Sunday, September 14, 2008

LFW: Sunday stories

Oof, I've just rolled in the door from a crazy day as your intrepid reporter at London Fashion Week, the first of six days of pure peacock watching. I started off the day at Spijkers en Spijkers at Vauxhall Fashion Scout this morning, a very interesting collection: lots of ruffles on everything. While I didn't really warm to the pinks and violets, I loved the dresses in oyster grey and peach and the fabulous ones that were studded all over. The second half heralded lots of leopard print, which the trashy side of me secretly loves just a little too much to be healthy. My favourite piece though was probably the black silk jumpsuit with tiny little hot pant shorts, you can see it in the final walk, unfortunately the quality is quite bad as my camera is pretty old and crappy:



After Spijkers, we jumped on a bus and headed over to Baker Street to go and check out Topshop Unique, one of the hottest tickets in town, in one of the most amazing venues:



Before the actual show started, they had a reception with lots of yummy miniature portions of traditional English grub - prawn cocktail, cod and chips, bubble and squeak, bread and butter pudding, all washed down with champagne. I was starving and grateful for the sustenance and bubbles - who wouldn't be?



Anyway, back to the clothes. The collection was really heavily 80s inspired - lots of bleached denim in the form of candy coloured jumpsuits and fun printed pieces like horse shoes and arrows through hearts on jackets, more jumpsuits and dresses. All of the models had hugely backcombed hair with scarves tied in them. One girl in a rust coloured ensemble had a matching denim jacket tied in her hair - sounds weird but it worked. My favourite pieces though were the backless jersey dresses with low hanging draped fabric. Not screamingly obvious but very sexy none the less.

In the front row, we spotted Alexa Chung, Peaches Geldof, Roisin Murphy and Cory Kennedy. I bumped into Cory after the show during the bottleneck to get out and when I mentioned that I liked her blog, she agreed to pose for a photo for mine. She was very sweet and patient when my camera messed up and waited until I got the snap I was after. I couldn't help noticing that she's also really tiny. We were both in flats and were pretty much eye-to-eye and I'm only 5'3". That just made me love her a little more:



Unfortunately, blogger has decided to mess up uploading videos for this evening, so I'll have to add some of the videos tomorrow. From Topshop (which ran late), we pegged it back across town to the tents for Ossie Clark.

I was amazed to see Alexa Chung in the front row in a completely different outfit to the one she'd worn to Topshop. The fashionistas sitting around me started to snipe about how it was a bit try hard but I bet every one of them would've loved the opportunity to change between shows, although I must admit I did see their point.

Ossie Clark featured lots of beautiful diaphanous dresses in rich jewely colours - pea green, burnt orange and deep purples, as well as his signature bold prints. Oh, and the embellishments. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. He had that stunning girl from the current Topshop ads walking too and for a brief moment, she made me buy into another dreamy beach life. Believe me, if I were built at a height where maxidresses didn't double as a street sweeper-slash-tent on me, I would so be in there, snapping everything up:

[OSSIE VIDEO WILL BE ADDED TOMORROW, HANG TIGHT!]

After Ossie, we had a short break where we had to do some work. I was glad not to be hopping onto any tubes or buses to march off to another destination and was glad just to plonk down for a while and file some copy before it was off to PPQ.



I've never seen the BFC so rammed. We had seats but in the loosest terms of the word. I had one butt cheek precariously balanced on the edge of a bench, legs in the aisle in order to avoid falling to the floor. And the show had started even before the models hit the runway.

Spotted on the front row: Jodie Harsh in amazing gold sequinned leggings, Victoria Hervey sitting with Russell Simmons (yeah, we couldn't figure it out either), Kimberley Stewart (in what appeared to be silver foil), Peaches Geldof (again, still don't like her), Pixie Geldof (interesting new haircut), Roisin Murphy (again) and Cory Kennedy (who had changed outfits), along with lots of people whose faces I knew but names I didn't.

I have a lot of photos from this show but I'll have to post most of them separately as otherwise this will officially be the longest post ever. I didn't love PPQ this season as much as I have in previous ones.

I think I may've been distracted by the elaborate hats. I am a firm believer that accessories should accentuate or make an outfit, not overshadow it. And this was most definitely a case of the latter. A shame really but I'll let you judge for yourselves when I post the videos tomorrow but here's a taster of one of the finer confections:



As I type, the PPQ party is currently kicking off in Piccadilly and I had intended to go but an exhausting day and some none too fresh sushi means that I think it's probably safer that I skip it and recover. I've also just heard that the queue is ridiculously long so I think it was a wise decision. It's another busy day tomorrow and I still need to figure out what I'm wearing. A fashionista's job is never done...

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