While sometimes I teem with opinions jostling to be exercised over the page, at other times I’m drawn into meditation, where my engagement with the happenings, and the actual materiality, of fashion loosens…
A peculiar thing happened in Russia in the early 1920s. Abstract art, often considered the pinnacle of elitism and high art, was instead employed by artists as a testing ground for ideas that promised…
Wearable technologies currently exist in two spaces – as conceptual pieces by artists and designers, and as engineering-driven wearable products that are taken to market. But, as Danielle Wilde explains…
With 3,000 employees, 2,473 points of sale, seven different fashion and furniture labels (to say nothing of his makeup, skincare, chocolate and flower lines), 16 cafés and restaurants, two hotels, a basketball…
This year’s summer resort wear collections have received lukewarm press, and have seen the whole idea of resort collections thrown into question. Writing in the New York Times, Vanessa Friedman described…
Vivienne Westwood has launched new uniform designs for Virgin Atlantic. It’s sure to test whether the airline can remain competitive whilst crafting a progressive image: there’s a fine line between style…
Women, fashion, and glamour are synonymous in the modern era – but in the mid to late 1980s this association intensified into one distinct cultural icon: the supermodel. While highly professional models…
While jewellery and fashion have long been entwined, in the mid-1990s, both costume and fine jewellery lacked innovation. They were caught in a no man’s land of mass-produced chain-store brands, and failed…
Under attack from a flock of killer crows, Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller The Birds, pauses to collect her handbag. It’s an instinctive gesture that many women would recognise. For a…
I recently had the opportunity to join the academic processional at my friend’s graduation. What was funny about this was that although I’m a member of staff, my own PhD is still under examination, so…
It’s unanimous: we think that the uniforms designed for the Australian Commonwealth Games team are ugly. More than 15,000 people polled by the Daily Telegraph said so, The Australian likened the official…
Fashion and war don’t seem an obvious pairing, but the military jacket is a fashion staple. It may take the form of a double-breasted dress uniform with brass buttons and epaulettes, trimmed in rock star…
Tweed is a mainstay of traditional tailoring; it is the cloth of royalty and aristocracy, fly-fishers and deerstalkers, bespectacled academics, Doctor Whos, fictional detectives, politicians and leaders…
A row of ripe orange pineapples with green stalks, blossoms of fresh white orchids amid verdant foliage. A tranquil sunset of turquoise green, fuchsia pink and deep purple, a flock of yellow-beaked toucans…
Savage Beauty – New York’s Metropolitian Museum’s wildly popular 2011 Alexander McQueen exhibition – is coming to London’s V&A in 2015. Excited? Bought your ticket already? Well you should, because…
The news that Louise Wilson has died held particular force for me, as someone who worked with her for ten years. She was the head of MA fashion at Central Saint Martins School of Art (CSM), and someone…
The classic white dress shirt is familiar and omnipresent in men’s fashion. As a result, we tend to be unaware that for more than 200 years this singular item of apparel, which is essentially unadulterated…
If you had to tell the story of one item or phenomenon in fashion, what would it be? See the end for information on how to get involved. Throughout the 19th century, the top hat was a mainstay of Victorian…
Queen Victoria, writing in her journal on the day of her wedding to Prince Albert, noted: Slept well & breakfasted at 1⁄2p. 9, before which Mama came, bringing me a nosegay of orange flowers … Had…
The rise of stitch and knit clubs, guerrilla knitting, yarn bombing and calls to knit sweaters for oil-spill affected penguins have all drawn attention to craft as a force for social change. Knitting is…