Mattel's Nigerian Barbie

As Barbie turns fifty this year, her protean qualities are revealed

Lots more here

Contrary to WASPy appearances, by the way, Barbie is Jewish

Donna Karan Barbie

Dior hats in the 60s

Before size 0

The V&A is just about to republish a delightful little book called How To Dress For Success by the Hollywood costume designer Edith Head. First published in 1967, Head meant it to be a manual for ordinary American women, both housewives and 'career girls'. It is a riveting period piece but what I noticed was the chapter in which she adviseds women on how to dress according to their size. The smallest sizes she cites are US 6, 8 and 10. There is no 4, 2 or 0. This tallies with my recollection of Britain in the 60s when only teeny, birdlike girls could fit into an 8 and most of were 12 or 14, or 10 if you were small. No-one I knew had an eating disorder (lack of central heating in most homes made eating salad in winter inadvisable). No-one was on a diet. . No-one ate fast food or ready meals. No-one was overweight. We now seem to be striving for mythical sizes. It's all in our heads.

Groomed within an inch of his life

Mickey Rourke shows the girls how to do it*

*For further explication, see here

and by special request (see comments)

What shall I wear to the party?

Lacroix sketch

Not me, my invitation to one of the many inaugural balls has unaccountably been lost in the post, though I do know someone who is going. Her husband appointed Obama to the position of president of the Harvard Law Review.

But what about the soon to be First Lady? Not an Oscar dress will have more attention this one, heavy with meanings, as Lisa Armstrong points out in the Times:

Bottom line, she's a good-looking woman who knows her way around upmarket labels (in the past year she has worn, among more predictable names, Thakoon and Rodarte, both up and coming darlings of New York Fashion Week). Fashionable, in a user-friendly way, she even made it onto Vanity Fair's 2008 Best Dressed list. She can wear just about any colour and she's the first First Lady since Jackie Kennedy who can anoint trends and sell out a dress (viz, the black and white sundress she wore to guest host ABC's The View). As Peter Som, another New York talent, says: “What she wears has a huge impact on fashion. From day one she has shown her own modern style that many women can identify with or aspire to.” For an industry reeling from the recession, what's not to like?

They'll find something. Because ultimately these outfits are sartorial landmines waiting to happen. They must transcend class, colour and financial barriers. Ideally they should impress, endear and unite. Really it's like asking a blanket to bring world peace, and be fascinating at the same time. On a slightly more attainable level, Letitia Baldridge, a former social secretary to Jackie Kennedy recently noted of Mrs Obama: “It would be wrong for today's First Lady to go around like a princess all the time. But I think it would be very wrong when she's on an official job to be dressed too casually. She's always got to be a bit above.” In short, if her husband is President, “she always has to watch everything ”. And you thought it was just a dress

.

Mary Quant

Mary Quant, now in her seventies, is interviewed about her mini skirt being commemorated on a Royal Mail stamp as an example of 60s design.


There is one way to age gracefully, retaining your style without the facelifts. Love too the upper class accent from an earlier era

I do not like pockets

We are supposed to replace bags with the newly fashionable pockets, ruining the line of your clothes . And what's with those pockets set directly inside the side seam so you look like a chicken trying to get your elbows into them, and bulging out your hips?

"I'm obsessed with pockets," says Anita Borzyszkowska, of Gap, a store that has been at the forefront of the pocket revival on the high street, from hoodie-style pouches on sweater dresses to Chanel-style patches on cardigans and invisible slips sewn into the side seams of dresses. Borzyszkowska - whose personal pocket tally for the day is seven (jeans plus a boyfriend-style cardigan) - cites Gap's collaboration two years ago with the designer Roland Mouret as the turning point. His collection of 10 dresses, much lauded at launch for its jolliness of colour and blousy styling, was in fact conceived with something else in mind. "One of the goals," says Borzyszkowska, "was for everything to have a pocket."

I tried on those Roalnd Mouret dresses and the pockets was the reason I didn't buy one.

Happy fiftieth birthday Motown

The sweetest most innocent popular music ever recorded, the sound of my early teens

Propping up the dollar

Despite the pound's dismal performance against the dollar, the sight of racks of clothes at 70 per cent off before Christmas at the Chevy Chase branch of Saks defeated my no shopping resolution.

Before and after the Mexico trip I bought two sweaters by a a brand unknown to me, Magaschoni, who make amazing, interesting knitwear. I got a grey and silver flecked zip up cardigan and a black one with fringed collar and cuffs. I feel as if I'm fiddling while Rome burns but the echoing, empty floors of Saks made me also feel rather guilty. No-one was buying anything and the bargains were so great.

A closed down shop is a depressing sight, and that Chevy Chase Saks always makes me feel as if I have returened to the womb.

Meanwhile Pure caashmere (see banner above) is 60 per cent off

Important advice on how to be in style now

Among other tips the Observer advises:

3 Do nude nails

You know how the old adage goes: when the It bag is bright, the nails must be light-er, pink. (Yes, we totally made that up just now.)

4 Read the Thoughtful Dresser

Hurrah for the extremely clever Linda Grant's latest book on fashion - a collection of essays and notions and fashion-related stories. It's not out till March, but why not pre-order at Amazon?

5 Buy a chunky necklace

The more noise they make - and the harder it is for you to stand fully erect while wearing them - the better.

Yes, why not?

The US edition will be published by Scribner, by the way, no date yet.

Who mkes a £30 cashmere sweater?

Illegal immigrants being paid half the minimum wage, unsurprisingly.

Britain's high street fashion giant Primark was at the centre of a storm last night over allegations that illegal immigrants paid just over half the minimum wage had been employed to make fashionable knitwear for one of the firm's bestselling ranges.

Primark announced yesterday that it had launched an inquiry after an investigation by the Observer and the BBC revealed that Manchester-based garment firm TNS Knitwear may have breached key employment and immigration laws. Breaches of the legislation could lead to fines of up to £10,000 for each illegal worker and potential prosecution for tax evasion and employment law abuses.

Primark also said it had handed material uncovered by the investigation to the UK Border Agency.

The workers, caught by an undercover journalist on a hidden camera, were allegedly being paid £3 an hour - just over half the minimum wage of £5.73 - for 12-hour days, seven days a week. Many of the garments made by the Pakistanis, Afghans and Indians over the past five months had ended up two miles away in one of the retail giant's largest and most profitable stores in Manchester's bustling Market Street.

The allegations were put to Primark this weekend, five months after an undercover investigation began into Primark's British supply chain. The investigation focused on Manchester's textile industry and in particular TNS Knitwear, which supplies 20,000 garments to the firm every week. Fashion Waves, a supplier used by TNS, was also investigated.

So much for buying British.

Disproportion

An Israeli friend, Etgar Keret, author and film director, has this to say in the LA Times and it expresses my own feelings exactly. I have nothing further to add

Is there anything in the proportionality principle that can rationally justify killing of any kind?

The motives of vengeance, which drive us to kill those who have killed people we love, are completely irrational, even if we try to wrap them in rational packaging. We exact vengeance because we hate and are hurting, not because we excel in mathematics and logic. Early in the aerial bombing of Gaza, five young girls from the same family were killed, and many more children have died on both sides of the border in recent years. The attempt to introduce their bodies into an equation that would make their deaths justifiable or comprehensible might be necessary to influence current events, but it is still enraging.

The only equation I can wholeheartedly accept is one whereby zero bodies appear on either side of the equation. And until that time comes, I'll choose outcry and protest that appeal solely to the heart. I shall reserve my appeals to the mind for better times.

How to tie a sarong

In 1963 Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and John Houston came to Mismaloya to make Night of the Iguana. Then, Mismaloya was a little cove on the Bay of Banderas half an hour's drive from Puerto Vallarta. Today millionaires' mansions climb up the hill and there are various shacks on the public beach where they'll grill you a red snapper but the pueblo of Mismaloya is still a dirt road.

We were in one of those millionaire's mansions, near the top of the hill with vast shimmering views of the bay, lumbering v formations of pelicans, schools of whales spouting, humming birds, butterflies, frigate birds gliding in the thermals. Life consisted of getting up to the sound of the er servants making us breakfast, wandering down to the beach in the company of mainly Mexican families and observing the numerous ways in which it is possible to tie a sarong, for example, making a halter neck dress out of it. We drank the tequila production of Mexico dry. We spent New Year's Eve in the pool, watching the fireworks like a jewelled chain exploding along the line of the bay and then went down to the hot tub for tequila shots.

Now, blearily I confront the bitter cold of this London Arctic winter. Normal service resumes. Sullenly.

Donde es los pelicanos?

How come I am not here any more?

More tomorrow.

British Design Awards

Check out the fashion shortlist here

More to be added, I believe.

Adios amigos

The Thoughtful Dresser decamps tomorrow first to Washington DC, then to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico where I will be obliged to spend many hours in our villa, lying by the infinity edge pool and having delicious meals prepared by the chef. I will not be taking my laptop.

The collapse of Lehman Bros in September forced upon us this act of economic compassion. Personally, I would rather have stayed at home, but rental villas were lying empty, so what could we do? We must save the world economy.

See you in January.

Invitation from Cocoa

I wrote a couple of days ago about my Sonia Rykiel bag bought from Cocosa, the membership only designer sale site at a 50 per cent discount

Cocosa have contacted me and have created an exclusive invitation code for Thoughtful Dresser readers.

It's free, you don't have to buy anything, and the items they sell and the discounts are very, very good.

Click here to jump the waiting list and join

Whatever happened to

That thing you bought at Primark?

I have only once been to this emporium, the week its megastore opened opposite Selfridge's, and unable to stop myself buying something I purchased a bronze green anorak thing which I wear in wet weather to go to the shops. It cost £10.

As far as the eye could see was a top. In every size and every colour. The same top. A whole room of one top.

Where does that cheap crap from Primark go when no-one wants it anymore? A long and informative piece in the Times today tells the depressing tale.

In his textile recycling factory on the industrial outskirts of East London, Lawrence Barry wades across a floor feet-deep in other people's discarded clothing. Above him, precarious fabric dunes lean against the walls and reach up to the corrugated iron roof. The air is heavy with mothballs and the sweet, cloying stench of stale sweat.

There was a time, 58-year-old Barry says, when the clothes coming into his warehouse reeked of love, instead. “People used to buy a good-quality suit and that was it. That was their suit,” he says. “The clothes that ended up here were worn to death, treasured, loved.” Now the 100 workers at LMB Textile Recycling spend their days sorting through the detritus of our addiction to throwaway fashion - cheap, synthetic, often unworn, rarely loved. And Barry and his employees have unwittingly found themselves at the cutting edge of British eco-policy.

Textiles have never been a great concern for keen-to-be-seen-to-be-green governments that get more brownie points from an easy tonne of glass or paper. But the textile problem has become too vast to ignore.

In February the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will launch a “sustainable clothing roadmap” to try to reduce the environmental impact of our clothes. In preparation, it has commissioned a series of studies in which the true extent of our shopping habit is revealed in stark detail.

In the past five years, with the rise of “value retailers” such as Primark, H&M and TK Maxx, and supermarket fashion ranges, the price of clothing in the UK has plummeted by up to 25 per cent. At the same time, the amount of clothes we buy has increased by almost 40 per cent to more than two million tonnes a year.

Instead of two annual seasons for clothes - winter and summer - we are now offered, and can afford, new apparel every few weeks. We buy fresh holiday wardrobes, which we wear for a fortnight. Our style icons are celebrities who are never seen in the same outfit twice. And as our high street stores reel from the credit crunch, still we are cashing in - packing out the shops, desperate for discounted clothes.

As a result, textiles have become the fastest-growing waste product in the UK. About 74 per cent of those two million tonnes of clothes we buy each year end up in landfills, rotting slowly (or not at all) in a mass of polyester, viscose and acrylic blends.

Graduates leave fashion schools with no basic skills

I'm sure Greying Pixie will have something to say about this piece in the Independent (perhaps this is why they don't know how to make sleeves)

While British designers dominate the world's fashion houses, the skilled artisans needed to translate the designers' visions into reality are becoming scarce. More than 3,000 fashion students graduate from UK universities each year, yet only 500 can expect to get jobs in their chosen field, with designers claiming that they could employ more graduates if they had the requisite technical skills.

"As a luxury goods manufacturer, craftsmanship is what sets us apart from the high street," said Ian D Scott, supply director at Mulberry. "There used to be a big pool of skilled labour, which has gone now. We did some research a couple of years ago and found that 50 per cent of our workforce is over 50, which shows that there are fewer young people coming through."

So concerned are the designers that they are lobbying the Government, with the aim of drawing attention to what they call a "growing education crisis" in fashion.

"If graduates do not have pattern-cutting, computer-aided design and production skills, they can't put their creative ability to use in the industry," said Linda Florance, chief executive of Skillfast UK, the sector skills council for fashion and textiles.

Bah humbug, etc.

Courtesy of George, the New York Times explains that we love It's A Wonderful Life - because we actually live in Pottersville.