How Philip Green, the £3.2bn king of the high street, lost his shine

April 26, 2016, 11:14 am

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Once, the Topshop supremo could do no wrong. But with the collapse of BHS, the lavish lifestyle of this brash outsider who parties with Kate Moss, owns three yachts and commutes by jet from Monaco is now under scrutiny

For more than a decade Sir Philip Green has been king of the high street, strutting down Oxford Street, medallion swinging like Tony Manero at the end of Saturday Night Fever.

With his slicked-back curls and year-round tan, Green’s almost cartoonish persona is writ large over the multibillion-pound retail empire he commands. He shot to prominence in 2004 when he tried to wrest control of the national treasure that is Marks & Spencer, his pugnacious business style injecting rock’n’roll and supermodels into the staid world of suits and share prices.

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Don’t wait for winter – buy your padded jacket now

April 26, 2016, 11:18 am

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Holding on for next season is so last season, as proved by fashion’s current must-have. Plus: five other looks that will last you into autumn

The trophy piece on the fashion insiders’ shopping hit lists right now isn’t what you think. Cold-shoulder tops? Been wearing them since February. Crochet bikini? Everyone’s over those post-Coachella. Satin bomber jacket? Old news, babes.

The piece that will have us running into stores when it arrives – at the end of May, in Topshop’s case, not that we’re counting the days or anything – is the padded jacket, the breakout star of the most recent Paris fashion week. The padded jacket used to be your coat-cupboard’s guilty secret, the piece you reached for when it was too cold to care about fashion. But that has all changed. Balenciaga’s red quilted jacket, worn grandly off-the-shoulder in the manner of a mink coat at the opera, is to next season what the Chloé tracksuit is to this one. The Stella McCartney padded coat, in metallic bronze and in luxe navy velvet, confirmed the quilted coat’s leap into high fashion.

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Stella McCartney's Team GB kit is confidently patriotic

April 27, 2016, 4:27 am

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The designer’s Olympic kit blends a safe heritage print meets performance kit

All herald Team GB. With the 2016 Olympics three months away, designer Stella McCartney has fired the starting pistol, unveiling a new kit for Team GB and ParalympicsGB which features a new heraldic coat of arms as its logo.

“The coat of arms is all around us in Britain. It’s so much a part of us that we barely even notice it, but it is so distinctively British,” said McCartney shortly after presiding over the launch wearing six-inch high heels, shoulder-robing a red coat over a cream blouse and black silk jogging bottoms. She was flanked on stage in central London by Tom Daley, who sported the new coat of arms on his tiny navy trunks, and Jessica Ennis with the image emblazoned on a two piece.

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What I wore this week: the statement cardigan

April 29, 2016, 5:00 am

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If you can make it work in a fashion context, it can be subversively ballsy

You can tell the cardigan’s star is in the ascendant, because people have started shoulder-robing it. Well, at fashion week they have, anyway, which might not seem relevant except – mark my words – these things have a way of catching on. Shoulder-robing is the ultimate power move. Shoulder-robe your top layer, and take a look at your shadow: bam, you’re a superhero. Also, you instantly have the aura of someone who has a high-powered, fast-moving, Anna Wintour-type schedule. Shoulder-robing suggests dynamic standing-up meetings and brief journeys, possibly by helicopter. After all, nobody shoulder-robes on a 30 minute tube journey, it’s just not practical.

On the other hand, the cardigan is traditionally the polar opposite of power dressing. Wearing a cardigan is like prefacing your sentences with “Sorry to bother you, but…” or “This is probably a silly idea.” Even a brand new cardigan never has that shiny, boxfresh feeling that a crisp piece of tailoring or shirting has. Psychologically, choosing a cardigan puts you sort of fireside.

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The Met Gala 2016: what will the guests be wearing?

April 30, 2016, 10:02 pm

≫ Next: Gingham style: the fabric that owns spring

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Taylor Swift in Louis Vuitton and Rihanna in Saint Laurent … Well, we can dream, can’t we?

What is“tech white tie”? The lucky few with the golden tickets to the Met ball have until Monday to figure out how to interpret this unusual dress code, stipulated on this year’s invitations in honour of the Manus X Machina theme. The rest of us can relax in our sweatpants, and wait for some prize sartorial entertainment. I mean, last year Rihanna interpreted the 2015 dress code of “Chinese white tie” as “dress as an omelette”, so the artistic expression bar is pretty high.

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Gingham style: the fabric that owns spring

May 1, 2016, 11:02 pm

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We are having a love affair with the wholesome cotton cloth, but does it mean we are all turning into Taylor Swift?

We all know what wearing leopard print means. It means you are sexy and womanly and a bit daring but very much within socially acceptable boundaries. It means being rock’n’roll up to, but not beyond, the two-martinis-on-a-schoolnight watermark. You put on your leopard-print pencil skirt and you’re, like, mentally high-fiving Diane von Fürstenberg as you leave for the office.

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Met Ball 2016: what celebrities wore on the red carpet – in pictures

May 2, 2016, 6:57 pm

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The theme was Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, which meant ‘sci-fi baddie’ to some (Taylor Swift) and ‘bohemian painters’ to others (the Olsen twins). See our video here

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Met Ball fashion: a silver, robot aesthetic at the 'Silicon Valley Prom'

May 3, 2016, 5:52 am

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What should a star wear on the red carpet in an age of technology? Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, Zayn Malik and countless others were in agreement

The dress code at the Met Ball red carpet was “tech white tie”. The tech bit was a nod to the Fashion in an Age of Technology exhibition at the Costume Institute, for which the party is the most out-of-proportion opening night party in history. The “white tie” part is code for “Anna Wintour will be displeased if you mess up the photos of her so you better bring your sartorial A-game”.

What does a ballgown look like, in an age of technology? Taylor Swift, GiGi Hadid,Kim Kardashian, Cindy Crawford, Kristen Stewart,Lara Stone,Lady Gaga, Kylie Jenner and Rita Ora are in agreement on this one: it is either silver, or gunmetal grey. Which is weird, when you come to think of it, because technology is not silver any more. Steel-grey used to be the default “machine” colour, but your phone is probably black, and laptops, charging leads – even modern robots, including Eve in WALL-E– are white.

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How Philip Green, the £3.2bn king of the high street, lost his shine

April 26, 2016, 11:14 am

≫ Next: Chanel's Havana show: controversy, communism and Tony Castro

≪ Previous: Met Ball fashion: a silver, robot aesthetic at the 'Silicon Valley Prom'

For more than a decade Sir Philip Green has been king of the high street, strutting down Oxford Street, medallion swinging like Tony Manero at the end of Saturday Night Fever.

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Chanel's Havana show: controversy, communism and Tony Castro

May 4, 2016, 4:47 am

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Staging an elite fashion show in a country with an annual salary of £3,000 is rife with complications, but it’s also classic Lagerfeld

Karl Lagerfeld likes to ruffle feathers almost as much as he likes to make ballgowns out of them. Remember the Feministe fashion show? The time he dissed sweatpants? That time he dissed ADELE, for freak’s sake?

His latest spotlight-grabbing setpiece was to stage a catwalk show in communist-ruled Cuba less than a year into the warming of diplomatic relations with the west. Lagerfeld told Reuters the show was a homage to the “cultural richness and opening up of Cuba”. But the staging of an elite fashion event in a country with an average annual salary of £3,000 was always likely to court controversy. Chanel goods are not available to buy in Cuba.

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What I wore this week: athleisure | Jess Cartner-Morley

May 6, 2016, 5:00 am

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The polo shirt is the athleisure update on the T-shirt, in the same way that the sweatshirt is the new crewneck

Shall we have an athleisure recap? Right, so here’s an omnibus edition of what you may have missed. I won’t bore you with the fastest-growing-retail-sector stuff. What you need to know is that (a) the sweatshirt is the new crewneck; (b) tracksuit bottoms are now several rungs higher on the fashion pecking order than jeans; and (c), Olympics or no Olympics, it’s a safe bet that whoever is declared overall winner of 2016 will be wearing a tracksuit, probably the sold-out deconstructed one by Parisian label Vetements.

Where do polo shirts fit into this? The polo shirt is the athleisure update on the T-shirt, in the same way that the sweatshirt is the new crewneck. The tone of fashion is shifting from that architectural-minimalist, “I probably work in an art gallery” look to something both sportier and a bit more brassy. Looks that would have been a bit naff – a bit Westfield, if you know what I mean – are now deeply fashionable. Tracksuits, say. And polo shirts.

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How Philip Green, the £3.2bn king of the high street, lost his shine

April 26, 2016, 11:14 am

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≪ Previous: What I wore this week: athleisure | Jess Cartner-Morley

For more than a decade Sir Philip Green has been king of the high street, strutting down Oxford Street, medallion swinging like Tony Manero at the end of Saturday Night Fever.

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M&S addresses critics with ‘see now, buy now’ autumn collection

May 10, 2016, 10:01 pm

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Retailer joins move towards immediacy with clothes that aim for an overarching contemporary feel in order to chime with next season’s collection

A surprise new look from a household name has dropped on to the internet. Beyoncé with another visual album? Justin Bieber with dreadlocks? No. The latest figure to exercise the very 2016 power of the online surprise is Marks & Spencer.

The headline news at the M&S autumn fashion showcase is that the alluring white off-the-shoulder sweater with side-tie detailing (£35), the soft caramel leather wide-cropped trousers (£199) and many others in the collection can be bought online, and in 26 stores, simultaneously with Wednesday’s unveiling to the press.

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What I wore this week: the dress-down hoodie

May 13, 2016, 5:00 am

≫ Next: Smash hit! Why tennis is having a fashion moment

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No one in their right mind doesn’t enjoy the breathe-easy benefits of a drawstring waist or the cocooning sensation of a hoodie

In the season that brought us the It Tracksuit, it is a stone-cold fact that dressing down is the new dressing up. Yay! Right? Well, not necessarily. DDITNDU sounds like good news: it sounds like permission to wear flat shoes all day, and/or justification for alternating two sweatshirts and calling it a Work Wardrobe. Sadly, it’s nowhere near as simple as that.

If you look gobsmackingly beautiful in, say, nylon tracksuit bottoms and a sports bra, then DDITNDU is good news. You can also get lost, sharpish. If you are an actual human being, then DDITNDU is a Trojan horse. A fleece-lined Trojan horse, true, but still one whose gifts are not what they seem. The mantra promises an easy life, but then lets you down when you look in the mirror and realise jersey sweatpants look glamorous only with an extra five inches of leg, and that, short of an injection of supermodel DNA, the only way you can add five inches of leg is to wear uncomfortable high heels, which sort of kill the loungewear mood.

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Smash hit! Why tennis is having a fashion moment

May 17, 2016, 10:00 am

≫ Next: What I wore this week: flat white shoes | Jess Cartner-Morley

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The players look great, the world of fashion wants to be courtside and athleisure is the hot trend. So, it’s no surprise that Serena Williams, Roger Federer and co are now style icons as much as sporting ones

The ranking of tennis on the fashion-sport matrix has long been a contradictory one. Tennis is arguably the most elegant and beautiful of all sports – the Wimbledon whites, the balletic grace, the absence of unsightly mud – but it has felt, in recent history, some way from the pop-cultural zeitgeist. The very power of the cucumber-sandwich, blond-ponytailed aesthetic has kept tennis as an eternally popular catwalk reference, but it has simultaneously distanced it from the present day. Until now.

Tennis in 2016 is about more than blond ponytails. As the sport becomes more modern, more diverse and more inclusive, it becomes more relevant. This is not, of course, primarily about fashion. But how tennis players look is crucial to the general perception of the sport, because snapshot visual images are the information about tennis that reach beyond the sport’s fans.

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What I wore this week: flat white shoes | Jess Cartner-Morley

May 20, 2016, 5:00 am

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The flat white is the lovechild of the Adidas Stan Smith trainer and the skin-toned, high-heel court shoe beloved of the Duchess of Cambridge

A flat white is not a coffee. Not here; hasn’t been for weeks. It’s a shoe. In fact, it is the shoe. If you make one update to your summer wardrobe, make it a flat white shoe.

A flat white means a sporty, minimalist, white shoe. In its most fashionable form, it is pared back to simple, smooth lines with no hardware. Imagine if Rachel Whiteread were designing trainers instead of sculptures and you have the idea. But anything flat, white, laid-back and unisex counts, from a glossy loafer to a classic trainer.

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What I wore this week: the blue shirt

May 27, 2016, 5:00 am

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≪ Previous: What I wore this week: flat white shoes | Jess Cartner-Morley

The rise of the blue shirt is probably the biggest fashion shift of 2016 so far

Blue is my favourite colour. The colour of cloudless skies, Saturday morning jeans and Cillian Murphy’s eyes; what’s not to love? It’s probably your favourite colour, too. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that blue is the most commonly cited favourite colour.

It is precisely because blue was already all around us that the trend for blue shirts is quite easy to miss. Its rise, overtaking the previously ubiquitous white shirt as the subtle fashion statement of the day, is probably the biggest fashion shift of 2016 so far. But because blue shirts were perfectly commonplace long before they became a trend, they have risen uncharted. Unlike, say, the embroidered bomber jacket, which is unmissable as a 0-60, all‑cylinders-firing arrival in the fashion marketplace, the blue shirt has moved steadily up the outside lane to become a quiet champion.

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Louis Vuitton cruise collection seeks fashion's next dimension in Brazil

May 29, 2016, 7:52 am

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Against futuristic backdrop, Nicolas Ghesquière focuses on nostalgic Ipaneman glamour and country’s sporting heritage

If challenged on his unconventional buildings, Oscar Niemeyer, architect of the Mac Niterói art gallery which hovers above Rio de Janeiro like a spaceship, would quote Charles Baudelaire: “Strangeness is a necessary ingredient of beauty.” As an aesthetic philosophy, this sums up the Louis Vuitton catwalk collection staged on the snaking ramps of the gallery at sunset on Saturday.

Out of the UFO curves of the building came models wearing parachute-silk cape-backed dresses with wetsuit zippers, or silk blouses inspired by Brazilian artist Aldemir Martins’ paintings of Pelé. The famous Louis Vuitton box trunks were reincarnated as Copacabana beach ghettoblasters, complete with gold hardware and the LV monogram. In the front row, Catherine Deneuve watched imperious, while Brazilian supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio captured the moment for posterity with selfies.

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Westminster Abbey proves divine inspiration for Gucci

June 2, 2016, 11:08 am

≫ Next: What I wore this week: the perfect wedding guest dress | Jess Cartner-Morley

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The historic abbey has seen plenty of extraordinary outfits but nothing like the luxury brand’s fashion show in its cloisters

What with hosting 16 royal weddings as well as every coronation since 1066, Westminster Abbey has seen its fair share of extraordinary outfits. The Queen’s 1953 Norman Hartnell coronation gown took a team of nine seamstresses eight months to make. The Duchess of Cambridge’s Alexander McQueen dress was such a closely guarded secret that embroiderers working on it were told the dress was for a costume drama.

But until the first look from Gucci’s 2017 cruise collection appeared on the flagged cloisters, a thousand years of pageantry at the abbey had not included a fashion show, technically speaking.

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What I wore this week: the perfect wedding guest dress | Jess Cartner-Morley

June 3, 2016, 4:59 am

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As a guest, the ceremonial function of your look is this: to bring the party

Being a wedding guest is one of the toughest gigs to dress for. But if you think I am about to let you off the hook with some bleeding-heart wear-what-you-feel-comfortable-in guff, you can think again. It is a tough gig, but it’s one that you need to nail. Because, assuming you’re a common-or-garden guest – not the bride or groom, not making a speech or looking after the rings – turning up looking excellent is the one job you have been given. Once you have your outfit on point and have found the venue and are waiting over the road with your gin and tonic, you are along for the ride. All you need do for the rest of the day is eat and drink, clap and smile on cue.

The least you can do is look good, frankly. But how to get the balance right between looking appropriate and being fourth-blue-lace-Self-Portrait-dress-from-left in the photos? Being a rule breaker is not the answer. I don’t think we need to spell out why a day on which your friends are honouring their solemn commitment to a socially ratified contract of monogamy is the day on which you need to tell the world what a free spirit you are. If the bride wears jeans and a T-shirt, by all means do the same, but if the bride is in a white dress, you need to look equally smart or you will get on everyone’s nerves. And consider the practicalities: weddings are long and often involve extended standing-around periods, so shoes that don’t hurt and a coat that enhances the look, rather than killing it off, are non-negotiable.

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