Literality

Further to my Clueless post of last week, I’ve just read Susie Bubble’s interesting post about Louise Gray, and the way in which she took a quote from Clueless about being “a traitor to your generation” and ran with it til she ended up somewhere connected to the start but far, far down the road. It’s amazing that Clueless has become a standard fashion designer reference, perhaps one day it will rival the Riviera or 1960s London for dominance. Gray’s show (above) resisted producing a literal interpretation of Cher’s iconic yellow check miniskirt or faux-fur backpack, and arguably ended up with something bearing little or no resemblance to the picture she might have pinned to her ideas board.

Susie’s comment about resisting being too literal with one’s inspiration reminded me of one of the most disappointing collections of the season in my eyes, Rodarte. Much as I love literal metaphor dressing/dancing (I always point at my invisible wristwatch when it’s “time for love” or whatever), this seemed so blunt. I’ve thought print was Rodarte’s weakest design element since last year’s woodgrain print and this collection proved it to me. Rodarte have taken a rather dated outline and applied Van Gogh’s work to it on repeat without re-contextualising either influence.

Similarly, when it comes to getting dressed, however much I love someone’s look, slavish copying has never led anywhere good. I always chuckle over celebrities’ advice in magazines to “mix designer with high street” as if descending to the high street is a brave aesthetic decision rather than a necessity, but I acknowledge the idea at work. I’m averse to the idea of the mishmash outfit that is thrown together without care on some level, a fashion concept that has dominated Topshop for a few years and has led to us falling out. Fashion that relies entirely on the wearers being young and skinny is lazy.

Style.com suggests that Rodarte’s approach can be read in the context of post-modernism, the school of thought that elevated the sample and the mash-up to important contemporary artforms. After a year of intensive study on it, I still couldn’t give you an elevator pitch for postmodernism but maybe after seeing the V&A’s exhibition on it I’ll be able to relate it to fashion more eloquently and not relate artistic efforts like the above to bad taste alone. However, what I have gleaned is that it means taking a language and mixing it up, rejecting its previous connotations, or any big story. There’s no story whatsoever in Rodarte’s work this season because there’s no room for imagination.

S

Images: Style Bubble, Style.com.

Signposts: Home time

I’m entering the process of tidying up my house for people to stay and it’s always an emotional process. As the child of one obsessively tidy person and one slovenly person (hi Mum!), I am always, like an enormous housebound quark, both tidying and making mess. So my mind is on the home and how wonderful it would be if it was tidy, which is the topic of almost all my thoughts not relating to what I will have for dinner; Miu Miu bags; and whether One Tree Hill will be renewed or not.

• Best Tumblr name yet: Things Organized Neatly.

• I’ve posted about Donna Wilson and her lovely cushions before but now there is an urgent need to mention her again because of DOUGHNUT CUSHION. I need it.

• The designer and creator of these beauties asks people not to repost the images, so I am gallantly not doing so, but in summary: embroidered Penguin Classics! They are gorgeous. Much as I love and defend my Kindle, I am prepared to accept this is one thing you will never be able to get on it. While you wait for your hand to get the message from your brain to click the link, let’s look at another Penguin Classic, Shakespeare’s sonnets in the now iconic Coralie Bickford-Smith design.

The completist in me wants to have them all in a row on my shelf:

S

Signpost: Daybook

I like this blog Daybook, for being cute and making flares look possible. These are from Gap! I must not buy anything else again ever though, or I will be kicked out of my house. I always used to wonder how people on American shows could just not “make rent” as if not paying it upfront at the beginning of the month was an option – or buying shoes with it – but now I am a grad student and I understand. I had my money for the year, and then I spent some of it I shouldn’t have. Now I must find additional employment. I hope this ends up being a minor life lesson where I look back and think “that was how I learned to budget across a whole year and began my amazing freelance career” or something and not “that was when my boyfriend and I ended up living in a tent in my parents’ garden and then he left me for someone more solvent.”

S

Please be amazing, Luella’s stylebook

So October will mark the release of Luella’s style book, of which we can now see a cover so I don’t have to style one up in Paint.

I’ve been looking forward to this for a while as a I love a book about fashion and I’m quite intrigued to see what the layout is like, particularly how close to a magazine it is. I recently got hold of a copy of Victoria Beckham’s style BIBLE That Extra Half an Inch. I love VB for being the Jackie Collins of the noughties and although I wouldn’t say I love her style personally you cn’t deny the woman has standards, hence why she can feature in a gossip magazine just for wearing flat shoes.

OMG, it’s WAG VB. Don’t get me wrong, this is a pretty terrible book. It reads fine – VB is quite funny I understand and it comes across here in jolly, I’m-normal-me writing. But it’s just incredibly boring to look at. It’s neither magazine-like enough or straight book-like enough.

Snooze.

Hilarious.

I have a few other fashion books, a “streetstyle” book from Nylon magazine and a book about fashion bloggers, which I think A gave me a while ago. Look who it is on the very first page. This bodes not well.

I think everyone misses the Jak and Jil blog. It did this better but is now defunct. The theme of this Nylon book is that it literally doesn’t matter what you wear as long as you are good-looking and refuse to smile when someone points a camera at you. Oh, look who it is:

The other book, “What I Wore Today” is more forgiving as to model good looks and is very vintage-themed and cuter.

This was a noble project and it’s interesting to look back at the Wild West of fashion blogging, which is what this feels like. Not that DiscoNap has a clue how to use a camera timer or rig lights but in the age of blogs like Sea of Shoes and  Cherry Blossom Girl, whose outfit posts could be in a magazine, it’s asking a lot to charge for a book like this anymore. When you find a blog like those sampled below, you end up going through dozens of pages of posts and, now, videos, and you get to know the girl. I’m not sure a book of blogs can work.

Cherry Blossom Girl:

Yay, hydrangeas!

Sea of Shoes:

I’m sure Luella’s book is going to be beautifully designed and picture-heavy, plus as a professional designer (soz VB), her insights might actually be worth reading. I don’t want to see any pictures of her past collections though - it’s still too soon!

S

Charlotte Gainsbourg – perfect

I know it’s easy to dress down when you are this beautiful but still, these photos are what I aspire to. Living a simple, unpretentious life and feeling completely at ease. Plus, looking v buff of course.

Photos first gazed upon at Discotheque Confusion, and originally published in Self Service (do not go to this website if you are epileptic).

S

Betty’s fierce mesh jeans

Yes, I would wear these, to the max. Although not with a leopard fake-fur coat, which only works on skinnies I think. I much admire Betty’s practical but fun style, which makes deep sense in either Paris or London. These jeans are not hugely practical and she says she is freezing but they are awesome. I hope they end up in the Urban Outfitters sale.

Mini-thought from a chilly S, over and out.

A little bit Disco, a little bit cups of tea

Hello devoted readers.  The blog has made it through its first year and to celebrate the blood, sweat and tears that went into our many posts about Topshop, we are throwing a soiree.

It is in the downstairs room at the lovely Scooter Caffe in Waterloo, tomorrow after work. My directions above are a little vague, try this Google Maps link instead.

The lovely Scooter Caffe.

There’ll be cakes, some little presents, tea and hopefully people who read blogs, write blogs, make clothes, make crafts, and generally people who are lovely. Feel free to turn up and introduce yourself.

xxx S & A, proud blog mothers

Bloggers, street style and the fashion industry

This is meant to represent blogging.

I just read this article on the impact of bloggers on London Fashion Week - is it cool that bloggers are being given respect or has the inclusion of amateurs diluted the status of the event? As far as I could tell, there were two ways in which blogging impacted on LFW:

1. I saw a few people around who I recognised from my Google Reader. I was too shy to say hello to any of them.
2. Everywhere you went, streetstyle bloggers were asking people for pictures of their outfits.

Issue 1

In the article above, BitchBuzz criticises bloggers who’ve been given access to LFW shows and then fail to take advantage of it, don’t post about it on their blogs and instead view the experience as an opportunity to get freebies and “be seen”. I don’t think this is true, although I’d agree about some quality control being in order. But maybe everyone will get around to posting and this is a speediness issue rather than a lack of care?

I have tried to do as much coverage as I can while writing things up for my internship as well, and Mademoiselle Robot has run an exemplary blog, covering loads of shows and getting photos and descriptions out there in double-quick time (but bear in mind she has help and a lot of access to popular shows). Hardly any other media outlets have done; it’s not just bloggers, working alone, who are slow, the big guns with huge teams are too.

It didn’t even occur to us at Disco Nap to ask for tickets to fashion shows. We need to start asking for more stuff instead of having like, integrity and shiz.

Issue 2

Street-style blogging, much like every other type of blogging, is available to anyone with the internet and a camera but it doesn’t make you good at it. I don’t love any particular street-style blog but I know they work hard at what they do and have an eye for an interesting photo. Crucially, people want to be photographed by the Sartorialist, Facehunter (see a look from the blog below) and Garance Dore. The teenaged style police hovering around the entrance may be just as talented but they definitely aren’t as polite.

Write your blog address on some slips of paper so people know who you are. Don’t just snap people who look like models wearing Topshop and imagine you’re capturing the zeitgeist. Also, style comes in more than one look at a time and in every shape and size. It started being a bit like school, with people assessing how cool you look/are, rather loudly while you stood there minding your own business.

In summary

Clearly I would love it if I get invited to Luella and Eley Kishimoto shows in the Spring so I am pretty biased about whether bloggers descending on Fashion Week is a good thing or not. We put loads of effort into the blog so I think it’s reasonable that we get some press access. But on the other hand, I don’t want blogs to go pro – it’s the ramshackleness and diversity of it that I love. I’m happy that bloggers don’t owe the PRs anything. You’ll get more honest commentary from a catty message board than you will from journalists with advertising to maintain. Let’s just all try and get along.

S

Disconnected thoughts on the theme of White

Image courtesy justjared.com

January Jones from Mad Men at the Emmy’s t’other day finally lifted me out of my bored state of mind when it comes to the red carpet. Clearly what we need is more “pretty robot” style. After Christina Hendricks, January Jones is my new Prettiest Girl in the World. Mad Men is superlative and she just looks more and more beautiful as episodes go on.

Obviously I won’t be popping out to the shops in white robo-gowns but there is something beautiful about an all white, snuggly wool outfit in the gloom of winter. I saw a girl last year in white and gold with beautiful cream-coloured hair done in a crown of plaits. She was standing at Lewisham bus station but really deserved to be going to the Crillon ball, dressed by Chanel.

Image courtesy justjared.com

At the other end of the scale of amazing TV, Leighton Meester of Gossip Girl is in white too. COINCIDENCE? Yes.

I wish designers would hem everything though as I am very tired of the deconstructed, flyaway threads look.

Osman

I went to this show but decided not to review it as I wasn’t very inspired by it other than this look, although I sat next to a really nice girl who was in raptures. You can read my burblings on it over at Amelia’s Magazine. It did show that white isn’t just for little girls or the bridal look you often see on American TV actors. I personally have an absolute yen for white cotton frocks, although this is a summer past-time so I am safe for the minute.

S

High tea with Lulu Guinness

Not Lulu herself, sadly, who was called away at the last minute, but her very charming minions. Ten or so lucky bloggers were invited to eat this beautiful tea at the Metropolitan hotel and A and I got to sit next to Katie and Joe from What Katie Wore. Katie is really beautiful in real life, as was Kathrin of Fashionista Diary who sat on my right (you can see Katie’s snazzy yellow Cos outfit from the event here). I have my charms but they are very much reduced after I have been caught in a major rainstorm. I was in good spirits though, as you can see.

Katie and Joe pronounced themselves winners of the cake-eating contest and I really wish I hadn’t tried to out-do them as I may have overindulged a little. It emerged afterwards that this is a low-fat “healthy” tea; those glass jars contain delicious “bread-free sandwiches”. I am suspicious of low-fat cake alternatives as a rule but these were nice and I guess it is aimed at Fashion Week nibblers and not bloggers. As RetroChick notes in her report, there were no bird-like eaters at this tea and everyone left with a doggie bag of extra cakes although I fed mine to hungry friends as I may have exploded and died if I ate any more.

I had already started on this biscuit because I am a greedy piglet.

What started off with earnest chats about online media etc inevitably got silly with some of the signature Lulu lips biscuits. It’s great being a blogger sometimes.It was cool to meet other bloggers and I found it quite amazing how generous Lulu Guinness were to us, laying on such a lovely tea. We do Disco Nap mainly for a laugh after all, as you can probably tell.

S

p.s. I want to clarify that my hair looked amazing when I left the house, and that despite the cliche, London actually has lower than average rainfall compared to most large cities in the world.