What to wear

By Lisa Armstrong, whose judgement I trust:

Checklist: Autumn/Winter 2008

1. High-waisted, 7/8th-length trousers. Try: Whistles.

2. Cropped jacket or blazer. Before buying, try it on with a pair of the above. You'll find that what complemented hipsters may not work with the new geometry. Try: Jigsaw.

3. Military or wrap coat or one with slit short sleeves for layering. Try: French Connection.

4. Concealed platform shoes or ankle boots - we're over bondage - and a pair of flats. Try: Office and Kurt Geiger.

5. Polonecks and other fine knits for layering and tucking into high waists. Try: Pure Cashmere and Hoss Intropia.

6. A leather jacket - biker style. Wear it with classic, simple pieces for extra edge. Try:Topshop.

7. A rococo-style necklace. Try: Mikey.

8. A narrow belt to thread through the loops of those high-waisted trousers. Try: Gap.

9. Longer-length skirts - either pencil-shaped or slightly gathered at the waist are the newest. If you can't bear calf or ankle-length, don't worry, knee-length refuses to die and there are even some minis. Try: Zara.

10. A fitted or semi-fitted sleeveless dress: this winter's sophisticated antidote to the put-it-away or give-it-away smock dress. Try: M&S Limited and Jigsaw.

Large woman + Puccini

Hilary Alexander at the Telegraph has a piece and video about Marina Rinaldi, the larger size label of MaxMara. They have a shop on Bond Street and go from UK size 12 - 26, but as this shoot demonstrates, and as I have noted whenever I have tried anything on, they tend to design for the tall and voluptuous rather than the narrow shouldered, and big-hipped.

Bill Cunningham: Who Knew?

I've been reading the US press online this week because of the VP debate and the bailout and discovered the wonderful photo and audio essays on fashion on the street by Bill Cunningham in the New York Times.

I had never heard of this guy, but he is wonderful, here he is talking about the new trend for lace. And he's been doing this for fifty years!

Wrapping up warm

Reguluar readers will recollect that in August I bought an Armani coat. My thinking at the time was that either a) I would get shortlisted for the Booker which comes with a guaranteed £2,500 or b) I would not get shortlisted for the Booker and the coat would be my consoloation. Either way, the universe would provide. And it did. US rights have just been sold and I'll have more information about that in the next day or two.

The day of Princess Diana's funeral I bought a MaxMara coat which I wore to death. Unless you live in LA, a really good winter coat is probably the best wardrobe investment because you'll wear it every day. I see now that this has become a trend in credit crunch chic:

And what better investment to make than a winter coat? If you like to justify your purchases on a pounds-to-number-of-times-worn ratio, a quality coat is as good as gold, especially as it's the item most people will see you in from October to March. As my otherwise fearsomely frugal grandmother - a Great Depression survivor - used to say: "Always spend money on a good mattress, shoes and coat."

According to Bridget Cosgrave, buying director of the Matches boutiques, we're paying heed to such advice. Coats from timeless brands such as Maxmara, and classics with a statement-making twist, like Burberry Prorsum's Prussian-blue cashmere trench (£1,750; matchesfashion.com), are already the season's big sellers. "People are investing in pieces that are luxurious, but that you can get lots of wear from - old classics that have been updated with fresh detailing and on-trend fits," she says. "You can't go wrong with a belted trench or a pea coat with military detailing."

Ah yes, the classic pea coat is emerging as the style of the season at every end of the price spectrum - from Alexander McQueen to Topshop. But with the trend for "slower" fashion and the (re)emergence of those high-end chains that were unmoved by the recent cheap-chic trend - including Jigsaw, Jaeger and Reiss - it's no surprise that the fashion editors' favourite pea coat is from Whistles. "Our cropped pea coat is our fastest-selling coat ever," says Whistles spokeswoman Fleur Askey.

The Peg

Don't my legs look long in these!

You know you are entering a dark tunnel when the general public is being sent to fashion Re-education Camp. You remember the great film The Manchurian Candidate when the US soldier was captured by South Koreans and brainwashed into believing he should kill the president (approximate plotline)?

This is what's happening to trousers this season. You know, I know, the whole world knows that trousers that balloon around your hips and thighs, cropped above the ankle to make your legs looks shorter are NOT Flattering.

This is why we have to be told repeatedly, that we are totally wrong and they are.

The Guardian today devotes a whole piece to them:

Bona fide peg-leg trousers aren't hard to spot. They usually have two front pleats at the waistband that are designed to add volume in the hip area, then balloon out in the thigh before tapering in again at the ankle. They can also be cropped on the ankle and high-waisted. Admittedly, they sound alarm bells for most of us - extra volume around the thighs is always a hard sell. What's more they look rubbish on the hanger. But, if you want to look on-trend for less than £50 this autumn, this is the only retail leap of faith you need make.

At the collections six months ago, the new trouser shape instantly stood out. At YSL, models wearing black bowl-cut wigs, polo necks and fierce ankle boots marched peg-leg trousers down the catwalk. At Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs paired them with rounded shoulders and spiralling headpieces, which sounds fearsome enough without the knowledge that some of these trousers were actually in leather. Challenging is perhaps the best euphemism for those particular peg-legs. Even Phillip Lim, the American designer who has won the hearts of women in search of wearable, fashion-forward clothes, showed a peg-heavy collection. The gauntlet had been well and truly laid down.

Here's my prediction. Women are now far more savvy about trends than they were even a decade ago, and we have the make-over shows to thank for that. Most women over the age of 20 are just not going to wear unflattering clothes. Most women didn't wear skinny jeans for obvious reasons (the clue being in the name). And after languishing a couple of years, of guess what, the boot cut is back. Why? Because they're the only shape that's flattering for pears. And there are more pears than beanpoles. Women are just not that stupid.

The strange world of me

I have a deadline. The deadline is actually tomorrow but I managed to get an extension to the end of next week. The deadline is for the book of The Thoughtful Dresser and I have been stuck in London all summer finishing it, and a cold, wet and windy summer. It's not been good or memorable.

But I have done something I have never done before, I have now almost completed buying my Autumn/Winter wardrobe. I broke with the habits of a lifetime and instead of going into a shop and saying, 'Ooh! I like that', I sat down and thought about what I needed, looked to see what was coming in to the shops and then went and got it. Yesterday I bought knee length boots, the day before, ankle boots, the previous week, winter coat. I bought scarves on eBay, a coat-dress at Jaeger and I've ordered a bag which will be in mid-September. One more item and I'll be done. I bought stuff when it had just arrived in the shops, and the sales were still on. They had not sold out of my size.

The clothes are all hanging in the wardrobe, unworn, under protective anti-moth covers, so it makes them feel old before I ever wore them. A little of the joie de vivre of life has gone, the impulsive purchase. I have far greater confidence in the capsule collection of clothes I've chosen. I have some marvelous investments in there. But it feels old. I feel old.

I realise that what I really want is to be rich enough always to wear new things. Change keeps the heart light.

The grown-up moment

Everything I read tells me that clothes are about to undertake a dramatic change: hemlines two inches below the knee, jackets that cover the bum, feminine blouses instead of clingy tops. Long sleeves. Alexandra Shulman told me a few months ago that in fashion, you just have to wait it out. If nothing suits you, don't rage against fashion, just wait. Your turn will come.

Here's Sarah Mower in the Telegraph:

The season we're contemplating looks like a veritable field day for those of us who don't regard "classic" as a synonym for boring; who like to change our appearances in small yet wickedly effective increments; and who enjoy nothing more than focusing on sharp, economical purchases while ignoring all nonsense trends strewn in our paths.

This, in other words, is the season that will sort the women from the girls.

It's a pity that it's taken such a terrible dive in the economy to lasso most designers back from their stampede into frivolity and force them to produce more useful, serious content. But having to imagine what would appeal this season while we were back in the first twinges of the sub-prime crisis has done them the power of good.

So what we're seeing on the rails now is measured, grown-up, curvaceous, functionally considered design - with the odd invigorating flash of something different. Which is what proves a designer's worth in the first place, I'd say.

Hobbs, unexpectedly

At a dinner on Wednesday night, at which the hostess, as ever, was in one of her proper designer dresses (she doesn't do high street, and nor of course would I if I were rich) I wore, after a lot of hesitation, a two-year-old purple silk dress from Hobbs, which is a British mid-range chain. And was gratified to get an email the next morning remarking on my 'beautiful dress'.

For years I simply ignored Hobbs, the epitome of English rose ware (what you wear if you can afford better than Boden) dull and dated, until I actually saw the purple dress in the window of the Kings Road branch and bought it. Last year I bought an excellent pair of wide-leg black trousers. This summer I bought a plain blue unlined linen jacket to wear with a simple white very hot weather dress. (We have to cover the arms). The range was not exciting but you could find the occasional useful piece.

I now read, from the pen of the fabulous Polly Vernon in the Observer, that Hobbs is hot:

We did not see this one coming. Hobbs – previously the spiritual home of the uninspired day-dress, the enduring-but-dull crew-neck knit and not very much else, let's be honest – has come up with a storming collection of clothes for autumn/winter 2008. These pieces are brilliant: sharply tailored, totally dramatic, with significant fashion edge. We're especially enamoured of the silken cocktail frock with the feather ruff (and why wouldn't we be? It's exquisite!); but we'd be pretty happy with any of it, really.

The Hobbs revelation compounds Observer Woman's strongly-held theory (first expounded in the mag, by me, in the December '07 issue,) that mid-market grown-up lady fashion is going to rule the world, any day now. To wit: Whistles totally rocks under Jane Shepherdson, Banana Republic's had such an amazing inaugural season in the UK that it hasn't even bothered getting itself into a dirty summer-sale scenario, and Jaeger's incoming collection is blowing our minds. We love it when we're right.

I already have one piece from the Jaeger collection and plan to buy more.

What women want

Valentino AW08/09 couture show

Fabulous or dreary?

It's Dior and costs £3265.

Browns Little Black Book

Avsh Alom Gur for Ossie Clark

Browns has a rather fun thing on its website, a little black book with pages on the new designers

In days of yore

For the past few days I have been doing this newfangled thingy called a 'wardrobe edit.' I hauled everything I wasn't actually wearing at the moment into a rail in the spare room at which it was revealed that I actually had far more clothes than I thought I did because I could actually see them. The envisaged scenario is that at the end of summer I'll do another edit and rotate some things back in again.

It seems that our dear Princess Anne has also just done a wardrobe edit, observing this summer's trend for florals:

Let's not for one minute suggest that Princess Anne's decision to dig out the dress she wore to her brother's first wedding in 1981 for another family wedding 27 years later was remotely connected to thriftiness. Anyone who can afford a designer dress, and has the space to store decades worth of posh clothes in palatial wardrobes, isn't too concerned about her bank balance. No, Anne's decision to recycle - or, to use the appropriate fashion parlance for this phenomenon, to repeat - a floral print piecrust-edged wrap dress is actually a common fashion practice.

However, as Imogen Fox points out in the Guardian, if you wear what you wore last time this fashion was around, you have to do it with a leetle bit of a modern twist if you are not to look in the miror and recoil with shock and disgust at how old the neck has got above the collar.

In 1981 she wore the dress with a yellow floral and net hat, and accessorised with pearls. Fast-forward to this weekend and she's wearing the same hat and yet another pearl choker. This isn't just a sartorial aberration either - the princess has form in repeating outfits without imagination. A blue-and-white dress worn to a film premiere in 1986 was trundled out again with the same white gloves 14 years later. A bonnet was worn twice 17 years apart, each time without irony.

Excuse me, you're on a hiding to nothing if you're looking for irony from a member of the Royal Family. Particularly Princess Anne. Isn't irony what they put on the horses' feet?

Anyhow, what with the Goth look coming back this Autumn, we're all warned against hauling out the gear from our early Eighties Madonna phase. Imagine that stuff on Madonna herself, with her weird reptile face and creepy arms. No, what we do is gesture to the look, gesture. I hope that's straight now.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Rage, rage against the pursed mouthed puritans who tell you can't wear a patent leather mock croc shearling flying jacket, like this

So here it is, Merry Xmas

Today I was invited to a couple of Christmas press show previews, at Jaeger and Selfridge's.

I did Jaeger first, picking up a coat-dress which has just come in, which I spotted at the AW08 press show a few months ago. For once, they actually have this on the site and that's it above. Very mid-Sixties. To wear with a ribbed sweater beneath and wide-legged trousers and very high heels.

I really like the cashmere travel sets they had, which include suede-bottomed slippers, socks, an eye mask, and a blanket. What they probably give you when you travel BA First Class, but of course I wouldn't know, would I? Still, the frequent traveller can heavily hint to their spouse. Even better it's only going to be available on line so they don't even have to go into a shop full of frightening female things to get it. It will cost £199, but who can put a price on love, as the Mastercard ads are always telling us? There were also lots of snakeprint silver things, Swarovski make-up mirrors. A shoplifter's paradise, in fact.

The Jaeger London collection was extraordinarily cohesive. You saw all the work paying off, and the creation of a collection out of the London Fashion Week show.
And this was the piece that the fashion press this afternoon was oohing and aahing about from the forthcoming collection. The top is cleverly cut to resemble the front of a tuxedo. Difficult to see from the pic but a very good dress.

After that I somehow managed not to make it up the other end of Oxford Street in the last week of the sales when it was raining, to Selfridge's press preview. And missed a £43,000 teddy bear with emerald eyes and a solid gold nose. Or so I read in the Evening Standard on the tube. And was quite glad I had. Because in another part of the paper was a piece about children in London who can't go to school because they have no shoes.

AW08 mid-market

The marketing executive of L.K. Bennett has left a comment in my post on the rise of the mid-market. She has provided a link to some of the pieces coming in for Autumn. Go take a look.

There are some very good tops.

And who buys couture?

asks the Sunday Times?

They are a new fashion type, these rich and pampered couture shoppers. Although their lifestyles are European (and specifically London), their cultures span the world — Korea, China, Venezuela. And what are they here for? Excess — in colour, proportion and, above all, decoration.

Yet there was little innovation. Like the husbands who pay the bills — anything from £50,000 to £150,000 for an elaborately jewelled creation — these women don’t give tuppence for the avant-garde. They want a waist where God intended; they don’t want flashes in embarrassing places and are bemused by garments with three sleeves. They want everything just as it always has been — at least, since the 1950s. And Paris couture survives by meeting their needs.

They have other demands, too, such as quality of the standard even the best ready-to-wear labels cannot provide. They also want exclusivity, so most couture houses have an unwritten policy of limiting sales of any £100,00-plus garment to one per continent, with first choice going to the most loyal customer. As one vendeuse told me: “There are no ceilings now — they have all been broken. These women have closets to die for. And they all pay cash.”

She sums up the market forces by confessing: “We can’t get enough crocodile bags, even though they sell for £20,000. Kurdistani millionaires’ wives buy them in every colour, which often means 10 identical bags.”

The geatest designer you've never heard of

I have never heard of this man, but clearly, we now need to

The truth is, fashion insiders will climb, probably even crawl, to see Kinder's designs. They've admired his work as the Zelig of fashion for years - he's spent two decades as a ghost designer (the style equivalent of a ghostwriter) creating internationally lauded collections for Calvin Klein, Costume National and at Versace after Gianni's death in 1997 - so news that he's launched his own label has caused a stir. Comme des Garçons's Rei Kawakubo came in person to view his first solo collection in 2007 - and then stocked it at her fashion emporium, Dover Street Market. Madonna has already been seen wearing a dress from his spring/summer 08 debut Aggugini range, as has editor of British Vogue Alexandra Shulman. If you know and love fashion, you know and love Kinder.

Stylist Arianne Phillips, who's dressed the likes of Courtney Love, Madonna and Justin Timberlake as well as receiving an Oscar nomination for costume design, declares herself a massive Kinder fan: 'I find that his creativity, ingenuity and sophistication in fabrics set him apart. I appreciate his wit, style and irreverent classicism.'

'He's got an incredible track record,' says Harriet Quick, fashion features director at British Vogue, 'and he's well known at parties and events because he's fabulously opinionated and discursive. When he left the big fashion machine and set up on his own, people wanted to back that. And his clothes are lovely - they don't date, and the fit is perfect: they show off a woman's body. They don't scream or shout status, but they feel like the real deal.'

read the rest

I've found his website here, and here's a page of his clothes currently being sold by Bowns in London

A woman's work

Alessandra Facchinetti for Valentino

Audrey Hepburn turns in grave

Givenchy

Haute couture, an economist writes

Do I look a leetle Left Bank?

I was halfway through a very interesting and detailed account in the Guardian of why couture is not subject to the credit crunch when, scrolling back to see if it had been written by Jess Cartner-Morley, the fashion editor, or Hadley Freeman, her deputy, I realised that it had been written by neither, but the paper's economics editor, who they'd send over to Paris for the shows. Fact fact fact fact.

Tim Jackson, principal lecturer at the London School of Fashion, says that the last big shock to luxury brands came after 9/11, because people stopped travelling, and a large proportion of luxury goods are bought by the well-off on their travels. There was, he says, a deliberate attempt to broaden the appeal of brands, with the sale of bags, jewellery and shoes that, while still expensive, were more affordable. "These goods have no issues with what's fashionable or size, and the goods have a high mark-up. There is a huge increase in directly operated stores, but they need high turnover to pay the overheads on the stores." Jackson says it will be this bit of the market - not the more exclusive haute couture niche - that will be affected by the credit crunch. The lay-offs in the financial sector, falling property prices and higher inflation are all likely to have an impact.

In Paris earlier, Sassi made the same point. "The issue is not the super-rich, some of whom are doing well out of the crisis, but the people below the super-rich. Haute couture will last for ever. It will only die when there are no ladies who are interested in beauty or feeling unique, or exclusivity."

While this helps explain the durability of haute couture, it doesn't quite explain why business has been so good in recent years. There are, however, solid economic reasons for the upturn. One factor is that the rich keep getting richer, and there are more of them. The compression of incomes seen in the decades after the second world war has been reversed; in Britain, for example, the gap between rich and poor has widened over the past decade, largely as a result of the salaries for the top 0.5% of earners.

Nick Tucker, market leader for the UK and Ireland at Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management, said last week: "Spending by high net worth individuals [HNWIs] and ultra-high net worth individuals [UHNWIs] remains robust. The ongoing strength in both the global art market and luxury industries highlights that the wealthy will continue to spend despite clearly worsening economic conditions and explains why, historically, these industries weather global downturns."

According to a report by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini last month, there are now just over 10 million HNWIs in the world with a total wealth of $40 trillion. To qualify, you have to have net assets - excluding the value of your home - of $4m. Qualifying as an UHNWI is tougher; there are 100,000 globally with net assets of $30m or more.