Signposts

• Amazing Mad Men cover for Rolling Stone.
• Cos, H&M and Monki all getting online stores at last! From Style Bubble.
• Lanvin are doing a collab with H&M. I’m slightly dubious as ever about these but we’ll see. Also rumoured are Bottega Veneta and Carolina Herrerra.

• Elle’s 25th anniversary issue should be on my mat when I get home. My fingers are crossed for the Helena or Coco covers, please not Kate Hudson. I love Elle but its covers haven’t been so good recently.

S

Sonia Rykiel for H&M

Super-joy! I just read on Grazia.com (in between furious bursts of productivity of course) that Sonia Rykiel is doing a collection for H&M. I think this could be great – I love her stuff, shown here in this pictures I borrowed from Net-a-Porter.

The first advance will be underwear – I’d be really excited by this but of course it won’t come in my size (I am the opposite of A’s classic pear) but then there will be “female knitwear”, on sale in February. By then I’ll have a job and loads of money!

Rykiel will transfer really well to the high street I think. It’s mainly about whimsicality and lovely colour combinations and won’t be let down too much by a reduction in the cost of the materials. There’ll be stripes, bows and hearts in all likelihood and as I am on a massive girliness drive, this will fit into my plans very nicely, without making me look like Paris Hilton.

Out with spikes and studs!

S

Gwyneth attempts design…

…results are hard to interpret.

These are just illustrations of Gwyneth Paltrow’s designs for “luxury jersey” company Zoe’s Tees and it’s hard to tell what the end product is going to look like. Every dress or outfit I daydreamed onto paper during GCSE Biology looked like these, with flippy hems and anatomically incorrect women as models. But I do like the look of the things and I tend to prefer upmarket celebrity designing (e.g. the Olsen twins’ Elizabeth & James, which is very appealing) to the high street ones, much as I am into democracy and fairness and stuff. The high street ones also impair a person’s ability to ebay designers like Stella McCartney.

The knee-length trousers and top combo looks like something I would wear, and how I would like to look if I were anatomically incorrect. It looks like what I wear at home sometimes – a Hennes catsuit with poppers and a thin sweater-material jumper in green and blue. It’s sort of like Flashdance meets Scandinavian forest creature. Hopefully this sounds as awesome as it indubitably is.

S

Matthew Williamson for H&M

Fashionologie has a gallery of the new MW for H&M collection (womenswear), which is at least looking more seasonable now that the weather is warmer. I inform you of this as part of my civic duty as it is very blah – the colours don’t gel and the shapes are very “H&M nylon frills”. He has a long collaboration with the chain lined up so maybe it will get more exciting a la Kate Moss for Topshop - or maybe the swimwear will make more sense than the dresses.

S

Matthew Williamson for H&M

Yet another designer collaboration announced for H&M – shiny boho Ibiza embroiderer Matthew Williamson will design a collection for women, debuting April, and one for men in May.

Matthew Williamson Resort 2009. Photo courtesy Style.com.

Williamson isn’t quite as exciting to most fashionistas as Comme des Garcons, but if Comme is the ideal winter brand, with its monochrome, structure and minimalism, then Matthew Williamson must be the ideal summer brand. Hopefully his hummingbird- and flower-festooned vision will translate with more flair in the H&M collection than it does in his largely ignored Debehams line.

The issue of fabric quality is important with designers who embody luxury and tend to design with bright colours and shine. When I started buying more designer and quality clothes, I quickly realised that much of the appeal is the softness of the wool or the light texture of the silk. No one expects H&M clothes to wash well or last, but they have to look like a respectable version of the designer’s main line.

S

Peaches for PPQ

Peaches for PPQ

We’ve discussed the whys and wherefores of designer collaborations and particularly the non-designer collaborations like Kate Moss for Topshop. Now London party girl and overachiever Peaches Geldof has designed a collection for PPQ, which will sell in Selfridges for hundreds of pounds a pop.

Peaches isn’t the most popular mini-celeb due to endless bad press involving shoplifting and being a brat, but she definitely has personality, or why would the papers, and by extension we, still be talking about her? I kind of like her. Back in the day I used to read her column in Elle Girl (gone but not forgotten) and I still think of her as the archetypal teenage girl, full of bluster but kind of cool. The items are rather nice too, especially this polka-dot, gauze-skirted, bow, frill-sleeve combo. Sounds a bit over the top when you put it like that!

S

Peaches for PPQ

Peaches for PPQ

KM for TS flies out the doors

Having said that I quite like the new Kate Moss for Topshop collection, I can’t have any of it anyway as it has sold out in the Oxford Circus shop already – in just 15 minutes, according to the papers. Good work A getting hold of that dress.