How the real world hijacked fashion

September 20, 2016, 11:05 pm

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Race, gender and class took over the London catwalks this season. Elitism is out and diversity is in

Fashion week has been hijacked by the real world. For decades, “the shows” existed in a champagne bubble, a parallel universe in which celebrities were jammed together on long benches, as if for a very glamorous school photo, and where mysterious diktats – Navy is the New Black; Minimalism is Dead – were pronounced six months ahead of time, as if by a cabal of fortune tellers.

But this is 2016, and identity politics has trumped everything else. From Brexit to the presidential election, public debate centres on issues not of policy, or economics, but of class, race and gender. On social media, if you are not cooing over cute panda videos you are probably debating a hashtagged identity issue – Kim Kardashian and the politics of nude selfies, or diversity at the Oscars. The most striking image of summer 2016 was of a woman in a burkini, surrounded by armed police. On 4 September, Kanye West caused a furore with a casting call requesting “multiracial women only” for his Yeezy catwalk show. On 8 September, the day New York fashion week opened, Lionel Shriver wore a sombrero on stage during an instantly controversial speech about cultural appropriation. In other words, this season’s fashion headlines were never all that likely to be about the sleeve shapes.

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Gucci's frenzied fashion is like an explosion inside a fairytale

September 21, 2016, 10:51 am

≫ Next: Miuccia Prada: 'It's time to talk about the present'

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Alessandro Michele, Milan fashion week’s golden boy, used a cryptic Nabokov quote to set the tone of an otherworldly show

At the entrance to a disused Milanese train depot repurposed for the afternoon as a fairytale boudoir (plush seating cubes in buttoned pink velvet, strip-bar glitter curtains, a throaty undertone of dry ice), each guest arriving for the Gucci catwalk show was handed a pink piece of paper. On it was printed a quote by Vladimir Nabokov: “Literature was not born the day a boy crying ‘wolf, wolf’ came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big grey wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying ‘wolf, wolf’ and there was no wolf behind him.”

Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s creative director, likes to layer several characters into an outfit – he himself was dressed for the show in a distinctive Renaissance-biker style that the New Yorker said in a recent profile suggested “a dandy who had run off to join the Hell’s Angels”. And he chose this quote to convey several points.

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Miuccia Prada: 'It's time to talk about the present'

September 22, 2016, 12:43 pm

≫ Next: What I wore this week: the updated power dress

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Prada is embracing modernity – with a twist – in clothes that project intimacy but are also wearable

Prada’s profits fell 25% in the first half of this year, while the status of Miuccia Prada as Italian fashion’s go-to intellectual finds itself under threat from Gucci’s newfound enthusiasm for “allegorical cartography and rhizomatic thinking”. (Me neither.)

But this Milan fashion week catwalk show – a film-meets-fashion showcase in collaboration with David O Russell, director of American Hustle and The Fighter – was a strong statement that Prada is not content to be yesterday’s brand.

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What I wore this week: the updated power dress

September 23, 2016, 5:00 am

≫ Next: Fashion world balance of power shifts to social media superstars in Milan

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The dress to wear when you want to be taken seriously is not what you think it is

If you are too busy being taken seriously as an important grownup to read a fashion column, then you are exactly the person who needs to read this. I promise I won’t waste a moment of your precious time wittering on about ruffles, or parsing the modern rules on how to wear velvet. (Psst, fellow non-serious-grownups: for the modern rules on velvet, see you same place next week.)

What you need to know is this. The dress to wear when you want to be taken seriously is not what you think it is. This is what I mean. I’m going to take a guess about the dress you wear to work on days when you’ve got a crucial meeting, or a major presentation, or a new boss starting. I bet it’s some version of a sheath dress: sleek, minimally detailed, in a block colour. It’s not tight, but it’s fitted. Hemline within three inches of the knee, up or down. It’s probably in a neutral grey or navy, bought as an update on a similar one you had a few years back which was lipstick red or petrol blue and had a zip running all the way up the back. (Secretly, you quite miss the one with the zip, although with the benefit of hindsight it was a tiny bit slutty.)

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Fashion world balance of power shifts to social media superstars in Milan

September 23, 2016, 5:16 am

≫ Next: Giorgio Armani shows how to handle the heat

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With fashion week coverage dominated by Gigi Hadid, the most powerful brands are now to be found walking on the catwalks

The most powerful women of the catwalk circuit are no longer to be found on the front row or in the industry boardrooms – but on the catwalks themselves. A tiny elite of models who have become social media superstars wield influence and commercial clout the like of which the supermodels of the 1990s could only have dreamed of.

Milan fashion week has long been ruled by luxury brands, but this week a new brand leapfrogged Prada and Gucci to dominate coverage: that of 21-year-old Gigi Hadid, whose stratospheric rise in modelling is inseparable from the 23 million followers she has on Instagram. (To put this figure into perspective, consider that Donatella Versace has 858,000 followers.) This week Hadid, the star of MaxMara’s advertising campaign, walked in their catwalk show along with her 19-year-old sister Bella. The pair also starred on the catwalk for Fendi, designed by Karl Lagerfeld.

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Giorgio Armani shows how to handle the heat

September 23, 2016, 9:59 am

≫ Next: Sporty evening sandals and bare ribs: Milan fashion week’s messages

≪ Previous: Fashion world balance of power shifts to social media superstars in Milan

Unstructured tailoring is still the focus, but with trousers swapped for slim bermuda shorts or neat, sarong-wrapped skirts

At 82, sole owner of the megabrand that bears his name and with personal wealth estimated around £5bn, Giorgio Armani is still celebrating his own creation myth.

The collection shown at his Milan headquarters on Friday will be on sale next summer, and many of Armani’s global customers live in regions where summer is very hot indeed.

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Sporty evening sandals and bare ribs: Milan fashion week’s messages

September 27, 2016, 11:05 pm

≫ Next: The rise of the alpha trainer sees sneakers step up in fashion

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Here are the five shows that mattered – and why

No, I’m not winding you up. And, yes, I’m talking about that Gucci show, the one with the orange fur coat with the zebras and the red leather jacket with the pussybow collar. Gucci has changed how we dress. I’ve been watching the off-catwalk fashion – not so much the peacocky Anna Dello Russo stuff as what the fashion footsoldiers wear, which is much more telling – and a key look right now is a midi-length, loose, floral or colourful dress worn with comfortable shoes (trainers, chunky loafers, flatforms).

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The rise of the alpha trainer sees sneakers step up in fashion

September 30, 2016, 4:04 am

≫ Next: So long, Michelle Obama: a first lady with style

≪ Previous: Sporty evening sandals and bare ribs: Milan fashion week’s messages

The news that women’s trainers have outsold high heels for the first time is no surprise in the context of the athleisure trend

The Mintel survey comes as no surprise to anyone who has been to fashion week recently. High heels – which were, until a few years ago, a non-negotiable element of the looks both on and off the catwalk – no longer have the monopoly on status footwear. In 2016, the right trainer is more alpha than Manolo.

The defining moment in the rise of the trainer as fashionable footwear came in January 2014, when Karl Lagerfeld’s dressed every model on his Chanel haute couture catwalk in a pair of Chanel trainers, to go with their £100,000 ballgowns. Trainers had been in the ascendency among fashion’s more minimalist dressers since 2010, when Céline designer Phoebe Philo’s habit of wearing Stan Smiths to take her catwalk bow sparked a slew of front-row copycats, but Chanel’s endorsement broke down the last remaining barriers. Once trainers were deemed chic enough for Chanel haute couture, there was no stopping them.

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So long, Michelle Obama: a first lady with style

September 30, 2016, 5:00 am

≫ Next: Michelle Obama: ‘She took first lady chic and made it modern’

≪ Previous: The rise of the alpha trainer sees sneakers step up in fashion

In eight years at the White House, Michelle Obama has reinvented power dressing. Here are some of her most memorable looks

• ‘She took first lady chic and made it modern’

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Michelle Obama: ‘She took first lady chic and made it modern’

September 30, 2016, 5:00 am

≫ Next: The Duchess of Cambridge: ambassador of British style, post-Brexit

≪ Previous: So long, Michelle Obama: a first lady with style

In eight years at the White House, Michelle Obama has proved to be the most stylish Flotus since Jackie Kennedy

See more of Michelle Obama’s most memorable looks

When Michelle Obama gets on the microphone, the world listens. Her speech at the Democratic convention in July was judged by many to be the best of the week, reaching the emotional and inspirational heights that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has sometimes struggled to achieve. Her turn on Carpool Karaoke with James Corden this summer, singing Beyoncé and Stevie Wonder, has, at the time of writing, been watched nearly 44m times on YouTube.

But for most of the eight years she has lived in the White House, there has been no microphone. Obama is seen a good deal more than she is heard, so how she looks has taken on disproportionate significance. Her image sets the emotional tone for the White House, becoming a symbolic ideal for other women, for other wives and mothers. Every new hairstyle has been combed as a cipher for a change in the national mood; every dress evaluated for the values it embodies.

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The Duchess of Cambridge: ambassador of British style, post-Brexit

September 30, 2016, 6:01 am

≫ Next: Maria Grazia Chiuri's Dior debut spells out her feminist message

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The Cambridges’ Canadian trip, their first as a family of four, has been deemed a success. But how did the Duchess’s wardrobe fare?

A red evening dress has beaten tough competition from some clams in the shape of penises to become the star of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s royal visit to Canada.

The international attention focused on visits by the younger royals is disproportionate to the substance of the itinerary. Engagements for this trip have included watching a college volleyball match, sending a tweet by telegram, riding a train and sampling the aforementioned clams at a food festival. So it is inevitable that in the absence of moments of substance for the media to focus on, the royal wardrobe is called upon to do the heavy lifting, and imbue a succession of photocalls with a message.

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Maria Grazia Chiuri's Dior debut spells out her feminist message

September 30, 2016, 11:52 am

≫ Next: Luella Bartley and Katie Hillier: ‘You can have swagger in jeans, an old T-shirt and heels’

≪ Previous: The Duchess of Cambridge: ambassador of British style, post-Brexit

Chiuri closed the door firmly on her Valentino era with a potent collection that showed Paris fashion week her range

With a catwalk show in the gardens of the Musée Rodin that brought Rihanna and Kate Moss to the front row and a square mile of central Paris to a standstill, Maria Grazia Chiuri became the first woman to head the house of Christian Dior. It’s a position that arguably makes her the most powerful woman in Parisian fashion since Coco Chanel. The moment is significant not only because Dior is a byword for style that has currency all over the world, but because it’s a house that symbolises womanhood itself. Since its very beginning, with the nipped-in silhouette of the postwar New Look, Dior has represented femininity as surely as Chanel has stood for chic.

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Luella Bartley and Katie Hillier: ‘You can have swagger in jeans, an old T-shirt and heels’

October 1, 2016, 1:00 am

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They spent their 20s designing by day and partying by night. So how do best friends Luella Bartley and Katie Hillier plan to approach their 40s? With attitude, of course

How does a generation that has never truly grown up deal with turning 40? For Luella Bartley and Katie Hillier, the answer was obvious: set up a fashion label. Last year, when they were 42 and 41 respectively, they founded Hillier Bartley, making the clothes they felt no one else was making, for women who are fine with getting older (well, pretty much) but who most certainly do not consider themselves middle-aged. Fashion for the post-midlife crisis generation, let’s call it. Velvet tailoring in petrol blue; a floor-length hostess gown in mustard silk. Party clothes for women who don’t do party dresses. A little bit Alexa Chung, a little bit Florence Welch. (Both are customers.)

When Bartley founded the Luella label in 1999, aged 25, with Hillier as her right-hand woman, their lives revolved around Shoreditch parties, late nights in Soho members’ clubs with Kate Moss, that sort of thing. Today, she and I are sitting in the garden of the Hillier Bartley studio, and things have changed. Green juice for her, flat white for me. “I got to 40 and thought I had to grow up,” she says. “This was my answer to that. This is something no one else is doing. Because the thing is, women don’t age in the same way any more. Our generation has women like Patti Smith to look up to. Getting older doesn’t mean what it used to.”

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Demna Gvasalia reinvigorates Balenciaga with strategic disrespect

October 2, 2016, 10:38 am

≫ Next: Stella McCartney's flashmob finale ditches strutting for dancing

≪ Previous: Luella Bartley and Katie Hillier: ‘You can have swagger in jeans, an old T-shirt and heels’

Georgian designer clings on to mantle as high-fashion’s foremost dissident with bull-in-a-china-shop disregard for convention

The bar for iconoclasm is pretty high at Paris fashion week these days. This season’s biggest debut saw Christian Dior’s first ever female designer shun the revered New Look in favour of feminist slogans and references to T-shirts worn on Sex and the City.

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Stella McCartney's flashmob finale ditches strutting for dancing

October 3, 2016, 11:44 am

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≪ Previous: Demna Gvasalia reinvigorates Balenciaga with strategic disrespect

McCartney cut through the Paris fashion week tension with an open-hearted show that took a strong ethical stance

It has been an emotional Paris fashion week. The Vogue-versus-the-bloggers plotline had laid bare the tension and rivalry embedded in a group of people currently spending 12 hours of every day of the week together, even before Kim Kardashian’s ordeal at gunpoint escalated the nervy mood.

So at Stella McCartney’s Monday morning show at the Opéra Garnier you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Or, it turns out, you could cut through it with a flashmob finale in which the models ditched the po-faced strutting in favour of a brilliantly silly dance, which choreographer Blanca Li had created late the night before, that being the only time the models weren’t busy with other shows. “I wanted to have a more emotional connection this season,” said McCartney backstage. As a British brand showing in Paris, she wanted her first show after June’s referendum to “show love, throw our arms around everyone, make people happy”.

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Karl Lagerfeld electrifies Chanel by embracing digital disruption

October 4, 2016, 6:54 am

≫ Next: La vie en rose: how fashion fell for the pink dress

≪ Previous: Stella McCartney's flashmob finale ditches strutting for dancing

The designer’s Paris fashion week show plugged into our slightly sinister relationship with modern technology

Other designers at this season’s Paris fashion week are miffed that the clothes on the catwalk have struggled for airtime, overshadowed by the drama happening in the wings. Karl Lagerfeld, however, demonstrated how Chanel retains its position as the biggest show in Paris by turning the off-catwalk commotion into spotlighting for Chanel.

The two big stories of fashion week are the blogger backlash, a row which is a microcosm of how the digital era has disrupted fashion, and the new “model-free” issue of British Vogue, featuring “real” people.

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La vie en rose: how fashion fell for the pink dress

October 4, 2016, 7:34 am

≫ Next: Louis Vuitton luxury goes futuristic at Paris fashion week

≪ Previous: Karl Lagerfeld electrifies Chanel by embracing digital disruption

Designers have been banging the drum for tracksuits and gender-fluidity for the last two years. So why is this symbol of femininity trending on the Paris catwalk?

Paris fashion week is almost over, bringing catwalk season to a close four weeks after the circus rolled into New York. And here’s what it boils down to: soon, you will want to wear a pink dress.

Wait. A dress? A pink dress? Is this the same fashion industry that’s been banging the drum for tracksuit bottoms and gender fluidity for the past two years? Indeed. More of which in a moment. But first, a little more about the pink dress.

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Louis Vuitton luxury goes futuristic at Paris fashion week

October 5, 2016, 4:03 am

≫ Next: What I wore this week: velvet | Jess Cartner-Morley

≪ Previous: La vie en rose: how fashion fell for the pink dress

Traditional tropes of Parisian attire were given a modern yet wearable twist with splashes of blue lace and metal beading

The Place Vendôme, like Louis Vuitton, is a monumental triumph of French luxury branding. The grandest square in Paris – which is not square but octagonal, faceted like a diamond so the rows of tall symmetrical windows reflect the maximum amount of sunlight – is an illusion. The Place Vendôme is a facade, a 300-year-old shopfront, behind which the owner of each plot is free to rebuild at will, so long as what the well-heeled shoppers on the pavement see is unaffected.

Louis Vuitton, the new owners of a large plot in the south-east corner, operates in a similar way. The name above the door remains paramount, whoever is working behind the scenes. Whether they are buying a bag designed by Nicolas Ghesquière, as now, or one created by Marc Jacobs five years ago, the customer is paying for a Louis Vuitton bag.

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

October 7, 2016, 5:00 am

≫ Next: What I wore this week: a slip dress over a jumper | Jess Cartner-Morley

≪ Previous: Louis Vuitton luxury goes futuristic at Paris fashion week

This glorious fabric has been a feature of every catwalk season since 2013

Somewhere between John Singer Sargent’s portrait of the luscious, black-clad Madame X (1884) and Margaret Thatcher’s wedding gown with matching blue muff (1951), velvet lost its way. A fabric that once stood both for flamboyance and status – it is no coincidence Henry VIII liked the stuff so much – became bloated and stuffy. What had looked fabulously decadent became twee and tame, the stuff of soft furnishings and little girls’ Sunday best.

Velvet has its mojo back in a major way. Major, because this isn’t one of those trends that comes out of nowhere and disappears two weeks later. The trends that truly permeate real life – the move from skinny jeans to sportswear at the weekends, for instance, or the death of the knee-length skirt (still mourning that one) – tend to make slow, steady headway, until one day you look around and realise they are everywhere. Velvet is that kind of trend. It has been a feature of every catwalk season since 2013, when there was a gorgeous Christopher Kane dress with slashes of skin visible between panels of navy velvet, which felt like the first velvet dress in a long time to have the attitude of a pair of ripped jeans. At Victoria Beckham’s New York show last month, the crushed velvet peppermint dress was the piece everybody wanted.

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What I wore this week: a slip dress over a jumper | Jess Cartner-Morley

October 14, 2016, 4:59 am

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

This is the autumnal equivalent of the white T-shirt under a slip dress

If you go by the fashion industry calendar, autumn starts at the beginning of September; if you set your watch by nature, it’s all about when the leaves turn. But truly, the point when autumn gets real is when you have to get up and ready for the day while it’s pitch dark outside and getting dressed seems a much less inviting option than getting back under the duvet.

At this point, all the plans you had back in those halcyon days of early September for a directional new season look based on crisp shirting and trousers cropped above the ankle bone go out of the window, because the only thing you want to wear is a jumper. This primal appeal is the reason I buy too much knitwear, finding myself drawn like a sucker to those neat, pretty coloured stacks that are everywhere at this time of year, stockpiling polo necks the way other people do Heinz soup. When the apocalypse comes, I’m your girl if you’ve got a spare penknife or torch to trade for Gap cashmere.

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