A grown-up vest-top is similar to a teenage vest-top, but the neckline is higher and the shoulders are wider. It's a more serious top. It's not perhaps exciting, but it is really useful, and you'll end up wearing it more than you might think. Jess Cartner-Morley shows a selection of grown-up vest-tops for your wardrobe Continue reading...
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How to wear grown-up vest tops video
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How to dress: the grown-up vest top
'It's the piece you pick up in Zara as an afterthought, and then find you wear twice a week for the next six months while the more "fun" buys never quite take'
What do you call a T-shirt with no sleeves? Sorry, no punchline: I don't know, that's why I'm asking. Some call it a shell top, which has a nice ring to it and is appropriate in that it evokes a delicate layer of protection. But I'm not sure such oblique nomenclature is helpful, so I'm calling it a grown-up vest top, which doesn't have any ring at all, but is appropriately utilitarian for what could be the hardest-working piece in your wardrobe. I'm talking about a crew-neck T-shirt, sliced off vertically towards the outer edge of your shoulders. Only a few inches of fabric differentiate this from a classic vest top scooped at the front and back, narrow straps but those inches are crucial.
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How to wear grey video
The colour grey is anything but drab, and can be a good choice in summery weather. Grey has had a complete makeover and is now the most chic of all the neutrals. It's more modern than black, more interesting than navy. Fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley shows a selection of grey pieces for your wardrobe Continue reading...
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Fashion gets real: how the ordinary woman became this season's muse
On this seasons catwalks, models pushed shopping trollies, lugged bags and wrapped up against the winter chill. Sound familiar?
There is a zeitgeist which rainbows over and above fashion. That news ticker which runs through your head I should buy a shoe with a chunkier heel, is gingham over, how many shirt buttons to undo? is only half the story. The bigger picture, in which style expresses the big stuff how optimistic we feel about the future, what femininity means at any moment, what we are nostalgic for is usually swimming somewhere just out of focus in the background.
Pan out, right now, and this is what you find: fashion has tired of its ivory tower and fallen in love with reality. Fashions distillery usually filters the essence of the zeitgeist to create an idealised muse. The more physically impossible the proportions, the greater the power of the image to etch itself onto the pop cultural consciousness. (Think of the elongated elegance and exaggerated gestures of René Gruaus illustrations of New Look Dior. Or Kim Kardashian in Givenchy.)
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Victoria Beckham: I used to feel famous, but now I feel successful
The ex-Spice Girl has forged a fashion empire with hard work, sharp business sense and a real understanding of how women want to dress. The fashion industry admires her, the public love her and finally she believes in herself
One midsummer evening not long ago, I rang the buzzer of a Holland Park mansion, wedding-cake white with black railings. The lady of the house, barefoot in a floral-print dress, opened the door and politely held out a hand for me to shake. (It was her left hand, but its the thought that counts.) Hello! I had a party, she said. It was so good. It was my birthday. And now weve got goldfish. Have you got goldfish? And with that Harper Beckham, three, hopped on to her lilac scooter and led the way into the sitting room.
This is not how interviews with fashion designers usually begin. But Victoria Beckham has built a label which last year took £30 million in sales by doing things her own way. She is the ex-Spice Girl who took on the fashion industry and won them over; the Wag who became a player. Let other designers play the eccentric artist; Beckham is the multitasking modern woman, seating her children next to Anna Wintour at her last fashion show.
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Fashion picks: Jess Cartner-Morley on sixties
They say that if you remember the 1960s, you werent there. Which I dont get, because who could forget clothes like these? Autumns take on the 1960s zooms in on the middle years: its darker than the go-go girls who opened the decade, but sharper and less woozy than the Marrakech-boho chicks who led into the 1970s. Think boots with above-the-knee skirts, oversized sunglasses, big buttons and wing collars. At Gucci, mustard yellow and tobacco brown lent accents of sophistication to rose pink and mint green; at Versace, Julie Christie hair added glamour to rollnecks. Saint Laurent evoked Edie Sedgwick with thrift-shop chic for party girls. At Louis Vuitton, Nicholas Ghesquière looked back to the era of youthquake with ski-lodge knitwear and Swinging London graphics. If the early 1960s is innocence and the decades end is rebellion, this mid-60s snapshot is about freedom. The clothes are retro, but the spirit is anything but staid.
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New York fashion week: Victoria Beckham's snug fit between extremes
Beckham has taken looks which were floating around the fashion zeitgeist before and made them her own
Victoria Beckham's spring/summer 2015 collection in pictures
Victoria Beckham's spring/summer 2015 collection in pictures
Having successfully infiltrated the fashion world, Victoria Beckham now occupies a very different position within the New York fashion week web of power and influence than she did in the days when she was marketing her own glamorous lifestyle in the form of figure-flattering date dresses.
Her brand now operates in the space between the avant-garde designers whose challenging ideas provide fashion's momentum and the commercial meat of selling those trends at mass level.
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Spike Jonze satire electrifies New York fashion week for Opening Ceremony
Humberto Leon and Carol Lim of the cult label Opening Ceremony commissioned the director to produce a hard-hitting one-act play for the event. It was followed by Anthony Vaccarellos debut collection for Versus
The conundrum facing New York fashion week is this: the pop cultural noise and fanfare around fashion is louder than it has ever been, but everyone from the consumer to the editors-in-chief is bored with traditional catwalk shows. The clothes on the catwalk have become overshadowed by the circus of celebrity, models, gossip and street tyle that wraps around them. The actual show has become the excuse for the party, rather than the party itself. What to do?
Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, duo behind the cult label Opening Ceremony, had an idea: how about asking Spike Jonze and Jonah Hill to reboot the catwalk show by scripting a one-night-only, one-act play about a catwalk show, in which the new collection serves as theatrical costume in a story about the human dramas of fashion week?
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Tommy Hilfiger lends modern touch to 60s vibe at New York fashion week
It was all flower children, Sgt Peppers and Woodstock at Tommy Hilfigers summer collection and hes still ahead of the curve
Tommy Hilfigers $6.4bn business is built not on his skill with hemlines or colour palettes, but on his gift for seeing the big picture. Tommy Hilfiger clothes sell because they make the customer feel connected to the gloss and glamour of pop culture, and to an aspirational lifestyle. And right now there is no more aspirational summer lifestyle than to hang out at a music festivals, looking cool.
So on the catwalk at New York fashion week on Monday, that was exactly what the models wearing Tommy Hilfigers collection for next summer were doing.
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From the alpha plait to the high-hip split: eight fast trends from New York fashion week
Flat shoes, suburbia and gingham? Sure. Sex? Not so much sorry. From Victoria Beckhams winklepickers to DKNYs midi skirts, heres a preview of next summers trends Continue reading...
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How to wear A-line skirts video
The A-line skirt is a shorter and more flared skirt. It's a fun garment, with a more energetic and cheerful look compared to the serious, ladylike and posed pencil-skirt. Fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley shows a selection of high street A-line skirts and suggests some ways that you can wear it Continue reading...
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London fashion week: Sam Taylor-Johnson show reveals 'spirit' of Chanel
Second Floor exhibition aims to create psychological portrait of late designer in form of 34 photos of preserved Paris apartment
The first must-see show of London fashion week features no clothes at all. Second Floor, an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, is a "psychological portrait" of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, the controversial founder of the house of Chanel, in the form of 34 photographs taken by the artist Sam Taylor-Johnson of the designer's apartment at 31 Rue Cambon, Paris.
The subject matter, interiors of an apartment preserved as a private memorial since Chanel's death more than 40 years ago, is a departure for Taylor-Johnson, better known for unorthodox portraits. Among the best known are her video of David Beckham sleeping and the Crying Men series, in which Daniel Craig, Ray Winstone, Sean Penn and other Hollywood stars were photographed in tears.
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How to dress for fashion week
From last-minute panic buying to how to sprint in heels, Jess Cartner-Morley on what she has learned about style from 15 years of attending fashion weeks
Imagine if you had to go to a super glamorous party full of incredibly well-dressed people with sky-high taste and really thin legs. And while you were there you had to have various impromptu high-level meetings with the 10 people in the world who are probably most important to your career. This party would start at 9am and go on till around midnight. It would involve some fairly lengthy hikes and a few high-speed sprints, between which you would stand around for hours, occasionally getting to squeeze your arse on to four inches of bench space among the aforementioned skinny people, for 20 minutes if youre lucky. Some of the party would take place outside at the mercy of the weather, some in ridiculously posh venues full of expensive flowers and twinkly candles, and some of it in underground car parks. In order to travel between these venues you would be up against a black-belt elite of taxi hailers (hence the lengthy hikes.) There would be no cloakroom facilities.
Then imagine you had to do exactly the same thing the next day, and the day after that, for four whole weeks.
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London fashion week: Google puts the capitals designers through digital bootcamp
The British Fashion Council emphasises digital engagement for small-scale London designers, while Burberry gets first go with the Twitter buy button
The catwalk shows may have moved from New York to London, but the trends are being set in Silicon Valley. London fashion week's welcome speech, customarily given at Somerset House by Samantha Cameron or Boris Johnson, was instead beamed live from the Mountain View office of Google director Peter Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald may not have the star power of Cara Delevingne, but the British Fashion Council (BFC) believe he is just as key to the profile and success of this week's shows.
Fitzgerald revealed that his team had held pre-fashion week digital bootcamps with London's designers, at which they were each challenged to do one thing digitally, this fashion week, that they had never done before. He was introduced by Natalie Massenet, the BFC chair who had just returned to London, not from New York fashion week but from Cupertino, having prioritised attending the unveiling of the Apple Watch over the Manhattan catwalk shows.
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What I wore this week: an A-line skirt for a new season
'A pencil skirt is posed, ladylike, slinky; an A-line skirt is peppy and energetic'
In all the Septembers I have spent travelling to fashion shows (15 and counting), I have never once bought a New Season Wardrobe. I say this with no designs on the moral high ground, by the way: I know loads of smart, good-hearted, hardworking women who buy a New Season Wardrobe for each biannual round of shows. And I love that they do, because seeing them in a new look each morning is like opening an advent calender window every day of fashion month to reveal some fabulous new outfit.
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London fashion week 2014 sees reboot for wellies, glamour and digital flair
Buzz surrounds Marchesa homecoming at only fashion week where rainwear is held in as high esteem as glamour
Oscar gowns, ethical fashion and Wellington boots. Welcome to London fashion week, where there is a trend to suit every taste.
The hot-ticket show of the 82 designers on the catwalk schedule is the homecoming show for Marchesa, the label that has ruled the red carpet over the past decade. Sandra Bullock picked up her Oscar in Marchesa in 2010; Michelle Obama chose a Marchesa dress for the White House correspondents' dinner earlier this year.
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London fashion week: the expert view on the trends to watch this season
Fake fur, flat shoes and minimal pleats as fashion embraces practicality but pink hair is the way to go
The clothes on the catwalk are to be sold next spring and summer. The weather, as London fashion week opens, is glorious Indian summer sunshine. But fashion refuses to be tethered by such details. Fake fur coats are set to be a major designer and high street trend this season, and many showgoers braved the heat and sported their faux. The new fake furs are more cookie-monster than trophy wife: think crazy colours and boxy shapes.
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Anna Wintour and Stella McCartney at Hunter Original at London fashion week stylewatch
There is a simpatico mirrroring vibe going on here, between the designers wife and Tsar Wintour, which augurs well for the reception of the Hunter Original show
The identical faint smize, the burgundy/navy/white palette, the arm and leg crossing. Also, the eagle eyed may have noticed that the wife of Hunter creative director Alasdhair Willis is, in fact, Stella McCartney. The McCartney clan were out in force for Hunters second London fashion week showing, flanking American powerhouse attendees Wintour and Richard Buckley (Mr Tom Ford) in all their transatlantic aristocracy. Nancy Shevell wore low-heeled ankle boots - not exactly a wellie, but a nod towards solidarity - while her husband Sir Paul McCartney, the epitome of the rock grandee in black jeans, must surely have enjoyed the Yellow Submarine references scattered over his son-in-laws catwalk. A humble Wellington boot brand? Er, that will be a no
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Five things we loved about JW Anderson spring/summer 2015
Always a highlight of the London fashion week schedule, this seasons show saw JW Anderson in a freaky Riviera mood. Really.
1. The backwards sailor pants.
The nautical gold buttons appeared on
the back rather than the front. It was a classic JW Anderson twist:
unexpected, a bit weird, really wantable. And - bonus - flattering.
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Alexa Chung at Topshop Unique spring/summer 2015 stylewatch
Its the lovechild of Pippi Longstocking meets Jane Birkin! This might be Alexa Chungs most Alexa-ish look ever
The double plait (Pippi) has that tomboyish, just-off-to-Double-Games cheeriness that makes Alexa seem a lot less stuck-up and annoying than most front-rowers. The turtleneck sweater, short skirt and flats (Jane) is a classically chic, Paris Saint Germain look. The lemon yellow is a next-season Topshop trend (so on-message). The Chanel milk-carton handbag is cute and fun but also, well its a Chanel limited edition handbag that probably costs about a million pounds and has to be personally approved by Karl. Oh and theres leopard too, which adds bonus points to any outfit, ever. So yeah, all in all, your average Sunday afternoon casual look.
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