Category: Fashion Week
Totally Temperley x
It’s the end of half term and back to the school routine..I’m sad the lie-ins are over, but I’m already grateful it’s getting lighter every day, although I’m still wishing on the morning star for summer. At least there’s the rich mix of London Fashion Week to dive headlong into..
Termperley London is what you wear when you want to tell the person you love that you love them. It’s long lines, supremely elegant and a masterclass in wearing flats..
The silhouettes are lux and gorgeous, but it’s the effortless layering that really captures the eye. Competing currents that clash and compliment with equal eloquence.
Impeccable diction and great bones.
Detailed and tender.
It’s a potent combination of direct appeal, subtle perception and unshakable artistry.
Laters, Kate x
H-two-Oh! x
Caroline Herrera Fall 2015 will never be an out & out rock chic heroine..but Caroline Herrera is still a heroine.
There’s no slip and slide on an outrageous avantgarde walk of the wild. This is soft, respectful and poetic with a sense of attentive stillness and clever touches.
There’s so much to appreciate with her now seemingly old-fashioned stance of taking a theme like water, and milking all the inspiration from it: transforming, transfiguring, transmogrifying. With the materials chosen taking as much precedence as the silhouettes.
Where she needs it, the tone is strong and textural, adding a mean streak with a flash of red and killer-pointed shoes..
Or paired right back: Reflections on water at sunset..
Or snow on a frozen lake: Simplicity and peaceful fragility…(and a rather stunning wedding dress)..
Cultivated, charming and full of quality – it’s a commanding performance with an impressive range, always offering an underlying sense of knowledge and calm in a world too full of dragonflies..
Laters, Kate x
Food for Thought..
Banana Republic Fall 2015 is the faultless streetstyle collection of NYFW.
It’s the Collection for the realities of life: Meeting friends, the school run, a trip to the shops..a quick snap from the paps…it’s normcorm coolness personified..
And maybe that’s where I have my itch, my first wobble of a potential problem, hard to hold back and impossible to shake off..
I love the stripe. But think too deeply and this collection becomes an unsettling vision..like a serpent eating it’s own tail. We have fashion..we have street style..now we have fashion that is street style and because it’s so perfectly of the moment, there’s no sense of pushing boundaries or striving for the next artistic step.
It’s not that I don’t like it..I really, really do..and look – metallics and tassels again..
(All photos Style.com)
It’s faultless, flawless, impeccable – and feels like it’s been squeezed and prodded into life by a profit driven corporate machine…to produce the opposite of anarchy.
The truth is fashion has to sell, but it fundamentally has to walk hand in hand with creativity: We need a heart..but we need a soul too.
Laters, Kate x
Coach Journey..
NYFW is in full force with a royal gallimaufry (look it up) of offerings, each screaming for attention. But sometimes it’s the unexpected that catches the roving eye. This is Coach..a brand I normally associate with tan and handbags..
But these are tough, potent clothes designed for attitude with a modern, fit-for-combat edge, ready to fight the worst of the winter weather with chutzpah and style whilst keeping enemies at bay.
And there’s a duffel..accessorised with a bandana. What’s not to love?
These shoes nail the bitch sentiment…hard nosed, no-nonsense but with just a subtle sprinkling of fairy dust with their glowing gold and cheeky tassel. Never thought you’d like a kitten heel? Look again..
(All photos from Style.com)
This is functional dressing with eclectic additions, it’s hard and seductive, frank and forthright with an awareness of what’s happening…but a determination to strut their own path.
I’ll have some of that..
Laters, Kate x
Man Mania x
One myth to nail is that women are not the only peacocks of the fashion world..and how my heart beats for this coat..
The male members of our species are more than happy to step up to the mark and find new ways to make outfits spring to life..
Just accessorise with red and a smile..
Choose your favourite raconteur..sharp, witty and erudite.
I want this coat too..how charming to see it on a masculine man, a moment where art and expectations collide.
( All pictures Tommy Ton from Style.com)
Bold, brilliant and beautiful..and always ready to grumble rumble..
Laters, Kate x
French Fancies x
It snowed in London last night – not a lot, but enough to make a new ,white world and Charlie a very happy boy. I’m just grateful we got our boiler to work again..why is it that boilers start staggering on what will be their last legs just when the coldest weather kicks in? And why are modern boilers so crap??
As a distraction from impending doom and financial ruin, I’ve been ogling Tommy Ton’s street style photos from the french Couture Shows, which have to be some of the greatest shots to obsess over: The ideas, the outfits that should look promisingly awful but by small strokes of magic give irony and imagination pride of place..
Maybe the cut out and keep part of the twenty-tens will be eclecticism. That heady mix of anything goes and modern-old-soul..
The power to dazzle by mixing high with low, latest and oldest, hard and soft, summer and winter with mesmerising narrative power…things that shouldn’t work in an outfit…working..
It’s a cocktail of collision..it’s dangerous territory and a high risk way of telling a story..easy to hype or misjudge. Or not.
(All photos Style.com)
It’s an organic development that creates the dramatic pulse, exploding the rules and energetically galloping over the baseline..
It’s the stuff of dreams…
Laters, Kate x
Food for Thought..
Much of the work of Marques’Almeida nibbles on an old drumstick: Denim – which doesn’t stop it being the sartorial rage of the moment..
It plays to that thrilling duality of grunge and deconstruction meeting designer brand.
But this denim is smarter, sharper… fruitier..
Straight talking boxy shapes that still hold a seductive allure.
And if you didn’t know already, they’re doing a collab with Top Shop on the 10 November..one for the diary..
(All photos from Style.com)
Check out those sleeves – It may be a drumstick – but it’s a top of the range organic one cooked sublimely in a heavenly sauce by a caring Michelin starred chef..
Laters, Kate x
Stellar Star x
When was the last time you saw something so smart it made your head spin?
Stella Jean as that rare ability to turn what we would look at and think is promisingly awful and turn it into proud peacocks of the fashion world.
Each looks is a wonder, with the clever use of stripes pulling it all together like the ribbons on a babies bonnet.
Stella Jean is prepared to do things that could completely trip her up…but instead she reaches that heady sweet spot of awe.
Just stunning.
(All photos from Style.com)
Each item is a wonder and a rich blast of laughter laden exotic air…
Laters, Kate x
A Pearl x
Preppy-sports-lux flavours Mother of Pearl SS15, stylishly crossing all sorts of nostalgic and modern borders with ease.
A step away from the bold, bright prints of previous seasons there’s something effortless about this simple combination of cut and colour that quietly sings of contentment and inner confidence.
Even when a bit of ooomph is brought to the party..
Clothes to wear around the house, at work, on a date..or just for the heck of it. Mother of Pearl has found her person and knows her well – I for one, can’t look away.
Laters, Kate x
Rachel Rachel x
The appeal of perusing the latest catwalk offerings is thinking you are getting ideas hot off the sewing machine..
Except of course you’re not..large flotsam of inspiration comes for the likes of you and I just walking the streets with a strange consortium of bits from vintage sales and jumbles..so there’s a rather wonderful organic life force with no-one having a monopoly, a wave of responding and creating that the Designers then put a spotlight on..and then we think it’s brilliant all over again, but maybe in a different way..
Except the way something influences and what processes then happen is up to the individual, which can be truly enlightening, particularly if they have a strong voice..
Amplifying, creating opposition, accepting, asking for more or leaving a loose edge – utilitarian wear in posh fabrics, it’s all in the interpretation..
At Rachel Comey SS15 you can taste the strength – there’s a simplicity reflective of a confidence in what she sees..
With masterful strokes of clashing patterns, eras and colour. But does she influence my style? – or do I fly to her light because there’s a kindred understanding?
I can’t really say why her silhouettes appeal so much..
(Although I find it hard to resist a good beltbag..)
Her designs are far from the traditional feminine shapes..
(photos courtesy of Style.com)
But then, I’ve always preferred sexy to be a suggestion of shape – and fashion to be style rather than trend…and maybe that’s why she makes my eyes sparkle…
Laters, Kate x
Maison Bentley Style 