What I wore this week: the cold-shoulder party dress | Jess Cartner-Morley

December 16, 2016, 5:00 am

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Previews of next year’s collections make it clear that it will rule 2017 as well

There has been a fair bit of seismic change to take in this year, one way or another, so you’d be forgiven for having missed one important shift: at some point in 2016, we passed peak jumpsuit. For the first half of this decade, the all-in-one was a visual shorthand for the busy modern woman who engages with fashion to look up-to-date as much as pretty. From the Chiltern Firehouse waiting staff in their sleekly tailored jumpsuits to the dungarees and Stan Smiths accessorised with a Bugaboo, the all-in-one has been everywhere.

And for several Decembers on the trot, the jumpsuit came into its own. In the season of office parties and friends’ nights out, a jumpsuit is in many ways the perfect look: upbeat without being gaudy, practical without being killjoy. At this time of year, you want to tread a line somewhere between Scrooge and the person wearing the novelty Santa hat; that is, to exude festive spirit in an infectious way, rather than being the Compulsory Fun Police blasting Mariah Carey on repeat.

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2016: the year that Vogue went rogue

December 22, 2016, 2:01 am

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This was the year that Vogue launched its documentary, put a Royal and a plus-sized model on the cover, turned 100 and its US sister publically backed Hillary. All in all, it was a big year for the fashion bible

You could not have predicted, looking at the January 2016 issue of British Vogue, that this was the dawn of most tumultuous year in its century-long history. Gigi Hadid smiled out from her first cover, wholesomely covered-up in a weather-appropriate Breton-striped knit and classic black leather jacket, while coverlines promised to help you in the traditional post-Christmas challenge to find your waist and to discover the best cold-weather skincare. So far, so Vogue.

Traditionally, it is the European editions that get the magazine’s name in the headlines. The nipple count in any summer issue of French Vogue is enough to get the internet hot under the collar on any slow news day, although nothing can match the furore around the infamous 2010 shoot featuring primary-school-age girls in heavy eye makeup, low-cut dresses and high heels. Italian Vogue got into hot water in 2012 for a “Haute Mess” shoot, which drew accusations of racism for its dabbling in the imagery of ghetto fabulousness; two years earlier, Steven Meisel shot Kristen McMenamy as a glamorously dead bird, an homage to the animals killed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill which wasn’t to everyone’s taste.

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What I wore this week: the mermaid skirt | Jess Cartner-Morley

December 23, 2016, 5:00 am

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‘Christmas Eve deserves star treatment. It is a night to bring the glamour’

Christmas has 12 days, and they are all brilliant, but Christmas Eve is the best of all. The anticipation of all that lovely downtime and TV and permissive snacking is as delicious now as it was when you were hyped up to the eyeballs at the excitement of waking up to a stocking on the end of the bed and eating chocolate coins in the dark with your little sister.

It is also the most elegant day of Christmas. Tomorrow is about stuffing endless recycling sacks with wrapping paper and gorging yourself until you can’t move, but today the presents are under the tree and you can still fit into your clothes. It is without doubt a day to dress up for.

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A guide to updating your Instagram for 2017

December 27, 2016, 12:01 am

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From the flat lay to being more mysterious, here are four ways to keep on top of fashion’s favourite social media platform

There are thank-you cards to be written and those last few Celebrations are begging to be mineswept. (Milky Way, right? Always Milky Way.) But they are going to have to hold, because there is one job that cannot wait, and that is refreshing your Instagram. These are the crucial updates your feed needs for 2017.

⛄️️ by @anddicted

Details. #commedesgarcons #levis501 #lumojewelry

On route to sing and surprise a Xmas party can't say as yet

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2017’s big ideas – part two: from a northern Labour party to fighting cancer

January 2, 2017, 4:00 am

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Jess Cartner-Morley is wearing Statue of Liberty green, Angela Hartnett hails the rise of regional bistros and TED’s Chris Anderson has a new vision for the future

Part one: from driverless cars to interstellar travel

Authentic voices and undiluted stories
By Jonny Geller

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Michelle Obama’s 10 best fashion moments - in pictures

January 6, 2017, 12:00 am

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Michelle Obama’s fashion legacy will prove that style plus substance can make political magic. It is a formula with which many have wrangled, but with less success. (Consider the term ‘fashion plate’, and what it implies about the wearer’s marrow, to see how fashion can be a double-edged sword for women in the public eye.) Obama’s style genius was not to rely on timeworn first lady tropes, but instead to show the glamour of being brave and the elegance of being modern

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What I wore this week: the white polo neck | Jess Cartner-Morley

January 6, 2017, 4:59 am

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The challenge is to avoid the fondue-eating, orange-casserole-dish retro associations

Time for a recap, post-party frock and novelty sweater season, of where we are vis-a-vis normal clothes. The shortcut to looking chic in an unfussy way was, for a long time, a white shirt. Then it was a dark polo neck, worn on its own or layered under anything and everything. The second half of last year was a blue-and-white-striped shirt moment.

The new look is the high-rise white collar. This can be a pie-crust blouse, or a white polo neck knit such as the one I’m wearing here. Its references include Alexa Chung, possibly photographed en route to a Chanel catwalk show, probably in a loafer; Jude Law in The Young Pope, drinking Cherry Coke Zero for breakfast in the Vatican; there is a dash of ironic 70s skiwear. In other words, for all its simplicity, it’s a lot more luxe, more high-rolling, than the standard flat-white shirt collar.

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What I wore this week: over-the-knee boots | Jess Cartner-Morley

January 13, 2017, 5:00 am

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Over-the-knee boots have been gentrified. They are for fashion, not for pulling

I t’s safe to say that this is an outfit I would not have foreseen myself wearing when I first spied Julia Roberts in thigh-high latex boots with a Lycra body and a tiny skirt on screen in Pretty Woman. Yet here I am, in over-the-knee boots and a demure, flowery dress that, if not exactly a tea dress, is definitely the sort that suggests drinking Earl Grey from a cup and saucer, rather than calling room service for champagne. It is as if the two Vivian Wards – the streetwise, gum-snapping one and the polka-dotted, polo-match-attending one – are dressing for a job share.

Over-the-knee boots, until recently NSFW, have been gentrified. They are for fashion, not for pulling, and you can tell. They look different. The new generation are not the shiny, black kind, wipe-clean on the outside and sweaty on the inside. They are suede, or velvet, or at least soft leather, all high-maintenance fabrics that you would not risk on a street corner, for fear of splashing. Also, they are probably not black. Instead, they are Armani-ish shades of sophisticated, understated grey, petrol blue, mushroom.

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Ore Oduba: ‘Strictly was like being a gladiator – without the lions'

January 15, 2017, 10:00 pm

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The BBC presenter vowed to keep dancing after winning Strictly last month. And he has. He talks about his tendency to cry, hugging Ed Balls and why he left the glitterball at his mother-in-law’s

It is a month since Ore Oduba was crowned the winner of Strictly Come Dancing in front of a record-breaking audience of 11.8 million, and Oduba has yet to come down to earth. He hangs in mid-air as he does a heel-click jump, kicking upwards and outwards, Fred Astaire in Nike athleisure, with a radiant smile to camera as his trainers tap together in space. And then he does it again, and again and again, every time the photographer gives the nod. Every Strictly show ends with a vow to “keeeeep dancing”, and Oduba is keeping that dream alive.

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Jackie Kennedy’s pink wool suit and the dark side of first lady fashion

January 17, 2017, 9:10 am

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The outfit she wore on that fateful day in Dallas represents the glamour of power – and is a symbol of a shattered dream

The most iconic piece of first lady clothing in all of fashion history is no pretty sight. Too upsetting for public display, it is sealed in a climate-controlled vault of the National Archives near Washington DC, where it will be kept hidden until 2103, a purdah imposed, when it arrived with an unsigned note on the stationery of Jackie Kennedy’s mother, Janet Auchincloss, which read simply: “Jackie’s suit and bag – worn November 22, 1963.”

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Will Karl Lagerfeld or Ralph Lauren dress Melania Trump for the inauguration?

January 18, 2017, 3:58 am

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To dress such a divisive figure as the incoming first lady will be a bold and controversial statement

Who Melania wears at the inauguration on Friday will be as important, if not more so, than what she wears. There is little doubt that she will look polished, expensive and chic in her two outfits – a day outfit for the swearing-in, and a ballgown for evening. Anyone expecting an excess of cleavage or bling has not been paying attention to the makeunder (tone-it-down makeover, as also undergone by Kim Kardashian) that has seen Trump embrace a new look: neutrals (the camel coat she wore on election day), on-trend statement sleeves (the white Roksanda dress she wore last summer) and unexpected fashion flourishes (who can forget the Pussygate pussy bow?).

But to dress such a divisive figure is a bold fashion statement that will put a designer in direct opposition to Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs, two very influential figures in the American fashion world, who have both said they will not dress her. So, her choice of designer name is a loaded one.

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What I wore this week: zebra print | Jess Cartner-Morley

January 20, 2017, 5:00 am

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The taming of leopard print has left a gap in our wardrobe for a look that is deliberately attention-seeking

Leopard print has crossed the floor. What was once the party frock of the rebel is now the kitten heel of the establishment. Naming no names. This is largely a good thing, because leopard being essentially a neutral means we can wear it every day, if we want to. And I do. But the taming of leopard has left a gap in our wardrobe for a look that is deliberately attention-seeking. A look you wear to signify that this particular evening you are going not just out for dinner but out-out. Or that you really love your friend and are really excited it’s her birthday. Or whatever. Leopard print doesn’t do that any more. It’s a bit like that phrase, deeply silly but somehow appropriate in its throwback corniness: when you marry your mistress, you create a vacancy. The leopard has been domesticated, so what’s still wild?

Zebra is the animal print leading the pack, as it were, but it is by no means a direct swap. Zebra means something different from leopard. I don’t mean it in a weird way when I say this, but the zebra just isn’t a sexy animal. Cats, leopards, panthers: those are your go-to sexy beasts. There is nothing seductive about a stripy horse. Nope.

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First lady's Jackie-esque style works hard to set gracious tone for Trump

January 20, 2017, 11:04 am

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Bespoke Ralph Lauren outfit is a coup for Melania Trump, who has been snubbed by top US designers including Marc Jacobs

Someone in the White House did their best to use the inauguration podium to set a gracious and dignified tone for the incoming administration. However, that person was not the new president.

Melania Trump’s sleek blue dress and jacket, custom-made by Ralph Lauren with matching heels and formal gloves, harked back to the Kennedy inauguration of 1961. Her understated chic stood in stark contrast to the red baseball caps worn by the Trump faithful gathered in Washington.

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Melania Trump's style evokes Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Reagan

January 21, 2017, 2:01 am

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New first lady wore retro powder blue skirt suit for swearing in followed by vanilla off-the-shoulder gown for evening events

If Melania Trump had former first ladies on her mood board while shopping for the inauguration, then it was dominated by Jackie Kennedy’s ceremonial formalities on the West Lawn and Nancy Reagan’s evening celebrations.

The skirt suit and matching gloves in retro powder blue the new first lady wore for the swearing in was followed by a vanilla, off-the-shoulder evening gown. The dress, a collaboration between Mrs Trump and the designer Hervé Pierre, featured a full-length ruffle in six layers of crepe, a narrow red ribbon bow belt and a deep side slit. Bold and dynamic rather than romantic or ladylike, it was closer to the vigorous, red-blooded style that Nancy Reagan brought to the White House in the 1980s than to Jackie Kennedy’s demure elegance or to Michelle Obama’s take on modern romance.

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Women on the march at Paul Smith's Paris menswear show

January 22, 2017, 11:12 am

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Designer is following the trend for unisex catwalk shows 23 years after he started designing for women

Women on the march was the story of the weekend. And so it was with perfect timing that 23 years after he diversified into designing for women, Sir Paul Smith included clothes for women on his Paris catwalk during menswear fashion week for the first time. The designer has scrapped his slot showing womenswear during London fashion week in favour of a blockbuster Paris show in which clothes for both genders are shown together.

There is an industry-wide trend toward unisex catwalks, but the move felt organic for Paul Smith, whose womenswear has its roots in men’s tailoring. First on the catwalk was a woman in a trousersuit in the black-and-green check of Black Watch tartan, alongside a man wearing a tailored coat in the same fabric over beige trousers.

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Dior offers pure escapism with fairytale haute couture show

January 23, 2017, 10:41 am

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Designer Maria Grazia Chiuri moved from her debut’s feminist T-shirts into a fantasy world that heralded a bold new attitude

Maria Grazia Chiuri made headlines three months ago with a Christian Dior debut which featured T-shirts proclaiming “We should all be feminists”. Three months later, those prescient T-shirts have been seen on Natalie Portman and Rihanna at the women’s marches this weekend, and their imminent arrival in store was a hot topic of front row conversation at the creative director’s first haute couture collection for the house.

However, Chiuri’s take on the zeitgeist has moved on, so that rather than protest T-shirts, she offered pure escapism. Having negotiated the security checks which are now a familiar feature of Paris catwalk shows, the ultra high-rolling shoppers traversing the gardens of the Musée Rodin where the show was staged were confronted with a full-sized maze constructed from hedges, prettily strewn with out-of-season berries.

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Chanel haute couture show proposes a new catwalk silhouette

January 24, 2017, 5:00 am

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Karl Lagerfeld finds beauty beyond the thin with iconoclastic collection that features ovoid-shaped skirts and padded-out hips

Hemlines go up and down, colours come and go, supermodels rise and fall, but in one crucial respect catwalk fashion looks the same from season to season – the silhouette is always tall, and always thin.

So Karl Lagerfeld’s latest haute couture collection, shown in the Grand Palais in Paris on Tuesday, was as iconoclastic as fashion gets. By sculpting skirts into ovoid shapes and padding out slender hips, Lagerfeld proposed a new catwalk silhouette. The designer who once criticised the singer Adele for being “a little too fat” seemed finally ready to see beauty beyond a reed-thin outline.

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This is what a feminist T-shirt looks like

January 24, 2017, 8:35 am

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Street protesters and fashion designers have fallen in step with their slogans. What are they saying?

There has been a recent trend in fashion that has been all too easy to mock and dismiss: men and women have been wearing their fourth-wave feminist credentials on their T-shirts. T-shirts with feminist slogans have been sold by Etsy and Asos; they have even made it to the Paris fashion week schedule. Fashion and feminism don’t always get along, which is precisely why what’s happening right now is significant. When women on protest marches are wearing the same feminist-slogan T-shirts as models on the Paris catwalks, we have, what we call at fashion week, a moment.

Last Saturday, the actor Natalie Portman spoke at the Los Angeles Women’s March wearing a Dior T-shirt sporting the legend “We Should All Be Feminists”, a quote Dior took from the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and which became the most Instagrammed look of the previous Paris fashion week. Rihanna posted a photo of herself in the same T-shirt on Saturday, as well as another image of herself wearing a pink THIS P**SY GRABS BACK hoodie from the label, designed by Victoria’s Secret model Leomie Anderson. This was shortly after Alexa Chung put up a selfie wearing an IN SOLIDARITY T-shirt from the Deep End Club, a conscious fashion label by DJ Tennessee Thomas. Ariana Grande Instagrammed herself in a hooded sweatshirt bearing an image of Malala Yousafzai and the legend FIGHT LIKE A GIRL. She teamed the sweatshirt with a pair of thigh-high boots.

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90s R&B and inside-out denim: what we learned from Vetements

January 24, 2017, 10:19 am

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The trend-setting label shows us the way forward – all in six minutes at their Paris couture show

You know that real-world thing where you wear a hoody or a hooded quilted Uniqlo jacket as a layer under your coat? The hoody as practical bottom layer is now officially Vetements-approved. On the catwalk – which was actually the lobby of the Pompidou Centre– an orange hoody was worn under a spaghetti strap, sari-silk evening dress. Just imagine if someone did this on the red carpet. That would be the best thing ever.

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Alexandra Shulman: UK fashion's chief advocate – and its vocal critic

January 25, 2017, 5:52 am

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In 25 years editing British Vogue before stepping down on Wednesday, she has championed UK designers and challenged industry failings

The fashion industry has plenty of colourful characters but few real leaders. A leader is what Alexandra Shulman has been in UK fashion during her 25 years at the helm of British Vogue.

Shulman, who is stepping down from the role in June, has balanced tireless cheerleading for the fashion industry with being one of its sharpest inquisitors. She has used Vogue as a platform to champion the talent of British fashion designers such as Alexander McQueen and Christopher Kane, as well as photographers, stylists, makeup artists and writers.

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