Orla Kiely AW’13

February 18th, 2013

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It seems kind of superfluous to add my voice to the chorus of OMG SO PRETTY surrounding the latest Orla Kiely collection, but I was there and it was in fact OMG SO PRETTY so here we are. That’s right, even my ice cold heart thawed a little on seeing this level of dedication to whimsy. Leith Clark and James Hatt did a beautiful job with the styling and set design respectively, upholding the tradition of Orla Kiely presentations being one of the most jolly on schedule.

Even the most tired grumpy cat (i.e. me) couldn’t help but be cheered by a row of models pretending to work in a little office, bless them. In the middle of a week of being “Strong! Fast! No Smiling!” or whatever the board backstage commands, I bet it was a nice rest for the girls to have a chat and a sit down too.

The Margot Tennenbaum inspired collection had lots of people thinking of Mad Men, but it reminded me of The Best of Everything in both the colour palette (dusky pink, mustard yellow) and the Typing Pool setting. The two pink looks and the velvet jacquard skirt suit in particular were fantastic and some of the others in the look book are just plain cool. I’m always happy to see some longer length skirts and girls in glasses too, so double thumbs up from me.

In other news: if you’re viewing this in a feed reader, you won’t see that I have a slightly changed and vastly better blog layout! I’ve been meaning to up the size of the images and improve the layout for mobile and tablet browsers for ages, so I hope you guys like it. Let me know what you think!

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Cravin’ Carven

February 4th, 2013

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When I’m shooting shows or browsing collection photos (tragically, a task I look forward to immensely, though the number of collections major designers bring out every year is bordering on the ridiculous nowadays), I mentally split everything I like into two categories – the “fashion likes” and the want-in-my-wardrobe likes. The fashion likes usually involve big poofy gowns, pleasing colour combinations or lots of embellishment, pattern, embroidery and shiny shit (reason being: most fun to shoot/draw). The in-between seasons (pre-fall and resort) are the best for searching out the clothes I’d actually like to be wearing though. Carven‘s pre-fall is especially on point, I would happily wear it as a uniform.

Especially digging all the blazers, leather jackets and cocoon coats. And my favourite tomato red colour. And the chunky jumpers. And those socks are giving me Prada ’06 Meisel campaign vibes, surely the finest tribute to thigh socks in modern times. Ok, brb, replacing all my black with navy, Carven ilu.

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(Illustration by me. Photos from vogue.com, god bless her and all who sail in her)