Is this a handbag? Harry poses a question

Of course it's a back pack. Or it could be called a day sack, or ruck sack, or a shoulder bag. Its near relatives might be called a messenger bag, a courier satchel, or laptop case. They are all bags for men.

I have occasionally referred to mine as a handbag, and have met with looks somewhat askance ( female) or mildly uneasy ( male). It would seem to be a bit of a gender tease .

But the truth of the matter is that I am not a messenger or a courier, and my bag rarely has a laptop in it. It might be retailed as a day sack, but I'm not actually going to call it that. It's a handbag in so much as it is where I carry my keys, diary, analgesics, notebook, umbrella, indigestion remedy, sunglasses, i-pod and Murakami novel. 

Stating the blindingly obvious: men do not have the same relationship with their bags that women do. But bags for men have been evolving and it is now possible to make more discriminating choices in this area. Without compromising one's masculinity. Well, the younger members of the species seem to be able to. But it remains a conundrum for the older male. Or perhaps it's off their radar.

Earlier this year I bought a lap top case by Mandarina Duck. I had coveted something from their range having seen the most stylish of briefcases in Venice a few years ago.The Mandarina  Duck case is immensely practical; it even has its own rain hood built in. But it is pleasingly designed, and manages  to avoid being one of those macho executive statements by brands such as Tumi that shops in departure lounges are so full of. And that makes a change.

Yesterday in  the quite modish Reiss menswear window display  I noticed two handbags. Of course they call them despatch bags. 

Hadley Freeman is banned from Paul Smth shows

Although bans have been sprinkled around the fashion press for some time, they do seem to be coming down with increasing frequency - a sign, perhaps, of a growing anxiety in the luxury market that with the impending economic downturn not as many people are buying £900 dresses and trousers. It is also likely to be a reflection of the power of advertising. Fashion magazines and some newspapers are financially dependent on fashion advertisers, which muffles the writers who work for them. They are unable to say anything remotely negative about the clothes, out of fear of losing that precious £100,000-a-year advertising account, which is why so much fashion coverage often reads as little more than advertorial puff and fluff. Designers then get used to such obsequiousness so that any words of dissent are treated as a shocking display of heresy.

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Maestros of fashion

Paul Poiret

Harry Goes to a Gig

Music and clothes have always been linked as far as I am concerned. Not surprising as my adolescent years were the sixties.

I have retained my enthusiasm for music, both old, and, importantly, new. But music and fashion don't seem to be so closely linked. Pete Townshend is always stylishly turned out and seems to innately know what works well for a man of his stature and demeanour. Unlike so many of his generation. But I can't off-hand think of an artist or a band who has recently prompted me to wonder where they get themselves kitted out. Certainly not Radiohead.

The other evening I went to see Joan as Policewoman. The fantastic Joan Wasser was launching her new album. I had seen her twice before and her performance was captivating. I can thoroughly recommend either of her two records ( if that's what we still call them)

Joan looked gorgeous as ever, but it was her bass player who particularly caught my eye. 

Rainy Orteca, a slight , impish presence on stage. And so stylish. A very well-fitted man's suit, and a well chosen shirt and tie combination. The business. Definitely the best dressed person in the room. And how refreshing to see someone on stage that actually did prompt the question; 'I wonder where they got that?'

Jacques Fath 1956

YSL, 1962

He roller-skates, he tap-dances

As I'm on a mission in Toronto all this coming week, I'll be posting some videos, unless Harry has anything to say, but he's buggered off too, to take in some country air.

Meanwhile (hat-tipping Norm

I am an Aquarius

Donna Karan has designed a series of astrological handbags.

Often she is so excited she speaks in crazy free-association sentences. For example, when talking about her decision to create astrology-themed bags, she says, 'I don't know anybody who doesn't go right to the astrology page to see. Everybody needs the support. What's today about? Because, quite honestly, we are not the masters. It is all mapped out. If you ask me, "How come bags?" I say, "I don't know. Why did he decide that now is the time for bags?"' (He, presumably, being God.)Karan's personality is so wacky and unbridled that it freaks some people out. 'Donna's a little koo-koo,' says her best friend Barbra Streisand. However, most people put up with it because she is probably the most powerful woman in American fashion today.

Here is the Libra bag - so what do you do if you're a Libra and you prefer the Capricorn bag?
Actually, I'm rather fond of Donna and wish I could afford one of her main collection dresses. And obviously I'm all i n favour when a nice Jewish girl with a big bum waxes rich and powerful by her own efforts and creativity (rather than marrying a nice Jewish boy with a big bum)

At home with Chanel

Work and play in Toronto

Next week my sister and I are hooking up in Toronto, where we both have a spot of work to do. Can readers recommend restauarants and shopping and any other pleasures?

The purpose of my visit is presently a secret. All will be revealed on publication of The Thoughtful Dresser.

Art over commerce

Hadley Freeman has a very interesting piece about being a judge at Graduate Fashion week.

Her point is that because fashion courses in Britain are based at art schools, designers have a supreme understanding of art and none about commerce, ie how to produce clothes that someone would want to wear. Including the designers themselves:

That brings us back to the question of why British students favour the artistic over the commercial. Marian McLaughlin, head of the international office of the Amsterdam Fashion Institute, is attending the London shows and agrees that undoubtedly British fashion students favour "quirkier designs". "You can really see the difference between them and other nationalities," she says. "Probably it's because of the art-school influence. It does produce interesting clothes, but I don't know whether they get jobs afterwards. All of our students definitely do."

But Marten Andreasson, fashion tutor at the University of Middlesex, disagrees.

"I think that, for the students, it is definitely more important to emphasise the creative because this is the time when they have the freedom to experiment and express themselves," he says. "By the time they get to their graduate show, then they should have decided whether they want to go commercial or be more experimental." But what happens to the ones who want to make collections based on the Holocaust? He makes a tactful shrug. "They probably go off and do MAs ..."

This is another thing that puzzles me. Fashion students say that their work is about "self-expression", but what they make always seems to be an awfully long way away from what they actually wear. There are a lot of pretty printed dresses and German tourist-esque shoes in the audience - almost none on the runways. Sharon Dewar, 29, a student at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, agrees that the delicate, multi-layered black dress she has designed doesn't seem to have much in common with the jeans-and-grey-cardigan combo she is wearing. "That's true. But I design things I aspire to, as opposed to things I actually wear, and it's a designer market I'm aspiring to." So what does she think is more important - being commercial or being experimental? "It's a balance really, isn't it? You want to enjoy making the clothes and other people to enjoy wearing them."

UPDATE Greying Pixie has some trenchant remarks on this in the comments.

Harry Goes Shopping

When you get to a certain age , where exactly are you supposed to go shopping? Or where might one actually enjoy the experience?

The old school menswear shops have largely disappeared. Perhaps no great loss. Although I lament the demise of Simpson's , which maybe was brilliant in the 30's when it opened, but when I knew the store they were certainly missing a trick.

There is a lot more to say on this subject, but for those readers ( or partners of readers) who are in London I'd like to bring to your attention the Designer Warehouse Sale.

They have been going for 21 years and hold about four menswear sales a year. I discovered them a dozen years ago, and go at least twice a year.

Next weekend they will be in new premises, so I can't give you a clear idea of what their new environment will be like ( they used to be in a photographer's studio).

They always have a lot of stock. Sure, much of it will be terribly youthful; skinny shirts, artfully modified jeans, streetwear with lots of unnecessary embellishment. But amongst all this you can still find well made and understated stuff.

That's if you are prepared to look. Because, although it is laid out largely by designer and types of clothing, it is rather like a well organised jumble sale. Which I happen to like. A lot.

And the people who run it are very laid-back, and certainly friendly rather than up themselves.

My last purchase there was a very fine Pal Zileri jacket. And before that a Jasper Conran overcoat. And , no, I certainly wouldn't have paid ticket price for either of those two items.

I will definitely be going next weekend. And I am very relaxed about probably being the oldest person there ( but one of my sons might come with me, and that's always fun)

Sewists' corner

I know there are quite a few sewists in the house, but me, I can't even get the needle through the thread and my attempts to re-sew a button in exactly the right place on a Jean Muir coat were humiliatingly inept. I do not do or make things with my hands. And my rule is, as my Jacobean manor house friends discovered when I stayed with them last weekend and they invited me to play boules, it is not that I am competitive, it's that I only do things I'm good at. Which is good, because it leaves so much time for lying around doing nothing.

But the next big thing, apparently is home remodelling of your own clothes.

Lilli Rose Wicks hopes to change our habits. In 2007, she won the Visionary Knitwear award at Graduate Fashion Week, and was inundated with offers to design for the high street. She turned them down as she felt the stores weren't willing or able to change their environmental practices. Wicks' work is made from organic or recycled materials. Her passion has always been to make or refashion her clothes rather than buy them new. "Before I buy anything, I work out whether I can make it myself," she says.

Wicks now runs workshops, in collaboration with the Soil Association, on customising clothes, and that is why I arrive at Wicks' cottage in Somerset with an armful of my own clothes, which, instead of joining the 300,000 tonnes of garments that end up in recycling bins, are going to be refashioned. I'm nervous because, having first-hand experience of my sewing, I'm not sure I want to mess about with my clothes. "Sewing is something you can learn. Everyone starts somewhere," Wicks assures me. Having spilt oil on a skirt I like, I'm hoping Wicks can help me hide the stain so I can keep wearing it.

The closet, the closet . . .

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am very late in seeing Sex in the City. I was supposed to go to a press screening over two weeks ago but it didn't happen etc boringly etc.

Now I have seen it. What point were they trying to make by scripting Hudson to fall in love with the most hideous Vuitton bag ever produced?

Other than that, it was two and a half hours of ceaseless frocks, Chanel 2.55s and their variants and a hunch that if Carrie had not come across Big in that closet she might never have forgiven him.

Now I must go and find a pink drink.

Le giraffe

Ines de la Fressange has been given the Legion d'honneur. I saw her at the party to launch the Golden Age of Couture show at the V&A. Tall women are sometimes called giraffes, this was the only time I have seen a woman who did exactly look like another species. You could see her everywhere you looked around that crowded, fashionable room. And I'm sure she eats only little leaves from tall trees.

(Which reminds me. On an entirely tangential note, it's official. Jews can now drink giraffe's milk.)

The ageing process is greatly helped when you're tall, thin and look a bit like a boy, albeit one with excellent hair, because let's face it, there's simply less of you to go south/downhill/wrong. So I actually believe her when she says she's reasonably relaxed about getting older, partly because she doesn't appear to have had any work done, and partly because age doesn't seem to be compromising her taste in clothes and accessories at all.

“That's not quite true,” ripostes de la Fressange in her perfect, idiomatic English. “I can't wear really short shorts any more, or fluorescents. Actually, I'm a bit of a navy jumper maniac now. But I'd certainly never go to a shop for 50-year-old women. And I wouldn't go really classic - it's very ageing.” This from the woman who used to live in Chanel, before Lagerfeld unceremoniously fired her as the house's face. But that was when she was still in her twenties, and even then she would mix her tweeds with T-shirts and jeans. Standard practice now, this was considered une vraie scandale at the time.

Summer in the City

It's what, on this side of the Atlantic, could be called the washed out Boden look. Probably borrowed wholesale in some of the smarter London postcodes ( we Brits are nothing if not impressionable) from the east coast of the USA.

Deck shoes and no socks. Distressed chinos. And a faded short sleeved shirt.

There is a message. And it goes something like this: the family has a house in Cornwall ( the Hamptons). We summer there. I am only temporarily in the city. I can't be bothered to change. And that's because really, if you take away the Porsche Cayenne, I'm just a surf dude.

Which, I reckon, is the same as the flip flop tendency. Which, unwittingly, is possibly trying to say: if you take away the Oyster card, I'm actually an Australian.

The world's greatest fashion museum

is in Santiago, Chile:

Yarur's grandfather founded the country's biggest bank, which his father went on to run as president. As an only child, Yarur inherited a fortune large enough to build his museum. But it is his parents' taste in fashion, not evidence of their wealth, that he wanted to preserve. As a prominent socialite and wife of a banker, his mother amassed a covetable collection of designer outfits, all of which she had kept in perfect condition. 'My mother was not a fashion victim, but she liked to dress in a special way,' Yarur, 46, says. In photographs his mother, who died in 1996, bears a resemblance to Rita Hayworth. With wavy, dark hair and voluptuous curves squeezed into silk blouses and pencil skirts, she was extremely glamorous - and she obviously loved to shop. Of the 8,000 pieces in the museum, 500 belonged to her, many of which were bought on her eight-month honeymoon in Europe.

Inside the museum are hundreds of photographs of Yarur's parents, along with home videos taken before Yarur was born: his mother on the beach in a scarlet swimming costume and matching lipstick; his handsome father swaggering towards the camera across the sand; his parents laughing together on holiday. Yarur, who now lives alone in his own house in Santiago, says the films and photographs still affect him. 'Every time I see them I feel sad. I was an only child so I don't have any other family.'

While he was devoted to his mother, as the only son of one of the country's most successful businessmen, and as a quiet, sensitive young man, Yarur found the weight of his father's expectation hard to bear. 'I didn't know what I wanted to do. My father wanted me to work for the bank. It was a very heavy burden.'

It was only after his father died in 1991 that Yarur began to think about creating a museum. 'After my father died, my mother told me that he had once talked about wanting to turn their house into an art museum. After they both died I didn't want to stay in the house, but I didn't want to sell it because of all the memories, and the house itself is quite important architecturally. So I decided to keep it, but to do something with it.'

I wouldn't do this but it does sound like fun

A few mates go to Manchester for a spot of shopping.

Ronke (pronounced Ron-kay) sweeps into the room in a riot of colour - from her draping orange and pink dress to her long tan leather coat tied with a green scarf at the back. I have a suspicion she's wearing a 1970s curtain but decide she must know what she's talking about.

We, her 'patients', line up on the sofa ready to be transformed into fashion-conscious divas; eager to discover our own style. We are four women in a city, contemplating a weekend of shopping. But this is Manchester not Manhattan and we haven't done our hair. Rather, we have booked a personal styling weekend to spruce up tired looks and get insider's tips on the latest trends. Our home from home will be a designer riverside apartment stocked with the latest Apple gadgets and a fridge full of organic treats.

The dress

According to Hilary Alexander, news of the dress's death have been greatly exaggerated:

But the "special occasion outfit" has passed its sell-by date, to be replaced by the "new special": a way of dressing that is much easier to achieve - and a lot more fun.

It's a trend long pioneered by a host of funky, high-profile, stylish dressers, from Gwen Stefani and Natalia Vodianova to Kate Moss, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and the reincarnated Gwyneth Paltrow - and it hinges around one adaptable wardrobe staple: the dress.

. . .

This season, they are everywhere - prom styles, floaty maxis, romantic, ruffled, you name it. And they are key to making this idea work. The trick is to invest in one great dress that makes you feel good, rather than "appropriate"; one that suits your body shape, highlights your personality, and makes you feel comfortable, confident and sexy.

It could just as easily be something you have worn on holiday, for work, or a favourite piece you have had for years, as something bought with a specific outing in mind. Then, you just "dress up the dress", adding accessories and layers as you feel inclined.

The best thing of all about the "new special" is that you can dress it down just as easily. You should be able to take off the jacket, swap your pill-box for a straw "pork pie", trilby or even a sun hat, trade your smart high heels for gladiators and your beaded clutch for a casual tote - and you're ready for a beach party or barbecue.

Basically, this is an argument for the LBD and its vairiants, ie it doesn't have to be black. But she's right, accessories maketh the outfit.

dress down
dress up (it's a cocktail ring)