Should we all be spending more?

Friends, today I have an important message: Go out and spend, because the fashion editor is suffering!

This is the start of a press email I received last night: "Due to the financial downturn and the low number of designers and sponsors that have registered, it is with regret that the management of London Designers Fashion Show have decided to postpone the event scheduled for 22-23 August 2009 to February 2010, at The Royal Horticultural Hall, exact date and venue to be confirmed. "

I was supposed to be going to that! You're slowing spending means that lowly bloggers such as myself are missing out on catwalk shows and canapes! Damn your eyes!

It was inevitable I suppose. But it's still sad. For me, the moment I realised that the fashion industry was suffering as hard as any other was when I read that Christian Lacroix had gone under; the first time I went to Paris I saw a Christian Lacroix wedding dress and I promised myself I would have one when I got married. Lacroix had never been a viable business (I read somewhere that even in the good times they never turned a profit) but it's still frightening that a house hold name can tumble so dramatically; it's like the fashion equivilent of the crash of Woolworths.

Shopping in Edgeware yesterday I also noticed a big gaping hole where the bay trading used to be. It made me shudder. Our once glorious highstreets are starting to resemble ghost towns, and i'm frightened that if we let them sit in ruination for too long, they'll never be restored. I'm as bored as everyone else of talking about the recession, the credit crunch, the current financial climate, the economic downturn, the doom and gloom. But this stuff matters, even if it only penetrates your consciousness enough for you to notice that your favourite shop doesn't exist any more.

Pop up shops are being touted as a temporary solution: I went into a lovely pop up store in Brent Cross on Saturday. It launches new and under exposed brands to the UK, which I think is a great idea, and one that will be of particularly good news to young and up and coming designers.
But that's all they are- a very short term solution. If there isn't enough expendable money in circulation to keep our current stores afloat then I struggle to see how opening more stores is the answer to the problem.

I dont have any answers; I don't think anyone has answers that can solve all the problems.

Kate of Makedostyle wrote a fantastic article on Friday about disposable fashion and the importance of buying investment pieces. This made amazing sense. But I have the inkling that to drag our country back out of the mess we dumped it in, curbing our spending and changing our habits isn't the answer; the answer could well be to take advantage of the wonderful unprecidented sales that are all over the highstreet in a desperate bid to counteract the affect of slowed spending, and spend all your disposable income on a pretty dress or two, at a bargain price that you know you wouldn't have got last summer. Yes, as usual my answer to any problem is to shop; not on your credit cards, not at the expense of paying your bills. But just that bit of money you have left at the end of the week: buy something fabulous, take advantage of the weather and thow a party or a barbeque in your garden.

That way you get to have a good time looking amazing, and hopefully my calendar doesn't get any emptier as more events are cancelled! Damn all your eyes again!!

Love, Tor xx

Big bust and a baby boom

First woolworths, then the officers club, ghost, zavvi, now viyella. Then I read on dressed and pressed's blog that the mosaic group c/o oasis, warehouse, principals and more was in trouble.

The face of the British highstreet is changing forever, and not neccessarily in a good way. Without choice there is no competitive market; without Zavvi we have to buy our non-chart CD's either online, or in HMV and who knows what that will do to the prices?

But today I read in the Independent that it's not all a downward spiral in retail terms, believe it or not. Evidence seems to be showing that the money we women seem increasingly guilty about spending on ourselves we are instead lavishing on our children.

What baby doesn't need an animal print D&G bottle?

According to several fashion companies, little sizes are turning into big business as designer childrenswear is experiencing buoyant year-on-year growth and bucking the trend of impending doom and gloom the rest of the retail industry is experiencing. The sector has become so profitable – Dolce & Gabbana has just announced that its kids' sales rose by 30 per cent in 2008 – that chic designers have taken to including childrenswear in their clothing lines. John Galliano and Marc Jacobs already produce mini designer gear, and soon Jean-Paul Gaultier will feature children's fashion. Boutiques and websites specialising in mini couture are springing up.
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Well done to the clever designers jumping on this trend and finding new ways of keeping their ailing business afloat. Because designer fashion doesnt come cheap, no matter how tiny the clothes are. This quite frankly frightening collection of baby-adult clothes from little marc jacobs costs almost as much as the adult range.

Not that I care about what crazy parents choose to spend their money on. What worries me about this though is the toddlers and children padding around in their diamond encrusted nappies or galliano trainers. See, where I come from kids look like this: They play out, they get grubby. They tear holes in their jeans climbing trees. They grow, really quick. And I wonder if the parents investing the money that, according the world news, they dont have in these expensive clothes will let their kids be kids in them or will fret (like I do over my betsey johnson handbag or my favourite suede heels) about them getting scuffed, torn, damaged. And what kind of life is that for a child? And what kind of values does it teach them? That having designer clothing makes you important, special, less able to play with the other kids?

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What right do I have to decide what kind of values a child should be given anyway? I don't even have one! And any boom in the British retail situation should be celebrated given the current crisis. After all, if we lose anymore highstreet stores, there won't be much of a highstreet left for me to shop on, and then where would this blog be??

Apologies for the slightly off fashion nature of this post, but it's worrying when there are 6 year old babies with better wardrobes than me. Learning which designer label you like best is something you can do at any age. Learning how to ride a bike or climb a tree are things you do in your childhood. Or maybe i'm just jealous because I don't own anything by D&G....and I can't ride a bike!

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Love Tor

Once upon a time....

Fashion has become a fairytale. Of course, it always was one to me, but this is my headline and i'm sticking to it!

In my 7, 123, 398 point list about why I love fashion, over the past month especially I have noticed another point to stick on the list; fashion always makes everything a little bit better. Take todays economic climate for example; people are losing their jobs, worried about how to pay their electricity bills and whether they'll be able to put a turkey on the table on December 25th. Can fashion take away these worries? Make couture free to boost moral? No it can't. So how is that weird and wonderful world we call fashion making everything seem better? By encouraging us to forget. To enter another world where everything is OK, and only beautiful things exist. No more black or utilitarian for us: Alice in Wonderland, Snow white and cinderella is where fashion is channelling itself now, and all to make us feel better. Now that's what I call selfless!

Take Nick Knights unbelieveable fashion photoshoot for Decembers Vogue as a prime example:

In amongst the fluff and froff I am seeing ladies dressed up for the mad hatter's tea party, cinderella's ball, and snow white's wedding to the handsome prince.

Still not convinced? Try Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's upcoming offering Alice in Wonderland:

OK, so he looks as gothic as usual, but who can resist a chance to look at photos of Johnny Depp?

I'm still not giving up on the fairytale thing though! This phenomena has even spread to the highstreet! Last night I dragged the boyfriend begrudgingly down to topshop for a glimpse of the Gareth Pugh Christmas trees promised on topshop.com (which was not there but you can see it below!)...

...and whilst pointing at the things i'd quite like in my Christmas stocking instead (mostly sparkles and sequins and shiny shiny gold!) I took these photographs of the the latest window displays in topshop: OK, so I got the angles all wrong, but they are gorgeous mannequins perched on the Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe-style furniture which has been painted like a forest inhabited by an evil witch.

You can even play a topshop christmas fairytale game, and are pretty much guarenteed to win 10% off at the store I can't stop talking about (dear god, someone help me stop!) Who says there's no such thing as a fashion fairy god mother?

See? Fairytales and fantasy as far as the eye can see! Now lets all listen to fashion, stick our fingers in our ears chanting "lalala I can't hear you" and pretend to be princesses whilst waiting for this credit crunch "blip" to blow over. After all, i'm sure that's how they got through the recession in the twenties...Isn't it?!

Lots of love,

Tor x

Lets go round again

Hey all,

As anyone who reads this blog on a semi-regular basis will know (because I bang on about it all the time no doubt!) I have a minor, ok major, obsession with sixties fashion. I've just finished my MA dissertation on the interplay between fashion and fiction in the 1960s, with specific focus on the works of Nell Dunn. If you think that is a mouthful, you should read the full title!

Nell Dunn reading and looking fashionable: this stuff practically writes itself!!

The basic initial premise is that, as in much literature throughout history, in Dunn's works fashion is preemptive of behaviour; the guy on the motorcycle will try to sleep with you, the girl in the shortest mini skirt will let him and so on. (obviously i'm summarising and simplifying, but you get the idea!) More interestingly, Dunn (who is, and presents herself as an "heiress from Chelsea") writes about the lives on working class women, who live for the here and now caring only for fast fun, appearance and looking good. They borrow there clothes or buy them on HP, with no intention of ever paying the full amount.

What with the credit crunch and all, it is easy to compare the working class women of Dunn's ficton with the lifestyle of the vast majority of todays fashion conscious woman. Looking good over all else: better to have the telltale red of a louboutin heel and a massive credit card debt than shop in topshop like everyone else, and have noone know you're "in vogue". Just as Dunn's women coo over 'genuine' Italian leather shoes for £5, so do we coo over the latest 'it' item in our glossy magazines and wonder what we'd have to sell or which credit card we'd need next to afford them (and i'm as much a victim of this as anyone else).

So maybe it's not just fashion trends that are cyclical (and the speed of these cycles are increasing dramatically) but our attitudes to fashion and the way we buy it.




And noone would argue that the trends aren't cyclical; looking at the pictures i've collated above, I can't see a single trend I haven't rocked; in fact i'm wearing white tights today (although as I chose the photos this could be clever editing of course!) I'm not going to go into the age old discussion that nothing is truly new or innovative any more, mostly because I dont think its true, and secondly because it's hard for certain trends not to look alike, inspiration not to be taken from icons, and perceptions of "uniqueness" are all relative anyway. Ever thought you had a unique style and you'd put together an amazing outfit then seen a girl on the tube wearing something identical? I rest my case!

So moving back to the concept of our buying habits being as cyclical as our style ones, what's is interesting to me now is that rather than moving forwards we seem to be moving back. The naughties representation of the over consumptive sixties with cheap fabrics in throwaway styles (replicated by the modern day primark) is now giving way not to the seventies (lux fabrics and free love, if you believe the hype) but the conservatism of the fifties; recycling fabrics, make do and mend, create your own. Why spend money on something you could do beautifully by yourself seems to be the new mantra.

At 24, i've spend my whole life engulfed in this overconsumptive public attitude of affluence and plenty. Now armed with a pile of old floral patterned childrens clothes (too small for Abbie, who thinks i'm a bear) and a needle and thread, i'm eager to see where winding back my sixties obsession a decade can take me.

Much love,

Tor