Category: Fashion
Super street style x
It’s the little things that make the street style photos of fashion week so fascinating..the glint of an unusual piece of jewellery sparkling in the sun, a plait of hair coiled like a blonde horsewhip on a cashmere shoulder..or just a casual chic humour that brings an outfit together in a shower of golden sparks..
This year is the celebration of the unexpected..like a jumper dress with tights, socks and trainers..
A soft, black, leather bow..
Glasses that smile back..
Chic shearling with buckles and straps.
A piece of gold and a flash of pink.
This one is specially for Dievca..
(All pictures Style.com)
Awesome earrings and a palette of grey.
Sometimes it good to stand outside the circle.
Laters, Kate x
Into the Darkroom..
Guy Bourdin was a photographer best known for his surreal work for French Vogue from the mid forties to the mid eighties and for his graphically strong and charismatic work for the shoe company, Charles Jourdan. He’s now the subject of the brilliant Image Maker exhibition at Somerset house, London.
Whilst conventional fashion images follow the general generalisation of the world: making beauty and clothing their central elements, Bourdin’s photographs offer something grittier..more radical. In a glossier, more vibrant, tumbling world he created desire and lust..then subverted it with hints at dark fantasies and suggestions of depravity. In beautifully created and calculated illusions, his camera acts like an unwanted intruder..
He invites you in…
Welcomes you to the unexpected, wickedly carving up the narrative, his subjects caught in the headlights. Disgraceful, flashy and all handcrafted with love and terror.
Where he’s happy to leave a layer of shocked emotions smeared across the floor..
But always with humour and heart.
The colours are intense: heightened, enhanced, almost hyper-real: Red, blue, a specific yellow, black and white. And always with a life and energy that our modern day editorials seem to have lost.
In our age of endless image manipulation and photoshopping, there’s something incredible about Bourdin’s sheer creativity and endless imagination. Look, no digital re-mastering..
(This is my lovely friend Sophie at the exhibition in our own photo homage)
This exhibition is cool statement strong balls with scalpel sharp insights and seductive eye candy. Go see it…then see it again..
Laters, Kate x
The Edit x
Charlie wearing Bella’s skinny jeans..
And odd socks..
Laters, Kate x
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
Luscious Libertine x
Designer Johnson Hartig of Libertine is a man who likes to chase the scream..it’s all over his clothes: Surrealism, Dadaism, futurism, exhilarating exuberance, rave, punk, street and fun.
Jazzed up juicy vintage silhouettes with glorious jewel case colours to relish with rapture.
All thrown together with Warhol’s soup can and Pop Art talismans: The joy is in the impact…the devil’s in the detail..
If I could choose any item from NYFW 2015 it would be one of these coats..the splinter is deciding which one..
Laters, Kate x
General Mayhem..
This is what I normally do on a Thursday..an engrossing, soul-enhancing, spirit-lifting art class in the sanctuary of a wooden hut on the green, leafy, quiet Common..
Today, this is my reality…it’s half term…so I’m at home..with the kids..and we’re working (??)(*&^%^%$£@!..hindering??) on a Top Secret project..which always seems like such a good idea in the abstract…
A happy worker!
I’ve now learnt that black gloss, children and white, blind dogs really don’t mix…pray for me..and my floors..and possibly my sanity..
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
Fashion Story x
In the focaccia bunfight of fashion, how is true style evaluated and who wins the cherry on the top?
We know sometimes less is more..
That it’s thinking out of the box..that magic moment when perfectionists take risks..
Finding that rare sweet spot moment when it takes brains and a perverse delight to play a swaggering fool. When you aren’t.
Elegance and body language is in the mix..
And it’s not about money..
Style isn’t beauty, it’s perfectly picked proportions.
That fine, hazy line between victim and genius, because there’s no beauty without strangeness.
(All pictures from Style.com)
Fashion is conforming to current styles and trends.
Style is throwing them out of the window.
Laters, Kate x
Jewel x
There’s a perverse delight in unearthing a bargain, and one of my best ever were these earrings from Siren London – not that you could buy this exact earring as they were actually my mash-up of two of their pairs…but it’s still possible to emulate.
The ‘kiss’ part was from one pair, and the lips from another – the ‘kiss’ earring was a ridiculously clever design with the word being a separate part of the earring which then hung off the main stalk of the stud and looked cunningly suspended just below the earlobe. The design meant there’s this blue-sky-thinking ability to use ANY stud earring to hang the word from. Sadly ‘kiss’ is no longer available..but ‘love’ is (tempted?) The lips were then the perfect foil to the words, but at £3.94 precisely one had to worry about their quality (having said that – I never got an allergic reaction wearing them) and how long they’d last..but now there’s a rather wonderful solution..
As requested in the original post, there’s now a posh version available..which means treasure, longevity and rapture..
Aamaya by Priyanka also has some other rather cheeky, desirable designs..
So here’s the thought: Indulge and mix them all up..sad face on one side with ‘kiss’…(yep..still got mine..)
Heart eyes on other with ‘love’..
Oh, how I laugh!
Laters, Kate x
Maison Bentley Style 