Smith takes on the Snuggie.

 Paul Smith

There is no secret from where the esteemed Paul Smith found inspiration for the former of these Fall pieces- why, it is quite evident that it is the high-fashion equivalent of the humble Snuggie.
 

A credible option for those fashionphiles among us who don’t like surrendering to the seduction of twenty-minute infomercials, the Paul Smith Rug Robe will take you from naptime to night life with no change of clothes necessary!
 

Best of all, it’s a look easily replicated at home! I’m sure most of us have a blanket just like this, crafted by a well meaning grandma or aunt with too much time on her hands, tucked at the back of the linen closet. Drape artfully, cinch at the waist with a thick leather belt, and you’ll get the designer duvet dress look without forking out a penny!

The delicious Holly Fulton.

  

Holly Fulton

In the hands of newcomer Holly Fulton, Art Deco went a bit mad at London Fashion Week. Vivid black prints saw 1920s geometry become futuristic- the Empire State Building turned cyborg. In colours so sherbety they’d probably sell in a sweet shop, darling shifts in soft-hued suede’s of creamy coral, cheeky lemon and milky grey would be the perfect sugary antidote to bittersweet London fog. Each piece was a carefully constructed pick-n-mix in a playful collage of print, colour and fabric, and despite this seemingly clashing mélange, everything was sleek, modern and utterly delicious. 

In short, I just wanted to give it all a big lick.

Short order.

 

 Second-hand wonder shorts

My father wears Cheap Mondays. I’ll let that sink in for a bit.
 

That’s right, my fifty-something year old father spends a fair portion of his life, legs squeezed like a pair of anemic sausages, into some trendy Swedish tubes of denim. I’ve learned to accept the fact that, from the back, my father frequently resembles the long-lost balding member of The Horrors. I’ve also learned to accept that his legs are better than mine.
 

My father discovering his inner trendy Swede, however, hasn’t been all bad. Long before the Cheap Monday era came the epoch of trying on my Sass & Bide jeans in moments of nostalgic “I miss sixties stovepipes and my lustrous locks!” hysteria. Better resembling an aging member of a mediocre over-hyped indie band than your twenty year-old daughter, I suppose. And fair play, the rediscovery of the skinny jean had left twenty years worth of Levi 501s in Dad’s wardrobe, never to be worn by their too-cool owner again, all in varying degrees of paint-stain, sweat and faded nonchalance. In other words, ripe for the cutting.
 

Just when the going got tough for Dad’s delightful old denim though, my fabric scissors poised glinting on the verge of creating a deliciously worn-in pair of cut-offs (requisite Sydney Summer regalia, you see), he succumbed to all the sissy sentiment that a pair of tight black jeans suggests. Snatching them from my grip, which was tight with the expectation of DIY, he placed the jeans and their twenty or so siblings on the very top shelf of his wardrobe. “You probably shouldn’t cut them up, Lil,” he said, “they’re my favourites.”
“Dad, you have a load, and you never wear them!”
“Maybe, but I love them.”
 

I suppose I could wrap this up metaphorically, claiming it to be an allegory for wanting to preserve memories of the past. I could use it as a bridging-the-generations story, about how the best designs are perennial, how they survive and continue to have life breathed into them in successive decades. But, in the end, this is just a story about how the promise of the perfect denim cut-offs was cruelly dangled in front of me by a father too trendy for his own good, and how I thought my bum was fated never to be clad in vintage denim so perfectly high waisted it could be deemed criminal.
 

It’s been years now since the 501 incident. My father remains devoted to jeans so tight his mobility is limited to a mere shuffle, and the Levis sit, the aroma of moth balls now irrevocably entrenched, unworn on the top shelf. A relic of his daggy mid-nineties days. I have spent many a melancholy afternoon gazing longingly at the cut-offs that never were, legs stuffed into some mediochre store-bought denim without the subtle nuances brought on by years of blood, sweat and spilt beers that only vintage denim provides.
 

Those days, however, are over. For just as the days have begun to get shorter, just as the chill of an impending Autumn starts hitting the mornings, I have found my darlings hidden in a local charity shop- faded to within an inch of their frankly probably unimpressive lives (up to now, of course), button fly trailing far up past my bellybutton, the most trashy-fabulous pair of denim shorts ever known to this tush.
 

Let’s hope my father doesn’t try to take them for a spin.

The blues are still blue.

 

L-R; second-hand, Topshop, Temt, second-hand

My wardrobe is giving me the blues. Not the type of blues that have one holed up in one’s room drinking bottles of red wine until four AM. Nor the blues that involve wailing Take That lyrics, eyes brimming with hot tears, into a hairbrush. Nope. I have the sartorial blues, and I assure you, these are much more pleasant than the aforementioned.
 

The blues are smart, not sexy. They gently insinuate themselves. They don’t have the volatile sucker-punch of a bright tomato red or the fiery seduction of a deep crimson. They lap at the edges of your fashion consciousness until suddenly, the whole thing overflows and you realize that you have spent the past week doing everything in head to toe blue- laid-back café days in chilled faded denim and a crisp duck-egg Oxford with rolled-up sleeves, gallery hopping in breezy steel-blue ombre and suede navy, late night pints and dancing in a deep midnight velvet. Hell, even my fingernails are a perky powdery shade.

  

Chilled-out elegance by Richard Nicoll, languid fluidity by Mark Fast, clean-cut cool by Arnsdorf

The blues are cool without being contrived. They can hint at the boundless depth of the deepest ultramarine sea or the chill clarity of a cloudless sky. 

 

The insouciant double-deniming cool of Alexa and Pixie just goes to show- nothing beats the blues.

Sun-drenched farewells.

 

Lover

These fashion weeks are making me fretful.Watching the heavily booted, rugged up hordes descend chap-lipped and red-cheeked onto the streets of New York and London gives me a sense of seasonal dread. While the Northern Hemisphere folk can see the light at the end of a particularly icy runway, us Antipodeans are coming to the tail end of our warmest season, and it's not a very fond farewell.

 

Lover

Susien Chong and Nic Briand, the designers behind dreamy label Lover, obviously share the inclination to cling tightly to the best of the season. With sweltering February almost behind us, the remnants of an Australian Summer are sun-bleached and beautifully balmy, without the sting of post-beach sunburn to hamper our enjoyment. The teaser video for new Lover collection The Harvest is lazy, low-key and drenched in sunlight. The clothes? Easy-cool cottons, linens and laces in softly romantic shapes that ask politely to be taken on a picnic.

And that is exactly the laid-back vibe that I want to soak up as these balmy days peter to a close- spending late afternoons lying in the grass with a good book, listening to some breezy lo-fi tunes and soaking up the last rays of buttery sunlight before Autumn takes hold. London Fashion Week it ain't.

Those naughty royals!

“Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.” Queen Elizabeth II

There is something of the runaway train about our royals- they always seem a bit off the rails, a bit out of control, a bit, well… mad. They try to cling to their inherent Britishness with stiff-upper-lips, tea breaks and respectably tailored wardrobes, but what keeps us ever so constantly amused are their shortcomings- the potty-mouthed private phonecalls of the Prince of Wales, the drunken antics of Princess Beatrice, and the odd outing of Nazi party attire.

 Mulberry

Emma Hill’s Fall 2010 collection for Mulberry captures all the cheeky contradictions of our beloved Brit royalty- heavy fabrics and furs in rich jewel tones teamed with jarring royal blues and neon corals, a demure trench with bright yellow knee high boots. Even when the models were decked out in prim grey skirt-suits, their black eyeliner was liberally smeared and their hair piled high, haphazard and flyaway on their heads. It was as if a motley collection of punkish princesses had stayed out until four am to shake off the stuffiness of yesterday morning’s royal responsibilities.

I suppose the lesson Mulberry has taught us with their latest collection is that, like us, even the royals occasionally come unstuck at the seams. So how can we inject a little majesty into our lives?

 Let’s face it, modern social convention doesn’t really look kindly on people wearing gem-encrusted precious-metal headwear in daily life, so this Crown ring by New York label Sunday’s Best is a worthy (and subtle) alternative.

What princess can get through the day without a morning pot of tea? Even if you look a little worse for wear after a night getting down and dirty with the commoners, this mug is sure to get your point across (and taking a cue from our favourite young royals, tea needn’t be your only tipple!).

What’s royalty without a little rebellion? Pop on modern classic ‘The Queen Is Dead’ by the Smiths for some treasonous twirling.

Picnics, prairies & polygamists.

 

If the dreamy Picnic At Hanging Rock has taught me anything, it’s that nothing is sexier than a good dose of mystique. Miranda, the heavy-lidded dreamer of the piece, is one of the most alluring conundrums I have seen on film. Floating languidly and nonchalant throughout, she immediately becomes mistress of any domain she enters, her aura permeating the wild landscape even after her curious disappearance. With her stiff cotton dresses buttoned to within an inch of her life, her only concession is the folly of some frills. We long to see beneath the enigma (and the frock). 

The same can be said of Chloë Sevigny’s prickly Nicolette in TV’s Big Love. She may be difficult, stubborn and too-much at times, but there’s little doubt there’s a lot hiding beneath that starched polygamist collar. And with her buttons all the way to the top and hair perennially in a low plait, it could be said that Nicolette owes more to SS10 Miu Miu than the Book of Mormon.

Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, Miu Miu

Thus, staid has become seductive. The functionality of a high neck and the classic romance of frills have met with hemlines slashed at the thigh and cheeky sheer fabrics. Innocence clashes with impudence in delicious incongruity. 

Lover, Nars lipstick in Blonde Venus, Bobbi Brown Gel Eyeliner, Opening Ceremony

The whimsical high collared frocks of Australian label Lover are the perfect mélange of prim and luxe. Long sleeves and buttons tracing their way right up the neckline would not look out of place on any of the Little House on the Prairie girls, were they not made from such lush fabrics. Pop on a dab of coquettish nude lippy, make like Miu Miu with a slick of liquid eyeliner and a messy low-slung braid, and finish with a pair of shoes Laura Ingalls-Wilder would deem obscene.  Prairie practicality goes provocative.