Ed Milibands speech to the Labour party conference on Tuesday unveiled a bold new strategy to shake off the Red Ed tag: he wore a tie in Tory blue.
Milan fashion week has slightly overshadowed the exciting fashion news emerging from Manchester, but the blue tie has been a trend.
Continue reading...1) The store was designed by Farshid Moussavi, one of the most successful female architects currently designing. Moussavi was responsible for the masterplan and infrastructure of the London Olympic Park. For a sense of her angular, modern, clean aesthetic, check out the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, Ohio. Also, shes very glamorous and wears five-inch heels to site meetings.
2) It has a signature scent. Diptyques Feu de Bois candles, to be precise.
Continue reading...For a lesson in how to balance reverence with iconoclasm you need look no further than the catwalk shows of Raf Simons at Christian Dior.
And this balancing act is not just a clever trick; the bottom line depends on it. For the veneration felt by luxury backers LVMH for the illustrious past of Dior is matched only by their determination that Dior should dominate the future. It wouldnt be a true Christian Dior collection without a nod to a Bar jacket, or a New Look suit, or a houndstooth check; but it must never feel old-fashioned, or it wont sell.
Continue reading...She wanted to be an architect when she grew up but clothes are faster than buildings. Designer Rebekka Bay talks to Jess Cartner-Morley about her plans for Gap
You can measure the scale of Rebekka Bays job by the mighty view from her desk. We are on the 11th floor of the Gap headquarters in Tribeca, New York, where, as creative director, she commands her empire from a glass-walled corner office. Supersized marble meeting table; shelfie-ready stacks of art reference books; a Frank Stella print in the waiting area outside. And a view to the south-west, over the Hudson river, that is so beautiful at sunset that between five and six oclock, I dont do any work. I just stare at the light.
Sunset downtime notwithstanding, Bay, 44, has her work cut out. Her pedigree as the creator of H&Ms upscale, minimalist offshoot label Cos won her the Gap job, which she took on two years ago. It was a huge jump in scale, and profile. Cos is sold in 90 stores; Gap is sold in 1,700 stores worldwide, its performance under the spotlight of business pages globally. The size of the business means long lead times, so that the first collection overseen by Bay hit stores only this spring; this month sees the launch of the autumn collection, the first for which Bay has had her full team in place.
Continue reading...So ardent was the clamour for hugs and double kisses around Phoebe Philo after her Céline show at Paris fashion week on Sunday lunchtime that, by the time the designer came to speak to reporters, she had pulled off the camel sweater worn to take her catwalk bow. Under it she was wearing a black cotton T-shirt printed with Before The Dawn, the name of Kate Bushs current tour.
Continue reading...Hubert de Givenchy had Audrey Hepburn; 60 years later, Riccardo Tisci, current creative director of the house that Givenchy founded, has Kim Kardashian.
The comparison is neither acid, nor arch. The correlation is surprisingly close. Givenchy costumed Hepburn for films and dressed her for awards ceremonies, developed a personal relationship with her, and made her the public face of his perfumes. They were pioneers of a mutually beneficial designer-to-celebrity hook-up that is now an industry standard for fashion, and of which Tisci and the Kardashian-Wests are simply the foremost example.
Continue reading...Hedi Slimanes catwalk shows for Saint Laurent begin begin properly, that is, after a diverting extended prelude in which models and rock stars drink champagne and snuggle up on the overcrowded front row, sideboob to leather jacket with some feat of structural engineering.
(It is Saint Laurent, not Yves Saint Laurent, by the way; the striking out of the personal, given name of the founder is one of the myriad ways Slimane has asserted control over a house founded seven years before he was born.)
Continue reading...The fashion editors were invited to have a play with the new Apple Watch in Paris. Here are five things of note from a morning of madeleines and wearable tech
1. You will definitely want one.
To be specific, the one were going to want is the rose gold one, with the white strap. I suspect this, inevitably, will be the most expensive one. The $349 (a UK price has not been announced) rubbery one is nice, but its all about the gold. Sorry.
2. Jony Ive and Marc Newson are power players in fashion now.
Forty-five minutes before the Chanel show was due to start, Karl Lagerfeld himself arrived at the Apple Watch preview, and sat down with Anna Wintour to try on a watch and be talked through the functionality by Ive and Newson. If thats not Apple flexing some powerful fashion muscle, I dont know what is. The breakfast launch was impeccably fashion-week-worthy: it took place at Colette, the most famous boutique in Paris, with espressos and Evian and miniature madeleines. Further proof that Paris fashion royalty are on Team Apple Watch: Azzedine Alaïa is hosting a dinner in honour of Ive.
I'm going to need a bigger wrist. #AppleWatchpic.twitter.com/Db3vcIZFcF
Continue reading...The designers typically elaborate show at Paris fashion week featured a faux street, complete with banner-waving models and guard rails. What was he trying to say?
Karl Lagerfeld, who once dismissed concerns over size-zero models as the whinings of fat mommies with bags of crisps, is an unlikely champion of feminism as a fashionable issue. How, then, to interpret his Chanel catwalk show at Paris fashion week, which closed with a megaphone-wielding Cara Delevingne leading a model army chanting for freedom, the Kardashian-clan catwalk star Kendall Jenner holding a banner reading Womens Rights are More than Alright, and a sea of placards reading Ladies First, History is Her Story, We Can Match the Machos and Boys Should Get Pregnant Too?
Continue reading...Skirt wearers beware its all about shorts next season. Moving on from culottes in Milan, Raf Simons at Dior traditionally the home of ladylike style has decreed that the board short is what youll be wearing come spring. But dont think that sanctions carrying a surfboard and sporting a ratty pair of Vans. Simons made the board short posh by pairing it with ornate frock coats and embroidered booties. Think Kelly Slater crossed with Sofia Coppolas Marie Antoinette and youre almost there. A truly genius mash-up.
Continue reading...The difference between Marc Jacobs Louis Vuitton (1997-2013) and Nicolas Ghesquières Louis Vuitton (2014-future date unknown) is this: Jacobs Vuitton was about travel, and Ghesquières Vuitton is about exploration. The Vuitton story began with trunks made for the wealthy and adventurous, and Jacobs loved to fetishise the rituals of high-end holidays: his shows featured bellboys and chambermaids, hotel corridors and steam trains. Ghesquière is more interested in travel as a mindset and a catalyst for ideas.
The Louis Vuitton fashion show, Ghesquières second for the brand, served also as a glamorous debut for the new Foundation Louis Vuitton, a museum of contemporary art which will house LVMH chairman Bernard Arnaults collection of modern art, and which officially opens later this month. Architect Frank Gehry has compared the building to an iceberg, to sails, and to a cloud. The asymmetric glass and steel arcs, and the waterfall lapping around the entrance, give it a sense of being a fractured-mirror image of the 1899 Grand Palais, that other vast glass-roofed Parisian temple of art, which sits on the bank of the Seine in the centre of Paris.
Continue reading...The Guardians fashion editor selects the ten best-dressed celebrities, editors and bloggers who made their rounds at Paris fashion week, from the insiders fascinations to a few unlikely entrants
The author of the Man Repeller blog is the Lena Dunham of the streetstyle world. The voice of her generation, as expressed in just the right boyfriend jean and perfectly mussed hair. With her minimal makeup and goofy faces, Medine puts style before vanity. (It should be pointed out that this is relatively easy to do when, like her, you are naturally gorgeous.)
Continue reading...The Facebook boss has defended wearing almost identical T-shirts every day on the grounds that he refuses to spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous. If only it were that simple
How to be successful: dress like Mark Zuckerberg
1 High-minded disdain for the silly and frivolous would make a whole lot more sense if Zuckerberg was, say, running to the lab to work on a cure for Ebola. The sentiment is somewhat undermined when you recall that Zuckerbergs key contribution to human progress is filling the internet with generic sunrise photos and updates on how your mums friends daughter is getting on potty-training her twins.
You have to think ahead. You have to think, while still in your underwear, how the outfit will work at the bus stop
Every year, the concept of cold-weather dressing a polo neck under a jacket, a midi skirt swishing against boots seems quite jolly for about a month, six weeks max. And then the novelty wears off and it becomes a bore. Youll be about to leave the house, go to put on your coat and realise it is pouring and the boots are suede. Or its blowing a gale, youve just blowdried your hair and that jacket has no hood.
You have to think ahead. Just as you remember to turn on the heating the minute you get home, before you take off your coat, the same goes for clothes. You have to think, while still in your underwear, how the outfit will work at the bus stop. Because that is, after all, the outfit youll be wearing when you arrive at work, and when youre waiting outside the cinema for your friend later on.
Continue reading...Retailer’s fashion team led by Jaeger boss Belinda Earl introduces new collection featuring 70s-style designs and workout gear
Marks & Spencer has unveiled the summer fashion collections that could save or cost its chief executive his job. The new ranges are due to arrive in store in the spring, when the City will demand concrete evidence that Marc Bolland’s turnaround plan is working.
Clothing sales have been in decline for more than three years, but recent figures have pointed to an improving trend at the high-street chain.
Continue reading...‘If we’re completely honest, us girls nicked this look off boybands on the red carpet’
This trouser suit isn’t actually mine, obviously. I don’t own a trouser suit. I don’t think I ever have, and in fact I don’t think I’ve ever wanted one, until recently. But in the past couple of months, the mental ticker tape of Things I Want Slash Need that flickers at the edge of my vision has begun to feature A Trouser Suit I Can Wear With Trainers.
I would love to make a case for this desire coming from a front-row epiphany with fancy Paris catwalk backstory, but I don’t really think that’s where this look comes from. If we’re completely honest, us girls nicked this look off boy bands on the red carpet a couple of years back. Posh suit, snazzy trainers, clean white T-shirt, dirty hair: that was the Baby Man Of The Year look, wasn’t it? And now that “tomboy” is A Thing, in fashion, and Karl Lagerfeld has decreed that trainers are the alpha shoe of the year, we’ve appropriated this and made it our own. (Also, those boys are all in navy tuxedos and shiny black shoes now, so don’t worry, you won’t get marshalled into a Range Rover in the Simon Cowell convoy by mistake.)
Continue reading...Update your 2014 Christmas-party look with our seasonal style guide. The mood is grumpy but the sillier your bag the better
1 The party mood is moody
The mood music of Christmas 2014 is a little grumpier than it has been over recent years. For instance, this year on social media it’s OK to be sarky about department store Christmas adverts again, after several years in which it was a major social faux pas to be anything except beamingly thrilled by all things Christmassy. It’s not that we’ve gone off Christmas, it’s just that we’ve moved on from the rictus-grin, everything-is-so-bleak-but-CHRISTMAS-IS-PERFECT narrative. For the first year in ages, models in party-themed fashion shoots are not smiling and carrying piles of glossily wrapped presents. On your moodboard instead is Cara Delevingne (above) in the Topshop Christmas campaign, looking sulky and practising her football headers on a disco ball.
Continue reading...What should you buy for the fashionista in your life if your budget doesn’t stretch to Chanel? Here, the Guardian’s fashion team share their affordable festive solutions
Playing Santa is one of my favourite things to do and my modus operandi when shopping for presents is to purchase things the recipient probably wouldn’t buy themselves. I think posh hair accessories fit the bill here, whether they’re really posh – ie Chanel – or something more silly but still with style pedigree, like a Katie Hillier bunny for £35. Small, perfectly formed and excellent for anyone who doesn’t ditch fun in pursuit of fashion. Lauren Cochrane
Continue reading...18 months after Emma Hill left, British fashion house Mulberry has finally appointed Johnny Coca
Almost 18 months after the departure of Emma Hill, Mulberry has finally announced a new creative director. Johnny Coca joins from Céline, where he has been head accessories designer, responsible for some of the bestselling – and most copied – bags and shoes of the past decade.
Coca’s appointment, rumoured for several months, draws a line under one of the fashion industry’s longest-running sagas of recent years. Names including Roland Mouret, Erdem and even John Galliano have been linked with the vacancy. The significance of the appointment is that Mulberry has opted for a backroom name with a prestigious record, rather than a well-known designer. Coca’s expertise is in leather goods, reflecting the reality that it is these – not clothes – that drive fashion profits. His arrival suggests that Mulberry aims to win back its position as the aspirational It bag label for British women – a position it has ceded in recent years to other labels including, ironically, Céline. The Céline “trapeze” handbag, created by the studio headed by Coca and Céline’s overall creative director, Phoebe Philo, became as recognisable a status symbol as the Mulberry “Bayswater” had been before it.