Uniqlo Launches Heattech: As Seen in Vogue, with music by Violet

 The scene was set for the Uniqlo x Vogue party on Oxford Street.

This Thursday I headed off to Oxford Street and was whisked into a winter wonderland at Uniqlo, only with a more practical (rather than Christmassy) vibe. British Vogue has teamed up with the clothing brand to shoot its Heattech range, which insulates your body using seriously clever microfibre technology, and the results were pure fashion. 

Heattech Styled by Vogue: My Verdict

I think it was a great way to break some of the myths surrounding style, i.e. 'beauty is pain', 'you have to suffer to look this good', etc., by showing that you can wrap up warm without looking like a stuffed mushroom and still look cool. So often we drag ourselves out on a cold Saturday night without a coat, because it ruins our outfit, or we brave the elements in a miniskirt and 10 denier tights because we don't want to look too 'sensible' for that hot date (in my case, the hot date is probably with the reduced cake aisle at Tesco, but hey ho...). The thing about Heattech is that it doesn't involve bulky layers but it creates wearable pieces that you wouldn't mind being seen in. 

 Awkward angle, but that's actually Gizzi Erskine at the bar. 

Famous faces who brushed past me included Nat and Leah Weller (who both look impossibly cool in real life), the TV chef and columnist Gizzi Erskine, and the truly beautiful fashion designer Charlie Casely-Hayford, who I was too scared to take a picture of. There were also several bloggers that I recognised from LFW, including Stella from Stella's Wardrobe.

 My sister (and fashion event partner in crime) enjoying an apple cocktail.

 Guests were a mixture of bloggers, celebrities and people from the fashion industry.

 All quiet on the rail front - the tills were silent but the stock looked good.

 Pixie Geldof performed with her band, Violet, who I'd never heard before but they had a really tight set and were well suited to the event. 

If you get the chance to see them live then do.

 The guitarist set the tone for facial fuzz throughout the evening.

 I have never seen so many moustachioed and bearded men in close proximity.

Looking good, guys! (And I hope some of them were for Movember).

 There was a little bit of shoegazing.

I then dropped the bottom of my glass (well, it literally fell out in front of my face) and I was left holding the top of the glass and some ice cubes and a straw. Slightly awkward.

Trust me to have a Miranda moment at a fashion event...

 The crowd watched (and texted, in the foreground).

Quite pleased with how this photo turned out.

 A closer look at Pixie's shoes - heeled clogs with tiny studs.

 [All images my own].

And here's a glimpse of the Vogue shoot for the collaboration.

[Image via Uniqlo].

It was a great evening and I really enjoyed being able to see the combination of magazine editorial and high street style.

Photo Essay: Fashion's Night Out, London 2012

 One early-bird shopper waiting for friends.

I liked his style...

 H&M's window became a live photo studio

 I'm really pleased with how this photo turned out - 

a girl having a make-over in H&M. 

Her headscarf is amazing.

 We made a bid for styling the newest drop of H&M clothing... with military hats

 There was a huge crowd to see Delilah perform in Topshop

 The woman herself, performing to her fans

 There's nothing like having your name in lights

 Bershka's balloons and 20% off stock

 Get thee to Chanel!

 One of the customising workshops in Miss Selfridge

 Let's get studded

 Studs up close

A shopper in Topshop - loved her nose ring

These ladies in Topshop were so stylish - I loved how they put their outfits together.

That red dip-dye is definitely on my wishlist too!

I also visited COS, Banana Republic and several other shops, but found myself grabbing a cocktail rather than my camera (sorry...). Basically, at some point you have to put down the camera and actually get into the action! However I loved putting together this photo essay and I couldn't believe how stylish the shoppers were - walking past AllSaints was like stepping into a lookbook. 

If you enjoyed #FNO then share the love! I can't wait for 2013's events. I'm off to a Vivienne Westwood warehouse sale tomorrow, so expect another shopping report from that trip...

[All photos my own. Please ask before reproducing.]

Fashion's Night Out: The Global Schedule

Serious shoppers, pay attention. Vogue's annual event, Fashion's Night Out, will be hitting our style capitals in just a couple of weeks, boosting the economy and our wardrobes along with it. This year sees all 19 countries where the magazine is published taking part. Here's your global forecast (they don't all take place on exactly the same night, sorry to upset sticklers for detail) of where to shop, with a particular focus on London.

The Official T-Shirt for London

 [Image via the official FNO page for British Vogue].

Designed by Jonathan Saunders, the t-shirt supports Refuge, which is a really great cause that helps women who are victims of domestic violence. I've written in the past about the charity's campaign with beauty blogger Lauren Luke, and it's great to see them staying high-profile with this.

06/09

New York (and across America, from Boston to Philadelphia and beyond)
Milan
Seoul
Sydney
London 
Paris
Madrid
Mexico City
Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver
Berlin
Moscow

07/09

Shanghai
Dusseldorf
Berlin
Beijing
Delhi
St. Petersburg

08/09

Taipei
Tokyo

10/09

Sao Paolo

12/09

Rio de Janeiro

13/09

Lisbon
Amsterdam
Rome
Guadalajara
Istanbul

20/09 

Thessaloniki

25/09 

Athens

Balenciaga's Exclusive Bag - Just One Example of Brand Involvement

 [Image via the Balenciaga Facebook page].

A collaboration between the amazing Nicholas Ghesquière and Vogue's Grace Coddington, this is part of the limited addition Pumpkin line of accessories, featuring sketches of Grace's cat wearing Balenciaga creations from over the years. It's whimsical and somehow it works.

Basically, FNO is the perfect excuse to either window shop or spend some hard cash. Take some friends along and make a night of it!

Top Tips for London's FNO

1. Check out the map on the website to help you get your bearings in terms of who is involved. Brands are listed along with a description of what they're offering, whether it's a discount or in-store make-overs.
2. Expect the unexpected. In 2010's event we were treated to an incredible flash mob of dancers in River Island.
3. Make sure you remember to eat - you'll be trudging the shops for hours if you attend the entire thing, so don't miss out on getting a decent dinner. The main areas participating are Oxford Street and Regent Street, with plenty of restaurants nearby, from chains to independent ventures.
4. Keep an eye on the hashtag #FNO on Twitter for more ideas of where to go.
5. Take your camera or be prepared to use your camera phone, because there will be some photo-worthy moments.
6. If you buy too much, remember to tell everyone you were just caught up in helping us out of the economic deficit...

If you're heading to Fashion's Night Out anywhere around the world, I'd love to hear from you.

Vogue US Hits 916 Pages With September Issue

Lady Gaga works it on the cover. 

[Images via Fashion Gone Rogue, one of my favourite sites].

Vogue US is considered by many slaves to fashion as the Bible, and it'll be even harder to shake that reputation with their ground-breaking September issue, totaling a massive 916 pages. I can't speak for the content because it's not out here in the UK yet, but by the sounds of the cover descriptions then it's going to be going for all-out style worship, creating a retrospective. 

Who better, then, to grace the front page than Lady Gaga? Arguably she knows about going stratospheric, considering her legions of fans and the uber-cool Haus of Gaga at her disposal to create outfits. Here she's styled by the legend that is Grace Coddington and photographed by Mert & Marcus, inside the shoot.

 

 

I can't say that I actually buy Vogue US that regularly (maybe once a year, if that, as it isn't half as good as its Italian counterpart, though I always skim through it and look out for any shoots featured on Fashion Gone Rogue) but I'm definitely set to buy this issue. If a magazine can churn out that many pages then I'll be keen to see top quality interviews with top designers, editors and creatives, as well as working out whether the advert-to-content ratio is worth their 'biggest ever' page claim. 

 

Another interesting proposition is 'Fall Fashion for All' - I'll have my politically correct radar going off for that one, as it'll be worth seeing just how diverse this gets. Will we see tokenism or actual genuine inclusion of women outside the 'white, size 0, very young' category? I really hope that 'for all' means what it says.

As for the 'Hair is the New Make-Up' feature? That's surely one for the Neophiliacs column in Private Eye magazine...

Sketchbook Magazine Goes Online: Interview with the Editor

When I read recently that the iconic Sketchbook Magazine (staunch supporter of illustrators, fashion bloggers and creative types) was being re-launched, I was intrigued to see what the new look publication would be like. As a self-confessed magazine junkie who'd readily spend my weekly food shopping money on creative glossies, it's fair to say that anticipating the re-launch was a bit like counting down to Christmas. And the best bit? It's moved totally online, giving you unrivalled access to the best up-and-coming design talents from the creative industries - artists, fashion designers, photographers and graphic visionaries. I caught up with Editor-in-Chief Wafa AlObaidat to find out what Sketchbook 2.0 is all about, learn what the Sketchbook Design Society will do, and to seek advice for any budding illustrators out there who want to submit their portfolio. Say hello to your new favourite bookmarked website...

"We want to tap into a bigger audience, but also we have too much to share and our previous blog layout didn't do the site justice at all," explains Wafa. Fully aware of the importance of digital platforms in magazine publishing, she continues, "We also wanted to compete with other online magazines of an international standard and, in order to do so, our online presence has to be strong." 

I completely agree; working with online content on a daily basis in my full-time job, I can see how easy it is for blogs and websites to reach people and create a permanent resource for them that is indexed by Google, whereas print versions don't have the same longevity. But will there ever be a printed edition again? "Ideally we want to get Sketchbook in print and online and we are ready for that transition but it was time to upgrade the site and allow for more of a regular platform for contribution."

One of the magazine's strengths is its collaborative style: the idea that you could add your own work to the living, breathing showcase that is the website seems incredibly tempting: "We want to get them to collaborate with other creatives within our network," she says. They receive over 50 portfolios a day and "pagefuls of invites to events" which are then distributed to correspondents around the world. Obviously the beauty of taking things online means that these events will now be reported as they happen, with daily updates and a fast turnover of editorial content. Alongside all of this is the brand new initiative that Wafa is championing, known as the Sketchbook Design Society, found as a tab on the website:

"It's a member-based organization of design professionals, educators, administrators, students and associates in communications, marketing, media and design-related fields. Our goal is to raise the general standard of design in Bahrain [where she's based] and the Middle East, and we hope to inspire local designers and engage the public."

It all sounds promising, but I can't help wondering if there's any time left for pop-up projects - something the publication became famous for with its 3 week series of live events in London's Carnaby Street back in 2010, which included Issue 1 cover star Susie Bubble as a speaker. "Once we establish a society of creatives, we may then continue to pop up and do spontaneous events,"Wafa reassures me. 

So what do you need to know if you're looking to submit something to the site, either as a feature or a creative contribution? If you're fresh out of uni then don't panic - "A big slice of our audience are emerging and young creative designers and illustrators and recent graduates of art school." Here are Wafa's top tips for getting involved with the site and on launching your career:

• Get your CV done in a creative way and check out the fan mail section on our site for inspiration. Creatives who email us with interactive portfolios are the ones that get a call back. 
• Get as much PR coverage as possible, and also continue to contribute to get your name out there, and build your name in the industry. This will allow clients to email you for services.
• Define who you target audience is and start emailing them requesting to work with them. 
• Be active online, social media wise, and do as much work as you can!  

Basically, if you're sitting at home wondering whether to submit something, then the world's your oyster as far as I can see. The new look website is a springboard for you to carve out a name for yourself and it's a great way to see what your peers are producing as well. Even if you're an observer rather than a creator, it's just as fascinating to see what graduates are coming up with and find out about industry news.

When asked for three words to describe the all-new Sketchbook, Wafa has a think and then picks five: "Clean, modern, minimal, user friendly, smooth." Just another example of how the publication goes beyond expectations. 

To join the Sketchbook Design Society, head to the dedicated tab (next to the Magazine tab) on the homepage.

[All images courtesy of Sketchbook]. 

Has Vogue Italia's Black Issue Changed Anything? Part 3: Views on 'Blackface'

If you've been following my blog posts about the need for diversity in the fashion world, you'll know that it's time for the third and final part of the series (and those of you who've not seen part 1 and part 2 can quickly catch up!). Now it's time for some more analysis, with help from Jezebel.com, Sola Oyebade of Mahogany Model Management, and academic Carol Tulloch.

Models on the catwalk, and how this is inextricably linked to editorial content

It is also vital to consider the impact of catwalk shows on editorial content, because models that are frequently booked for the catwalk will also be used heavily in magazines, particularly those crowned ‘the next big thing’. Fashion shows are a great place to analyse the industry’s attitude to racial inclusion, especially as the designers themselves decide who will walk and who has the right look of the season. It is therefore unsurprising, in light of what I have previously discussed, that few designers actively support racial minorities on their catwalks and most are reluctant to discuss why this should be the case.

The website Jezebel has painstakingly analysed New York Fashion Week’s models in terms of ethnic origin and has written profusely on the findings. It transpires that non-white visibility has always been incredibly low and makes only small increases each season. By looking at the diagrams for the Spring/Summer 2011 shows provided by Jezebel, as seen below, it is easy to analyse the scale of the problem in the modelling industry. 

 [Image via Jezebel.com]

As the image depicts, Spring/Summer 2011 was still a heavily Caucasian affair, with 81.8% of show models belonging to that racial category. Catwalk reports revealed that many shows shared the same non-white models, so their figure of 18.2% could be even worse than previously suspected as the number of non-white models hired will not be as great as 18.2% in total. The accompanying graphic proves to us that the use of non-white models is not improving year by year, as the media would often like us to believe, and indeed it seems to fluctuate. Obviously with black models occupying 4.9% in Fall/Winter 2008 and 8.4% in Spring/Summer 2011 then promising results can be achieved, but this is not to say that the statistics will not decrease next season. There is no sure sign of improvement to be seen in these statistics and no way of predicting the racial diversity of the Fall/Winter 2011 shows in New York, or indeed any other fashion capital, because there are no guarantees here. One could have easily predicted a sharp rise in the number of models of African descent following Barack Obama’s electoral victory at the beginning of 2009 (looking at the Fall/Winter 2010 statistics compared to those of Fall/Winter 2009), but the increase here was only 0.5%. New York Fashion Week designers clearly have no great desire to jump on the Barack Obama bandwagon in terms of genuine ethnic visibility. 
 

Britain is not immune to such racial discrimination regarding its models, and several modelling agency C.E.Os have stood against the grain and campaigned for change. Two of these would be Carole White, of Premier Model Management, and Sola Oyebade. Sola, the founder of Mahogany Model Management, based the company around the motto ‘Injecting colour into mainstream fashion’. Mahogany aims to properly represent people of colour in the modelling industry and Oyebade has also become affiliated with the annual Top Model of Colour awards. He has protested against London Fashion Week’s lack of ethnicity, saying that the organisers ‘refuse to put a fair proportion of models of colour on the catwalk... London Fashion Week & the British Fashion Council are blatantly open about the "industry Apartheid" they are practising’ (2008). In response, a spokesperson for the British Fashion Council (BFC) suggested that it is a designer’s responsibility to choose their own models and the BFC has no control over ‘the aesthetic’ of a show. However the BFC offered to write to the designers ‘to remind them of the culturally diverse community we live in when casting models for their shows and ensuring that those models truly reflect that diversity’. They also reminded Oyebade that ‘Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards 2008 went to Jourdan Dunn, highlighting the role she is playing in increasing the profile of black models’ which, though a brilliant achievement for Dunn, hardly indicates a seismic shift in the attitude of the fashion industry as a whole. 

Meanwhile, Carole White has been working as a modelling agent for many years and ‘after a brief golden age in the Eighties and Nineties, Ms White's analysis suggests that fashion show designers and the industry media have regressed to an earlier, more blinkered approach’ to black models (Sharp, R., 2008). 

What are the detrimental effects of white dominance in fashion?

The fashion industry plays a vital part in the economy and is highly effective at reaching out to consumers and influencing their lives. The clothes we choose to wear every day can often be carefully considered and millions of people consult fashion magazines for advice or inspiration, most notably young women. So what happens when this main audience is presented with racially biased content on a weekly or monthly basis, and it becomes alien to see a non-European face within editorial content?
  
Carol Tulloch, a research fellow in Black Visual and Material Culture at the V&A, believes that ‘young black people will not struggle to find role models if there are none in fashion magazines, as they can use other outlets. These days there’s YouTube, internet forums and all kinds of music channels which will give them a chance to learn about black culture.’ However, she admits that ‘black women are under-used in fashion’ and greater visibility would be a positive change (to Polly Allen, 2010). 

Even one of the most prominent and successful black models, Naomi Campbell, is little-used in fashion magazines and her personal problems often overshadow her working life. Whilst Campbell appeared on the cover of Interview magazine and the key fashion shoot was staged around her, the narrative of this shoot detracted from the positivity of her prominence. Interview magazine chose to show Campbell as a dominatrix, subjecting her male companion to violence and humiliation, which seemed to painfully echo her real-life reputation as an aggressive woman who has been frequently accused of physically abuse her own staff. This overshadows Campbell’s position as a role model to many non-white women, which was discussed in the accompanying interview by Tony Shafrazi, along with her humanitarian work. 

 Naomi Cambell for Interview Magazine, 2010, shot by Mert & Marcus. 

[Image via Fashionbombdaily.com]

Carol Tulloch, like many other academics specialising in black culture, believes that ‘Naomi Campbell broke barriers – I know it’s a bit of a cliché to say that, but she did such a lot for black women, especially when she worked with photographers such as Ray Petri, who used black models when not many others would’ (to Polly Allen, 2010). The photo shoot in Interview magazine does not present Campbell as breaking any barriers beyond those of taste.  

What conclusions can we draw from this? 

As the journalist Nell Frizzell questioned, ‘Will the recession make publishers, advertisers and editors even more wary of having black people in their magazines?’ and it is honestly difficult to tell. Publishers are genuinely suffering in the recession, but knowing the success of the Black Issue, maybe greater non-white visibility would gain readers for a magazine as well as media exposure and revenue. However, there is the opposite risk of magazines using the recession as an excuse for not using black figures, leaving them to “play it safe” with Caucasian-filled pages. 
    

The way forward, as I see it, would be to start with the catwalk and then magazines will follow accordingly. Robin Givhan, blogging for the Washington Post, admitted that ‘Sure, it would be nice to have a veritable United Nations on the runway. But this is fashion and it's all about personal vision, not we-shall-overcome’ (2008). If the designers begin to see non-white people in their creative vision then our fashion magazines will be the first to jump on that particular trend. Yet model aesthetics do not change as rapidly as the seasons of fashion; Supermodels held court for the 80s and 90s until the waif look arrived with grunge, and that malnourished look has remained popular for the majority of catwalk stars ever since. With every attempt at differentiation on the catwalk, waves of scandal have followed, so it’s hardly surprising that ethnicity will not be embraced overnight. 

In the words of Sessilee Lopez, ‘I’m hopeful that one day the industry will see that black — in all its shades — is beautiful’ (Blay, 2010). In light of Vogue Italia’s Black Issue, it is evident that using non-Caucasian models does not damage circulation figures in the slightest, and consumers are clearly supportive of diversity in fashion magazines and on the catwalk. There is no real excuse not to take a leap of faith and give the public what it deserves, which is a fashion industry that won’t just take the money of ethnic minorities, but will represent them and acknowledge them as fashionable too. Homogenous content is unremarkable and incredibly lazy in an industry which defines itself on being inspirational and creative, and it is time to move on.  

What do you think - is it time for things to change? Let me know.