Report by Isaac Lock

This season, the LFW celebrity ante was upped significantly. As well as the usual cast of Alexa and Peaches and Pixie Geldof, we’ve had the Olsens, Donatella Versace, Gwyneth Paltrow, TV’s Lorraine Kelly (who had a mumsie moment in the front row of House of Holland) and Nicola out of Girls Aloud. Most intriguingly, Victoria Beckham [see above with Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman] slipped in to sit on a bench by a makeshift runway in a damp tunnel under LFW’s new home, Somerset House, for new-designer initiative Fashion East. “I’m working and haven’t time to see loads of shows,” she said. “But there’s so much great new talent I wanted to make it to this.”

Post-show, she said she loved Central St Martins graduate Michael van der Ham’s patchwork dresses. Mrs B seemed to be there from her own genuine interest. “We don’t court celebrities,” said Fashion East founder Lulu Kennedy, “but Victoria got in touch and said she wanted to come. She insisted she wanted to be treated like everyone else, turned up with a friend and watched quietly. It all seemed very down to earth.”

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Compiled by Cat Catologue

Photography by Tyrone Lebon

Most peeps think that fashion folk slavishly wear what’s on the runway. Not so. However, what does emerge around showtime is what’s best described as a fashion week uniform. A great indicator of how to work the clothes for the current season [that’s Autumn/Winter 2009], London Fashion Week’s fashion pack were working Breton tops [see above], bare legs and er, ankle socks – obviously not both together.

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Report by Mr Caryn Franklin

You all know that defining what we want our clothes to say to the viewer  is the key to a good look. I didn’t always know this. When I first met my wife I would blithely arrive for a date in what I took to be splendid apparel. “But what” she would bark, “is the story?”

This month and this week in particular are traditionally bloody in our household. The Head of Operations is out at shows all the time, and this year we’ve taken steps, or rather she has, to ensure the children still recognise us come October. I’m home alone.  

Since Thursday I have stepped into my gentleman’s dressing area looking to construct a new capsule collection entitled StayatHome: A Mere Man Multitasking. 

William Morris maintained that an object that is fit for task is inherently beautiful. My primary look is functional but still, I think stylish. A Pair of graphite Edwin jeans, a Penguin polo shirt and old school Onitsuka Tigers look good in the bedroom mirror during duvet-arranging, and reflected in the cooker door while dishwasher emptying. Accessorised with Marigolds and a nose peg the story is still on-message for scrubbing the downstairs toilet.

Eventually, of course, one has to venture outside and let the critics read the story.  Walking the kids to school and putting out the recycling is multitasking after all. Here’s what I suggest for readers who want to say Sensitive and Caring but also Edgy Metrosexual. 

This year, menswear is about sustainability, credibility, and in uncertain times, the purchase of key items that will be heirlooms, not landfill. To this end, I am swathing my torso in tweed, and not just any tweed, but the Harris variety. The weavers of the Outer Hebrides are moving into a new era, and have recently teamed up with Scottish Designer of the Year Deryck Walker. I am wearing one of his new-look designs, a subtle herringbone in navy and amber pure new wool. It’s actually a suit, but a story involving so much zig and zag in both coat and keks might, I think, be a trifle sudden before nightfall. I am therefore teaming the coat with bespoke putty-coloured courduroy trousering created for me by my friend, the Godfather of new British tailoring, John Pearse.  JP dresses the famous and infamous and assured me that my dream of pants so high that he would take a chest rather than a waist measurement was both dignified and dashing.

On the accessory front I am currently finishing the StayatHome narrative with my favourite last sentence, an Hermes scarf in white and gold. Casually knotted about the throat – I stop short of using a signet ring as a woggle – this devasting piece gives my Fall collection European élan. A squirt of L’Instant by Guerlain, and I am confident that when the call comes – to pick up my fashionista from Somerset House, I can mix it with all the other queens and still look very now.

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In the world of fashion photography we have the Steven Meisels, the Craig McDeans, the Tim Walkers and then, on quite the other end of the spectrum, the Scott Schumans, Garance Dors and Tommy Tons – a growing group of style lovers with well made cameras stalking the fashion flock across the globe to capture their brilliant Fashion Month outfits.

Craig Arend’s done it for Teen Vogue, Style.com and his own blog AltamiraNYC.  Now he sticks to a steady diet of off-duty models, “They get the best reaction,” he explained, “Ali Michael and Judith Bedard are my favorites, though Judith’s less active now.  She’s a great redhead.”

He’ll throw in an editor or buyer for good measure, “I prefer buyers.  My favorite’s Holli Rodgers, she’s the head buyer for Net-a-Porter.  Amazing style, super friendly girl; she’s classic, wears a lot of pants.”

As for London versus New York street style,  “New York’s style’s much more commercial; London’s more individual, which is definitely more fun to watch.”

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who disagrees.

Britt Aboutaleb

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Photography Ophelia Wynne

Modelled by Morwenna

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Interview by Cat Callender 

Photography Banquet 2004 © Nick Knight

Everything you should know about fashion’s most visionary photographer – in his own fine words…

* Contrary to popular belief, I do get out of bed for less than £100,000. I’d spend quite a lot of time in bed otherwise!

* I don’t like to wear green because it was the colour of my school uniform. It was the most revolting, unnatural shade of green I have ever seen. It has put me off green clothing for ever.

* I don’t have paintings or sculptures in my house, I have large chunks of minerals. I collect them. My favourite is hemimorphite. It’s usually a grey colour, a bit like concrete. But when you get copper running through it, it goes a most beautiful blue and looks like a crashing wave. * I’m not great with dishonesty as a trait in people. 

* Sometimes my clients think I’m being difficult. But actually I’m working hard to make their image great and I think they want to give up before I do. Sometimes people can mistake that for me being difficult or hard to work with. But I’m not. 

* When I was a skinhead in the 1970s, people would cross the road so as to avoid me. * I used to dream in French. Now my dreams are about abstract shapes, quite often reoccurring abstract shapes, which is fine, but it doesn’t make them very interesting. 

* I don’t enjoy parties, dinners or making small talk. Perhaps it’s because I’m 6ft 3in and most people aren’t, so I miss quite a lot of the conversation because it’s lower than my ears. I spend quite a lot of time at such events daydreaming, and then have to catch up on the conversation that I’ve either not heard or ignored! * I have a tattoo of a rose – where, I won’t say – that I had done when I was about 17. I photograph roses, so I’ve been in love with them for a long time. Architects make buildings and photographers photograph roses.

 * I wonder whether at the end of my life I’ll look back on it and be able to say, ‘You did something that was of some worth to people.’ That’s a lingering doubt of mine. 

The private view of Nick Knight’s exhibition SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution is on Monday at 7pm at Somerset House. It runs until 20 December. For more details, go to www.showstudio.com

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Interview by Melanie Rickey, Fashion Features Editor at Large, Grazia

Photography by Chris Brooksmenswear

She is the fashion writer par excellence with four million readers and an acute eye for new designers. Now Sarah Mower is the BFC’s Ambassador for Emerging Talent. Students, look sharp…

Sarah Mower is probably the most read fashion critic in the world. With a career that spans more than 20 years at the forefront of fashion journalism, not to mention four million regular readers on Style.com – for whom she reviews the catwalk shows in London, Milan and Paris – her influence and global reach is second to none. Designers read her reviews of their shows on their BlackBerrys the morning after. Journalists read Style.com to see how she is thinking, because her thoughts are often the barometer of where fashion might be going, and certainly help pin down where it is now.

Closer to home in London (where the writer lives with her husband and three children Tom, Maisie and Phoebe), Mower has become an ambassador for the British Fashion Council. Or rather, to give the title its full vent, in May this year Sarah Mower became the British Fashion Council’s first Ambassador for Emerging Talent. When you break down what British fashion is famous for – namely its new, fresh talent that feeds the rest of the world’s design studios – it actually means that she plays a pivotal role in nurturing the next generation of British fashion designers.

The BFC job involves spotting, advising and promoting to the world the best design talent our art schools have to offer. What’s more, Mower also ensures these fledgling designers secure the correct funding and every kind of support to fulfil their potential.

Thus far she is doing a sterling job with a stellar bunch. Of those in her care from day one, Christopher Kane and Marios Schwab lead the charge. Behind them march Meadham Kirchhoff, Peter Pilotto, Mary Katrantzou, Mark Fast and – making his debut this season – Michael van der Ham.   All are at London Fashion Week in large part thanks to Mower’s stewardship.

With her uniform of peak-shouldered Margiela tailoring, extremely high heels, dark shades and her penchant for not smiling or making small talk, Mower cuts something of a mysterious dash around the fashion capitals. In actual fact, most people are intimidated by her and find her steely demeanour quite scary. In real life, though, she is simply, by her own admission, “something of an introvert”. What she’s saying is that she’s shy. Behind the veneer is an endearing character for whom the mantra “with great power comes great responsibility” could have been written.

Melanie Rickey, Fashion Features Editor at Large, Grazia

HERE, SARAH MOWER REVEALS TO THE DAILY HER THOUGHTS ON FASHION

I thank God every day for Google. Because when designers start quoting their influences to me, at least now I know what obscure photographer, artist, or blah blah they are on about because I can go and check it.

Feeling the electricity of ideas connecting, that’s what I like. That’s where my Ambassador for Emerging Talent role has come from. You know quite a lot of things about a lot of things and about a lot of people, and you can see who needs what and you can right wrongs, and, knowing how the whole system works, you can enable people.

I know I have a very grumpy face, but that isn’t what I’m like inside. I’ve learned not to be riled at fashion shows. There isn’t any point. You can get anxious about getting into the thing. You can get anxious and annoyed about waiting. You can get annoyed with PRs who don’t know who you are. What I’ve learned is that it’s just not worth it. Because all that stays with you are the good things. You just have to let the rest go.

I never had the patience to be an artist. My mother was an art teacher. As soon as I was old enough to hold a pen she encouraged me to just draw all the time. All I could do, ever, was draw. Get an idea down quickly. There couldn’t be any palaver between me thinking of an idea and expressing it.

When I started out, I was really scared of designers. And very intimidated. They were older than me. Gradually, they got younger and younger than me and I learned more and more. I now see what it really takes for a designer to actually be able to do it.

Embarrassingly, I have cried at a show. Oh God! I used to sob at Helmut Lang shows and I don’t know why.

Being a fashion critic is very complex. You have to judge or assess what a designer is doing in relation to everything else: the trends that are coming up, or the feeling or mood that is rising from the season. You also have to connect how it relates back to their body of work. So you are judging them against their own track record. I know all this inside me when I sit down to a show.

I have Googled myself. I am happy to say I have only ever found two spiteful things about me. One was hilarious: it said, “Who is Sarah Mower? Has she ever done a day’s work in her life?” And that really did make me laugh. That is because those who know me will know I work every single hour I could possibly work. And I love it.

I’m big in Japan. I have an illustrated column in Japanese Vogue. They like me in China, too. When I was in Shanghai, a girl came up and said, “Oh, Sarah Mower! You’re like a manga hero!”

Back in the 1990s, Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan were putting on the most incredible shows we will ever see. It was beyond fashion. It was Barnum and Bailey. It was absolutely mind- blowingly theatrical, visceral, moving and terrifying. They were rivals. It was like the Blur and Oasis stand-off.

I don’t get my legs out much because I’ve got terrible legs. And you can write that.

Know who you are. If it’s a frilly moment and you are not a frilly person, you can’t give in to frills. When I was a kid you had to wear a miniskirt or bellbottoms. Now fashion is so diverse. And thank God.

A lot of people ask me what makes a good designer. It’s when they’re able to articulate who they are, while capturing something about the times, while making clothes that can be worn; that’s the key. A designer is bad when they are derivative, run after every trend and don’t have the skills to make things properly.

After 9/11, London fashion was so dead. Everything was so hopeless. The rest of fashion became so polite. Then suddenly all those kids – Christopher Kane, Marios Schwab and Gareth Pugh – came up with this sense of confidence. But it wasn’t an aggressive sense of confidence. They weren’t snotty. They wanted to learn. I didn’t know if I could help them, but I was going to try.

For me, the less identifiable clothes are, the better. I wouldn’t wear the obvious thing by a designer. Dressing for me is a process of many things: trying to dress your own body, accept your own body. And whatever age you are – know it and celebrate it.

I’ve met Martin Margiela [the famously private Belgian designer, who hasn’t been photographed for over a decade]. He is the best mentor and teacher there could ever be. He talked to me about how he does things. I can’t tell you what I learned from him, because I swore to him that I would never, ever break that confidence. And I never will.

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Report by Sheryl Garratt

Photography by Chris Brooks 

On the top floor of the townhouse near Shepherd Market in Mayfair, where Matthew Williamson’s fashion empire is based, there are two rooms: a design studio and the office where Matthew works with his business partner, Joseph Velosa. Erin O’Connor once came for a fitting and walked into the wrong room, catching the designer sitting at the computer. “Oh my God, you’ve got a desk!” she exclaimed. “I had no idea. I just thought you threw chiffon in the air all day!”

Williamson laughs as he tells me the story, adding that his job is nowhere near as glamorous as people expect. Which is just as he likes it. It is two weeks before he’s due to show in London when we meet, and August is the cruellest month for most designers – the factories are closed, and most of the new collection won’t be arriving for another week. “I just can’t wait to get moving,” he says. “It’s doing my head in.”

He’s gone for bold, almost psychedelic prints in this collection, partly inspired by the Scottish artist Jim Lambie’s installations, and a more polished look overall. “It’s not so much about kaftans in Ibiza. But quite what it is about, I don’t know! I’m literally getting clothes in now and pulling it together, but the idea is a quite strong, sharp silhouette, and the prints are fabulous – huge, overblown orchids.”

Since he was 11, Williamson knew that he wanted to be a fashion designer, but then it was all about making clothes, having a shop, putting on a show. “That was my fantasy as a little boy,” he smiles. “Fortunately, as it evolved, I realised that I actually love the other aspects behind the glamour and the glitz. My favourite part is always the period after the show, when I’m creating. It’s that cyclical nature of fashion that I love, that moment of going, ‘Right, it’s done. Let’s look at the good and the bad of that show, decide what we want to pull forward and start afresh.’ Those weeks of fabric sourcing and sitting with my staff and teasing out the ideas for the next collection are definitely the best part.”

I’d always thought of Matthew Williamson as a bit of a social butterfly, flitting around the world looking for new inspiration and making new connections. Jade Jagger, Kate Moss and Helena Christensen appeared in his first show in 1997, and since then he’s forged lasting relationships with the women who wear his clothes – from Kylie and Cheryl Cole to his close friend Sienna Miller. In fact, he’s surprisingly shy and low-key in person. He doesn’t like texting, he says, and he’s not even big on phone calls. He only has five really close friends, and he prefers seeing them face-to-face. 

He’s well aware of the value of celebrity, however. The tulip dress that Cheryl Cole wore on The X Factor last year became a best-seller, and when stylist Rachel Zoe recently wore one of his dresses on her US reality show, his New York store was unable to keep up with the demand. To up his profile in the US after opening his shop there last February, he even did TV himself. He featured in the new season of Project Runway and is about to make a cameo appearance in Mischa Barton’s new, fashion-centred TV drama, The Beautiful Life. 

On the whole, these connections have developed organically. “I’ve been fortunate to have women like Jade and Sienna who have really helped express who I am as a designer,” he says, but points out that for any stylish woman the clothes come first. “She’s not going to wear it if she doesn’t feel great in it.”

If he sounds defensive here, he has reason. His label is a very British success story, and we often fail to celebrate it in a very British way. I often hear that Matthew has been lucky to have big breaks so early in his career and to keep his company afloat for 12 years, when so many others have floundered. But you make your own luck: people willing to work hard, and to put their work out there, tend to be luckier than those who sit passively sniping at the success of others.

It also helps that Matthew was never interested in difficult clothes, in art for art’s sake. “I am quite a commercial designer, and at the end of the day I make the clothes that I make because I want them to get bought. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I still get a thrill out of going in one of my stores and seeing someone buy something.”

A handsome but slight, almost fragile figure wearing skinny jeans and a black jacket, which he later explains was for a formal Vogue photo shoot earlier in the day, he has always been drawn to bright colours, in his clothes and in his home. “To me, it’s hard to wear black. I find it quite a draining colour.”

Fashion always seemed a way to escape the greyness of his native Manchester and enter a more colourful world, and he pursued it with a single-minded determination. At 17, he was the youngest student on the fashion and print degree course at Central Saint Martins. With hindsight, he says, this was probably a mistake. “I didn’t really know what my style was at college. I’d never say I regret going, but if I had that time again I’d have gone in my early twenties. It was really tough, competing with students who had experience behind them and some clarity about what they wanted to do.”

In his third year, he took his first trip to India, where the bright saris and the skill of the craftsmen he met in Mumbai and Delhi opened up new possibilities. “I became fascinated with the country and the culture. It was the opposite from where I was born and brought up.”

The designs his travels inspired went against the prevailing trend for understated, androgynous clothes. He used bold prints, bright colours and went for an unashamedly feminine feel, with details such as beading that often made his pieces look like vintage finds. The resulting boho but chic feel was perfect for girls who had grown up with rave culture, who liked to dress up but also loved going to Goa, Ibiza, even Glastonbury – which is exactly why Jade, Kate and Sienna were initially drawn to his work.

“It’s definitely not about me creating a uniform or a working wardrobe,” he says. “It’s much more of a lifestyle collection. I want the wearer to feel exuberant and special. Not in a garish way or a glitzy, obvious way, but my customer definitely wants to walk into a room and be noticed.”

It was his then boyfriend, Joseph Velosa, who encouraged him to send some samples that he’d had made up in India into Vogue. When the magazine said they’d write about him if he could show some sales, it was Joseph who worked out the costings, drew up an order form and got shops to take them. After the first show, when orders flooded in from prestigious stores all over the world, Joseph stopped their fledgling company overstretching by choosing to supply to just four of the stores. “Even then, he worked out that we’d have probably gone bust if we’d taken all those orders and then couldn’t fulfil them.”

In the early years, Joseph worked part-time at Air France while Matthew designed for the M&S Autograph range to keep the company afloat. (He still has a successful diffusion range with Debenhams, and this year did a collaboration with H&M.) Later, when they separated as lovers, there was never any doubt that they’d continue as friends and business partners. 

“It strengthened our working relationship in lots of ways, because we were out of each others’ pockets and in separate homes,” says Matthew. “It was difficult, don’t get me wrong. There was a period of time in which it was uncomfortable. But we had a lot at stake, so we just had to work through it.”

Matthew’s parents also played a big part early on, selling their house in Chorlton and coming to London to help. His mum sewed the cashmere jumpers together after that first show; his dad did everything from painting walls to delivering clothes. They’d planned to come down for three months, but ended up staying for seven years. By then, his mum, who only ever wears Matthew Williamson, was working part-time in the London shop. She was a brilliant saleswoman, her son says proudly, often encouraging mums who’d come in with their daughters to try things on. “The mothers would be like, ‘Oh no, it’s not for me; it’s for skinny blonde 20 year olds.’ And my mum would say, ‘Look, I’m 60! So it’s clearly not. Let’s work it out.’”

This inclusiveness is what I like about Matthew Williamson, and despite the recession he has plans to expand his colourful world still further: he is showing a small menswear collection this year and is launching a range of homewares with Debenhams. But he’ll be 38 next month, and though he’s still working just as hard, he’s also more relaxed about the future, less driven. 

“I’m getting less anal about plans as I grow older,” he says. “I hope I’ll carry on doing what I’m doing, but I’ll only do it while it makes me happy.”

Matthew Williamson’s show is on today at 1pm at7 Howick Place, SW1

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Scott Schuman, thesartorialist.blogspot.com  Photography by Tyrone Lebon

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by Mrs Rubbish

Photography: Emma Hardy

My earliest memory of food is from when my parents got divorced: my dad threw a cabbage out of the kitchen window in frustration at me and my sister’s behaviour. It’s become a running family joke ever since to watch out for flying cabbage.

I learned most of my culinary skills from my stepmum. I grew up with her and my dad in Perth, Australia. She was a keen cook and made quite adventurous dishes. She’d make her own sushi and all sorts of fancy stuff.  I remember for one of my birthdays she made kangaroo steak with tomato relish and couscous. The downside to this was that my sister and I always had to do the washing-up and it felt like every utensil in the kitchen had been used. I think that’s why today I love one-pot meals. Out of dish rebellion I make simple, easy, no-fuss food.

When I cook, I add lots of lemon juice to everything, even if it’s Italian.  I also add Tabasco to everything. We just bought a big bottle of it for the studio, as without my hot sauce I can’t design.

I’m not really one of these people who grazes. I don’t think about food that much. When I’m getting into a manic state and when my thoughts become a bit fractured it’s a sign that I need to eat something. That normally means a snack of crunchy peanut butter on toast until I’ve managed to get downstairs to prepare something more substantial.

I’m really into healthy eating. When I grew up it was all about fresh, organic ingredients, so it’s just permeated my cooking repertoire. I’m also really into my mum’s vegetable soup with toasted Vogel’s bread. Your palette forms  a familiarity with the food you are raised on. Perhaps that’s why I’m not big on sweets and puddings.  I love a bowl of chips at The Royal Oak on Columbia Road. And I love fish pie – it’s one of my favourite stodgier meals.

This will sound neurotic, but I truly do prefer salad to pudding. The only exception is Tip Top’s Hokey Pokey ice cream. It’s the best flavour in the world and you can only get it in New Zealand. It’s almost worth flying there to have it. One of my favourite dishes is chicory salad at the Rochelle Canteen in Shoreditch. I often go there just for that dish. I do drink coffee, just one or two max a day. Peppermint tea is a big favourite and I’ll have the occasional mug  of sugary builder’s tea. I have plenty of other vices. I smoke when I drink, which is quite often, but I do do Bikram yoga and try to go to the gym when I can.

The intention of a healthy lifestyle has been passed along by my parents. Dad’s a retired ophthalmologist and, at the age of 62, has just won the world rowing championships in Croatia in his age group. He’s flying over with medal in tow to see my collection, so I’m excited that he’ll be at London Fashion Week for the first time.  My mum stills runs marathons, too. The dish I’ve chosen to make is something I throw together almost every day. The basis of it is very simple. It’s healthy and filling and really virtuous if you’re feeling a bit rough. It’s immediate and comforting in its integrity – which kind of mirrors what I’m planning in my spring/summer 2010 collection. I wanted to make an urban wardrobe with a spirit of escapism. There’s a Tahitian influence: I’ve done luxurious versions of grass skirts and sarong drape dresses in simple, earthy colours. It’s very optimistic.


Richard Nicoll’s show is today at 7pm at TS, NW1.


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