Kylie Minogue at Stella McCartney's Christmas lights switch-on

November 27, 2014, 2:32 am

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At the store’s annual Christmas lights switch-on, Kylie Minogue went for low-key sparkle while Neneh Cherry dressed for the cold

Sound the Mariah Carey klaxon: the Christmas season has started. The turning on of Stella McCartney’s festive lights at her shop in Bruton Street, London, is the first day of Christmas in the official fashion calendar. Our highlight: a heartwarming girly bear hug between two pop queens. Kylie Minogue (black sequin blazer over silk camisole, boyfriend jeans, black courts) said hello to Neneh Cherry (hooded mohair cloud-grey coat, black skinnies, trainers), who wrapped her arms around her for a cuddle. Who needs mistletoe?

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What I wore this week: a mid-thigh coat with a mid-calf skirt | Jess Cartner-Morley

November 28, 2014, 8:30 am

≫ Next: From Rocky to Scrooge: what’s hot and what’s not this week

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‘My coats are mostly knee-length, which is completely wrong with a long skirt’

My skirts have been getting longer since this summer. I’ve gone from mostly knee-length with the odd shorter skirt, to mostly mid-calf-length. It started because to-the-knee skirts and dresses, which I relied on as the Prada-esque grown-up-cool length for years, began to feel a bit office-wear. And not in a retro Mad Men way, just in a regular Monday morning way. A longer skirt makes me feel more sophisticated. (I am not at all sure the longer length actually does me any favours, but you can’t have everything.)

Anyway, the whole Below The Knee thing was going really smoothly. My midi skirts enabled a deeply satisfying dig-from-the-back-of-the-cupboard revival of two near-redundant categories of shoes: a pair of silver and a pair of black pointy kitten heels both totally worked, but only as long as I could brave bare legs; after that I switched to knee-length boots – black stretchy ones, and wrinkly tan suede ones – I hadn’t worn since the dark ages.

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From Rocky to Scrooge: what’s hot and what’s not this week

November 28, 2014, 10:00 pm

≫ Next: What I wore this week: the blanket coat

≪ Previous: What I wore this week: a mid-thigh coat with a mid-calf skirt | Jess Cartner-Morley

Christmas list: maxi dresses, pyjamas, Rocky’s tracksuit. Regift: Die Antwoord, umbrellas, Scrooges

The Comeback being back Lisa Kudrow is back as Valerie Cherish. Mortifying and hilarious.

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What I wore this week: the blanket coat

December 5, 2014, 8:30 am

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‘If you want to wear a blanket coat – and you do, of course you do – it means wearing it over clothes which have down-to-earth ruggedness, but a bit of snap’

Iam calling this look Gaucho’s Moll. Argentinian romantic rebel meets Rosie Huntington-Whiteley rocking cashmere at LAX. The blanket coat was set fair to lord it at the pinnacle of this season’s fashion trends from the moment Christopher Bailey draped every model in the Burberry show in checked and monogrammed blankets for the show’s finale at London fashion week. By the time Cara, Jourdan and the rest had sashayed to the end of the catwalk, 500 Christmas lists had been silently written and prayers sent to Santa. Pretty impressive, as it was February.

The appeal of the blanket coat is not difficult to pinpoint. Not since the onesie has a fashion item so blatantly riffed on our desire to stay indoors – flickering fire, palms around a hot drink – until the clocks go forward again. But the campfire-cosiness which gives the blanket coat its appeal is also what makes it an unexpectedly challenging look to pull off. If you are a supermodel and have been in hair and makeup for two hours, you can wear it over handkerchief-hem silk skirts and look traffic-stoppingly glamorous. But for most of us, there is the very real danger that people will think you are escaping a house fire.

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Christian Dior is a (slimline) winner at Tokyo’s national sumo wrestling arena

December 12, 2014, 4:02 am

≫ Next: What I wore this week: an updated party dress

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Raf Simons’s futuristic collection forms the centre of the house’s charm offensive in Japan – and there’s not a kimono in sight

Fashion’s most exquisite and exclusive creations are often called “fairytale” dresses. There is a good reason for this: storytelling and myth-making are how brands conjure up their halo effect of desirability.

What has changed in the 68 years since Christian Dior founded his atelier is that the story now needs to reach customers living many thousands of miles from the Avenue Montaigne. And so, in pursuit of the pot of gold at the end of the luxury rainbow, Christian Dior travelled from Paris to Tokyo to stage a catwalk show for 1,200 guests at Japan’s national sumo wrestling arena on Thursday night, billed as a celebration of Dior’s historic links with Japan.

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What I wore this week: an updated party dress

December 12, 2014, 8:30 am

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‘Look up “party dress” on any online boutique and you will be inundated with strapless, strappy or sleeveless frocks’

You get to a point when the parties you go to just aren’t as hot as they used to be. Literally, I mean. Parties are still, on occasion, fairly badly behaved, but they are very rarely sweaty. I suspect the wooden floorboards we spent most of our 30s stripping and painting and fussing over lose heat something rotten compared with those nice mouldy, fuzzy carpets we had in the rented accommodation of old. Also, the days of every guest turning up with 10 randoms tagging along are over, and you start losing good people to the dreaded babysitter problem. There is less dancing on tables, and more sitting down at them and eating.

What’s not to love? Nice food and somewhere to sit down, and actual ice and lemon in your gin and tonic. It’s all good, and I’m all for it; I just need to adjust my wardrobe.

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What is Christian Dior doing putting on a show in Tokyo?

December 16, 2014, 10:00 am

≫ Next: Stylewatch: Hot dresses from Roland Mouret's pre-fall collection

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Just as the super-rich have left the rest of us behind, the most powerful luxury fashion houses are carving out a new superstratum of international glamour

Last week, I went to Tokyo for a Christian Dior show. Yeah, I know, that’s what everyone asks: Dior in ... Tokyo? Not Paris? Huh? And then they shake their heads in a fashion-people-are-crazy kind of a way.

No. There is method in this madness, and shrewdness in this extravagance. Dior’s Tokyo pre-fall event represents an emerging strategy by the great Parisian fashion houses to retain status by detaching themselves from the decline of France, and reposition themselves as global brands. The phenomenon of the catwalk show on tour – just a week earlier, Chanel staged one in Salzburg, Austria, and has previously shown in Dubai – is a ploy by which the aristocracy of the fashion industry, who for generations ruled the seas of style unchallenged, intend to maintain their supremacy in a globalised economy.

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Stylewatch: Hot dresses from Roland Mouret's pre-fall collection

December 17, 2014, 8:49 am

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≪ Previous: What is Christian Dior doing putting on a show in Tokyo?

The designer reveals new twists on his signature look – and lets us in on another of his talents …

His pre-fall show was at his sumptuous Mayfair flagship, but backstage Roland Mouret was being as French as ever, waxing lyrical on his favourite subjects: women, hot dresses and cooking.

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What I wore this week: black and white for parties

December 19, 2014, 8:30 am

≫ Next: Boxing Day sales: best fashion buys

≪ Previous: Stylewatch: Hot dresses from Roland Mouret's pre-fall collection

‘It could be a cream lace blouse and a black leather skirt; a fitted fluffball black sweater with a white pencil skirt; a white mini dress with black tights and heels’

So I’m totally on top of everything and 100% sure I ordered all those presents and they’re absolutely going to turn up on the doorstep Monday morning latest – pause for deep breathing into a paper bag – but, um, there’s quite a lot to do at this time of year, isn’t there? And it gets to the Saturday night before Christmas and you realise that “assemble chic outfit for party, with clean tights, hang on bathroom door” has somehow fallen off your to-do list. And it’s the Strictly final, so any small window of getting-ready time you might have had is going to be spent with one eye on the TV.

What you need are rules. This sounds horribly bossy for the first weekend of the school holidays, I know, but do you want to spend your downtime in a panic, grabbing random dresses out of your wardobe, discarding them and then having to hang them back up again? I thought not. What you need is a calm, fail-safe formula, and here it is.

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Boxing Day sales: best fashion buys

December 25, 2014, 9:00 am

≫ Next: What I wore this week: sequins

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When it comes to clothes and accessories, post-Christmas shopping is about staying ahead of the trends, as well as finding the cheapest bargains

Successful sales shopping means identifying what you need, and what will hold its value, and pursuing that without getting sidetracked. Put it this way: if you’re Arsène Wenger, try to look for a great defender and not get waylaid by fancy creative midfielders. Here are six bargains for new year.

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What I wore this week: sequins

December 26, 2014, 10:00 pm

≫ Next: The people who secretly influenced your style this year

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Once you hit a certain age, you have to start being a lot more careful about how, and when, you wear sequins. Here’s how to shine in them

It seems churlish to speak ill of sequins four days before New Year, which is a big day for sequins, but the duty to speak truth to power must be shouldered at all times, even now. The sequin has a dark side, and you, the sequin-buying public, have a right to know the truth.

Here’s the thing: sequins, like drinking, turn on you when you get older. In my 20s, I understood a “hangover” to be a light headache of the type easily seen off with a couple of ibuprofen. Happy days. These days, just as drinking is ill-advised, sequins can be, too.

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The people who secretly influenced your style this year

December 30, 2014, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Mourn the death of the wallet – it holds memories as well as money

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The past year’s biggest style influencers weren’t Alexa and Cara. From Nigel Farage to Prince George and Tess Daly, meet the people who subliminally influenced your style in 2014

Thought you were modelling your look on Cara? Alexa? Amal? You wish. Here’s the – much-scarier list – of the people who influenced your wardrobe without your knowledge or consent.

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Mourn the death of the wallet – it holds memories as well as money

December 31, 2014, 11:30 pm

≫ Next: How to have a high-brow 2015 in fashion

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Phones and contactless cards are killing wallets but I’ll miss somewhere to keep photos and souvenir scraps

Let’s start with a quick quiz that will establish, once and for all, whether you are old. I’m not interested in your age in actual years; this is about your age in pop cultural years. Which are a bit like dog years, in that you can go from prime-of-life to past-it really scarily fast.

Question one: you are paying for a flat white on your way to work. Do you (a) count out £2.10 in coins, enjoying the familiar small but tangible sense of satisfaction at getting rid of your coppers, or (b) tap your contactless debit card against the reader?

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How to have a high-brow 2015 in fashion

January 1, 2015, 1:00 am

≫ Next: The fashion icons setting trends for 2015

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Fashion can be fun. But it can also be a form of art. Next year, fashion will be inspired by Jackson Pollock, Sofie Grabol and Barbara Hepworth

Banish FOMO. Here’s what you need to diarise now to make 2015 your most stylish and cultured year ever

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The fashion icons setting trends for 2015

January 1, 2015, 2:00 am

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New year, new you! To help you with makeover inspiration, here are some of the stars whose style we’ll be chanelling in 2015

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What I wore this week: knitwear

January 2, 2015, 8:30 am

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‘Jumpers are what you keep stuffed in a big drawer; knitwear is what you hang in your wardrobe’

Jumpers aren’t really fashion at all. They are just clothes, which are quite different. They are about as far from the experimental, leather-culotte school of dressing as you can get. Something you wear to keep warm, as you might wear a dressing gown on cold mornings. A lot of the time, you don’t even plan them as part of an outfit: you get dressed of a morning, in jeans and a shirt or whatever, and then put a jumper on top later.

But it’s January, and I don’t know about you but I don’t feel like wearing leather culottes now. On the other hand, I expect to spend most days in jumpers. So let’s talk about jumpers. At this point we should differentiate between jumpers and knitwear. Jumpers are what you keep stuffed in a big drawer; knitwear is what you hang in your wardrobe. Jumpers are practical; knitwear has a crisp-winter-walk, marshmallows-in-the-hot-chocolate lifestyle thing going on.

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How I gave up heels

January 3, 2015, 12:30 am

≫ Next: What I wore this week: how to make the most of the January sales | Jess Cartner-Morley

≪ Previous: What I wore this week: knitwear

My 11-year-old son told me, “That skirt looks really weird with those shoes”’

• Marina O’Loughlin gives up fine dining
• Bim Adewunmi gives up Twitter
• Alexis Petridis gives up being grumpy

I thought this was going to be fun. I thought I was going to be bouncing around with a smile on my face and a puppyish spring in my step. Running up escalators, swinging around lampposts, that sort of thing.

High heels are the enemy, in the popular narrative: they ruin your posture, make you miss your bus, generally shore up the patriarchy. Besides, how hard can it be to give them up now, when flat shoes are having such a fashion moment? Trainers with ballgowns at Chanel, sandals with organza skirts at Burberry, leather slippers with wide trousers at Celine: flats outnumbered heels on the catwalks in 2014. If Cara Delevingne can wear trainers and chunky flat boots on the red carpet, it would surely be a breeze for me to spend a week without heels.

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What I wore this week: how to make the most of the January sales | Jess Cartner-Morley

January 9, 2015, 10:00 pm

≫ Next: Galliano enjoys solemn rehabilitation with first show for Maison Margiela

≪ Previous: How I gave up heels

The purpose of discounting is to get rid of all the so-last-season stuff – so don’t fall for the fashion industry’s tricks and end up with something you don’t really want

In the January sales, there are winners and there are losers. Success requires strategy and grit. But forget the sharp elbows, because the other shoppers are not your opponents: in this mind game, it is the industry you are playing against.

The purpose of discounting is to get rid of all the so-last-season stuff; fashion that’s past its sell-by date. Now, while I am gung-ho about sell-by dates when I look in the fridge, I’d never buy fashion that was even slightly on the turn. The thrill of the new is as crucial in the fashion industry as it is in newspapers.

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Galliano enjoys solemn rehabilitation with first show for Maison Margiela

January 12, 2015, 1:08 pm

≫ Next: What I wore this week: the silk shirt

≪ Previous: What I wore this week: how to make the most of the January sales | Jess Cartner-Morley

Disgraced designer follows months of industry speculation with a solid start in his comeback show in London

Four years on from the most spectacular fall from grace the fashion industry has seen, the rehabilitation of John Galliano can be time-stamped to the second after his comeback catwalk show ended. Following the last model’s disappearance backstage, Galliano appeared briefly in front of the audience and bobbed a blink-and-you-missed-it bow, dressed in the white lab coat that is the uniform of the Maison Margiela label for whom he now designs.

During his 15 years at Christian Dior, Galliano turned the post-show bow into a performance in its own right, having his ateliers run up themed costumes – a matador, a pirate, a prince – in which he would stroll the catwalk, soaking up applause. This humble bow was the most convincing evidence yet that Galliano has left behind his previous doomed persona.

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What I wore this week: the silk shirt

January 16, 2015, 10:00 pm

≫ Next: What I wore this week: the belted coat

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‘When I say silk shirt, I mean silk shirt, not blouse. Specifically, a sharp-edged collar and a slimmed-down silhouette’

Gripped by a most atypical enthusiasm for sales shopping, I was last week exhorting you to buy a long-sleeved shift dress, this being an item from last season (and therefore discounted) which will be just as useful, and look just as current, in this new year of ours.

Arguably I should leave it there and move on, because I am after all endlessly banging on about newness and relevance and how if you don’t keep up with fashion you turn into the visual equivalent of that tedious person who starts their sentences with “As I always say.” (If you always say it, say something else.)

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