VINTAGE AT GOODWOOD - DAY ONE AFTERMATH!

Posted by Fashion Junior at Large

After months of anticipation, Vintage at Goodwood festival made its debut today, and it looked a little something like this....

Lots of beautiful people....

And others being made to look beautiful....

A catwalk show featuring beautiful Biba-ites...(plus festival organiser Wayne Hemingway)

Then some not-so beautiful rain. Boo.

Thankfully there were vintage stalls to keep us entertained, plus the sudden cold and dreary weather meant I just HAD to buy a peach mohair jumper (excuse tired 'festival' face in pic below)

But ultimately mud stopped play and there was no way I could walk around in my heeled brogues without completely obliterating them. Here's hoping for practical footwear and sunny skies tomorrow!

(For more pics from the day, please see the Fashion Junior's blog)

Dressed by Kiki's Fashion

FASHION FRISSON #1

Posted by Fashion Editor at Large

The first in an occasional series. Watch and weep as Brooke Shields gives us an AW 2010 fashion lesson from 1980 with a pair of Calvin Klein jeans a silky gold blouse and some matching ballet pumps. 

PERFECT PATMOS

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There is a very good reason for my silence over the last three weeks. The below location swallowed me up, and took me away from city and connected life. Eventually, it delivered a sense of peace. You can travel and be on the move, or travel and be still. In a place as perfect as Patmos you can have it all. 

This is the road from where we stay in Chora down to the beach at Petra.

Meet Manoli the captain of the boat we were lucky enough to invited onto almost every day of our break. Thanks to our dear friend Joan Rolls and her close family friend Nick Contomichalos (who owns the boat) we spent many wonderful days pootling from bay to bay around Patmos.

This is Aspronisi. You can only get to the "white island" when the sea is calm.

Meet Joan Rolls and her jeep "Hercules". Joan is the reason we go to Patmos; she has been holidaying here for 26 years and everyone on the island knows her. When we see her careering down the hill from Chora to Skala in Hercules, we think the people who made Mamma Mia the movie MUST have been inspired by her for the character played by Meryl Streep. 

Saying hi from our picnic on the white island.

This is the shoe shop in Skala. The lady who runs it is at least 80. I love the sign outside. The old timer in the frame is typical of the local seafaring men who are heavy of moustache and have these macho peacockish walks.  

On quite a few mornings I walked down from Chora - thats it in the distance at the top of the hill - to Skala using this wide stony road which must be 900 years old. The road was built in the decades after the monastery of St John the Divine (also known as St John the Theologian) was finished; the monastery is the darker structure dominating the skyline. Chora is the white sugar-cube housing surrounding it, incidentally Chora is a UNESCO world heritage site

The view down to Skala from almost the same point as the previous shot.

All the buildings in Chora have incredible door-knockers.

This is the doorway into the house we rented.

Greek islanders traditionally use distinctive azure blue paint for their woodwork. In Patmos the locals prefer this shade of pale blue which exactly matches the colour of the sky above and around Patmos. 

One day I spotted some workmen using the colour while repainting a door. It enchanted me in a stupidly romantic way that there is a brand of paint aimed at the Greek Islands climate. Of course its obvious that there would be one, but seeing it made me smile.The workmen thought I was crazy wanting a shot of the paint pot...

This is a shot of Skala as you drive around the curve of the bay from Grikos

The beach at Diakofti is the best spot from which to enjoy the sunset.

After a week on Patmos we were rewarded with a full moon (our first one in three visits). It was a magical night

Why Patmos is Perfect

No airport

No tourist chain hotels

No swimming pools, just quiet uncommercialised beaches

Great swimming

The cruise ships only stay for four hours; when you see people viewing the island through a camera,  you know they will be gone soon

Just heard from friends still there that Hamish Bowles and a mega A-list Oscar winning actress and her kids (don't want to compromise her privacy) arrived (not together) this weekend

The rest must stay my secret. I'm under strict orders!

Photos: Fashion Editor at Large

FREJA

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Tom Ford Eyewear AW 10 campiagn

Freja Beha Erichsen is without doubt the model whose work I currently, lets say, appreciate the most. The girl has all the charisma and intense appeal Kate Moss had in her early days. However where Kate was an enigmatic will -o-the-wisp, Freja is a swaggeringly sexy, dangerously beautiful creature who adds a frisson of brilliance to everything she does. Maybe its because she's gay like me and out and proud, (despite the Vogue profile last month that skirted the issue), that I paticularly admire her being totally herself in the fashion industry. Gay girls are hugely outnumbered by gay boys in global fashion.

Josh Olins for British Vogue

As I write the 22 years old from Roskilde, Denmark, sits at number two in the models.com global model rankings. Lara Stone is number one; but it should be Freja. She is the face of Valentino, Chanel, Tom Ford, Balenciaga and MaxMara for AW10, and the cover of French and British Vogue for August. AND DID I MENTION HER AMAZING NEW HAIR????

Josh Olins for British Vogue

Her  layered (lightly permed?) haircut is my new obsession. I am seriously considering losing my almost the same length all over shoulder length brunette locks in favour of working this. What do you think?? Shall I??

All Tom Ford Eyewear

THIS BAG WILL CHANGE FASHION

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By the amazing Tommy Ton at JakandJil

As a handbag fan, I look back on my little cupboard that represents the last ten years of handbag history and see an era encapsulated. The noughties were a time of big, ostentatiously designed and very quirky handbags. These receptacles represent the modern womans' predicament - out and about away from home operating with what she can carry to achieve her aims. Throughout the noughties that was a lot of kit.

While on my Greek holiday just now I was asked by a masseuse (and not for the first time) whether I had scoliosis. I DO NOT. What I do have is an over-developed right shoulder from carrying large designer bags with lots of stuff in for a decade, and an underdeveloped left shoulder that won't take the weight of a bag comfortably.

When Arete the amazing woman who realigned my back on holiday had finished with me, I vowed never to carry a heavy handbag again, which lead me straight back into the imaginary clutch of the handbag I haven't been able to get out of my head since I first clapped eyes on it. Yes, I am talking about the Celine Classic bag again!

Without wishing to over do the "Phoebe Philo is a genius" blather that has taken over as the default line of thought for every fashion writer and blogger in the western world, Phoebe Philo has pulled off something approaching genius with this bag.

More Tommy Tom

With the Classic she has stripped the fashion handbag back to its purest form and created a perfectly formed and useful design classic, that I, among many, many people, can't wait to wear for the rest of my days.

The many combinations of colour, leather and skin means that each new owner feels she is getting something tailored to her taste.

Crucially, the dimensions of the bag are the thing that mark it out as something new. It is small, the dimensions are 19cm high, 23.5 cms across and 6.5 cm deep, but it is large enough to hold a notebook and diary, wallet, two smartphones and essential make-up items. This is a bag for an organised woman who can reduce! The Hermes Constance bag (below) is even smaller.

Hermes "Constance" bag

My gripe with the Classic is that it is just too small for an iPad. Can you make a bigger one please?  You only need to go up by a few centimenters in height and width to fit it in, and then it really will be genius.

A selection of colours of the Classic

Hopefully I be treating myself to one of these if the next couple of months are good on the work front. What I won't be able to do is win one. BUT one lucky person, hopefully one of you, will, and all thanks to me!

I've started working as a consultant on what promises to be an amazing new e-tail website that launches in October. When they asked me what handbag to recommend for an elegant little teaser campaign they are doing to introduce the site, there was no hesitation. With stealth planning and a well timed swoop on Celine in Paris I managed to get hold of not only a new-season Classic, but one in the most in-demand colour, geranium red - i.e a little lighter than the one at the top of this blogpost.

In fact, I handed it over to them today, and when it left my possesion to be photographed, there was a pang of loss. Look back here NEXT WEDNESDAY for more news on how this £2,200 little beauty can be yours.

All summer I have been imagining my head on top of these bodies

Photos:
Celine Resort Lookbook
JakandJil.com
Celine.com

THE NEW WAY TO SHOP??

Posted by Fashion Editor at Large

I don't know about you, but I think vintage clothes can be ridiculously overpriced for what they are. Especially in Brick Lane and its environs, but also generally at street markets and vintage shops in university towns around the country.

Shopkeepers charge whatever they think you will be willing to pay for said item. So, if that is a tattered 1930s chiffon tea dress with sweat stains and a questionable smell emanating from the armpits the price really should NOT be £450.

These people think they know how to price vintage, and they don't. My first job in what would have been called my Gap Year today (better known as my "I don't know what to do with my life" year) was the fashion vintage sorter for Rokit, the vintage fashion institution with outlets on Camden High Street, Brick Lane and in Covent Garden.

In the end I worked at Rokit for three years (working around my degree), as a result I know a lot about vintage. And I know most of what we buy in shops is initially sold to the supplier by weight. Hence the concept of buying by weight has always appealed to me. So when a press release for Kilo Klub, a vintage sale that charges for vintage clothes by weight,  popped into my inbox at Grazia I just had to tell you about it.

This pop up sale claims to be the cheapest way to buy your vintage. Whether you are looking for the perfect 1960's cape coat, a gorgeous 50s prom dress or an 80s jumpsuit, be prepared to rummage through 12 tonnes of stuff to hunt down your bounty. Items are sold by kilo weight, £15 per kilo, which means ladies shoes will usually be £6-£8, shirts/blouses around £3, dresses come up at £4-£8. We've got our fingers crossed that there will be some amazing finds to be had - and at those prices, there will be minimal wallet damage.

Rummage sales can be hard work, but if you enter into the spirit of the thing, they can be a whole lot of fun, and more entertaining than a 2am eBay bidding war! I have personally experienced the stress of shopping for vintage online - when you are unsure about the fit or quality, and then it arrives and your worst fears come true. With my years of rummaging experience, not to mention an ability to check for sweat stains, holes, odd smells, loose seams and worn out patches in a record ten seconds, I expect Kilo Klub will be a blast.

With the AW season approaching I have prepared a hit list of the sort of things I will be looking out for:

Marc Jacobs faux fur

Prada sweater and skinny belts

 Chloe camel coat

 Louis Vuitton 1950's dress

M

 Miu Miu 1960's shift

Stella McCartney grandad cardigan

Kilo Klub is on Friday 6th, Sat 7th and Sun 8th August, 10am to 5pm (6pm on Sunday) at Drays Walk Gallery space, Brick Lane. For more information please call 07850 111707.

Additional reporting Fashion Junior at Large
(Image: Lauren, courtesy of Queens of Vintage, all catwalk shots, Style.com)