double standard, but the fashion world is tough and can only be fooled for a very short time. By writing hyping copy about designers who have nothing to offer apart from the fact that they are based in London, such 'experts' do nothing but harm.

The level of creativity in Milan is higher than in London, just as creativity in Paris is higher than it is in Milan. These are facts that cannot be denied, although with less Anglo-Saxon hubris, they could perhaps some day be changed.

London Fashion Week: Erdem, Marios Schwab, Christopher Kane

2010-02-24T23:38:00.001-08:00

Back to back events, well-organised sites and shows reasonably on time. What wasn't to like about London Fashion Week?

Well, there was the little matter of the shows and their quality.

For example, we saw a show in which the shoes were virtually unwearable and made most of the models walk like cripples with their knees bent like Mediterranean water carriers in the nineteenth century. How soignee is that? Actually, the show was worrying for other reasons too. I don't know the rules of design plagiarism if colours are changed, but there were at least three straight copies of another designer's work in it. Surely we can expect more from a designer showing under the aegis of the BFC?

There was quite a lot of dross on show every day, which is to be expected with a schedule so crowded with young, relatively inexperienced talent. But, apart from Richard Nicoll, there were only three shows that held the interest for a while. In order of success, they were Erdem, Marios Schwab and Christopher Kane. None was perfect, but then again none was a total disaster. Erdem did what he does best and showed some beautiful colours, including a gracious golden-yellow and brown combination that I would think has not been seen for many, many years. Marios Schwab's message was rather confused – some hints of traditional Austrian dress fighting some seventies' Manhattan sculpted effects and a serious crystal overload for evening – and Christopher Kane revisited old Dolce & Gabbana territory with leather embroidered with gaudy Alpine flowers and a lot of lace. His mini kilts were chic and sexy and his leather with crystal and silver embroidery made basic shapes both interesting and sophisticated. Both looks, I am sure, will be best sellers.

And that is fine: even young designers have to eat. But I do think that London fashion is so banal at the moment because the favoured ones are thinking more of sales than pushing forward with some new ideas. There seems little point in producing Oxford Street clothes and calling them designer. We need more rigour than that if we are to survive the hubris that seems to be swallowing London yet again.

But there were genuine fashion moments. At one especially dire show, as the first Gothic horror came down the runway a small child began to wail in distress. It required all one's discipline not to join in.

Erdem: photos © Jason Lloyd-Evans

Christopher Kane: photos © Jason Lloyd-Evans

Richard Nicoll: Photo © Jason Lloyd-Evans

Marios Schwab: photos © Jason Lloyd-Evans

London Fashion Week - Day 2: Margaret Howell, Betty Jackson, Richard Nicholl, Matthew Williams

2010-02-21T23:48:00.000-08:00

A day when some designers did what they usually do whilst others gave us something new.

In every designer's career, there is a horizontal line, honed over the years, and it is the lifeline of his label's style. As it becomes trusted by customers, they buy into a vision and aesthetic that they wish to be part of. They expect consistency – that is what the horizontal line is about – but they also expect originality. A mature designer understands this and develops a handwriting that is instantly recognisable as his or her own, while avoiding the sterility of boring repetition. It sounds easy but it is fraught with dangers, especially for young designers eager to test their sensibilities on various levels. But even for designers of experience, there are seasonal variations: a collection shoots up above the line and sometimes it drops below. Occasionally, a designer tries to redraw the line completely, which is the most dangerous thing of all.

Yesterday, we saw examples of the line continuing in the work of Margaret Howell who, in the colours of a February morning in the country, presented a collection so on target that every item was classic Howell. Topcoats – some three-quarter length – and raincoats fit for Garbo and her country equivalent today; 'shrug on and forget' traditional knitwear and high-waisted skirts were all spot on line.

Betty Jackson was also on line and, like Howell, gave women a real wardrobe instead of the endless flimsy little dresses that less experienced designers seem to think is a fashion collection. She solved the country–town conundrum by answering the question 'What does a city-slicker fashion woman wear when she goes to the country?' Answer: virtually anything in this strong line-up, except the gold satin evening wear that somehow looked both dour and dowdy.

Richard Nicoll soared triumphantly above his consistently strong horizontal line honed into a line of beauty over the last few seasons. Understated, confident and so chic (not a word one can use that often when describing London fashion), this was a collection of perfectly realised silhouettes, colours and detail - all of them minimal. Relaxed and young, but highly sophisticated, its draped and tied insouciance - which almost looked impromptu - proved that Nicoll has the ability and refinement to become a major player in the international fashion field. This was the show of the day, without a doubt.

By contrast, Matthew Williamson decided on the risky path of changing the horizontal line that his customers have loved for the last 10 years. And he almost brought it off. Although this collection dipped a little below his line at times, it showed enough strength to suggest that, if he continues his new way of thinking, he will achieve his goal of moving forward while taking his customer with him. Tweed coats (yes, tweeds!); peachy pink suede, capes in large layers, a definite commitment to fur; studs and shine: it was in essence Matthew, but with a new eye, one that should produce some interesting things in the future and attract new customers once it has settled down and re-established the essential line once more.

London Fashion Week - Day 2: Carine Roitfeld, an Elegant Visitor

2010-02-20T23:38:00.000-08:00

Is there anything more restorative on a Saturday morning after a rather too hard night of partying than a bacon and egg sarnie? And I don't mean in a Smallbone or Philippe Starck kitchen. No good at all. I mean a greasy spoon. There's a great one just round the corner from where I live in London. I use it rarely as I am normally out of town at weekends but this morning, being here for London Fashion week, I popped in. What I love about London was all there: overwhelming smell of bacon and sausage cooking, all the red tops and a great mixture of people. The two scaffolders reading the back page of The Sun are standard, so is the guy checking out the form on the racing page but what makes Soho so great is the unexpected. This morning, two very thin and earnest guys discussing the influence of Ezra Pound on T S Eliot's verse. Love it all.

Carine Roitfeld,the charismatic editor of French Vogue, is in London to attend a few very carefully selected shows. I am a great fan. Neither pretty nor beautiful, instead – and much more interestingly – she is a classic French jolie laide with immense personal style. And that is worth much more than beauty every time, in my opinion. Androgynously thin, eyes like smudges of cigarette ash, dead-straight hair and always a-teeter on vertigenously high heels, she is an original - and one who, unlike any other Vogue editor, inspires not only designers but a multitude of copies - in her own country.

Because another thing I love about this uber stylish lady is that she is entirely French … no, full-throttle Parisienne. As elegantly removed from the confusion of a fashion week as a borzoi in the Bois De Boulogne photogrpahed by Lartigue. And, of course, she smokes. Ticks all the boxes. She is a modern Marchesa Casati, a legendary fashion figure from the beginning of the last century, who enslaved men wherever she went.

I love both of these women for their unique style that comes perfectly naturally from a mind-set that is the result of a philosophy of life. They tower above all others. Carine Roitfeld should, by rights, not be allowed in London during LFW: she makes all our fashion journalists look as if they are just about to bring the cows into the milking parlour! But I am thrilled she is here.

Photo from Evolvestyle

London Fashion Week – Day 1: Aminaka Wilmont, Jena-Theo, Braganza, Hakan

2010-02-20T00:58:00.001-08:00

London Fashion Week, in Somerset House, its resplendent new home … Sun shining, self satisfaction floating like a miasma over all. How lovely to be us! A minute's silence in remembrance of Alexander McQueen, called for by BFC chair, Sir Harold Tilman. Wall of condolence set up in the main entry to the shows, awash with maudlin comments that would have made McQueen's lip curl with disdain. He was, after all, a man who had turned his back on LFW and refused all blandishments to get him to return and show here. Unless he latterly changed his mind, he had a deep and frequently expressed contempt for the BFC and was an unredeemed refusenik.

Libertylondongirl, the famous New-York-based English blogger whose identity was revealed this week in Grazia was busy trying to find something to say but, as it was only the first day, found not very much. However, I'm sure this intrepid lady will find plenty with which to regale us all as the week progresses.

An international set of designers to start the week off and show how marvellously eclectic London fashion now is. Aminaka Wilmont is a Scandinavian partnership - he is Danish, she is half-Swedish, half-Japanese - and their seafaring heritage came to the fore in colours and prints inspired by the sea as well as details of great subtlety, translating the flotsam and jetsam of the seashore into draped and wrapped effects and strong knits and leather. It needs to be seen close-up to reveal all the thought that is in it.

Jena-Theo (she's a Brit and he is Greek) moved forward the concepts that won them the FF@CG prize last September. Voluminous proportions moved dramatically with the model's body and the prints and knits were good.

Jean-Piere Braganza (brought up in Canada) was all sharp geometric edges and Bauhaus-inspired cutting and layering. The result was chic but rather mannered. Angular cuts layered across the body look strong on the catwalk but I did wonder how they would look after being worn for a three-hour dinner. But this was a sleek, confident collection that would appeal to a ditto woman.

Hakan, from Turkey, was all about cut. Think Roland Mouret and Victoria Beckham and you get the idea. Commercial. Commercial. Commercial. Very expensively made, it was about statement clothes for women who could live up to the money of what they had on their backs. A much more international than British aesthetic, and ultimately probably too smooth for native British women. Whoever makes his clothes is worth his weight in gold, however.

Quote of the day: a stout supporter of the chairman, commenting on the weather: 'Oh, Harold always makes the sun shine!' Nobody laughed.

London Fashion Week – Celebrating Joan Burstein

2010-02-18T23:20:00.001-08:00

London Fashion Week starts today, a good time to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Browns, a long-term destination for fashion followers who can't wait to get to South Molton Street at the beginning of each season to see who and what it is stocking. For years, this small elegant shop has been accepted as that reliable a barometer to what is currently good in fashion. And it all emanates from Joan Burstein, who co-founded the store with her husband Sydney all those years ago and has never looked back. More importantly, she has never made a mistake. That is why, when I worked with foreign buyers in Italy back in the late seventies the first thing they asked - no matter where in the world they were from, was, 'Has Mrs Burstein been in? Is she buying?' and their response to the collection on display was an exact replica of my answers. That is power. Forget all the cliches about Joan Burstein being fashion royalty – what an insult to compare a woman who has worked hard and consistently at perfecting her trade to someone whose position is an accident of birth, bestowed for who, not what you are. And just remember that there has never been such a powerful figure in British fashion as Joan Burstein.

So, another tough bitch fashion maven? Hardly. Just an impeccable nose for talent, be it to employ (Manolo Blahnik sold jeans for her; Richard James had a Saturday job at Browns and Paul Smith sold menswear there) or to promote. Mrs B, as she is affectionately known, brought Georgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Sonia Rykiel to London. She spotted Hussein Chalayan's quality before anybody else and became a fashion legend when she not only bought John Galliano's graduate collection but also had the courage to give it the full window treatment even though he was entirely unknown. Kenzo, Jean Muir, Missoni, Dries van Noten - the list is long and continues to grow today.

But the most marvellous thing about this all-powerful lady is that she is so un-fashion. Softly spoken, glamorous, and beyond gracious, you would expect to find her dispensing tea surrounded by King Charles spaniels in a perfectly proportioned Georgian gem in one of the elegant shires, surrounded by beautiful impeccably mannered grandchildren. Instead, at 83, she is up with the lark like an eager little bird, foraging (discretely) for the latest thing, carrying on her trade quietly and with the greatest aplomb, as she always has. The Missus, as her devoted staff used to call he, is never flustered, doesn't shout, has the punctuality of kings and would never ever say something to damage a career, even if she disliked the aesthetic of a designer. In short, one of a dying breed: a lady.

That is why Joan Burstein is as loved as she is respected. If ever a woman deserved to be made a Dame it is Joan Burstein, not for being a hugely successful shopkeeper, not even for wearing her fashion knowledge so lightly but for being a positive force for good that has enabled London to hold high its head as a fashion retail centre for over forty years.

New York Fashion Week - Why Bother?

2010-02-18T08:29:00.000-08:00

New York fashion week was clearly not a vintage one, with banality being the order of the day. No great surprise there, I must say. It has been a long time since we looked to New York designers for originality, wit or even very much involvement with the concepts of good design. Certainly not for at least five years. As the great names have changed or grown old, New York has stopped being a place where new ideas are generated. There is no current equivalent of Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein (the designer, not the label) or the young Donna Karan. There is Marc Jacobs, of course, but he is so volatile that we get no coherent statement, each season being a new and often desperate-seeming attempt to catch the mood for quick sales. He is a sort of paradigm for a nation with the shortest attention span in world fashion, coupled with an almost pathological longing for the look already known - and only (slightly) different. Current US fashion is as sterile as the fashion magazines that I saw on the news-stands in New York two weeks ago - not nearly as juicy with ads as they were, of course, and about as engaging of the imagination as a handout from a pizza parlour.

Why has this happened to a fashion country that was once so exciting?

In a word, greed. This is a vast and lucrative market - why do you think London fashion is destroying itself trying to break into it? - and it devours fashion in huge quantities. But, because of the sheer numbers involved in its retail structure, it can afford to take very few risks, so, more than any other market in the world, it must dumb down, just as all American mass culture must. And, as we all know, mass means crass. If you set out to be all things to all men (or women) you end up with a sort of porridge that appeals to no discerning palette.

That is why 7th Avenue is a sinful place. The home of the US rag trade is dominated by the dream of the quick buck at any cost and its aesthetic has insidiously permeated designer level clothing over the last ten years. The result is that designers there are hailed not for being good but for no other reason than being the new kids on the block, no matter how banal and boring they may be. Old designers plod on, weakening their message with each season in the race to keep up with the second rate. It is a corrosive situation which could well spread and I find it alarming that such infantile attitudes have such sway across the fashion world.

All of which makes me ask why, in these financially strapped days, journalists keep New York on the schedule of international venues. Frankly, on current performance it really doesn't deserve any attention at all.

Designers' Nest, Copenhagen Fashion Week– winners and runners-up

2010-02-16T23:17:00.001-08:00

Jan Busch Carlsen is a visionary entrepreneur who has set up a competition specifically to provide a showcase for young Scandinavian fashion students, enabling them to show in Copenhagen as part of its fashion week. And as long ago as 2001. Each season, around thirty of them from art schools in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland come together to show on the runway three garments each from a selection of their work - and wait to be judged (and see if they win the 50,000 kroner prize).

For the second time, I was a member of a panel of international judges and I found the experience refreshing. After seeing the work of twenty eight candidates, we finally chose as the winner a menswear collection by Mille Marie Jensen of Designskolen Kolding, Denmark, for its sublety and attention to detail, and two runners up: a children's wear collection by Kaia Folkvord Rugsveen, from Esmod, Oslo, for its exciting shapes and brilliant colours; and one womenswear collection by Anne Birkjaer Bitsch, a student from TEKO Centre, Denmark, who showed a strong sense of volume, shape and texture. You can see the pictures of their clothes here and decide what you think.

Anne Birkjaer Bitsch,TEKO Centre, Denmark

Kaia Folkvold Rugsveen, Esmod, Oslo

Mille Marie Jensen, Designskolen Kolding, Denmark

All photos © Copenhagen Fashion Week

Alexander McQueen's Death: Some Further Thoughts

2010-02-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

I was out of the country when the news of Alexander McQueen's death was made public so I had not read any press coverage of it (read my original response here). Arriving at Heathrow yesterday, I bought The Sunday Times and The Observer, both of which I had been told would carry a background story.

And so they did. The Observer, a newspaper that once employed writers of the calibre of AJP Taylor and commentators like Malcolm Muggeridge, had managed to drag up somebody who had once interviewed McQueen and had become a 'friend', and The Sunday Times had cobbled together a series of quotes from the same kind of 'friends', several of whom wished to preserve their anonymity. Neither piece said anything, really.

All of Alexander McQueen's real friends are so devastated by the shock that they are unable to talk to any newspaper, I am sure. How could it be otherwise? A suicide is a devastating thing because it makes those close to the person concerned feel complicit in the death, at least by default; the suicide of a young person is even more devastating because of the waste of a life, and the suicide of a talented creator with years of creativity ahead of him, in the natural order of things, is almost unbearably devastating for what we all lose – friends, acquaintances and strangers alike.

The facts of Alexander McQueen's life are simple. He was almost universally recognised as one of the great fashion creators of the last decade of the twentieth century, admired, if not always understood, by his peers of all ages and levels of fame. And yet, I feel a great disservice is being done to his memory by the sort of articles I have read. Alexander McQueen – or Lee, as it has quickly become obligatory to call him as a badge identifying how close one was to him (it was in fact only his real friends who ever called him that without self-consciousness) – was shy and even reclusive. He was never at ease in the limelight - one of the major contributing factors to his frequent gaucheries, which meant he said things in interviews that seemed harsher and cruder than he actually meant. Naively, perhaps,for somebody who was a world figure - and a revered one, at that - he wanted to remain anonymous and to enjoy a private life. 'Friends' commenting on him, his demons and his talent smell to me of doing nothing more than exploiting a tragic moment that has robbed us of a complex but boldly mold-breaking talent of extreme and unequivocal originality. Their vapid comments can be safely discounted.

Alexander McQueen was theatrical to the end and I have often felt that, had he come through a different educational system that would have provided the cultural basis he seemed to me to be desperately needing, he would surely have done something more creatively sustainable – and challenging – than designing clothes. Inside, there was a Diaghilev or even a Nijinsky trying to shock us into understanding his world – a world remarkably complete and entirely free of references to any other dress designer's work. Many said that, in order to fulfil his potential, he should be given a couture house and an unlimited budget. But for me he was too much of a Titan for that: working with clothes alone could never bring complete artistic fulfilment. I would certainly have given him the budget, but I would have added a theatre, a ballet troupe, an opera company and a team of athletes and then watched him soar to true greatness. I mourn the fact that, like Queen after Freddie Mercury's death, the Alexander McQueen label, whether or not it continues, can never be the same. The fire has gone, taking with it the excellence and leaving only the embers of the creative fireball that was Alexander McQueen.

Copenhagen Fashion Week shows: Ole Yde, Minimarket, Margit Brandt

2010-02-14T23:42:00.001-08:00

Ole Yde; photos: Copenhagen Fashion Week

My time at Copenhagen Fashion Week became a little confused towards the end and things unravelled enough for me to miss a few shows. The situation was not helped by the fact that some of the shows were scheduled for very late. Anyone ready to look at frocks after 11pm, folks? You know the answer. Unless it is a sure-fire winner on the level of Galliano, Prada or Ralph Lauren, who in his or her right mind wants to be leaving a show after midnight? And I gather that things were even later at least once in Copenhagen.

It isn't just that even the keenest fashionista suffers from frock fatigue at that sort of hour. It is also the fact that the show stops being a professional presentation for a professional audience and becomes a hyped-up party for friends, liggers and people there to enjoy the experience. And I can tell you, professionals are there for one reason only – to assess and enjoy the clothes. Thank God, we are rarely so sad as to make looking at a fashion show at a time of day when others are enjoying a civilised dinner part of our social life. And we always know that the organisation of a late-night show, with hundreds of gatecrashers, is a logistical nightmare that always overwhelms the organisers as seats are stolen, professional guests ignored and the total confusion of mixing party-goers with workers reigns. It always makes me think, 'These people are not ready yet for a grown-up commitment, so why give it?'

In contrast Ole Yde presented his collection in the ordered calm of the Georg Jensen flagship store at Amagertorv. It was the right setting for the luxurious clothes that were sent down the runway, featuring the 'Daisy' collection of Jensen jewellery based on Denmark's national flower and apparently a great favourite of HM Queen Margrethe. This was, like the show of the long-established company, Margit Brandt, very grown-up clothing. From the two poles of the fashion spectrum, they represented the extremes of Danish fashion: at one end, demi-couture, at the other clothes for every woman.

Lastly, in a week of so much unrelieved black I was delighted with Minimarket, a label not afraid to penetrate the gloom with strong flashes of colour. Reminiscent at times of Pierre Cardin and even Benetton in their heyday, the show was full of fun, although I was not convinced by the airhostess hats (postmodern wit, or merely a bad memory trip?) and found the African mask make up added nothing to the story. Just the opposite, in fact.

Minimarket; photos: Copenhagen Fashion Week

Margit Brandt; Photos: Copenhagen Fashion Week

Copenhagen Fashion Week shows: Noir, Munthe Plus Simonsen, Designers Remix Collection

2010-02-13T08:44:00.000-08:00

Noir: Photos Copenhagen Fashion Week

A beautiful blonde walking towards you in a blizzard. Every happy heterosexual male’s fantasy, surely. And certainly one that was amply fulfilled at the Munthe Plus Simonsen show on Thursday night at Copenhagen Fashion Week. It was a slick and highly professional presentation of wearable, sexy clothes in a subdued palette of grey, black and sand, with strong knits and sheepskins – not surprisingly, with the city deep in snow. It will have wide commercial appeal.

More complex in its references, Designers Remix Collection by Charlotte Eskildsen looked to the recent collections of Chanel, Valentino and Balmain – which makes the label’s name very appropriate. The mood was dark, even gothic. Feathers, frills, twisted ribbons – we had seen everything many times. But there is a talent here that could flourish and flower if only it can break away from the footsteps of Paris and walk boldly to its own creative rhythm.

There was the same sense of déjà vu at the most interesting of the evening’s shows, by Noir. Picking up on John Galliano’s obsession with underwear as outerwear that has been a recent feature of Dior couture, Noir went a stage further. He had the models appear in bra and pants and then proceed to dress each other, at a languorously erotic pace which, aided by a soundtrack of Nina Simone, had overtones of lesbianism, bordellos and even S&M. There was simmering sexuality in the air but the clothes were bound to be secondary in such a strong presentational statement. Appropriate to the name of the label, black was the colour du jour – or should I say nuit, as the collection consisted entirely of evening wear. A broader approach and a lot less referencing would help the clothes live up to the presentation possibly.

Designers Remix Collection: Photos Copenhagen Fashion Week

Munthe Plus Simonsen: Photos Copenhagen Fashion Week

Vulnerable Creativity: Alexander McQueen obituary and evaluation

2010-02-12T03:14:00.001-08:00

Just when the international fashion world is getting ready to present the autumn/winter 2010 shows (kicking off this weekend in New York), a dark shadow makes them a time of sadness rather than celebration.

Alexander McQueen’s suicide is a tragic reminder of the vulnerability and insecurity felt by all creative people and, over the last few years, hugely exaggerated for designers expected to produce more and more ideas, more and more collections, more and more public statements and appearances … They may appear to be gilded peacocks in a crystal world of privilege but, in fact, most designers are little more than desperate battery hens.

Lee McQueen was a highly talented man with a distinctive – and instinctive – creative approach. But he was as complex as he was clever. He glamorised women but he also victimised them. Few who saw them will forget the extraordinary shows he presented in London with the patronage of American Express in the nineties. He raised the bar for a dark theatricality that, if anything, became darker and more threatening to women when, under the aegis of Gucci, he continued to explore and exploit his demons – demons that seemed to intensify after the suicide in 2007 of his one-time muse, Isabella Blow. His was a strangely ambivalent creative sensibility: he seemed so often to hate the thing he so clearly loved. His romanticism (which produced some of the most beautiful clothes of the last 20 years) was always symbolically charred at its edges by an approach to beauty and women offensively brutal at times, as he presented them as predators and victims, hard and soft, human and insect.

Alexander McQueen cared passionately about his creativity. He banned me once for criticising a show and, although he allowed me back, I’m sure he never forgave. I think he always felt that my well-known championship of John Galliano made me put him in second place, and maybe it was so. They were similar in many ways. They shared a strong theatricality; they loved to shock (and delight); they both grew in stature once they were finally taken under the wing of, respectively, Gucci and LVMH. They were rivals for the hearts of fashionistas but I think future historians will bracket them closely together as fashion’s Michelangelo and Leonardo or Goya and Velazquez – but who will be which only time will tell.

Until then the fashion business, insanely predatory in its greed on all levels, should view the suicide of this sad young man as a cry for help from all designers as they burn themselves out in over-production and begin to hate and fear the thing they once so loved. There is a price that is too high to pay for even the most beautiful of creations and the healthiest of sales figures, as Lee McQueen’s shockingly untimely death has made clear to even the most bone-headed members of the fashion world.

www.colinmcdowell.com

Lee McQueen's Death – A Tragedy for Fashion

2010-02-11T07:55:00.000-08:00

I am en route to Copenhagen for their fashion week but I have just heard the tragic news about Lee McQueen and wanted to record a first reaction. It is a great personal tragedy, of course, and also a terrible blow for the whole fashion world, particularly in Britain. Lee McQueen was one of the few designers of true stature London has produced in the past few decades. I'll remember him more fully when I have a chance later …

Donatella, the Versace Family and an Unnecessary Book

2010-02-10T03:57:00.001-08:00

Photo courtesy www.catwalkqueen.tv

A cold and dull Milan morning yesterday was enlivened by interviewing Donatella Versace in the beautiful apartment in via Gesu where Gianni used to live and entertain. She was on great form and everything went without a hitch. Being an absolutely useless linguist, I am always amazed at how competent others are. Donatella was totally relaxed, even though she is in the last throes of preparing her new collection, due to be shown during Milan Fashion Week in two weeks' time. She is a rare thing in fashion – super high-glam yet totally down to earth and practical. She has just come to the end of her role as chair of Fashion Fringe @ Covent Garden to which she brought a sympathetic and understanding approach for all our finalists, even inviting them over to Milan to see her menswear show and then tour the ateliers – an experience they will never forget.

A new 'tell-all' book about the Versace family and the problems they have faced and overcome since Gianni's death has just been published. One has to ask, what on earth for? Despite the claim that it reveals 'the untold story', the facts are already common knowledge and this book adds nothing to them. The author is employed by The Wall Street Journal, although not as a fashion specialist, and I assume that is what persuaded the Versace organisation, which has refused many other overtures by publishers, to co-operate. I imagine they did so on the assumption that the esteem in which the newspaper is held would ensure a fair and even-handed account.

That's not what this book provides. Instead, it is slick, shallow journalism. Like most of the writing in The Wall Street Journal, it is dull; but, unlike the newspaper, it is also slipshod: contradictory statements appear even on the same page. This is hack work, I'm afraid, and as such I hope it will die very quickly, just as similar books on Calvin Klein and Yves Saint Laurent did.

All of which makes me a little sad and – not for the first time – more than a little ashamed of the more opportunistic members of my profession. I can't imagine anyone for whom fashion is important sticking with this book for more than 20 minutes.

Fashion Weeks: Christopher Bailey at Burberry Takes a Lead

2010-02-08T23:55:00.001-08:00

Further to what I wrote yesterday (read it here) about the way fashion weeks are changing, it was interesting to receive this press announcement from Burberry on exactly the same theme. Surely this is the way forward … The question is, will it change how we perceive and consume fashion?

"We are very excited to announce that we are hosting the first ever truly global fashion show. We will be simultaneously live streaming our show using 3D technology directly to New York, Paris, Dubai, Tokyo and LA. This unprecedented event will enable people to experience the energy and atmosphere of this show from around the world. 3D technology will bring our global audience into the London show space allowing them to see the colours and fabrics, to hear the music and to be a part of that moment when it all finally comes together."
Christopher Bailey, Chief Creative Officer

Burberry to live stream womenswear show globally in 3D
http://www.burberrybrand.com?p=t1JChtJk60CUX6p-gYMTKQ

Burberry is to live stream its upcoming Autumn Winter 2010/11 womenswear show in 3D to events in New York, Paris, Dubai, Tokyo and Los Angeles

The Autumn Winter 2010/11 womenswear show will take place at The Chelsea College of Art in London at 4PM on 23 February 2010, during London Fashion Week

The private 3D events will receive live stream from London to custom screening spaces designed by Burberry Chief Creative Officer, Christopher Bailey

Burberry will be partnering with broadcaster Sky television on production using its innovative 3D technology

Pre-show entertainment hosted from behind the scenes, backstage and red carpet in London

NEW YORK 3D live streaming event at Skylight studios

PARIS 3D live streaming event hosted with concept store, colette

DUBAI 3D live streaming event at The Address

TOKYO 3D live streaming to La Fabrique for ''Burberry Night''

LOS ANGELES* 3D streaming event hosted by Tina Brown, editor of The Daily Beast

Burberry is the first brand to broadcast live simultaneous events in 3D worldwide

Burberry will also live stream its show in 2D at live.burberry.com where viewers can watch and comment on the show in real time using their Facebook and Twitter accounts

Burberry, which is headquartered in London and a member of the FTSE100, was founded in 1856

* All events will be taking place simultaneously in real time, with the exception of the Los Angeles event which will have a delay due to time zone.

Fashion Weeks: The Balance Between Quality and Quantity

2010-02-08T05:35:00.001-08:00

Last week when I was in New York I read an interesting piece in The New York Times about Zac Posen (read it here). What struck me, particularly given Fashion Fringe's purpose 'to find, nurture and mentor new young designers', was the observation that, before the financial downturn, New York 'was a breeding ground for young designers, overrun with labels that became overnight sensations merely because the industry willed them to be so…' Not, you'll notice, because the public was clamouring for new labels (most of them have enough difficulty keeping up with the present ones). Because, rather, the industry itself has been subconsciously – or even in a conscious but inexpressible way – finding the multi-collections produced by designers and high-street labels repetitive and cannibalistic as fashion on the streets becomes increasingly homogenised and predictable.

Nothing is more boring than excess. Even Casanova realised that in the end. The fashion weeks are about to start. Anxious organisers, for whom these events are a great money-spinner, will go for quantity rather than quality – an approach already established in London – in the hope of keeping our interest. Instead, it really is time that the attitude change back to the old fashion mantra 'less is more'. Then there would be no more fights for calendar space on the international schedule as each so-called week shrinks to, maybe, two days for New York; two for London; four for Milan; and a week for Paris – all of which will be shown to foreign journalists and buyers via Web links and videos while they sit in their offices. Think of the money and time saved - and think how that money could be used to stop the global slave labour that the fashion world currently accepts as the murky but necessary underpinning of its glamour.

As The New York Times says, what happens in the fashion world is what the fashion world wills to happen. As an industry, we should be spending less time hysterically looking for new 'stars' and more looking at the appalling human rights record fashion has. Just because frivolity and vacuity have become the current benchmarks of fashion does not mean that they need remain so. During the fashion shows to come in the next few weeks, might we all spend a little more time in thinking rather than dreaming?

Fashion Fringe in New York

2010-02-06T23:35:00.001-08:00

Four exciting days in New York, on a promotional trip with the winners of last year's Fashion Fringe chosen by Donatella Versace and a team of industry experts at our finalists' fashion show during London Fashion Week. We are here at the invitation of Bloomingdales Soho, the young and trendy outpost of the famous American store. We were thrilled to see that Jena Theo, the winning label of Jenny Holmes and Dimitris Theocharidis, had been given the two windows on each side of the store entrance, along with a description of Fashion Fringe and its history.

We gave a presentation to the sales staff and then watched the customer reaction, which seemed very positive. While the designers schmoozed with the clients, the rest of the team were busy with Fashion Fringe appointments which I'm confident will lead to great things in the future. It's time to look beyond London. But New York is never entirely about work - or rather New Yorkers know how to blend work and pleasure. One of the best-known movers and shakers in U.S. fashion retail (discretion requires anonymity, I'm afraid) gave us a great 'meet and greet' drinks party in his apartment to which he had invited an A-list which included friends of mine and some of the top people in US retail and PR.

The evening ended with a late supper at the New York branch of Le Caprice, one of my favourite London restaurants, which opened on Fifth Avenue in October to instant success. Black and white, elegant, the Manhattan Caprice is clearly related to the Mayfair one but the clientelle are very different. Much more ebullient, very chic and expensively dressed, they were out to have fun. A man in white tie and tails with a very thin but beautiful woman caught my attention at the bar and made me realise how boringly men dress in London these days.

Paris Haute Couture: Blogger Tavi – Fashion's Shame

2010-02-03T01:55:00.001-08:00

A last thought on Paris couture.
Have I been mean in calling Tavi sad? Certainly, that was not the intention. But no-one who saw her at Paris couture could avoid thinking of the sacrifice of the innocents, I would have thought – a sacrifice by the business itself and, I'm afraid, by her parents. (I even found her outfit eerily reminiscent of the ceremonial clothing in which the Inca dressed their daughters before they led them up mountains, drugged them and left them in the snow as offerings to the gods.)

Pushing young and inexperienced people into a highly sophisticated and complex world such as Paris high fashion is a decision for mum and dad, of course, but to outsiders it is almost bound to smack of exploitation, no matter what the original intention. It is fine to talk about fresh young bloggers bringing a new perspective – and they certainly can. But this isn't an argument about the validity of blogging. Anybody with even a lick of sense knows that a fresh voice has to be a knowledgeable one if it is to have any significance apart from pure novelty. Little Tavi was stage-managed and styled for Paris – what a cute idea to give her an outsize bow in her hair to ensure that she didn't just blend in with the crowds – and that is getting dangerously close to exploitation, surely? (Not to mention something of a contradiction of the unaffected, unpackaged, uncontaminated view that most bloggers set out to offer.)

I can't help wondering about Tavi when she is in her thirties … then I think of Judy Garland and I just feel that, although she is probably enjoying the exposure to an exciting world (what little girl wouldn't?), it isn't something with which professionals in the fashion world should be co-operating.

Suffer the little children was not meant to include this.

"She's ready for her close-up": Tavi (and father) face the press.
Photo © Larry Ewing

Paris Haute Couture: Overview and Images

2010-02-03T00:02:00.000-08:00

So, Paris couture survived another season of doom and gloom - and did so rather well. Sure, it may not be healthy as it used to be when it was the fountainhead of fashion. Certainly, the rise and rise of designer ready-to-wear has not made things easy for couturiers but that doesn't mean it is time for the coffins. There's big trouble on the way for ready-to-wear so, as long as couture hangs on in there and loses no more big names, it won't just survive, it will also prosper.

You must have noticed how The Crash has made rather a lot of people very much richer than before and very much more blatant about showing it (£15 million a year for the new M&S boss and barely a murmur). The mood is right – and right across the globe, wherever there is a stock market.

Meanwhile, I hope a few more pictures from Paris couture make it clear why I love it so much … and think it still matters.

Top – Chanel: pictures © Larry Ewing
Centre – Chanel (left); Gaultier: pictures © Larry Ewing
Bottom – Valentino: picture © Larry Ewing

Hommage to Christian Dior: John Galliano couture show Paris 2010

2010-01-31T23:24:00.001-08:00

photo © Larry Ewing

My love affair with John Galliano – only his genius, darling – is well known. Ten years ago I wrote a book with this most talented and modest man, and I am about to start working with him on a new one. In the time between the two, I have seen him grow to such a marvellous flowering that I truly can say that he is the fashion genius of the age, with a sense of beauty and a response to history second to none. And his couture show this season showed him at his very best.

Sensitive, as always, to women and the legacy of Christian Dior, which he treats with the utmost respect whilst never letting it subdue his own creativity, this season he added (as he frequently does) an extra dimension. This time it was in the form of the cutting techniques of Charles James, the eccentric, obsessive Anglo-American designer who came to his peak in the fifties and sixties. Notorious for quarrelling with his clients – all very rich American socialites – to such a degree that he often refused to let them take delivery of evening gowns they had sometimes waited years for, he was the perfectionist to end all perfectionists. In that he has much in common with John but, apart from the talent and integrity, no two men could be more different.

Galliano started his show with Edwardian equestriennes in sharply-cut riding jackets in hunting pink that looked severe at first glance but were softly tailored to the now traditional Galliano/Dior cut invented by Galliano several seasons ago and still being subtlely refined. They were worn with side-draped New Look skirts which the high street will make into fabulously sexy little minis. Then came the cocktail dresses, miraculously involving great rolls and swathes of fabric to make powerful shapes more sculptural than anything seen in Paris this season. And finally, the ballgowns, all of a beauty that we have come to expect from this man. The colours were amazing and the echoes of some of Dior's great gowns from the past presenetd an hommage to the great man so subtle that few in the audience (including sad little Tavi in the front row) would realise it. This was a show that confirmed that in John Galliano's hands questions as to the modern relevance of couture – I have asked them myself – are in themselves irrelevant. He continues to bestride the world like a colossus.

All photos © Larry Ewing

Viva Mexico! Jean-Paul Gaultier Paris Couture 2010 review

2010-01-29T02:54:00.000-08:00

Swinging down the runway in a full red skirt singing "La Paloma", Arielle Dombasle, the French actress and wife of the celebrity philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy (only in France! … the Brits have to make do with celebrity chefs) brought Jean-Paul Gaultier's couture show to a roaring close. The audience entered into the spirit and clapped in unison when the singer was joined by Gaultier himself (in his trademark black, and not singing).

It was the end of a very Gaultier event. An iconoclast with a great sense of humour (hands up anyone who has ever seen a couturier apart from him so much as smiling, let alone laughing) and the confidence to send up couture – the thing he loves – Gaultier's show is alwayslike a flash of light in the serious business of making clothes important. His outrageousness makes us smile, and even laugh out loud.

Photo: © Jason Lloyd-Evans

He always works to a theme and this time it was Mexico – just made for high-camp high jinks - and he worked it for all it was worth. Huge and marvellously inventive sombreros, incredibly wide Gaucho pants, flared jeans with what seemed in all the exciteme-t to be hundreds of brass buttons running down the seams, cowboy boot-shoes
and palm leaf fan pleating made sure we didn't forget for a moment that this was Mexico with a very big M. It was fun but it was also serious in that the clothes were superbly tailored and would adapt to a very chic modernity that could only be from Paris and, indeed, Gaultier himself.

I am a huge fan because I love confidence and that was what this show was all about. The confidence to make a really individual statement and have fun whilst doing it.

Photos © Jason Lloyd-Evans

This Year of Grace

2010-01-27T05:50:00.001-08:00

Thinking about Grace Kelly yet? Well, you certainly should be. On the train back from Paris I was pondering the fact that this year looks as if it is going to be the biggest Kelly fest since High Society was released in 1956, the year in which her marriage to Prince Ranier of Monaco made her everybody's fairy princess, until Princess Diana appeared. Coincidentally, the film was shown shown over Christmas on British TV as a curtain-raiser for what will probably be seen as This Year of Grace. The reason is an exhibition devoted to her at the Victoria & Albert museum – I know, I know, but they have to make money somehow and medieval iron strapwork hasn't really been a crowd-puller for at least six hundred years, now, has it?

And Kelly's influence is already showing itself in fashion, with Ferragamo jumping in with a parody of To Catch A Thief, Hitchcock's 1955 romantic thriller set in Monaco and the South of France pairing Kelly and Cary Grant for the first time. The Ferragamo advertising version features Claudia Schiffer – the 'face' of Ferragamo for Spring-Summer 2010 – and a smooth young French guy whose day job is in real estate. Shot by Mario Testino in Monaco with Claudia looking soigné but not quite like Grace, who always had a a smile playing around her features that suggested that she wasn't necessarily taking all this ice-cool blonde-goddess stuff entirely seriously, any more than Cary Grant did. In fact, what seems to have been forgotten in this little exercise is that TCAT was a romantic comedy which was sending up the impossible perfection of the glamorous life of the times. None of this for Ferragamo, of course who treat the scenario with deadpan seriousness instead of the light-hearted irony of the original.

And that's the problem with re-creations of the past. They are lifeless, as pastiche always is, with none of the delicious feeling of dressing up and having fun that the original had. There must be more interesting ways of selling clothes.

Stefano Pilati of Yves Saint Laurent certainly takes a much more involving approach to getting us to buy his Autumn-Winter 2010 menswear. He barely shows any clothes at all in the promotional film made for him by Bruce Weber. And when I tell you that this short film is by Bruce Weber, you will know that barely is absolutely the right word. Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing is very Bruce, with naked boys wrestling, snogging, diving and looking perfectly beautiful but arrestingly dumb. On the soundtrack, Bruce points out that ANLRT is the first film he has made that hasn't starred his dogs and Elizabeth Taylor (don't know which would have been given top billing), but it does have some fifties' footage of female nudes by Bunny Yeager, one of Weber's favourite specialists in nude photography. As an oblique way of getting guys to buy clothes, this film is attractively abstract and reflects the way that Stefano Pilati (thoughtful, cultured and subtle) thinks, every bit as much as it reflects Bruce Weber's life-long photographic approach. And, even if we don't see any clothes, isn't that the best way to get us thinking about them, through a vision that has at least a chance of engaging our imaginations?

Even so, in these times when fashion is slipping from so many people's radar, it does seem that a newer and more arresting approach to advertising, one that might really kick-start our enthusiasm again, is taking a worrying length of time to emerge.

(Paris couture coming up in the next couple of days.)

www.colinmcdowell.com

The Thrill of Couture

2010-01-26T13:58:00.001-08:00

Arriving in Paris for the couture shows has always been an experience. First-class on Eurostar; limo waiting at Gare du Nord (apart from meeting relatives or a lover, there’s no better way of arriving at a station than seeing your name on a card, held up by your personal chauffeur for the week); hotel staff welcoming you back with what seem genuine smiles; flowers from the top designers waiting in your room. What’s not to like?

Then there’s the excitement of opening the invitations to the shows, always bigger and stiffer than for ready-to-wear; checking all the right ones are there (phew!); the personal notes from the designers; the invitations to an intimate dinner – which, in fashion terms, can mean anything from 10 to 60 people! – and even private views or special open evenings at the top exhibitions at the time from the Louvre to the Grand Palais or the Pompidou Centre. You really feel privileged. And I, for one, love being pampered – or should that be corrupted?

But it’s all about work and that goes on even though first class and limo have gone for most of us. And it doesn’t matter at all because couture week is a joy, not just for the obvious privileges but also for the great privilege of seeing clothes made with love and incredibly (almost crazily) obsessive attention to detail. The couture shows are the ultimate fashion experience: refined, elegant and perfumed with that very correct Parisian politesse which means that nobody shouts – even at the paparazzi – there is no running or pushing, and even if there is chaos and hysterics behind the seams, the serenity and confidence reign supreme front of house.

But even at couture, where the numbers to be seated (tickets carefully checked, placement strictly adhered to) are much smaller than for ready-to-wear, punctuality (once the prerogative of kings, according to Louis XIV) has never been a priority of fashion and we all sit patiently, watching the private customers arrive, calculating their husbands’ bank balances (couture starts at around €30,000 per garment and can easily soar way above €200,000) and reminding ourselves that we are not at the opening of a new supermarket here but waiting to be inducted into the higher mysteries of fashion as art. No wonder it feels rather like being in a temple of perfection.

Designers – Born or Taught?

2010-01-26T00:09:00.000-08:00

There's nothing like couture week in Paris to get one thinking about the nature of design and where designers come from. (As for the shows themselves, by the way, bear with me – I'll be looking back over the week as a whole. Not that there's any shortage of instant coverage to show you what individual shows actually looked like: bloggers seem to be virtually filing from the front row in real time – not for me! Apropos of which, at the ravishingly romantic Dior show I sat opposite the renowned Tavi, designer-dressed from head to toe and working her camera like mad.)

Christian Dior, of course, had no formal college training at all. It may seem ironic at a time when many of our colleges are over-producing 'designers' with huge prodigality, but some of our most successful fashion figures did not: Cristobal Balenciaga, Coco Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani, Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, Gianni Versace: this list is random but it is not exactly a roll call of duffers. All were basically self-taught or learned on the job, either in their own fledgling company or by working for someone else. Many of them could neither draw nor cut.

What they all had was a vision and a belief in themselves - and a conviction that the two things could be brought together by determination, hard work and self discipline. You could say that these qualities are standard in anyone who makes it in business, including the creative. But what I find most interesting is that they, and other truly great designers such as Yves Saint Laurent, had a philosophy and a cultural knowledge that informed every thing they did and was so strong that their fashion statements – to use a very silly modern expression - have always been unlike any other. And, with the exception of Dior, who changed his shapes and proportions every season without radically altering his aesthetic, they were and still are steadfastly consistent. They didn't have a muse: they had a period, a civilisation to inspire them not only through visual stimuli but also through literature, music and history. They were aware of the past even if it didn't appear overtly in the work of their own present. In other words,they had – and have – a developed point of view that informs all their work whether skirts are high or low, colours bright or dark. So, you can always tell which garments they created and which ones they didn't, something that high street economics has almost removed for less-grounded, younger designers as part of the increasingly desperate need for something totally new each season to stimulate buying.

As Balenciaga said of his customers, a woman who can wear any and all designers knows nothing about fashion, or herself, at all. It is the same for designers. If they produce any or all styles they have no personal style at all.

And perhaps it doesn't matter. Maybe the past is irrelevant at a time when money is made by variety: opera singers giving us pop very badly or vice versa, or footballers dancing even more badly on television (no dancers playing football … yet). All of which is why, although I have a high regard for many fashion colleges, I just occasionally wonder if they have the right people teaching the right things or whether those things are so instinctive that they are beyond teaching. Certainly, I find it as hard to imagine any teacher telling Chanel how to design as I do Balenciaga in Big Brother.

Paris Couture Preview

2010-01-25T00:14:00.001-08:00

Today I head for couture week in Paris, still the fountainhead of fashion, promoted as such by the French government and accepted by civilized women (and men) across the globe as the indispensible and inescapable creative dynamo for other fashion centres.

It used to be that couture was the driving force of this amazing city's creative energy but that is no longer the case. As fewer and fewer of the grand names of the past (Lanvin, Balenciaiga) bother with it, and so few designers in Paris have been trained in it (Gaultier is the one remaining figure since Lacroix closed his atelier and Valentino retired), couture is increasingly being seen as an indulgence the fashion world cannot afford in these straitened times.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It may seem a perverse argument but it would be highly detrimental to the future of fashion if couture were allowed to fade away – already a real and present danger – because of current financial difficulties. Without couture, fashion has no cultural basis, history or lead and becomes just another commodity to make money from. It is couture alone that creates the vocabulary of the fashion for tomorrow. Or it should do.

But at this point it isn't. If Couture is losing its position as fashion leader, blame has to be laid at The door of couture itself. The Chambre Syndicale de la Couture – the body charged with protecting and safeguarding French fashion's jewel in the crown – has opened its exclusive club (once the most exclusive in fashion) to designers who are not only not trained in couture but even not trained in fashion at all.

It is possible to cut corners and fudge the rules and get away with it lower down the feeding chain – who looks for originality of concept or intricacy of cut in high-street chains? – but it should be unthinkable at the pinnacle. During this week I will see shows of dumb, posh dresses whose designers have been welcomed in and encouraged to call their work couture. It is no such thing, no matter how hard wily PRs try to convince us that it is. All it is really about is red-carpet dressing where banal evening dresses are 'lent' (how many are ever returned?) to actresses as the best way of getting instant world publicity. And all the big-name designers (there are lots of other designers in Paris trading as couturiers, but they are little more than up-market dressmakers) have played this game. And they probably feel they have had to in order to survive. But it is a complete and disastrous reversal of the way things should be in a healthy fashion industry. There is no design energy in high-street clothing and nowhere near as much as there should be in designer fashion. Why would couture wish to align itself with sterility?

Currently, couture designers are either meaninglessly recycling the past (only Galliano at Dior and Lagerfeld at Chanel even begin to use it as a jumping-off point for a modern design approach), turning back to their own past glories, or showing retreads of the current ready-to-wear collections, their own or those of other designers. And this is why I am not expecting too much excitement this week in Paris.

But I might be pleasantly surprised. I hope I am. Couture is in trouble and the way to get out of it is not to go down the scale but to go up, with boldness and imagination. There is no other way to go, if it doesn't want to go through the door marked Exit. The fashion world is awash with interchangeable minor talents at the moment - far too many of them for a healthy industry - most little more than copyists.

Couture must stand apart from such mediocrity and fulfill its role as leader. It must provide a new path of inspired genius, vision and bold energy, one that will embolden the rest of the industry as Dior's New Look did in 1947. At that point French fashion was so much in the doldrums that many thought it could never recover. But Dior proved them wrong. Within two seasons all designers were following his lead. Much more importantly for a healthy industry, he inspired other great designers to challenge his approach to fashion, including Chanel (who came out of retirement to do so), Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent. From them came the future. And, if our future currently looks bleak it is because we are waiting for their modern equivalents. It is couture's job to provide them.

A Legend Recalled

2010-01-22T00:27:00.000-08:00

I look back at Diana Vreeland with fondness and awe. After her dismissal from her role as Editor in Chief of US Vogue I met her several times in New York, and once very memorably in Italy, when I was developing a book about Balenciaga, a shared passion. The book never happened, but it gave me the opportunity to visit her in her amazing, tiny, all-red apartment on Park Avenue, full of pattern, photographs and drawings, where we took tea and talked fashion. I was young, she was old. I was nervous – always, despite her kindness – she was grand, but encouraging and already a legend in her own time.

She talked passionately and often very aggressively about fashion. I sat at her feet and learned. She was especially outspoken about New York fashion, which she felt had grown from what she once referred to as 'the slime of Seventh Avenue'. I loved her because her attitudes were so young and irreverent, and she had a marvellous sense of humour (something conspicuously lacking in today's grandes dames of high fashion) and a great sense of irony – completely lost in today's fashion world so dominated by money. Diana Vreeland believed in quality, dreams and integrity. She didn't give a thought to money. Which would, of course, make her unemployable in fashion today.

She would be appalled at the philosophy behind most magazines now and the way editors and publishers have since her day contrived to tie their own hands so effectively.

We were once talking about advertising. Diana was not terribly interested in it and preferred to concentrate on areas she felt had more scope for imagination and creativity.
'Did you have much to do with the advertising manager when you were
editing Vogue?' I asked.
The eyes became as big as saucers. 'Certainly not. Wouldn't recognise him if I saw him. I didn't even know his name!'
'But you must have passed in the corridor or met in the elevator?'
A look part horror, part pity and part bewilderment.
'Advertising personnel using the editorial elevator? NEVER!'

Other voices, other rooms....

Can Skills Save Fashion?

2010-01-21T01:49:00.001-08:00

The high street swallows up so many good ideas, cheapens them in so many different ways and manages to convince women that buying shoddy quality is what buying fashion is all about. A comment from Penelope on my blog about technical skills (read it here) points out the difference between how Princess Diana's clothes were made and how her relative Barbara Cartland's were: nothing to do with taste, everything to do with knowledge. Barbara Cartland's skirts fell properly; Diana's did not. It's all in the cut and sew.

We need to keep the skills of fashion creation alive. The clothes designed for the spring and summer are more relaxed and informal, in fabric as well as cut. The formality of winter clothes comes from the way in which fabrics like wool or velvet behave under the scissors. We cannot lose this. But already it is endangered. Seventy percent of fashion now is about dresses. Even couture houses often don't bother to show coats or jackets, preferring huge ballgowns which have no meaning except when remade in white to become wedding dresses. A highly successful house like Elie Saab shows no tailoring at all, and yet is considered a bona fide couture house.

This is a problem for designers. The good ones know very well how to cut a perfect winter coat, but it takes time and skill … and what is the point if nobody wants to buy it? And the reason nobody wants to buy? The age of fashion has dropped and continues to do so. Women in their early twenties or late teens clearly don't want to dress formally. And yet…

And yet, whenever there is an exhibition or a glossy new book devoted to high fashion from the past, there is always a sigh of longing. What is the sigh for? Glamour, allure, sophistication and all the things current fashion is not especially interested in because designers feel there is not a big enough market for them. Time for some joined-up thinking in the fashion world, perhaps, to try to bring grown-up women back to high-fashion clothing once again?

The Trouble With Men

2010-01-20T01:01:00.001-08:00

Milan menswear finishes and the press caravan moves on to Paris, hoping to find the excitement there that was so lacking in Italy. But I don't think many journalists are holding their breath (not that there are that many of them in any case – the times have meant a dramatic cut in travel right across the board). Perhaps this doesn't really matter. Rather like couture, menswear shows have a diminishing point and purpose. Not because there aren't any ideas. Despite the banality of most of the shows in Milan this time, there are usually some worthwhile ideas in most seasons. But Paris is the true home of cerebral excitement in men's as well as women' fashion, in my opinion. The next few days will tell if that is true this season.

But – again, like couture – it could be said that ideas that never leave the runway or are only worn by a tiny percentage of young urbanites in half-a-dozen fashion cities in the world are basically stillborn, with no potential for growth. The similarity ends there, of course. Couture – especially in the hands of Galliano at Dior – engenders ideas on which ready-to-wear (especially the up-market high-street chains and labels) feeds for many seasons to come.

Men's fashion is different. Whereas women are excited by the new and respond naturally to an outrageous idea in couture as a challenge to be captured and tamed for reality, men hate all dress ideas that can be seen by onlookers – not to mention mates – as new, let alone fashionable. It sounds a cliche but it is as true today of most men as it was in Beau Brummel's day. As many people, including a lot of men, acknowledge, it is part of the Great Male Insecurity that lurks behind virtually everything men do, especially in dress. Only the most outrageously extrovert – who used to be called cads – want to draw attention to themselves by their clothes.

Which is why such Milan catwalk moments as camel-hair coats worn with no socks are not going to have men shouting, 'ME! God, that's so me!'; ditto for tartan trousers halfway up the calf (memories of the Bay City Rollers clearly still not far enough away to be forgotten yet); and I think we can all agree that calf-length fur-trimmed gilets aren't going anywhere either. It is desperate, but so are the designers. What can they do to ease men forward with ideas that are new but also accessible enough to stand a chance with most young guys while still keeping the attention of the experts in their audience with excitingly original looks? No-one in Milan seems to know.

The sad thing is that I am sure it doesn't have to be like this. Where I live in London there are plenty of cool young guys who look great … but very few of the ideas in their dress originated on the catwalks of this city.

Out of Season

2010-01-19T01:23:00.000-08:00

The Milan and Paris menswear shows mark the beginning of the spring fashion round, with couture and women's ready-to-wear still to come. Except for couture, the clothes won't be in the shops for half a year. It becomes increasingly hard to find a rationale for this crazy fashion schedule imposed on designers. How much longer can this system can go on? Winter clothes arriving in the shops in July; only end-of-lines available in the run-up to Christmas, when people are more ready to buy, and nothing new in the shops in December, when the other great pull, the sales, are on. Does it make any sense to have fashion clothes available to buy when only the most demented fashionista wants to spend? (Winter coats in the shops, end of June, is a mantra of madness.) And none when the majority of women do. You couldn't make it up.

The irrationality of the situation highlights the fact that the fashion business is terminally old-fashioned. It's out of step with the realities of most women's buying needs. The calendar we work on evolved before World War I, was looking creaky in the fifties and was terminally out of date by the sixties, the era when young women realised that they didn't need a winter coat and could wear a mini in January without dying of hypothermia. In the days of strict divisions between seasonal wardrobes there was a rationale: central heating was rare; cars, buses and most transport were cold; and heating in offices and homes was kept low for economy. None of this applies today. And, even with this month's icy weather, it is clear that winters are just not as cold as they once were. Certainly in the cities where most of us work, simply because of the heat from buses and cars, neon lighting, stores with tropical temperatures belting out into the streets through open doors - and of course the body heat of the millions more workers who flood in each day – we simply do not need the luxury of winter clothing. As I see it, once everyone wakes up to that realisation, then much of what the fashion industry currently produces becomes not just irrelevant but really rather stupid. Am I missing something here? Or are they?

Less than sixty years ago, when fashion meant high fashion and designers created couture alone, secrecy was at a premium at the collections. No photographs, not even any sketching allowed, on pain of banishment for life. (This isn't the place to tell why - but another time, perhaps.) Now fashion has become a business where everybody demands immediacy - which is why the bloggers could change the whole picture very quickly.

In the past, the seasons were dictated to a degree by the lead times of magazines - two to three months (newspapers gave shows very limited coverage, if any at all). And that set the rhythm. Women waited to see the season's look in their favourite magazine. They had no choice. But not now. Why should women be expected to wait for six months to buy clothes they can see on the day they are shown? Seen the pictures, want the clothes, seems a reasonable argument.

If only the fashion industry could acknowledge that simple view then, with dramatic changes in timings of manufacturing and delivery of clothes, profits might come back. After all, buying is a 24/12 occupation for women of all ages in the West. The flow of new clothes, including those by designers, needs to be the same. Wouldn't everything get better if there were no longer the need for journalists, photographers and buyers to spend days and weeks traipsing from one capital to another to see designer suggestions for new seasons that actually don't exist any more? It would certainly save on carbon footprints and travel and accommodation bills, while also making high fashion much more realistic - and more desirable - for most women.

www.colinmcdowell.com

2010-01-17T23:47:00.001-08:00

In Milan, where I have some meetings about a project later this year, I was called by one of the people who look after www.colinmcdowell.com for me. They're excited because the site is starting to take shape - they've just added video of some of my designer interviews – and I find it exciting too because it has the potential to become something different from both fashion journalism and fashion blogging. Both of those are about the now, the latest, what's happening, what's in and what's out. I see my web site as having a rather longer life and becoming a reference source for students, writers, anyone interested in fashion. We're already republishing entries from Fashion Moments and updated entries from the Directory of 20th Century Fashion. At this point we are dealing with the historic designers and labels, but we'll also be adding new assessments of designers who weren't around for the print edition of the directory, including those working for old-established companies which already have their historic entry. We'll be adding print and video interviews, extracts from my designer talks in London and links to sources of up to the minute fashion information.

It's no secret that I bemoan the lack of knowledge among many fashionistas, especially young students and writers. So it seems only right to put my money where my mouth is, as it were, and start providing another source of background information about fashion, designers and all aspects of good design.

Building the resource will take time. Check it regularly for updates – or let me know anything you particularly want to see.'

I Like It, So It Must Be Good

2010-01-12T00:21:00.000-08:00

When did the change happen? I'm talking about the fundamental seismic shift that undermined centuries of critical certainty. I was asked this recently by someone who clearly felt it had all been downhill with the arts (including fashion) in the last few decades. It seems to me that it is part of the same broad theme as the journalists vs bloggers debate. Who is qualified to judge what?

In my opinion it was the sixties when the critical equation was permanently reversed. That decade changed the old mantra of the educated classes (as they were rather quaintly called then) from 'This is good, therefore I like it' to 'I like this, therefore it is good'.

Predictably, the new approach caught on. It opened the floodgates. Who was being let in? The young of course, who not having much education at that time and generally having far too much fun to be arsed with actually learning anything that might back up their view, took things into their own hands. Their parents and teachers stood aside, awed by the sheer energy and cheek of the new culture their children were forging with no reference to anybody, or thing, least of all from the past.

It's possible to see this (plenty of people do) as the end both of a long civilization and of the meaning of criticism. If everybody's critical voice is different but equal, regardless of their degree of expertise, how can there any longer be the sort of consensus achieved by a critical structure based on agreed rules, as in the past?

So, did the sixties herald the end of a creative world? In many ways, yes. But even though at this point much of what is being produced - certainly in fashion - is seen by many as inferior to what went before, we are living in fabulously vibrant creative times when everything is possible. A few amazing ideas are beginning to emerge. If that means we have to temporarily put up with ignorance and arrogance, it is a price we can pay. We may be walking through a blizzard – but that doesn't mean that we're walking off the edge of a cliff.

It is hard to see our way, clearly. It is uncomfortable and even dangerous. Many take comfort in inertia, while others make a great show of throwing a lot of intellectual snowballs around … and we all know how brief and insubstantial their lifespan is. Far too few creators and commentators in fashion, as in any other field, have the intellectual energy and creative rigour of a snowman or as much capacity for thought as the cheeky little robin perched on his head. But there is always a thaw. All periods of artistic unrest eventually clear, leaving the way ahead open.

We probably have another generation or two before all the dross is cleared away, but I am sure that when it is we will no longer need to look back for guidance to critical tenets that are already tired and irrelevant. Just because so much of the new is at this stage so bad doesn't mean that it will stay that way.

Getting Technical

2010-01-11T00:03:00.000-08:00

Responding to my blog about fashion bloggers, SilentStoryteller brought up the problem of fashion writers - bloggers and journalists – not knowing enough about the skills of fashion to be able to assess what comes down the runway (read the blog and the comments here). The comment begs the question of how many fashion writers know anything at all about the technical side of the clothes they are paid to assess. I'll stake thirty years in the fashion business on the fact that virtually no fashion journalists could pass Eilis' test of telling the difference between a French seam and one that is overlocked (or even define either). Imagine a ballet critic not knowing the meaning or difference between a pas de deux and a pas de chat, or a cricket commentator not knowing his maiden over from his silly mid-on.

I do know what a French seam is and why it is different from an overlocked one, but that is because I came to journalism obliquely, after several years working as a designer in Italy. I wasn't any good at all, but I did spend hours helping designers chase the Holy Grail of the 'perfectly set-in sleeve' à la Balenciaga. The failures were ripped out and discarded. Highest score? Nine rejects, the final one biting the dust some time after 2:00 AM, as I remember. But that is how I learned about technical perfection and the absolute necessity for a designer to always pursue it, at no matter what cost, if he is to keep his integrity. In Hardy Amies' classic phrase, a designer only fulfils his role by 'doing honour to the cloth'. It is a very serious business, which is why I worry a little when I come out of a show where the clothes have been cobbled together and hear fans talk about the fabulous cut.

As Giles Deacon told me in an interview last year apropos fashion journalists, they are mainly so ignorant of the technical and taste aspects of the business that in his opinion a designer today can learn virtually nothing from reading them. It is a sad outlook for fashion if he is right.

Elvis Lives (for fashion folk, at least)

2010-01-08T23:16:00.000-08:00

On your way to Parkes, New South Wales? Already there? Wishing you could be?

It's not an outlandish question for fashion followers, because Parkes is the venue of the 'biggest and best convention in the world' to celebrate the anniversary of Elvis Presley's birth (watch the BBC report here). He would have been 75 this year and Parkes has been celebrating his life since 1993 with what claims to be the world's largest jamboree of Elvis impersonators and fans who converge on this tiny town once a year to sing, dress up like their hero and, according to one not entirely delighted local resident, indulge in 'colossal drinking.'

Why should fashion people care? Simply because Elvis was one of the first – if not the very first – popular entertainer to take the link between masculine dress and stardom and put it on the streets. The gloriously camp late costumes – jumpsuits sparkling with rhinestone – have a permanent place in the pantheon of looks that will never be forgotten, of course. But more widely, pre-empting both the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, Elvis made young guys want to look like him with a universality that had never been seen before. Thanks to the exposure he received from television and film, he started the spread of American blue-collar fashion around the world. Other performers had worn suits – Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra – or dinner jackets, like Fred Astaire. Elvis, the one-time truck driver, dressed like young working kids in the street.

And let's not forget that jeans and casual shirts or T-shirts were fashion - or at least as far as young men in the fifties and early sxities wanted it to go. It wasn't not avant garde, true, but it shaped everything that has come since. It swept the world when Elvis' natural theatricality was reinforced by Bruce Springsteen's urban, New Jersey, blue-collar hardness. And, really, men have not looked back since then - nor, unfortunately, forward with any imagination. It's still blue jeans, T shirt and leather jacket for millions around the world on a night out. Blue suede shoes may be in a slight eclipse at this point, but the blue-collar look has lasted half a century now, making it one of the 20th century's most enduring styles.

With the menswear shows in Paris and Milan just a week away we can already predict that most of what is on the runway will be watered-down looks in the same tradition, with the designer's contribution little more than that of a stylist. Which seems a pity. 'Elvis Lives!' is the rallying cry in Parkes this weekend and, in fashion terms, it is true - with a little help from Bruce and his musical mates.

More Bad Press

2010-01-07T23:47:00.001-08:00

Here we go again!

The beginning of the new fashion year and it already looks as if fashion is going to be treated as cluelessly in the newspapers as it was last year and for many before that, at least at the level most women can afford. Advice from a journalist about what to buy now, which I read today, made my heart sink as I asked myself, for the trillionth time, why fill pages with stuff that means so little to anyone (not least, I suspect, to the poor hack who writes it) when there is so much glorious fashion, even at high street level, that would lift the spirits of any reader?

These were the suggestions for the 'essentials' for the coming season: a white shirt, a blazer, a sweatshirt, a denim shirt … at this point I checked the newspaper's date, suspecting that somebody had slipped in a journalistic Mickey Finn and I was actually reading a page from the seventies … chinos, a slim belt – apparently 'nothing says you "get it" like wearing a basic belt in the "right" way' – a printed scarf.… No, I can't go on. It's just too sad. The pictures were equally uninspired. And yet these were not clothes chosen for suburban mums or provincial dentists' receptionists but the serious choices of a young (I assume) urban woman for other young urban women.

I happen to believe that being able to share what you believe in with an audience is one of the greatest privileges of journalism. Who wouldn't jump at the chance to share a passion with the world? But this pallid stuff is so far removed from passion that it really is a betrayal of what newspapers are for. No wonder they are on the danger list. This is writing by somebody who couldn't care less about fashion, edited by somebody who couldn't care less about journalism. Talk about a suicide pact. And I suspect it is the result of the increasingly common problem in newspapers: the people who care – and know – about subjects that are still seen by proprietors and editors as 'peripheral' cannot get jobs because newspapers can't afford them. You can hear the boardroom conversation with the money men: 'Its only fashion, we can make some savings there, surely?'

The economics of newspapers make it increasingly necessary for editors to get as much content as possible written in house by people already on the pay roll. You can imagine the conference in the boardroom. 'We need an upbeat, new season fashion piece for tomorrow. Any volunteers, ladies?' So, somebody employed to cover dance or family affairs finds herself frantically ringing PRs to see what is in the shops now. They, of course, spot an amateur immediately and, quietly singing Hallelujah under their breath, thankfully offload the dodgy stuff that has End of Season sales written all over it and wait for a pat on the back from their clients.

And it is as sad as it is unnecessary. Colleges around the world are creating seriously demanding course in fashion journalism and their graduates – smart, savvy and passionately in love with their field – can't get jobs because editors have opted to save money on fashion ('It's easy stuff. Not exactly brain surgery! Ha,ha.') One can imagine how happily they would take that attitude to the financial or political pages. But, apart from the reader, the real loser is fashion. Last season, as in most seasons, the great designers from Milan and Paris created marvellous clothes, as directional as they were beautiful. Many have already begun to filter through, in watered-down versions, to the high street. There are great clothes full of new ideas to be found in all price ranges. So why do newspaper readers have to be so shockingly short-changed simply because of laziness or lack of interest in fashion? If I were a designer or the CEO of a top high-street company, I would be very unhappy. And if I were a woman I would be furious.

Fashion Blogging: The Rape of the Innocents

2010-01-06T22:19:00.001-08:00

My quarterly clearout of magazines before I sink under their weight and am never seen again is always a harrowing experience forced on me by sheer lack of space. A snowy day in London town – to
meteorologically twist the old song – seemed as good a day as any for doing a job I hate. But this time, as I was piling them up (tears in my eyes!), I thought about a comment from Helene of The Luxe Chronicles on my blog about – well, bloggers, in fact (read her comment here), and whether the blog really could take over from the corrupt and collusive world of printed fashion magazines.

I share Helene's fear that bloggers will soon be no better than magazine editors if they become a major new means of fashion communication and are prey to the temptations of corruption in their turn. But only up to a point…. Bloggers are disadvantaged because we all know that what they write is neither edited nor refereed. So, at this stage at least, what they stand for is much more interesting than anything they might actually say. And they stand, in the main for a clean, clear way of looking. The other small problem is that they are also not normally experts in fashion – or, if they're only thirteen, in anything. But what they do have in many cases is a fresh enthusiasm that can transcend this lack of knowledge. And, who knows, it might develop into some sort of wisdom if they stick around long enough.

But then again, I don't really want them to … for their sakes. What we are all seeing is the rape of the innocents by the fashion industry just as it was in the thirties in the movie business, with child stars like Judy Garland destroyed for the rest of their lives simply because they looked cute on camera. Yes, young bloggers will probably be showered with privilege, just as their print equivalents are, but only for as long as fashion thinks they and their medium can deliver the publicity it needs. When they don't - it's out on your butt! And curly hair and cute dimples will not save you then, my girl!

There is another reason why, although in the short term the bloggers' freshness might help fashion out of its seemingly terminal creative stagnation, in the long term their future doesn't seem so rosy. And that comes back to my magazine clear-out. For a long time now, the catwalk has only kindled fashion's dynamic. The essential spark that makes the flame has come from the magazine pictures created by stylists and photographers of genius. And what they do, new technology cannot, at this stage, hope to compete with. It's a question of scale.

We all have our favourite magazines. Mine is Italian Vogue, usually as thick as a Mezzogiorno mamma's waistline but infinitely more
seductive. Its creative values are unrivalled and its variety is never allowed to stale. I paused in my clear-out. I simply couldn't bring myself to toss out the September 09 issue with its brilliant Steven Meisel story, Performance: page after page of boundary-pushing audacity (see the pictures here). It's going to be a long time before blogs can catch up with that sort of quality.

In the meantime, let the bloggers have fun and feel important (as well as sometimes giving us unusually straightforward, honest, from-the-heart appraisals of what they see). Enjoy that feeling of warm well being, my darlings. Every fashion journalist longs for that often too brief spell of being pampered, valued and cared for: the gifts ('Goody! Another Gucci bag!'), the front row seats (only three away from Suzy!), the private dinners with Dolce & Gabanna! … everything that seems to make life worth living for many of them. Fashion paradise doesn't last long. When your time has come to hit the mat marked Scram, it will come even faster than slipping in the snow and it will probably bruise your ego more than a pratfall in the snow will bruise your butt. As the say in the porno industry, 'It's your organ that has to be big, baby, not you.'

Picture source. Vogue Italia Sept 09. Sasha Pivovarova & Ash Stymest by Steven Meisel.

The White Ribbon – Perfect for Fashionistas

2010-01-05T23:34:00.001-08:00

The Austrian director Michael Haneke, is one of the world's most challenging and puzzling film makers, as everyone who saw Caché ("Hidden"), with its disturbingly inconclusive ending, will remember. His latest, The White Ribbon, a tale of emotional deprivation and conscious and unconscious cruelty, is strong meat. Ambiguous, unsettling, puzzling, challenging: the usual critical vocabulary used of Haneke comes to mind as this grim tale of life in a German Lutheran village just before World War I unfolds – and totally enfolds the viewer in its tight and sinister closed world. Like Caché, The White Ribbon is a who-dunnit, but one for which the answer is not one culprit but a whole village, including its strange Midwich Cuckoos type children. It is a battle of power – and the ones ultimately revealed to have it are as surprising as one might expect from this director.

For visually aware fashionistas (is there any other kind?), the film is stunning. Image after carefully composed image builds up the sense of a separate but strangely familiar world of total authenticity. It doesn't take too long for the penny to drop. This film is a re-creation of the turn-of-the- century world of the German photographer August Sander, specifically inspired by his best-known image, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance. In order to capture the etched-in-ice clarity of Sander's photography, Haneke shot the film in colour and then converted it to black and white. The result is a blend of sharpness and subtlety that eerily conveys a sense of time and place that colour would have probably failed to capture.

But what will fascinate all people who are excited by appearances is the cast. Carefully chosen for their ability to look exactly like their historic counterparts seen in Sander's work – which, shockingly, was largely destroyed by the Nazis – what stays in the memory is the faces (I seem to be having a faces 'thing' at the moment, especially in films), which are almost unnervingly period perfect, especially those of the children, chosen from over 7,000 hopefuls, for how convincingly they could be 'Sanderised'. Interestingly, most of the adult actors were recruited from the theatre, not film, and few are known outside Austria. What is clear is that a film like The White Ribbon is authentic because the director wished to re-create a period and place for us and set out to do so with uncompromising rigour.

In contrast, the idiocy of most period films (eg the truly dire The Young Victoria) results from a determination to modernise the past - mainly, I suspect, so that the heroine can be easily recognised and identified by her fans. The result, apart from a slight nod in the direction of an early-19th-century hairstyle, is that Emily Blunt as the young queen looked no more Victorian than any pretty young woman walking down a street today. You will not be too surprised to learn that The Young Victoria has so far earned almost £5 million at the box office in the UK while, to date, The White Ribbon, released just six months later and the winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, has made just over £400,000. The former, of course, will soon sink into that deep pit of oblivion known as movies on TV, whereas the latter will be seen and talked of for many years to come wherever people take seriously the art of film.

Keeping Couture Alive

2010-01-04T23:33:00.001-08:00

Old wine in new bottles, fine; new wine in old bottles, dodgy. I was thinking of this today after talking with a colleague about this season's Paris haute couture, which takes place in two week's time. As couture shrinks – for how many years can it survive before it just becomes a parade of posh frocks little different from designer ready-to-wear? – many couture houses have tried to revive their sinking fortunes by bringing in new young designers. It's a stratagem that might look convincing on paper but it fails much more than it succeeds. Inevitably. Couture is so grounded in a period of privilege and a way of life that cannot be conceivably restored that it must eventually die as a practical exercise in fashion to be worn. Again, couture is not something to be taught in colleges. It takes years of 'hands on' experience – in Paris alone – for it to be mastered. No young designer today has that experience.

So, what is to be done? Established fashion houses are very valuable commodities that can go on making money long after their eponymous designer has gone. And few can resist the temptation to give it a go. It was, for example, inconceivable to let Chanel disappear with the death of Coco. Perfume, makeup, accessories - all needed a fashion show to keep the spirit of the house alive and its profits high. It was a touch of genius to bring in Karl Lagerfeld to carry the torch. Bold as a lion, shamelessly addicted to personal publicity, much more a stylist than a designer, he entirely ignored Chanel's dictum that all fashion must be logical and charged in like a mad bull, tossing everything for which she had stood on his sharp, ambitious horns and deliberately vulgarising her aesthetic in order to make the house the hottest fashion news in the world. His chutzpah succeeded brilliantly. Coco might have been spinning in her grave with rage but, under Lagerfeld, Chanel has survived and prospered. The reason is that he was a virtual reincarnation of her - arrogant, dismissive and so totally convinced of his superiority that he could have been her son.

In contrast, Christian Dior – gentle, modest and never entirely at ease with his fame – had to wait much longer for his alter ego to appear after his death in 1957. Things had ticked over but had been lack-lustre until John Galliano – a man with no experience of couture but, in strong contrast to Lagerfeld, a deep respect for the legacy of the house's founder, along with a mix of creative assurance and modesty almost unknown in Paris – set about revitalising it for a modern clientele, whilst so successfully retaining the original aesthetic that Dior could have designed the collections himself. The love of fabric, the romantic idealisation of women, the theatricality and the pleasure in turn-of-the-century glamour: their creative DNA is as one and the rest is … as they say.

Balenciaga has had no such luck. Nicolas Ghesquiere, the current designer there, sees no relevance in couture for modern women. And he is right in that, of course. But it seems a great pity that, even in its long, slow death, couture is deprived of a reprise of the artistic spirit of Cristobal Balenciaga, one of its greatest luminaries - even the greatest in the informed view of many. Not that it is easy to imagine Ghesquiere's aesthetic ever being subtle enough to re-create Balenciaga's magisterial modernity, I think. Then again, we are told that the spirit moves in mysterious ways, so it might still happen.

But I will never know, not having seen his clothes on the runway for some seasons. You see, I was banned from Balenciaga because I wounded Gallic pride by accusing the house of being intellectually pretentious. If I had called General de Gaulle a secret transvestite and a wife-beating drunk, the heavens could not have showered my head with more fire and brimstone. The women in the press office clearly felt that not only their personal honour but that of Paris as the fountainhead of fashion had been sullied - and by an Englishman, at that. I accepted the edict, of course, thinking all the time of Crécy, Poitiers, Honfleur, Agincourt and Waterloo. But, above all, I was thinking of Cristobal, and how he must have been smiling down on them. It was a curiously satisfying situation for me, because they had done exactly what he would have in the same circumstances. Instinctive genius as he was, he wasn't always so hot at personal relations. He was notorious for pursuing vendettas with other designers, cutting clients off without a word if they displeased him, refusing to meet all but the most carefully chosen members of the press and even closing his firm down – with the immortal words,"It's a dog's life" – without informing any of his devoted staff that they were instantly out of a job.

So, who said the spirit of a great design house dies when the designer does? No such thing. It just waits for the perfect reincarnation to come along and then starts all over again.

What's Wrong With Fashion Journalism?

2010-01-03T12:19:00.000-08:00

A piece in my newspaper about a dress that has proved very popular this season is illustrated not by a picture of the designers or the dress on a professional model, but with paparazzi shots of celebs wearing it. They include the usual suspects from popular, transitory culture: Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Cheryl Cole, Rihanna...

We seem to have reached the point where the dress itself is almost irrelevant and the only credibility it has comes from the wearer. This is nothing new, of course. Without the wearer, the wedding dress of the Princess of Wales would have been of no interest in itself, any more than the one worn by Wallis Simpson for her wedding to an earlier Prince of Wales. Even people who make their living from writing about fashion would probably have to think a bit to remember who designed the first and go to the history books for the second (the Emanuels and Mainbocher, respectively).

Fashion writers, like any other commentators on artistic work, should be critics rather than popular cheerleaders. Loving frocks and the world of showbiz personalities are not enough. A fashion journalist needs to have the knowledge to differentiate between the good, the average and the bad – and to know why each one is what it is, just as a book critic can tell the difference between a Nobel winner and a Mills and Boon romance. But, sadly, you don't even need the fingers of one hand to count the number across the globe who do.

That's why fashion journalism as we have known it is dying, as new graduates from modern courses bring different agendas to the job and bloggers take over the field of immediate reaction. Things had to change, because journalism has allowed itself to become dependent on advertising revenues – which can, of course, be withdrawn if comments displease. Result: all commentary on any label with an advertising budget is now totally anodyne. Thank God for the bloggers who give an immediate and honest reaction which, let's hope, might some day also be an informed one (not always the case at the moment).

Meanwhile, if you want to see 'the star in the frock', cancel the newspaper and start reading Hello! and OK.

Best Face Forward

2009-12-30T04:21:00.001-08:00

Is animation changing the world? I ask because the strangely expressionless faces of the characters in Avatar bear a frightening similarity to the face of today's fashionable beauty: no lines, no expression apart from that in the eyes, no engagement with the other person – and of no interest at all. Ever since Snow White, beauticians have tried to make women's faces bland and boringly predictable (or all identical, to put it another way) in the mode of the moment.

Now, of course, it is much easier thanks to the developments in Botox, plastic surgery, nips, tucks and a million and one ideas spawned by fashion's Hell's Kitchen in an endless onslaught to destroy female individuality.

Fashion is predicated on change and the best catalyst for that is to engender insecurity – something fashion discovered with Marie Antoinette in Versailles, if not long before. Insecurity is about inadequacy and feelings of inferiority. Fashion gives women a simple answer: buy yourself out of it, darling. How? Clothes? No, everybody
does that. Get a real new (for which read young) you by changing your actual face. If Anna Wintour can do it, it must be the latest fashion, surely? And why stop there? Are you happy with your body? I thought not. But don't worry, the benign scalpel in the caring hand of the plastic surgeon can make it all right again – and not for so much money!

So, we have reached the point where changing the colour and style of your hair is not enough in the constant paper chase after youth. It's about flesh and skin now. A celeb fest or a red carpet affair is the scariest thing imaginable on planet fashion. Nobody knows who anyone is anymore. "Is that X over there?" "You know, I am not sure." "It
looks like her but she's different, somehow." You bet. She's had the knife, along with most of her friends.

And it isn't just older women who crave the blandly expressionless face of beauty. Botox is popular even with teenagers in America and Brazil. And it is sad. Like most people over Christmas, I have probably spent too much time looking at old movies starring the classic actresses, each one of whom had her own strong face. And the
variety was great. I also saw a magazine picture of Jerry Hall, whose character and personality, not to mention her very individual beauty, made her an outstanding model light years ahead of today's contenders. And even she has gone bland and expressionless in that Avatar way.

So what are we left with? Where is the excitement of facial variety to be found?

Thank God for Pat McGrath, the world's undisputed makeup genius who, working with bold designers like John Galliano, is creating extraordinary looks based on tribal face painting and, rather ironically, the slapdash makeup applied by the demented in Bedlam. So far, it is only used in fashion shows and deliberately self-conscious magazine features but it might just be exciting enough when tamed to the level of real women to break the stiff face of the drawn cartoon character that is current beauty.

Wouldn't it be great if fashionable women could laugh – or at least smile – again and even show some animation in faces that have become masks as grotesque as any seen in the carnival of Venice?

Fur Will Fly

2009-12-29T01:22:00.001-08:00

The Queen, Kate Moss, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Shirley Bassey do. Michelle Obama, Stella McCartney, Carla Bruni and Christina Ricci do not. We're talking celebs wearing fur in public.

Naturally, it's a perennial preoccupation with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) but rather a lost battle among many high-profile fashion followers who think the glamour of fur outweighs all the criticism it receives. And, largely by default, we have all played a part in allowing its insidious return. Has any fashion magazine ever suggested to a growing list of top designers who use it that fur is perhaps something that fashion can do without, no matter how beautifully designed it might be? Despite the glory years of the anti-fur campaigners in the eighties and nineties, when emotive ads shot by David Bailey and hysterical denunciations by supermodels like Naomi Campbell of fur wearing seemed to suggest that fur was as dead
a fashion as egret feathers, the fact is it is once again accepted almost without comment not only on the runway but also on the backs of the fashionable, even it does keep a low profile on the shop floor.

Over the last ten years fur crept back in the form of rabbit trims, followed by coats of often unidentified pelts, until we reached the point where Wags out for a night on the razzle or Kate Moss boarding a private jet swathed in the real thing cause not even a small sigh of disapproval from the readers of Hello or OK. Anna Wintour used her power as editor-in-chief of US Vogue to bring fur back on its editorial pages and the models and photographers who seemed so reformed slowly dropped off the edge of the moral high ground and began to reappear on runways (some of the most powerful designers in Milan and Paris had not renounced fur at all, although for some years they did not show it on the catwalk) and then in advertisements, buoyed up by the crisp rallying call of the E-in-C of US Vogue that, as long as fur is a part of fashion, the magazine should cover it … which gave the ditherers the perfect cop-out: "It's
not my fault, stupid. It's fashion, innit?"

PETA hopes to change all this with a list of the Worst Dressed Celebrities in the world - based on how often they are seen in public wearing fur - followed by an on-line poll in February which will choose a 'winner'. Who do you think? Shirley Bassey? Liz Hurley? Keira Knightly? Jennifer Lopez? All guilty. Or could it be an all
Brit final between the Queen and everybody's favourite, Kate Moss? Both super guilty. Whoever it is, a business with worldwide sales in 2007 of over $16bn which contributed over $21bn to the global economy in 2008 is going to need a very big shift in public opinion before it starts to tremble. And we haven't even begun to think about fashion's obsession with the precious skins of reptiles.

Ethical Issues

2009-12-27T02:31:00.001-08:00

2009 was a very stimulating and challenging year and it ended on a high note which involved me with a different area of fashion from the normal day-to-day run of parties, exhibitions , lunches and parties that keep the international fashion wheels turning. Different, but important. I would even say that, for the future as well as right now, it is THE most important area, although it is so often ignored within the business. The Academy of Design in Colombo, Sri Lanka, working with the Sri Lankan government, asked me to help organise and then chair an international symposium to look at ethical questions in the manufacture of high-street clothing which are becoming so pressing around the world.

The ethics involved with the sourcing and maufacture of cheap clothing is, like that over global warming, a very simple one. We all know that those special offers of a dozen boxer shorts for £10 are based on expoitation of Third World labour, just as we know that the big countries' refusal to accept their responsibility for the plight of the smaller ones is all about expediency. We are well aware that those who should be making the decisions hide behind uncertainties which are often no such thing. We are lured into acquiesence by talk of lack of consensus among scientists on global warming. We are assured that major manufacturers are as ethical as they can be without penalising the buyer with huge price hikes to cover the new fairer wages that any attempt at equity would force on us.

So, it's easy, stupid. Copenhagen has guaranteed that you won't have to sell your second home, exist with only one car and only be allowed to use it very rarely. In the same way, the fashion mantra says, we are determined to give you the best value for money in your clothing. How? By cutting already considerable profits? By no longer building shops and malls as grand as palaces? No. By keeping foreign wages at a minimum and turning a blind eye to the exploitation, knowing that the consumer –who alone can change the situation - looks at only the price he or she has to pay, not that paid by women and children working as cheap labour for major labels in vurtually every Third World country.

I feel strongly about this double standard form of thinking, so I was delighted to be invited to Sri Lanka, home of some of the most modern and efficient clothing factories in the world, where workers are at last treated with the benevolence of the great Quaker factory owners in late Victorian times in the modern equivalent of pragmatic enlightenment set up at Bourneville and Port Sunlight. It seemed the perfectly appropriate venue, as this is a country which is trying to take its responsibilities to both the workers and the trade necessary for economic strength seriously.

We gathered a group of international and Singhalese experts to debate the issues of ethical sourcing of fabrics, acceptable standards in employment in Third-World fashion manufacturing - almost entirely for Western labels - and the need for education in these issues not only in Asia but, even more pressingly, in the West where the product is sold. Invited delegates came from manufacturing (including TopShop), retailing (including Asos) and a wide range of academics and educators. Our keynote speaker was John Thakara, a leading figure in the world of ethical food sourcing who broadened the whole subject form the start. A vital element was the close involvement of Sri Lankan manufacturers and political figures - entirely appropriately, as this small island is trailblazing in so many ways, with the help of enlightened Western manufacturers and retailers. The week was quietly successful and we are now planning next year's event, which will take the debate further.

Red Ribbon, White Space

2009-12-18T00:45:00.001-08:00

A movie and a book neatly encapsulate the two faces of fashion: the film Valentino and the book Maison Martin Margiela. Glamour on one side, rigour on the other; overexposure of one designer as an international social force, deliberate secrecy and anonymity of another. The contrasting history and position of the designers Valentino and Martin Margiela, both of whom have now handed over their companies and taken a back seat, are worth examining as they neatly sum up what has been wrong and what has been right in fashion over the last few decades.

Valentino has enjoyed a long and very high profile career as the glamour merchant of the rich, especially in the United States. Season after season, he has made himself ever more wealthy by realising that the rich have little imagination and always eschew novelty for the known way and the path of conformity. We all know that most of Valentino's pricey little wisps of chiffon were paid for by rich men – than whom no group is more traditional. So, by never having an original idea, our Val built a multi-million dollar empire. But is this something that should make a man a household name? I don't think so. It is rather like a carpenter becoming hugely successful by making exactly the same piece of furniture over and over again, with only the slightest variations in the choice of wood. Boring to all but the most timorous and uncertain.

No one could say that of Maison Martin Margiela, as a fabulously original and challenging illustrated volume of the same title (published by Rizzoli) makes clear. Just as Valentino is a high-profile glamour figure (if you want to see naked vanity and self-regard, catch him and his business partner parading their outrageous bouffant hairstyles in the film whilst uttering a string of affected platitudes), Margiela has so shunned the limelight that many suspect that he doesn't actually exist and possibly never has. Not so surprising. Every edict and comment that issues from the company, not to mention the clothes, is branded simply 'Maison Martin Margiela'. The anonymity is total but the design is original, radical and challenging … and has been since the beginning from a company that has spawned ideas – witty, unexpected and frequently downright impossible – with all the excitement and unpredictability of a fairground.

Fashion is in chaos and facing meltdown at this moment. The fortunes of Valentino and Maison Martin Margiela offer an instructive parable for our time. What is wrong with a fashion world that elevates a creative nonentity to world status and leaves a true genius virtually unknown to the fashionable masses?

Could it have anything to do with advertising budgets? he asks innocently….

Issues with The September Issue

2009-12-14T23:28:00.001-08:00

Talking to some fashion friends last night, the topic of The September Issue came up and somebody said it was a shame that it didn't have more widespread distribution. I kept quiet, but I have to say I fully understand why the film was given such a limited airing. Once again, it brings home the the stark fact that fashion only really 'works' as a spectator sport, when you are in the audience of a show – and by no means always, even then – or when it is on the glossy page of a magazine, as an image created by a top stylist and photographer – and that is becoming increasingly less frequent as more and more mediocre images are printed in a desperate attempt to keep readers' interest. There are so many desperate fashion magazines now that even students can't get excited over them. Isn't the time fast coming when most fashion magazines could be published every two or three months without causing too much angst for their readers?

We are at the beginning of a revolution. It is already clear that there are too many clothes, too many shows, too many pictures and way too many magazines even for the most dedicated fashionista. Which is why I feel that The September Issue was such a big mistake.

The truth is that it was boring … because putting together a fashion magazine IS boring. Everything moves terribly slowly. The daily dramas are over such trivial matters that nobody but the participants could possibly become emotionally involved with their outcome. Fashionistas flocked to the SI because they wanted to see Anna Wintour put in her place – fat chance! – and the director played into their hands by trying desperately to get something going between her and Grace Coddington over some pictures Wintour decided to drop. Storm in a teacup is the phrase that comes to mind and that is all it was, I'm afraid. No wonder that Sight and Sound, the cineast's bible, called The SI 'a boring film about boring people'.

No wonder it wasn't inflicted on the public at large. Even among fashion folk its appeal could only attract the weaker minded. Just show us the clothes much less frequently and leave it at that. The huge fashion magazine that is over three-quarters devoted to advertising is no great cause for celebration – except to the publishers, of course!

Books and Bokks

2009-12-13T23:55:00.001-08:00

Christmas comes but once a year and when it does it brings … the chance of a good laugh. At least to fashion insiders.

I have two publications in front of me. My Favourite Dress, published by The Antique Collector's Guide, is a strange book, a spin-off from an exhibition of the same name in which designers were asked to nominate their favourite dress. A trite idea, but quite an interesting exhibition. But trouble comes when it is gathered in hard covers. Clearly, if a designer is asked to nominate a garment designed by himself, the chances are that it will end as a barely disguised exercise in narcissism. And, of course, it does. Some of the puffs provided by the designers – or their desperate PAs or PR companies – are shamelessly self-serving. OK, we can accept that in the most egotistical profession in the world after acting or being a world sports personality. But what is shocking in My Favourite Dress – and the thing that makes it such a fashion insider's pleasure – is the pictures of the designers themselves. I know all the designers featured here. I see them regularly and I have to say that, almost without exception, their personal pics are works of fiction in themselves. I gasped with amazement at the portraits that were clearly 20 years out of date, and the careful air brushing and retouching of the more recent ones. I know this is a vanity industry, but surely it must try to keep some links with reality? Nobody wants to go down to posterity looking like an abandoned prune or WH Auden after an especially heavy night. But my guess is that this book will have a very short life, entirely lived on a shelf in a bookshop – but one would have thought that a publisher would have tried to give even a silly book some credibility.

Have you heard of Bokks of London? Thought not. Well, they are specialists in luxury mail order (ready for an Edese Doret Boeing business jet, anybody? It's yours for only £85,000,000) for those with very much more money than sense. Their catalogue (far too classy to be called that, of course) is all carefully lit seductive photographs
of items selected more for price than taste level, supported by commentary by superannuated hacks and the likes of Dustin Hoffman and the ubiquitous Karl Lagerfeld, comes in a black cardboard container and weighs rather a lot. In it you will find such essentials as a razor by Hommage at £20,000 (ideal for dad); The Caribbean Chocolate Epic, a five-day trip to Jamaica and an eat-as-much-as-you-like chocolate bonanza for mum (from £90,000) but – and here's the shock - flying only business class; and a treehouse lighthouse (£45,000) for the kids … or Tory MPs! And if that isn't a big enough Christmas spend to impress your Surrey neighbours, you can add on exclusive entertainment for the oldies by the oldies: private gigs by Lenny Kravitz, Tony Bennett or Sting. Prices by negotiation.

Writing this, I wonder if that man of taste Sir Philip Green might be a top Bokks customer. I am sure he would find much to love in these glossy pages. They actually make Harrods look rather like a thrift shop. If this publication landed up in the wrong hands it could cause a revolution that would rival the one the French had a couple of centuries ago. Let them eat cake? Not this time, ducky. Give them diamonds instead.

PS In case you didn't get it, the name means that most items are delivered in a box – black, of course.

A New Fashion Language?

2009-12-13T02:34:00.001-08:00

News that the movie Avatar is introducing a new language is challenging. Although only rudimentary – about a thousand words – its potential is daunting if kids take it up and make it a new way of communicating, possibly secretly. As our English language becomes more dumbed down by the day, the prospect of building a new one is exciting because it would have the precision that all 'naming of parts' requires – the precision new languages develop and old ones like English eventually lose.

How challenging if fashion – which has the most old-fashioned linguistics of any modern industry – could follow Atavar-speak, create a new vocabulary and break away from its endless round of tired old recycling of the ideas of others. It is surely only with such a radical new approach that it can regain some of the energy it once had … in the distant days when making money was second to creating something new, exciting and challenging. I find it extraordinarily lacking in vision or even imagination that designers are still working with fabrics and techniques invented centuries ago and seem quite devoid of any curiosity to change the situation. And we all know the correlation between curiosity (and lack of it) and intelligence (and lack of it).

Maybe the first step could be a serious consideration of why and who should be accepted for a fashion design course. A new pedagogic language of design, perhaps, a la Avatar? Colleges around the world provide us with graduates who are adequate as plodding foot soldiers but rarely if ever the Alexander the Great leader of the future. And why should they? Poiret, Chanel, Balenciaga and Dior never went near an art college. Neither did Miuccia Prada or Vivienne Westwood. How many of the fashion leaders we hail as greats today might not have been really great if they had enjoyed a different form of education – one that aimed to raise them above the lumpen crowd of mediocrity that floods out of the world's educational establishments every year?

Sensible Shoes

2009-12-11T14:36:00.001-08:00

Has it taken a radical architect to end the nonsensical desperation of women's shoes, almost all designed by men of course? In her architecturally shaped thermo-injected plastic shoes, Zaha Hadid has virtually eliminated heels in a design approach apparently conceived with the revolutionary aim of allowing women to walk more than twenty yards without pain or even support from a companion, passser-by or concierge (see them here). And, it is claimed, the new shoe is selling like mad to women sick of bunions, backache and ever escalating bills from doctors and chiropodists.

I wonder. Hadid's shoe – more a sandal, really – is a strange concept for women inured to the ritual humiliation of grotesque ugliness and brainwashed into the belief that high-fashion footwear must mean high heels and soles with an even higher price tag (£400 is considered not exceptional for the right label). How will they adapt after all the commercial brainwashing?

I don't think they will change at all. Hadid's shoe is no more a fashion item than the terminally provincial Ugg boot. It goes without saying that it is designed with impeccable logic and will appeal to sensible women everywhere. But the women who have made shoe designers wealthy men in return for ensuring that they will be cripples by the time they are sixty couldn't care less. For fashion shoe eccentrics, without the agony where is the ecstasy?

Distressed About Jeans

2009-12-04T05:36:00.001-08:00

I've just spent three days touring Sri Lanka's state-of-the-art factories dedicated to making cheap clothes for the West. All the big labels seem to be here in one form or another: Next, Victoria's Secret, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and, above all, Tesco and M&S (so much so in the case of the last that this island could be renamed Marksland - or maybe Roseland, given that the image of Sir Stuart is everywhere and his name is spoken with the awe that, in different circles, is accorded to Mother Theresa alone). It is all very caring and benevolent, I am sure, but I fear that a lot of land and rural livelihoods have been swallowed up to make it possible.

One of the processes that struck me as being a paradigm for the ludicrous situation that fashion labels are now in is found in every Sri Lankan factory making jeans for the West. Which seems to be just about all of them. It takes the form of distressing brand-new, perfect denim in order to age it so that it looks as if the wearer has had his or her jeans for years. Infra-red beams are used to make creases at crotch and knee; paint is stippled through pieces of cardboard with pre-ordained patterns to imitate the messy jeans of the house painter from hell; razor blades and sandpaper slash, distress and destroy the surface… you get the picture.

The result is thousands of pairs of identically 'personalised' jeans leaving the factories everyday. How sad that the character marks that made jeans such a graphic map of an individual's lifestyle and even social status – the frayed edges, spilled paint and worn-through knees – are now presented to the buyer with a sterile and mass-produced identikit identity. This is sick manipulation, no matter what gloss is put on it. It always was, even when it was first begun by the Italians, always in awe of Hollywood and its kitsch idea of the Wild West. It didn't have much credibility even then for anyone who knew anything about the history of America, and today it is about as convincing as Simon Cowell's TV personality.

Imagine a brand-new car being sold with artificially created marks of ageing such as scratches and dents and you realise how sick the jeans trade is. Buy them new and unmanipulated, like the cowboys and the blue-collar workers of America did, and make them grow old on your body with your own history in the surface and shape. As with your car, if there are any blemishes, they should belong to you alone.

Kate's Pearls of Wisdom

2009-11-23T01:24:00.000-08:00

My newspaper devoted an entire page to the shocking news that Kate Moss finds vanity more gratifying than eating. Quelle surprise! Who would have thought it of a model brainwashed for years by the mantra, "If you don't keep thin, you don't get work"? Simple as that. Did anyone actually expect her to advocate steak and kidney pudding followed by tiramisu as a way for young women to have fun?

So, has Kate — the little cockney sparrow we all loved because she was beautiful and seemed to be blessedly free of opinions on anything — turned into the new Cruella de Ville of high fashion, the one who speaks the unspeakable? Do all those fans who could forgive her the drugs, the fags and spilling out of nightclubs at three in the morning, giving a very good imitation of being totally wasted — just like thousands of other cool young Saturday night urbanites — see her as the enemy, as my very-middle-class newspaper seems to?

I don't think so.

What Kate has done, either naively or with clever pre-Christmas cunning (after all, she does know people who need to sell a lot of fashion clothes this season), is let the world know what most of us have divined: the look is all. As it always has been in the fashion world. Kate's comment is nothing more than an update of the slogan attributed to the Duchess of Windsor that a fashionable woman can never be too thin or too rich — although with high-street sales booming (with a lot of help from Kate) at least the second point is no longer so relevant.

And, of course, it isn't just Kate who is guilty. Most of us would like to be thinner if only we could learn to be obsessive over our looks, as models must be. But I guess that for most of us the mantra for contentment is "You can never be too complacent or lazy".

Wonder why the Duchess didn't come up with that one?

More Ethics & Prada's Party

2009-11-19T00:38:00.000-08:00

The second day of the Drapers Summit was very well attended… except for the session devoted to ethics and sustainability in sourcing and supply. At the end of the previous session, at least half the audience left the hall. I'm sure that it had nothing to do with the calibre of the speakers but reflected the fact that, in these difficult retailing times, retailers simply feel that ethics are a luxury they can't afford. As one speaker said, to check out cotton sourcing and manufacturing standards could add as much as £10 to the cost of a mid-price bra, as if this was such a shocking thing it couldn't be contemplated. And so the exploitation of which nearly all of us in the West are guilty goes on.

In the evening, I went to the Prada party in their Bond Street shop to celebrate the launch of a book - Prada's first - which celebrates in pictures the firm's ground-breaking history in well designed pages full of radical photographs. It was packed of course, and we found ourselves dipping and dodging round a long line of scantily dressed mannequins showing us the cruise collection of brightly coloured prints. No reference to sourcing, as far as I could tell, but that was not much of a problem for the crowds, celebrating what was effectively the first fashion Christmas drinks party in London this season.

Drapers Fashion Summit

2009-11-17T23:25:00.001-08:00

I spent yesterday at the Drapers Fashion Summit 2009, devoted to 'The Business of Fashion', a gathering of retailers and representatives from many other areas of fashion. We were told by Joseph Wan,
CEO of Harvey Nichols, that handbags at £15,000 a pop sole with no difficulty; according to Marigay McKee, Fashion and Beauty Director of Harrods, the luxury market was also booming in her store, regardless of price. Designers like Betty Jackson and Lulu Guinness were a little less euphoric, but the most interesting contributions of
the day for me were at two diametrically opposed ends of retailing: Anthony Thompson, managing director of George at Asda and Stephanie Phair, director of theOutnet.com, the newest venture of Net-a-Porter.

Both were reassuringly buoyant about their sides of the market, but the person I found myself in complete agreement with was Touker Suleyman, owner of Ghost and Hawes & Curtis, who said that in his opinion the bad times are still to come in fashion retailing. If he is right, I must say that I am afraid the knock-on effect will seriously endanger some of London's designers – they are already hanging on by their fingernails in the hope that next year might be better.

Today the Big Gun speakers include Diane von Furstenberg, Harold Tillman (CEO British Fashion Council) and Stuart Rose. To add some variety from all the retail emphasis, I will be doing my bit as part of a panel to discuss The Power of the Style Press.