what kind of fool am i

I am such an idiot.

I recently posted on the three gorgeous girls from Tank magazine, and especially went into a whole riff on Richard Nichol, who I ERRONEOUSLY claimed designed Georgie's gorgeous wacky studded jacket for Topshop. What was I thinking. It's by one of my favourite, perhaps all time favourite, designers, ASHISH. Well, it's a good excuse to print an old fashioned editorial RETRACTION. AND, to post more shots of his work.



This is from a series I shot as his recent show. Altho it's for A/W, the colours and ideas are still so perfect for now. I think it might have actually been Ashish who got me to think again about orange and tangerine tones, which I wasn't previously wild about.

Note her sequin skirt here: I had that exact pattern and colours (my all time favourite, pale turquoise/celadon) on one of three turkish kilims I bought from the creative director at Simon & Schuster in NY, when I was an art director. He was selling them from his flat file drawers, and all the girls bought some: it was a peer pressure thing. I since loaned them to my brother, and God knows where they are now. Jon, if you're reading this, I'd like them back please!



An authentic, untouched blur shot from the show. I love love love the magic of blurs.



Here's Georgie again in the jacket, and if you want to go back to the original post, you can have a real laugh at what a fool I am. Or... perhaps, inadvertently, that was my April Fish Day prank on YOU. ; D

dress me up in elber albaz

Those of you who knew me way back in November 2009 might remember how excited I was about the Dress Me Up charity thingy at Topshop. I posted on it a few times (for example: here). Our favourite celebrities and designers donated their dresses for charity, and people were able to rent them for their Christmas parties, with the idea that later, the dresses would be auctioned off.





Anyway, the auction is now happening, thru the wonderful Kerry Taylor Auctions. (The Christopher Kane 'Atomic Bomb' resort dress, for example, starts @ £50). By bizarre coincidence, I went to their Audrey Hepburn pre-auction viewing. Which I posted about a few times. I didn't realise that Kerry Taylor was doing the auction for Dress Me Up as well.



(I should add: Topshop doesn't get anything for this, and neither do I: it all goes to charity for Age Concern, and since we're all headed in that direction if we don't manage to get ourselves killed first, I feel it's a pretty good cause).




The auction is Tuesday March 16th at 10.30am, with viewing open to the public on Sunday 14th 12-4.30pm and Monday 15th 9.30-5pm. It's too large to be held in their Pall Mall space, so it's out in Dulwich at their warehouse: 40 Martell Road, West Dulwich, London, SE21 8EN
Just go to their site, or via Invaluable. Should be great fun, I'm going to try to make it on Monday, so maybe I'll see you there. If not, please spread the word!




As you can see I'm in a kind of sea green/nudes sort of colour mood today, altho I've shot a ton more than I'm showing here. From top to bottom: Patricia in Kate Moss's Lanvin by Elber Albaz, Nicola Robert's custom made tour dress, Olivia Palermo's Armani frock, Kimberly Stewart's beaded number by Antik Batik, Richard Nicholl's print dress + Christopher Kane's Atomic Bomb resort dress (starting price: only £50!!), Jourdan Dunne's Herve Leger, me trying to stuff myself into said Leger, and back full circle to Patricia in Kate's Lanvin dress.



No wonder she's smiling. I bet Kate's got plenty of happy memories in this dress. Have a lovely weekend, everyone. Hope you're busy making your own happy memories.

ashes to ashes

I never know what posts will get responses, or why. And I don't know how some bloggers get like 300 comments (granted, they've been doing it a lot longer than me). Once recently I posted something that got zero comments. ZERO! Mr. Dot felt so sorry for me, it was so cute to see him so.. sensitive to my feelings. When I got a comment, he was really happy for me.

One thing that's been getting a lot of response (relatively speaking), by emails, too, is the two part zip dress coming up for Topshop by Richard Nicholl ('nudes', recent post). Meg asked when she can get it. Well, Meg, you don't have too long to wait now: according to my own Topshop Deep Throat, launch date is 13 February (Saturday), just in time for Valentine's Day. I'm not sure if that means just certain shops, or globally and online, but I'm about to meet him/her in a dark car park somewhere in DC in the late 1970s to find out.

This Richard Nicholl for Topshop 'pink nude bustier' is £70, (convert to your currency) and launches 13th February.

This title, btw, is a reference to an old poem we used to write on each others' yearbooks in the States:

ashes to ashes
dust to dust
what's a bra
without a bust

Turn up your stereo speakers, boys & girls, and sing along with Dave:

nudes

Altho I'm not yet seeing it that much on the street, I am so ready to wear nudes (the whole range, from ballet pink thru to beige). I was wearing it in Miami, of course, and I'm wearing it here, too: just not seeing it that much, apart from popping out like the first snowdrops in early spring, in the form of wisps of skirts peeking out under coats. It's still too dark & cold to do the bare legs, but we can get an edge with leggings & tights.

This is one of the rare shots on my blog not by me: I got it from Topshop's look book. I don't work for Topshop, btw: I don't work for anyone. I 'promote' - i.e., gush about - whatever I feel like at any given time. Just read an interesting, thought provoking piece (& comments) on the Business of Fashion, re: the whole Tavi thing (or Bowgate, or even Babygate, as I've heard it called). *



For example: I've just seen an inside scoop on Richard Nicholl's S/S 2010 eight piece collection - his 5th collaboration with Topshop. Now what am I to do: I happen to love everything, because it's all in shades of nude/pink with a lot of underwear-as-outerwear themes at play. At 65 quid, I'd snap this denim stripe two piece zip 'dress' (bustier, aka bandeau, & skirt), in a heartbeat.

No one is offering me a sample, or even a discount. And yet, I can't help but spread the word, because I love it. To me, the whole point of having little bosoms is that I can get away with stuff like this.

*(Just discovered, TAVI HERSELF has just done a brilliant post on the subject, addressing the BoF article/post.

I'm curious: what do you think: can you be bought? And if so, at what price?