MFW SS13: WILL YOU WEAR PRADA'S NEW LEATHER SOCKS?

Posted by Bethan Holt, Fashion Junior at Large and Kasia Hastings

Leather socks at Prada (image from vogue.com)

Sorry, what we mean when we say "socks" is "flats that were essentially kid-leather ankle socks with a bifurcation to separate the big toe were slipped through a dainty harness of pastel satin". Thank you Vogue's Hamish Bowles for providing the correct definition of one of the big talking points of Miuccia Prada's SS13 collection, shown in Milan yesterday. As always with Prada, there's a lot to say about what we saw. Much of it revolves round the Japanese geisha influences and allusions to the hard/ soft elements of female character. If there were ever a collection to get intellectual about this would be it. But our minds are mostly on THOSE socks, which tie up in a neat little package exactly what Mrs Prada does best- shows us something utterly alien, seemingly unworkable  and makes us want it a little bit and then a little bit more until its filtered down to the high street and we're all completely mad for it.

The Prada socks look (image from vogue.com)

What's kind of fascinating about these socks though is that, in their current form, they are entirely unworkable. Could you dance in a club or run for a bus in them? Not so much, unless you're up for having shards of glass stuck in your feet. They remind of Courrèges space boots- clearly in space you don't really need to think about litter and the such.

Courreges space boots from the 60s (image from veralustina.blogspot.co.uk)

 They could also pass for a souped up version of the Vibram barefoot running boots our colleague Stu has recently been sporting, although those boast "quidfurcation", a made-up word for every toe having its own individual hole. There were far more viable seeming styles which involved the sock inserted onto a rocking-horse like jewelled platform and reinforced with extra ribbon-y straps. This is exactly the kind of thing we can imagine uber keen fashionistas wearing next season. In fact, Susie Bubble has just tweeted "My feet will buckle in these but I'll still do my damn hardest to get them come January... #prada" along with this picture:

Meanwhile, The Telegraph's fashion team confimed "#mfw #prada the leather socks you slip into hobbling-high platforms will be sold, said miuccia p: "but reduced". Whether the socks alone will be up for grabs is still anyone's guess. We're thinking a thin sole could perhaps be added, giving them a kind of minimal boxing boot look. And they'll undoubtedly spark a move on from the fash crowds' current love of a grey/ navy sock to metallic styles, possibly with an added ribbon. It's definitely a Marmite debate, but Elle's Stacey Duguid spoke for the "love it" team when she tweeted "Just popping back to the hotel to spray paint my socks silver". A quick fix way to get the Prada look now, will you or won't you? One thing we're betting any of you shaking your heads in disgust, you'll probably have come round to the idea by next Spring. That's the kind of magic spell Mrs Prada is so adept at casting.

SS13: MY LFW TUMBLE

Posted by Bethan Holt, Fashion Junior at Large

As well as keeping up with what's going on in Milan and catching up on everything which piled up at the office while I was out at shows, one of the big things I have been doing is trying to plough through the hundreds (if not thousands) of pictures I took over the five days. Some you'll see in more substantial posts another time but others are just snippets, and so I thought I would share a tumble of pictures with you today to show u a few of the thingsI got up to during LFW....

FRIDAY

Backstage at Zoe Jordan, the looks and the models...

I have a soft spot for Emilia Wickstead who has a slightly unfair rep as a designer who just makes pretty dresses for society ladies. This was one of my favourite looks from her salon presentation, though  it is really only suitable for tall model types. I could totally get on board with an Emilia prom skirt though.

SATURDAY

Lara Mullen backstage after Daks

Ryan Lo's glitz spectacular to the tune of Azealia Banks at Fashion East

Latex dungaress by  Claire Barrow at Fashion East.

Gorgeous lilac tulle on denim at Marques' Almeida

 Jourdan Dunn outside Rag and Bone

Models in Barbie-esque boxes at Sophia Webster

LFW SS13: HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, RAG AND BONE

Posted by Bethan Holt, Fashion Junior at Large

Hello, Rag and Bone audience!

It's a long way from Dakar to New York and then to London, but that's the trajectory taken by Rag and Bone which culminated in a presentation of their SS13 collection on Saturday afternoon of LFW. Let me explain if you were wondering why geography has anything to do with this post. If you haven't already seen Rag and Bone's SS13 collection, then you should know that it is made up of soft, loose cottons including hoods to drape gently over your head and fierce leather trousers, jackets and skirts, some in blinding neon colours. This is the Dakar bit, referring specifically to the Paris-Dakar rally- a hardcore off-road race which used to run, as the name suggests from Paris to Dakar, Senegal. Due to safety issues, it now takes place in South America but Rag and Bone designers David Neville and Marcus Wainwright drew inspiration from the combination of souped up cars and their crews, as well as the Bedouins whose territory the race would cross.

Paris-Dakar 2001 (image from www.usautoparts.net)

Bedouin styling (image from style.com)

The New York bit is obvious. Rag and Bone is a distinctly NY label even though the designers are British- they occupy a place on the city's fashion week schedule and slot nicely into the attitude and cool which defines a modern New York aesthetic. They have six stores in New York, and one a piece in Washington, Boston , Tokyo and now London. The only European store opened on Sloane Square back in July, so to celebrate the brand decided to host a presentation during London Fashion Week, with an official store opening by Anna Wintour at the same time. Natty. It was all well and good for Wintour who smashed champers over the door frame before crossing the road for the presentation. For the rif-raf (which still includes key editors and fashion directors of top publications) there was a long, confused and crowded wait as realisation dawned that there were to be two presentations and we would have to wait. I think quite a few gave up, judging by some tweets I saw but after being plied with free drink all the invited who stuck it out eventually made it in. There was none of the usual show diplomacy with carefully thought out seating plans, instead there was one bench at the front reserved for the most special of guests and beyond that, a free for all.

Even before it began, Rag and Bone in London was something different. Then it got fun and savvy. The screens which had been white with the brand logo flickered to life to show the audience reflections of ourselves. The fact that this made us so much more than observers became clear once the models emerged, dressed in looks seen already in New York. If anyone was moved enough to make any kind of facial expression then everyone would be able to see. There's one look- the green leather skirt you'll see details on below- which really makes me smile, perhaps that came across in the footage beamed onto the screen when the model passed my way.

Presentation over, we were shown out and, ta-da, were facing the Rag and Bone store. I guess if you were lucky enough to have a little LFW time to kill you could have popped straight in and bought something if you'd loved the presentation enough. It would have been fascinating to see how a "See and Buy" system could have worked, like the one Topshop Unique employed. Topshop let customers watching online click, choose the colours and buy looks as soon as they saw them streamed on the website. They'll be delivered to them in eight weeks time. Clever. I'm not sure Kings Road locals can have been mightily impressed to have hoardes of fashion people causing chaos in the square on their quiet Saturday afternoon stroll. But it definitely showed them what Rag and Bone is all about.

My favourite look- big zips, cracked graffiti paint-ish leather and a massive white shirt, what's not to love?

More Rag and Bone Details...

LFW SS13: FIVE OBSESSIONS AT J.W ANDERSON

Posted by Bethan Holt, Fashion Junior at Large

J.W Anderson has been one of the most talked about designers in the run up to this London Fashion Week, judging by my Twitter feed and overhearings. That's because on the first morning of shows, his collaboration with Topshop hit stores and coaxed fashion editors away from LFW prep to a land of pinafore dresses, penny loafers, bat pattern jumpers and J-Dubz pencils. Consequently the Toppers collection was playing a starring role on last night's F-ROW as everyone waited to see what one of LFW's most intellectual, rigorous and unpredictable designers would do next.

Jonathan had created a "Treatment Room"; a place where he had played with fabric, texture, silhouette, in response to "a personal urgency to strip back fashion to garments with an edge". That quote tells me that this was all about taking the fundamentals and playing around with them, embellishing them with a J.W flourish. So, what got me ticking?

1. ADDED FRILLS

2. FINGERPRINT PRINTS

3. THE BAGS

4. THE BOOTS

5. LOOK 21

Reason- the colour of this jacket is just phenomenal, plus I love that the model is Zen formerly known as Kate.

Image from Vogue.com

LFW SS13: FIVE CHRISTOPHER KANE OBSESSIONS

Posted by Bethan Holt, Fashion Junior at Large and Kasia Hastings

Christopher Kane, the Brit boy who can do no wrong, wowed once again this afternoon with an offbeat concoction of pretty pastels and dangerous D.I.Y. Kane incorporated nuts, bolts and spikes as well as every Dad's favourite duct tape but there were also lovely bows and delightful beads. There was a slim, silver mirrored catwalk at the same location as yesterday's ACNE show plus the sleekest ponytails ever. Until 3/4 of the way through, we thought it might all be bright whites and candy floss colours, then BAM- a badass biker. Then back to loveliness before the final two looks which were all fragile pieces of lace patched on with blacker than black gaffa. Only at Chris Kane. 

Five hours later and we're still obsessing over...

1. HELL'S ANGELS LEATHER JACKET

2. MAJOR BEADING

3. WHITE DENIM (J BRAND COLLAB)

4. DUCT TAPE MASTERPIECE

5. NUT & BOLT SHOES

Image from Jane Keltner deValle, Senior Fashion Director, ‏‪Teen Vogue.

LFW SS13: TEATUM JONES' FROM DEMOCRACY, WITH LOVE

Posted by Bethan Holt, Fashion Junior at Large

Every day as my train pulls in Waterloo station, I pass a series of brightly painted cabins smattered in graffitti. I've always wondered quite what goes on in there- impromptu jamming sessions for teenagers, perhaps? Well, last week I learnt that it is something rather more refined as I found myself approaching Makeshift studios from the other side, clambering up the steps to meet Catherine Teatum and Rob Jones who occupy one of those cabins. Inside it is actually a sleek designer studio, all clean lines, giant Mac screens and walls covered in tears making up moodboards for their SS13 collection, 'From Democracy, with love' which I have come to preview. I first encountered Rob and Catherine at LFW last season and they talked me through a dark journey into the sinister side of fairytales. They had created vibrant prints inspired by Grimm's Fairy Tales alongside great tailoring and were showing at Liberty.

This season's partner is The Dorchester. When they wrote to the hotel asking for more information about The Dorchester prize- an award for emerging fashion design talent- they got talking about a more bespoke collaboration.  Teatum Jones has taken the quite unusual route of breaking into the fashion scene not through sponsorship but through collaborations with the likes of Liberty and now The Dorchester. It makes sense given their background; Catherine previously worked at Luella Bartley and Rob at Warren Noronha before they set up together after meeting working on menswear at John Richmond, and launched their first collection for SS11 after a whole year of meticulous planning.

Refinery 29 quickly tipped them as ones to watch. Now they're two years into their venture, stocked everywhere from Vancouver to Riyadh to New York, and have really got into the groove of working together. Catherine describes how they "really trust each other. Rob sketches and I drape on mannequins then we come together and develop each other's ideas". Even before that stage, they have it all worked out- Catherine decides on a book she wants to read (for SS13, it was 1984) while Rob immerses himself in films.

The collection they will present today is all about the sixties and how the future was imagined at that time. In the context of the moon race and the cold war, the world was an uncertain place. " We were interested in the tension that existed in the world then" Rob says, summing it up as "glamour laced with fear". The ultimate incarnation of that situation was Jacqueline Kennedy who "went through so much but always looked so pristine, always performing even when her suit was splattered with her husband's blood".Aside from 1984, the pair reference sources as wide-ranging as the exhibitions various countires put on to show their might, plus films like Battle Royale and 2001: Space Odyssey. So, what does that actually look like as a collection?

There are the prints and tailoring they've been honing from the start but Teatum Jones has also ventured into jersey and jacquard for the first time. "We listened to feedback from our customers around the world and knew they loved easy pieces so we have done jersey and every sleeve in the collection is raglan which is so flattering" Catherine describes. One of the prints comprises soft lines inspired by Lucian Freud painting, juxtaposed with the crushed metal aesthetic of John Chamberlain. Meanwhile, the tailoring is sublime, especially a cool spearmint two piece; they have a secret lady advising them who also works with Savile Row stalwarts Ede and Ravenscroft and Hardy Amies. The silhouette is very much that 60s couture shape worn by Jackie Kennedy. My standout piece has to be metallic jacket which changes in the light from aquamarine to copper with a silver centre panel. I'm also looking forward to seeing the Atalanta Weller shoe collaboration. 

Odd buttons, a Teatum Jones signature, on a selection of AW12 and SS3 pieces

Rob and Catherine have worked with The Dorchester on a few projects in the run up to the presentation.  They've designed a scarf with a print created from the hotel's archives of photographs. They have gone through what must have been an arduous process of mixing a bespoke cocktail with the help of The Dorchester's mixologist. It's called "The Odyssey" and is a combination of English gin and (French, obviously) champagne. Catherine's architect brothers, Teatum and Teatum, are doing the set design for the presentation and from the sketches it looks like it will more than hint at that retro- futuristic vibe which underpins the collection. Above all, the whole shebang promises to be completely "chic", how could it not be when Rob and Catherine use this word so often that it must permeate their every thought? Not that I'm complaining, that's what we want from our designers isn't it? 

Rob Jones and Catherine Teatum (portrait by Alice Whitby)

'From Democracy, with Love' is at The Dorchester today (Monday) at LFW. Teatum Jones is avaialble to buy at Liberty.