Style Bubble

The Giant Quality Street Arriveth!

If you're tired of hearing about Fred Butler, I don't blame you.  I do mention her a lot.  But honestly, the woman basically provides me with a daily cheer that I cannot but continue to harp on.  Her rainbow monochromatic dressing is still stuck in my head.  Then yesterday, a Quality Street-like pyramid arrived at the office (how odd that both KOS and I received some gifting on the same day...).  Onlookers commented that I had suddenly been reduced to acting like a five year old child.  So be it.  I mean, how can you not become an instant baby when you're faced with a fuschia wrapped pyramid decorated with a pinwheel and origami trinket boxes.  The box inside will sit proudly on my shelf as it is itself a crafty bit of work.

Then comes the star attraction inside, wrapped with wads of Fred Butler printed tissue paper.  A piece from her current accessories collection which launched last season that had my childhood nostalgia levels at an all time high when I first saw the lookbook images.  I did declare that if I was as nimble fingered as Fred Butler, I would think about dabbling with PVA glue, foil and cardboard all day long too... sadly I'm not, so I can only reap the benefits of someone else's handiwork.  The necklace (I'm working on perching it on top of my head somehow...) reminded me of this salient truth.

Derma-whatty?

When Guy from Fashion156 asked if it was ok to let them use the fashion shoot I modelled in for them as part of something they were doing for Dermalogica of course I said go ahead.... they shot the images afterall and I wasn't really clear on the details.

Then when Guy sent me the images yesterday, the results of what they had done with the images, I had to guffaw a bit.  I'm currently in the centre of a large Fashion156 wall collage at the Dermalogica store in Kensington behind the skin bar.  Prospective people getting their skin mapping done might find themselves staring at my petrified-esque expression wondering what is the connection between me in Simone Shailles' knitwear and skincare.  I'm more impressed by the composition of the collage by Fashion156-er Emily Rand.  My friends and I chortled at the irony of me, scared of beauty products in general and has never paid for a facial in her life (BA business class freebie facial gave me hives...), being on the wall of Dermalogica so we shall be popping down to the Kensington store on Saturday to chuckle a bit more and for their experts to tell me that my skin is in a terrible state that is beyond repair. 

Tufting!

When in San Francisco, I documented the masterclasses that went on during the Arts of Fashion event (still slowly editing the video...) and in the class of Tony Delcampe (director of the La Cambre school) and Laurent Edmond (creative assistant of Maison Martin Margiela) they went mad for 'tufting' - meaning a technique used in Chesterfield sofas where the cushioning is created by sticking pins through them. 

I come back though and read an interview with Scottish designer Jamie Bruskil Tetsill and then remember that tufting is a way of working yarns in textiles.  Jamie went tufting mad for his S/S 09 collection and by using black mohair on the garments, from a distance the tufted effect looks like marabou but I'm sure when touching it in person would feel entirely different. When combined with the patterns, the tufting is further elevated with a fantastic judgement of colour, clashing brights where possible and incorporating simple geometric motifs.  Though the shapes of the garments are fairly simple, with the addition of his tufted detailing add a very finite structure to the dresses, like outlining drawings with a chunky black marker (so satisfying, no?).  He plans on making tufting a signature of his so expect more next season. 

A scarf and more

I must confess. I can't talk of sustainability in fashion coherently or intelligently.  a) I can't adhere to the rules that eco-fashion impose and b) I can only speak in the basic baby language "Oh that's cute!" or "Oh me no likey...".  So the basic dealio with sustainable fashion is if i like it great, if I don't then no amount of ethical talk is going to sell it into me. 

Fashion156's blog (there's a reason why there's a special link to the right...it is a GEM of a blog...) alerted me to Multiple Choice, an initiative that concentrates on one particular project at a time.  My HK radar must have been off at the time but back in May 2008, they set up a "Made in HK" pop-up shop in New York featuring clothing, accessories and objects by HK indie labels.  It did not get the raviest of reviews...

However, Multiple Choice's online store that revolves around the concept of '1 Thing' might be a better bet.  Only 1 thing is offered at a time with no thematic boundaries but I guess the focus is on special commissions and unique design.  Their 1st item on offer now is multi-tasking scarf.  Now, multi-tasking clothing, when done well is a great thing indeed.  But when done badly, you might as well start making awful QVC adverts for it and have it featured on Bid-Up TV or similar channels.

On the site they have described the scarf, designed by Mint Fashion Studio, as being incredibly versatile...you can wear it as a ruff, a shawl, a structured collar.  With its frayed edges, ruffles and two tonal make-up though, I'm seeing this scarf as an exaggerated belt, an additional to a dress to make a halter neck, an asymmetric sleeve/shoulder, a jagged peplum and with some clever wrapping, a top.  I'm even seeing guys doing something quite elegant with this scarf in the muted colours of beige, black and grey.  Like a far more advanced version of those American Apparel jersey scarf, for a seemingly expensive price of $108, I think a lot can be coaxed out of this 'scarf'.

Stumbling into Happy Colour

I continue to be inspired by colour clashing/matching, the sort that Yves Saint Laurent was famous for and older still, I STILL continue to be haunted by these ravishing images from this old issue of Vogue Korea.  In San Francisco, the mind wandered to those colours and I tried to dabble with them in my $20 outfit challenge.  It's not that the colours are particularly oddball or that they are purposely clashing but that they are unexpected together but still work in a sort of uneven harmony.  I'm not entirely sure whether such palettes can be designed but rather it's a case of running rampage through a fabric store and putting swatches up against each other or some sort of equivalent.  Therefore, this accidental palette plagues the mind and when I received my package from Nikicio, a gem of a label that is based in Indonesia (I THINK it is my only Indonesian label find to date...), the perfect bit of pale foam green (draped front jacket) and a deep gradiated purple (wide wrap belt with rope tie) jumped out at me and cried out to be paired together with more vibrant colours...

I just can't shake these sort of palettes off so I'm hoping I'll stumble onto more of these combinations by happy accidents...

This Shit is Bananas

I'm in knitwear overload at the moment with many many knitty things to talk up and of course nothing is really going to erase those Sandra 'Pool Position' Backlund images from my head just yet especially as I have a mammoth interview to write up (fortunately, Sandra has a pleasant voice to listen to repetitively on the dictaphone...).  But in the interest of adding fuel to the heavily stoked fire that is my Pro Choice post which I'm still astounded at the number of comments it has incited (a proper thank you will come later...) and to assert the notion of DIVERSITY in all arenas of fashion, I bring you Emma Bell's knitted dress from her S/S 09 collection.  Emma Bell is somebody that I cannot fault for her OTT-ness (try telling someone like HER to tone it down and you're likely to get a wad of plastic sequins shoved in your mouth).... especially as she is often described as phantasmagorical which is absolutely my favourite word of the moment.  Taking the idea of a soft toy/teddy bear dress up a level, Bell has carved out a truly unique niche within knitwear with this one singular piece (she isn't actually a knitwear designer I might add....).  I vaguely remember giving somebody knitted cupcakes as a pressie to somebody....just never thought an entire dress of foodstuffs would come out of it.  And it doesn't just consist of cutesy foods like cupcakes and fruit... hamburgers, fries, pizza all feature too.  I have no shame.  I have momentary fast food freak-outs and I don't really give a crap, but instead of going incognito in some low-key grey-ed out clothes, I'd wanna order my Pizza Hut (why the heck have they changed it to Pasta Hut...worse marketing move ever...!)/McDonalds/KFC wearing this... 

P.S. I've always wanted to say the title of this post in real life except with my British accent, it sounds reaaaaally wrong...

T vs. T

I guess I should have seen it coming when I saw this invitation to the Alexander McQueen McQ press day.  "Take that, Topshop!" says Lee McQueen, "I'm going to Target instead....".  And so he has.... the ker-razy rumours circulated around August are indeed true.  Alexander McQueen will be designing a line for Target which will drop in March.  Hold yer' horses though.  It won't be inspired by his mainline but by his diffusion line McQ which of course stopped me from dying of a heart attack today when I heart the news (if it was based on the mainline... the disbelief would surpass the time I found out about CdG/H&M....).  Seeing as this isn't really likely to affect me considering eBay makes things extortionate to buy.  In my past few trips to various branches of Goodwill in San Fran and Beacon's Closet in New York, I gather that the Go International stuff for Target often gets offloaded there in bundles as I found copious amounts of it the last few times i was there... so if I luck out there, that would be a far preferable situation than me arranging some sort of long winded procedure of procuring this stuff when it actually launches.

Woah Wode!

NOTE: I had some blog downtime last night because of my ISP and so this post comes a little late...Election Madness I tells ya.... hope ppl are ecstatic with the result!

NOTE NOTE: I also realised that this blue paint comes on a significant day for the world... I'll be painting the town a Democrat blue courtesy of Wode.

I had high hopes for Boudicca's first perfume because a) it's Boudicca, where I had a real fashion moment walking into their Fashion in Motion event at the V&A by mistake and b) when they did up the Christmas tree last year at the V&A, they chose the wonderful Escentric Molecules as the fragrant of the tree where I proceeded to inhale deeply and then waft outside into the cold crisp air, wanting to sing carols out loud and give out presents to strangers like some sort of deranged female Scrooge.

Meaning, that I trusted Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby not to put out a scent under their name that was a half-ass cheapshot.  I think I need to bang on about the deal between me and perfume though for a bit.  If I'm honest, there is one passage of text that changed my outlook on perfumes and scent forever and it comes from an unlikely source... British Sunday Times journo India Knight who talks about shopping in her book er..The Shops.

"I think most scent today smells common. The idea of complexity or evocativeness seems to have disappeared from the perfume-maker's art and to have been replaced with naff - and usually synthetic - scents. A really good scent is an amazing thing, with almost narcotic qualities: it makes you feel sexy, complicated, alluring, confident, ready to take the world on.  Yet today's most commercially successful scents smell 'fresh' and 'clean', which usually means abrasively citric.  Given that I wash regularlly, I don't want to smell extra clean - I like scents that are a little  bit dirty and complicated.  You wouldn't wear giant, wiast-high white cottong knickers when out on a hot date, would you?  So why smell of their olfactory equivalent?" (She recommends Guerlain's Apres L'Ondee, Vol de Nuit, Caron's Tabac Blond, Quel Amour by Annick Goutal, Shiseido's Feminite du Bois...)

Words that for some reason have stuck with me when making my scent choices.  So from Boudicca, we have WODE.  Legend has it Queen Boadicea wore cobalt war paint on her skin and when her tribe was defeated by the Romans, she killed herself by swallowing hemlock.  In ode to that, WODE is a graffiti spray can scent that appears blue when first sprayed but then magically the colour disappears within seconds once it has settled leaving a scent which actually has extracts of hemlock in it to linger on.  The name is also a significant one as it comes from the old English word 'Woad', a blue plant extract that in its raw state would only turn blue when exposed to oxygen.

Wode does also come in a clear version if spraying oneself with blue paint doesn't appeal.  Like a girl who's just bought a new pack of Magic Pens of course I couldn't wait to try out the Paint scent...

I realise Smell-o-Vision or Smell-o-Web has not quite developed properly yet so I can only give my honest opinion which is that it ticks the boxes of India Knight's words which I carry with me and more.  It LINGERS and LINGERS and keeps coming back to me in different ways throughout the day making it probably the most complicated scent I've worn.  Poo-masker, this is not!  I'd refer to Comme des Garcons scents for reference if comparisons must be made but with a bit more delicacy perhaps...

It's available at selected stockists and UK peeps can buy it online...

The Comfy Curvy Stomp

I'm a strong believer in word of mouth and in the case of high heels, if I have three or five different people chirping that the heel is EXTREMELY comfortable, I'm basically sold.  Especially when we're talking about the extreme shapes of Natacha Marro's shoes, last notably seen on the girls in geek glasses and sheer skirts at Charles Anastase.  When I first posted about them, people doubted the comfort factor and even I, who has only seen them in pics and not in person, can't really speak up for them.  However, people have subsequently emailed/commented with cries of 'Yes they are indeed COMFY!'.  I'm thinking this isn't a propagated myth unlike the one that people like to spread about Manolos being the comfiest shoes ever (lies I tell you lies!!!) and so I'm inclined to be a believer.  Of course, this could all be self-delusion as I'm smitten with her S/S 09 work which was showcased at the Victim S/S 09 show and wouldn't mind tolerating a bit of pain anyway. 

The curvy stomping platform is still there hidden under powder pink brocade, cream satin and faded rose prints.  Then there's EXQUISITE laser cut peeptoe booties which I do believe take Prada's AW08-9 dresses and power them up into peeptoe booties.  There's delectable ice cream leather or patent waves in the ankle boots.  Also I do believe I've found my animal print calling in the lace-up platforms....something about the print that isn't quite so intimidating.