A Catch-up!

Apologies. It has been too long... But it is only now that I am lying on a beach and sufficiently recovered that I feel the urge to put finger to blackberry and fill you in on the past month. It has been a bit nuts to say the least. We started with Handsome’s 40th birthday party which he shared with his twin bro. We decided to recapture their youth and throw an old skool house party in their family home in Holland Park. Dan Williams DJ'd and frankly brought the house down with his 80's mixes and 70's funk and at some point in the early hours the council took it upon themselves to pay us a visit... Nothing changes! Everyone was on great form with some rocking outfits and dancing into the wee hours. Mum is now best buddies with Jade Jagger and Amiee and I left for Paris with no voices and major hangovers!

The Paris show at RMO showroom was 2 weeks of full on fashwani. I am pretty fluent now. I realised that I had graduated to a whole new level when I heard myself telling my friend Olivia that I was 'really driven by trousers right now'. I kid you not- shoot me now...

The Showroom in Paris 

Separated at Birth

Seeds of Inspiration

So I was talking to my cousin last night about inspiration. He is Big In Advertising and it is his job to understand what makes people desire things. As you can imagine this was a bit of a complex one involving much impassioned gesticulation and basically ended up back at the start of the creative process. 

How does inspiration happen and what starts it off? I was explaining that I don’t actually actively go out looking for inspiration, rather the seeds are sown and at some point they germinate into ideas through a process of living life and looking around.  Sometimes it is frustrating because the ideas are there but just below the surface and something needs to trigger it to let it flow. It is not a process which can be rushed and obviously with a business to run that can be a little unsettling sometimes. However today I found myself at the fabulous Haunch of Venison gallery during a gap between meetings and I must confess that for the first time ever I was inspired by an exhibition. I was lucky enough to catch the Joana Vasconcelos show before it ends this month and for me her work has such strong links to fashion that I couldn’t help but fall in love with it all. The seeds are sown and I am ready to go!

The mysterious incident of the navy tights in the designer's drawer

In the ever changing vortex of taste that is planet fashion there are few truly heinous fashion crimes. Most bad taste can be excused as ‘on trend’ however as with anything in life there are ten comandments which-for the greater good of society and regardless of creative need- should be obeyed. ‘Thou shalt not wear navy tights’ is definitely one of them. Especially if you thought they were black.

Fashion week is an incredibly busy time for us. We are flying madly from appointment to appointment, from launch to dinner to party and somewhere in all that are school runs, parent meetings and tears at bedtime. There is not the necessary time to luxuriate over the choice of ground breaking outfit. The creative dresser within must be reigned in if I am to get anywhere on time and organized the night before. In the dark. Because Ginger #1 is asleep in my bed. And therein lays the problem…. The rogue navy tights luxuriating at the bottom of my drawer undisturbed since last winter have reared their ugly head. Or feet. Whatever.

To be honest it was Amiee that they claimed as their first victim. She rummaged in my drawer shortly before we left for the Value of Fashion launch and she was rocking a beige and black neutrals looks. Except it was beige, black and navy which isn’t a look and in fact an offence and to add insult to injury it only came to light (excuse the pun) under the flash of the photographers camera as her outfit was recorded for Fashion Week posterity. Lets hope they think it’s a new trend.

I was the second victim. Thinking (clearly mistakenly) that the offending item had been taken into fashion custody and were languishing safely in a British Heart Foundation store somewhere I went into the drawer with foolish carelessness. My devil may care attitude was rewarded in the cold light of the taxi cab on route to a charity dinner for HET last night when my vintage Sara Berman lace cocktail dress was ambushed by the surprise appearance of the navy tights. I don’t understand how it happened but I had no choice but to shoulder on, the tights under surveillance. I had a fascinating evening and was enjoying myself greatly until I spotted a fellow fashion body across the room. We did the fashion quick step over to each other and performed the necessary eye sweep and computation. ‘You look fabulous darling! So clever to lift all that lace with navy.’ ‘Oh yes-very next season don’t you think?’

Perhaps I will let the tights out on bail.