It's Non-Uniform Day (Banker style)!

For those of you who only read Drapers or Vogue.com for the news, you might not know that Thursday is the start of the G20 Summit here in London, a yearly meeting between the world’s largest national economies to discuss an agenda that usually includes IMF reform and strategies to revive the global economy. Naturally, this attracts protesters of all kinds, which naturally makes the world’s bankers both in attendance and in the general vicinity a little nervous since most people blame them for the current global credit problems.

In anticipation, the Metropolitan police have advised bankers to dress down so they’re not as easily recognized. This is likely to present a sartorial challenge to those whose wardrobe skills usually involve deciding which grey suit to don each morning. And it is a conundrum that the police seem to be grossly unqualified in giving advice on. So far, City workers have simply been told to avoid suits and dress down in chinos and loafers. That's it.

Not only is the advice incomplete, it is possibly the worst wardrobe advice ever. Chinos and loafers simply reek of money and poshness. Bankers who choose this option might as well wear a T-shirt with the slogan "I spent my bonus on a yacht". Dressing in chinos and loafers all too readily bellows “banker trying to dress like a normal person” - kind of like when you see an Olsen trying to blend in behind her giant shades and venti latte that’s bigger than her forearm, or when a kid plays hide-and-seek in the middle of the room.

So I’m wondering –is it really that easy to spot an off-duty banker? What gives them away? The untucked Thomas Pink shirt over dry-cleaned jeans and never-before-used Nikes? The super gelled Ross Geller hair, like they’ve been swimming against the tide all morning? I don’t really know many bankers, so I’m curious - what exactly do they look like whilst they walk among us? Most importantly however, if chinos and loafers must be left out of the fashion equation, what should anxious bankers wear to dodge the rioters? Dilemma…

Some inspired style suggestions come from Imogen Fox of the Guardian:

“The best wardrobe disguise a banker can adopt on Tuesday is probably the Mark Ronson look, aka the ironic Hoxton suit. Ideally it should consist of a brilliantly boring cardigan, neatly buttoned and worn with a skinny-ish tie and narrow-fit trousers. All the better if you can accessorise with a pair of nerdy glasses. It’s a little bit Matthew Horne, and not especially on-trend, but it suggests that you shop at Topman, and not Thomas Pink.”

And who said non-uniform days were fun?!

Happy Summer!

Summer is finally here! I've been waiting. The clocks went forward an hour on Sunday, thereby heralding the official beginning of Summer. In the last forty-two hours of 'Summertime' however, I've been struck with many wardrobe related perplexities. Could I get away with wearing flip-flops to the corner shop without my feet becoming frosty? Should I really be wearing black opaque tights with dresses now that it's officially the Summer season? Should I save myself the bother of early morning decision making and just carry all weather defeating accessories with me (sunglasses, hat, scarf, umbrella) until the weather shows some sign of stability? And, crucially, has the time really come to embrace the pastel palette of Spring/Summer?

This morning I woke up to the sun beaming through my window, and it seemed I would be granted respite from the above questions, for the day at least. Relief.

But the sunshine and warmth was short-lived. This afternoon the skies darkened, the temperature dropped and I made the sad decision to close all windows in my flat. I started to doubt if Summer really was here at all. But just as the clouds began to gather and I sensed condensation in the air, a small Summer miracle occurred...

I heard the unmistakable musical sounds of an ice-cream van. Yes, they still exist. And this is what I heard from the vans loudspeaker:

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are grey
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away"

How apt! Against the grey London skyline, the ice-cream van really was like a beacon of sugar-filled light. Ice cream, of course, makes everybody happy,and for today at least, the ice-cream van was my sunshine. But I'm still hoping it doesn't take our real sunshine away.

Oh Valentino...

"I am extremely happy to have quit from fashion ... all of the designers are doing the eighties. I hate the eighties. I did it, and I hate it. When I go to see my dresses of the eighties, I vomit."

The fabulous Valentino speaks candidly to nylonmag.com If any of us ever wondered how Valentino really felt about hanging up his needle and thread, I think we have our answer.

For the love of Chalayan

I love fashion. I love looking at fashion. I love considering what exactly ‘fashion’ is and I love even more learning about those who attempt to define it and create it. So when I heard that ‘From Fashion and Back’, the Hussein Chalayan retrospective currently showing in the Design Museum, promised to explore the extraordinary designer's work, naturally I got very excited.

Few designers have pushed the boundaries between fashion and art like Hussein Chalayan. His pioneering work is motivated by ideas not readily associated with fashion: architecture, philosophy, science and technology, cultural displacement and identity, genetics, anthropology and aerodynamics all inform and influence his work.
From invoking elements of architecture to installing lasers in dresses, no material is off limits to the Cypriot, who, in addition to helming his own label, is also the creative director of Puma.
Chalayan in particular has made his reputation by invigorating fashion with dazzling performance. His acclaimed runway shows function as performance pieces which allow him to express important concepts. It was part of his “After Words” collection in 2000, in which models donned chairs and tables, a nod, Chalayan says, to the plight of refugees who flee their homes during war, as happened to his own family before the partition of Cyprus in 1974. Then there was his “Readings” collection last summer, also exhibited in the Design Museum, in which the clothes used motorised lasers and crystals to dazzle the audience with artificial rays of sunshine. A comment on celebrity worship, if you’re interested.
His Spring/Summer 2009 show was equally emotionally and politically pertinent. The collection titled “Inertia” literally ended with a crash: the live smashing of dozens of wine glasses lined up along a pseudo-bar inset in the back of the set. While that happened, the stage was occupied by a circle of girls standing on a revolving platform, wearing molded-latex dresses that appeared to be frozen in motion. Each dress was hand-painted with images of crushed cars.

"It's about the speed in our lives and how it can only result in a crash," Chalayan explained, adding that the prints, which included number plates, car handles, and fenders, were "taken from pictures of car graves."

Some say that it is fashion's responsibility (if it's to remain at all relevant) to register events in the world at large. But it takes an incredible designer to probe the live anxieties of this scary moment and yet still come up with a wearable fashion collection. After seeing such a comprehensive, thought-provoking, inspiring and beautiful exhibition as this, it is clear to me at least, that person is Hussein Chalayan.

I'm getting my head around hats

Think you know all there is to know about hats? Well, I thought I did, but a recent trip to the V&A taught me otherwise and opened up a whole world of millinery and head-adornment that I felt it was only right to share...

'Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones' is a collaborative exhibition between the V&A and one of the fashion world's most prolific milliners, Stephen Jones. Stephen Jones's work is represented in the permanent collections of the Louvre (Paris), The Fashion Institute of Technology and the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (both New York), the Kyoto Costume Institute, and the Australian National Gallery (Canberra). According to the milliner himself, however, London is 'the hat capital of the world', and so it comes as no suprise that it is here, in the V&A in London, that hats are the focus of a whole exhibition of which Stephen Jones is the curator. From the splendour of the guards' helmuts at Buckingham Palace to the baseball caps in Dalston market, the hat is, and always has been, embedded in the city's culture.

In the book published to coincide with the current exhibition, Jones laments "why are hats remaindered to the Timbuktu of fashion when they are in fact its Shangri-la?" And he's right. It has been many years since women, in the process of accessorising, have reached for hats as naturally as they do bags or jewellery. This major exhibition aims to revive interest in this oft-forgotten accessory. It traces the evolution of hats, from inspiration to the intricacies of construction, shedding light along the way on everything from the history of the hatbox to the turbans place in fashion.

Wandering the exhibition, I realised that the hat is more than a mere accessory. It is a sign of religious affiliation (yasmulke), a culural emblem (sombrebo), and a status symbol (mortarboard). It is a style signature both onscreen (Indiana Jones weathered fedora),and off (Slash's top hat). And, occasionally it can be a little bit of everything- such as the beret, which has been affiliated with countless military factions, Che Guevara, French culture, Bonnie & Clyde and er, Monica Lewinsky.

If you see me out and about wearing my newly purchased paper hat (not very practical, but then again, the best things in life rarely are), at least you now know why. Hats off to Stephen Jones!

Picnics, pigeons and men in camoflauge...what an afternoon

Yesterday, despite having a 'to-do' list the length of my arm, I threw caution to the wind and decided to take advantage of the sunshine and relative cloud-free sky by heading down to Hyde Park with my friend Aimee. Work/play balance is key, right?!

Sunny days are a godsend for us cash-strapped students as you can eat your pre-prepared lunch from your rather tragic looking plastic tuperware container, and rather than just look a bit frugal, you can turn the whole sorry activity into a an alfresco dining experience, aka. a 'picnic'. As it turns out, everyone loves picnics, not least of all Aimee and I.

There were some minor slip-ups however; one being that it's not so easy to eat couscous with chopsticks. Note to self: bring appropriate cutlery to picnics in future and do not depend on utensils stolen from Asian restaurants and thrown to the bottom of handbags. Another minor hazard were the pigeons who were eying up our food. Although I'm not quite sure how much they would have appreciated my couscous, I'm pretty sure they would have enjoyed Aimee's rather delicious looking sandwich, leaving us with the dilemma 'to share or not to share?' As much as I dislike pigeons, I couldn't help but feel as though we had invited ourselves into someone’s home, cracked open a delicious treat and didn't offer even a taste to our hosts. On this occasion however, we kept our food to ourselves (it was very tasty after all). I didn't want to give the pigeons the wrong impression- throw them one crust and next thing you know they could very well be perched on your arm pecking mercifully into your hand looking for more. You know those pigeons, it's just take take take...

Happily, the pigeons were not our only distraction. While Aimee and I were the ultimate ladies of leisure, army men were busy running rings around us, dressed in all their army gear, hauling huge backpacks around while screaming at their fellow army folk, and being shouted at by the leader of the bunch (we knew he was the leader because he was the only one who got to wear a white wifebeater tank top, lucky man). No skipping ropes for these guys, but wow, they are hard workers. Then again, I would be too if an insanely muscley man behind me was bellowing 'run faster faggot, FASTER!' into my eardrum. Who know how many skips I could do under that kind of pressure!

Not the quiet, chilled-out afternoon that we had first envisaged. But hey, when army men present themselves, who are we to turn them away. I’m loving Hyde Park.