Style Bubble

'Les' Note

>> This is sort of an inconsequential post and should really be tweeted as opposed to blogged but having been to Topshop Oxford Circus and SQUEALING at the sight of a pair of leggings, I thought I better spread the excitement about and burn off this ecstatic energy I have.  I knew French label Les Heal (formerly known as Heal - legal issues perhaps causing the name change?) were coming into Topshop's EMERGE section (formerly known as Topshop Edit - seems we're all about name changes here... can I be Susie Sangria formerly known as Susie Bubble?).  I just didn't know that they'd be reproducing the best pieces of Heal's A/W 09-10 collection, the one that caught my eye - such as a renewed navy (I promise it is navy, it's just very dark in the pic...) version of this 'Stereomatic' dress/jacket that I have here in grey jersey...

AND... adding a pair of grey jersey panelled leggings to get some Stereomatic action going on in the bottom half...

Hmmm... do I go ALL THE WAY into Stereomatic haven and don the jacket AND these leggings and go out, trying not to be mistaken for some sort of interpretative dancer (don't know why I'm associating head to toe panelled grey jersey with modern dance...)...?  Or do I just hold back and be happy with my Stereomatic upper half?

Encensing

>> This may feel like some kind of coupled-co-ordinated post seeing as Steve has also posted about the latest issue of Encens.  But I swear to you, it's nothing as cutesy as that.  I've been enamoured with Encens for not all of the magazine's lifetime but whenever it does cross my path.  Stylist and editors
Sybille Walter and Samuel Drira and their baby Encens is essentially a hugely inspirational vanity project, which isn't a dig at all when you consider that by being completely selfish and publishing something that is to your exacting desires and going in a direction that bucks what is already out there is a risk and is the root of all exciting publishing (The Face - must we carry on mourning?). 

Anyhow Walter and Drira are concerned with looking back to look forward or perhaps they're not trying to look forward at all and in fact, want to stand still at a time where certain designers of a loose period of 70s-90s are the focus (Ted Lapidus, Yves Saint Laurent, Kenzo, Thierry Mugler, Issey Miyake come to mind - all carefully sourced and seamlessly blended with more contemporary pieces) and where silhouettes are rich, dramatic and playing with contrasts all the time. 

I'm serving up a video flick through because this beast of an issue is impossible to scan and now that it has become an annual issue, it's thicker than ever and renders it a coffee table book as opposed to a flicky style mag. It's best to try and hunt it down (it took me three tries at the Soho newsies to get hold of it...) and see for yourself the specific styling that Walter and Drira have employed.  It's also worth the £15 to gorge yourself on the images in your own privacy and NOT gratify yourself with shonky scans of this evocative pic fest...

Song is Circled Sun by Chromatics

Giddy with Giles

The fun time gal is heading our way next season and I fully intend to join in on the proceedings.  There's still a TON of fun to catch up on from S/S 11 but I guess if I'm busy HAVING fun, it stands to reason that the fun-times-catch-up is slow.  Pah... actually, that's a lie - I am incredibly chocker-block with work that is sort of related to the blog but not really (I'm ever evasive of course...).  Still, I must plug away as before you know it, A/W 11-2 (!!!) will already be upon us - it is afterall always a shockingly short season change.

So I give you the man who makes me think of one thing and one thing only.  Ken Dodd's infamous lyrics from 'Happiness'.  Happiness IS all of those things that Dodd sings about - sunset, ocean, a field of grain - all that jazz of course, but let's add an adendum about all things Giles Deacon that's going on at the moment.  And it's a LOT. 

First off, his own collection which made its return to London this season and incidentally was my first Giles show experienced in person.  I feel like the past few seasons, since he started showing in Paris has been a gradual crescendo to Giles defining his brand and what it is - lavish and cartoonish rolled into one.  Yes, he is about extreme feminity (zee hair, zee variety of girls, zee BIG skirts that command a fair bit of floor space.)  But throw all of the pop-culture bits and bobs and along the way, a mix that is uniquely his own is the ker-ching result of a crazy pinball journey that pings between Anne Boleyn, legendary London tranny DJs and Kew Gardens.  The ACTUAL results of this trip are hibiscus prints spearheaded with arrows and oozing with bloody, pom-pom mohawks, flying eyeballs, plaster prints mingling with ribbons on full skirts that look deceptively frou frou from a distance all.  Those Pacman googly eyes get asserted as a Giles signature, which I will probably welcome over and over again, especially if they make it onto twisted Fairisle knitwear that has been made in collaboration with Sid Bryan of Sibling...at the point when that came out in the show, there was a little physical air punch...

Then the legend that is Veruschka in all her 71-year old glory came and closed the show.  Second air punch...

(All backstage photography of Giles S/S 11 by Morgan O'Donovan for Dazed Digital)

Finally the models all trooped out into a three-storey exit that I was lucky enough to see heads on...  (thanks to whoever did the seating plan...)

Then a hop to Paris brings us into the much-anticipated Ungaro debut.  I wasn't really sure what I was expecting, knowing what had gone before under other *ahem* 'creative directors (loved the LiLo reference with the Herbie VW Bettle car in the set of the presentation overgrown with 'bright new blooms' - GEDDIT?) yet also knowing how evocative as a Parisian house, Emmanuel Ungaro once was.  With an ever-more cartoonish zane injected into his own collection, it left him a route of going down his idea of what French chicness is about and so it bloomed, like the flowers on the amazeballs set, into sequins, sexy draping, ladylike tweeds, OTT embroidery, feathers, glitz, and PLENTY of lace.  It could have been a strange pastiche and whilst there were throwbacks to an almost antiquated or old-school idea of 'glamour', the key was again in casting variety which had everyone from a young Bambi to Kirsten Owen to Anna Dello Russo stamping the approval on a return to frocks and pretty things that isn't over-thunked. 

That sumptuous and decadent side of the balance could have dipped too far had Giles not pulled it back into his world with little touches such as floral motifs on sunnies, shots of neon, cut-outs made to look like feathers on a gown...

And of course...

FUNGARO... thanks to the Love Mag peeps for letting everyone know the name of this creature that Anna dello Russo was babysitting for the presentation.  I nearly went away trying to come up with a name for  a hybrid creature between one of those strange goat puppets in The Lonely Goatherd bit in the Sound of Music and a My Little Pony....

Then we go back to Giles and his side bits and bobs and we have this new collection of jewellery here that rounds up all of Giles little critters - the character Eek (mouthless teddy with inquisitive/nervous eyes...), a decapitated Bambi, a wee little thing called 'Gonk', gremlines, dinos and other staple motifs like paper clips, spanners and a jaw-like 'Man Trap'....

Then I have the cheesy Christmas announcement.  I'm not into gift round-ups (PR emails insisting that I do one will be ignored...) but this is a recommendation I can't pass up.  In a similar fashion to Stella McCartney's seven-day knicker set that continues to tickle my fancy, Giles has got together with those other happiness-givers, Happy Socks to do a box of socks for the week, due to be released early December.  25% of proceeds goes to Elton John AIDS Foundation, limited edition...ecetera ecetera... but what I'm interested in is the promised 'specially designer box'.  I want little individual sock drawers with maybe a few holographic elements for the Crimbo feeling... time will tell what will show up...

Gotten your happy fix yet?  You giddy?  Gleeful?  Filled with joy?  I can just about accept it if you aren't any of those things.  Too busy with fun times to care though...

Shoe Showmeister Returns

>> The return of shoe designer/couturier Benoit Méléard has been talked up in various places (Dazed, Vogue.com) but I've not seen these particular specimens out and about yet - the outre showpieces that in a way connects with what Méléard has done in the past. If you don't know the name, the shoes will come to you through past collections when he was designing for the likes of Alexander McQueen, Helmut Lang and Jeremy Scott.  In 1997, he then launched his own collection of experimental shoes, thus being the first to give his shoes their own catwalk show.  More commercial collections came along but a quick Google search mostly yields his more out there designs that I suppose added early impetus to the editorial shoe extremes that the likes of Nicholas Kirkwood and Atalanta Weller both indulged in at the beginning of their careers.  His website ain't up but a return has arriveth with his S/S 11 collection entitled 'Manifest'.

The collection is mainly a tribute to American shoe designer Beth Levine (designed under her husband's name Herbert Levine), another experimental shoe forefigure, who that isn't widely known unless you've happed upon her pieces through exhibitions, even though she's often referred to as 'The First Lady of American Shoe Design'.  Her signature elastic straight line is taken from the inside of the heel and moved to run down the front of the foot by Méléard which is all tastefully referential, but the only thing I'm taking away from this comeback collection is the fact that he has used a great deal of grey jersey.  Me thinks it's also grey marl.  Grey.  Marl.  Jersey.  How did this escape me when I first looked at this collection?  Perhaps it was the bright shade of grey.  Perhaps it was how taut the jersey has been pulled into shape of the shoe.  The realisation has now dawned on me and specifically these chunky specimens below will need to try and make the arduous journey from a random stockist somewhere (let's hope stores have taken note of Méléard's return to business...) into the centre of the grey jersey drawer that I kowtow to on a daily basis...

Going back to a Beth Levine-related note though, I was particularly fascinated by her Kabuki shoe, first designed in 1959 and re-issued in various colours and fabrics thereafter.  It also cleverly slots into the Japanese-inspired slant that many shoes decided to take in their various twists and turns for S/S 11 (Chanel, Acne, Kenzo are just a few that come to mind...) and its simplicity of form is startlingly relevant.  Ebay probably isn't going to be my friend and neither is vintage sizing (Levine had size 35 feet!) but I'll be on the look out for any Herbert Levine labels out there from now on...

Wee Shop Find

>> I'm probably about to offend the school of women who worship at the alter of Celine with my choice of words, but I had to round up this particular trio of coats/capes, representing three distinct price stratas too using the word 'bathmat'.  I blame Steve really.  It's all looking a bit 'bathmat' to Steve be it Celine's fluffy sheepskin, Acne's nubbly cream wool or the vintage version that I saw at The Shop on Cheshire Street which prompted the trio .  That's not to say that the heights of perfection can't be reached within the bathmat context as Celine's gold-clasped fluffy cape and leather collar-ed reverse shearling coat clearly demonstrate.  I'll leave it up to SHOWstudio's ode to Celine's ability to do 'Perfect', to illustrate this...

(Stills from 'Perfect' film by Ruth Hogben, Styling by Katie Shillinford)

A closer look at the fully accomplished bathmat piece with its choice bit of accompaniment - Emma Balfour looking like she might kill you if you dare even think about flicking a drop of water on her bathmat cape in the ad campaign...

Acne's Galaxy Wool T-shaped coat is less tufted and fluffy but still definitely nubbly and fibrous enough to warrant bathmat status.  I nearly bent to its will when I was in Browns Shop 24 where it's hanging up because the cocoon shape along with the star-cut collar and zippers in the sleeves were all sitting in all the right places...but then...

...perhaps I knew all along that something like this would pop up for a mere £50 at The Shop on Cheshire Street.  Alright, this is reaching the almost inferior level of bathmat and it doesn't really stand a chance against Miss Perfect at the top and Miss Galaxy above.  But it does tick a very fluffy fluffy box.  And there's also a slight chance that were I to take a ridonculous bath Daphne Guinness style, this WOULD actually come in handy for absorbing some of the wettage.  I didn't buy it in the end as I'm still thinking that Miss Galaxy might do the trick (I can just FOR-GET about Miss Perfect....) but head down to The Shop if you're after some bathmat action...

P.S. The smart buyers at The Shop have also got in a LOAD of vintage hand-knitted chunky cable, Aran and waffle knitted jumpers at about £30 a pop... may have felt like I paid through the nose as I was rummaging wearing my pink Prada jumper...