how sexy clothes lost their allure

The talent all great fashion designers have in common is the ability to read a room. You do not get into the history books by making pretty dresses. The best designers at any fashion week are the ones with a fingertip to the breeze, judging which way the wind is blowing. Like standup comics, they divine precisely how far they can push the audience out of their comfort zone to keep their attention without alienating them. And by sticking a pin in a map to illustrate where we are now, their clothes make us sit up and realise how fast the world around is spinning.

For decades, the mantra of Milan fashion week has been that sex sells. Paris does intellectual and chic, London does weird and innovative, New York does polished and commercial, and Milan does sex and glamour. Simple. But the impact of #MeToo, working in an unlikely pincer movement with the rise of the modest pound, as luxury fashion’s Middle Eastern customer base continues to outpace other markets, is pushing sexy dresses on to the wrong side of history. The ciabatta-e-burro of this city’s catwalks has gone stale.

And so Milan is reinventing itself. After a few years during which she seemed to be edging out of the frame, Miuccia Prada, is back on form: profits are up, critics are raving. Introspection has never been big at Milan fashion week, but Prada is constantly questioning her own work and the world around her, poking around in the uncomfortable contradictions. "It was all about what’s happening in the world now," she said after this show. "On the one hand, you wish for freedom, for liberation, for fantasy, and the other you have this extreme conservatism." There were plunging necklines and short skirts on the catwalk, but the standout beauties were the prim looks that she has always made sublime: a grey sweater, a white shirt collar, a stiff satin skirt. Prada studied mime for five years in the 1960s, and recalled in W magazine recently her lessons with Etienne Decorum: "One day, he limited us to only moving our fingers – the body control was extreme." She learned to say a lot, without making much noise; she does it on the catwalk still.

5 fashion items that Audrey Hepburn made her own

If there is one takeaway from Beyond the Screen, the new exhibition of rare Audrey Hepburn photographs opening at London’s Proud Central gallery today, it is to acknowledge how many specific fashion items the actress launched. Almost everything Hepburn is wearing in the images-  lensed by Terry O’Neill, Norman Parkinson, Bob Willoughby, et al- has gone on to be deemed a 'classic'.

It may be 25 years since she died, but cable knit jumpers, white bug sunglasses, and oversized mannish white shirts are as chic, popular and relevant in the British fashion vocabulary in 2018 as they were when she first wore them. Here are five of the best fashion Hepburnisms that are still worth copying today...

White sunglasses

The idea that celebrities might look cooler and more mysterious when wearing sunglasses was brewing long before the early Sixties, but Hepburn's appearance in 1966’s How To Steal A Million, wearing enormous bug-eye lenses in the opening scenes, captured the imagination of audiences around the world. Douglas Kirkland’s stills of her in the Mod white frames by Oliver Goldsmith, worn with a graphic white suit and chin-strapped felt hat, are still considered to be some of her most iconic pictures.

A mannish white shirt

Several of Hollywood’s Golden Age female stars were responsible for turning the kind of white collared shirt usually reserved for men in the workplace into a statement fashion piece for women. Hepburn, along with Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly, was among the first to use it as a symbol of role reversal, empowerment, and sexual liberation. In Mark Shaw’s 1954 portrait, Hepburn is at home reading, relaxing on a sun lounger wearing nothing but a shirt and earrings.

Cable knits

Photographed in 1989 by Eva Sereny, Hepburn wears a cream cable knit jumper and white linen trousers. Her knitwear choices were always neat, monochrome and structured; it’s another pure and minimal look from the actress that means all of the viewer’s attention goes straight to her face and personality, rather than her clothes (even if it does make you want the jumper too).

The Beatnik coat

The streamlined, checked wool coat is a winter staple these days, but in swinging London, it was a hot new look. Hepburn took the trend to Paris, commissioning Hubert de Givenchy to make a grid-print felt coat for her to wear in How To Steal A Million. 

The little pink dress

Hepburn’s style was, at times, wonderfully girly. Another image set that is constantly shared on Instagram and Pinterest is this 1955 Norman Parkinson series, shot for Glamour magazine in Rome. Givenchy’s pale pink fit and flare silhouette looks even more distinct when set against the bougainvillea. The bateau was Hepburn’s neckline of choice and is now the first feature one should look for when trying to emulate

Fashion Festival is stylish success

    Looking fierce: a model takes to the runway in the 2018 Bermuda Fashion Festival where local and international designers and models showcase their work on the big stage on Front Street (Photograph by Blaire Simmons)
Organisers have hailed this year's Fashion Festival as a huge success.

They said that Bermudian designers had been offered international opportunities as a result of the event.

Danilee Trott, executive producer of the festival, was thrilled by the quality and reception of this year's event.

Ms Trott said: "We had a really broad range of international guests that participated as designers, models and mentors.

"They were reality stars, celebrity stylists, red-carpet designers, supermodels — it was definitely one of the highest-calibre group of guests we have had come and be a part of the festival."

More than 2,000 people watched the three runway shows, with standing room only at some events.

Local designers also earned their place in the spotlight.

Ms Trott said: "Their collections blew me away and I am just so thrilled for the opportunities that they earned that will help them take their brands to the next level.

"The mentors were so impressed by them that on the spot, as they were judging the winners, they were offering up additional prizes of internships and externships. The decisions were not easy to make."

Charda Simons, Nicola Lucas and Desiree Riley all won trips to Atlanta, Georgia, to learn about marketing and business from fashion designers Ken Laurence and businesswoman Lisa Nicole Cloud.

Ms Lucas, of Aqua Designs, said: "The Bermuda Fashion Festival was an amazing experience for me, having never really been featured in a runway show or even attended one.

"The local models were amazing and it was such a great highlight to also have an international supermodel walking in one of my designs.

"I am honoured to have been chosen to go to Atlanta for the externship where I'll get more hands-on experience in brand marketing and building my business."

Ms Riley, of Dezir Designs, added: "It has definitely offered up many opportunities for me such as shooting my line in New York with famed photographer James Hercule, as well as working with other international designers for their shows.

"Evelyn Lambert spoke to me about opening her show at New York Fashion Week and Lisa Nicole Cloud has already approached me about a few of my looks for a red-carpet event."

Ms Simons, along with Rochelle Minors, also won the chance to show their collections at the Fashion Gallery New York Fashion Week in September, with free flights offered by JetBlue.

Taijhuan Hollis won an internship in Los Angeles with fashion gurus Adolfo Sanchez and Viktor Luna.

Jessica White, an American supermodel, said she enjoyed being able to walk the catwalk in Bermuda.

She said: "Bermuda is such a majestic place full of beautiful people. I'm honoured I had the opportunity to grace your island.

"I look forward to coming back and special thanks to the Bermuda Fashion Festival team for having me and who worked so very hard on an amazing production."

Melissa Leach, who served as a mentor at this year's show, was pleased to see the festival evolve over the past three years.

The Bermuda resident, who has worked with fashion industry heavyweights including Burberry, Jimmy Choo and the British Fashion Council, said the event had become a "solid platform" for Bermudian designers.

Ms Leach said: "I am pleased to have been a part of the programme this year and I look forward to continuing my support of the festival and of the emerging design talent by sharing my knowledge of the business side of fashion, giving our local designers the best possible chance of success."

Lisa Nicole Cloud, international designer and mentor for the event, said: "The show was a quality fashion production and the hospitality shown to me during my visit was exceptional."

Boys can be girls: What we learned from Paris fashion week

As Paris men's fashion week comes to an end Sunday we look at four things we learned from a packed and at times emotional six days:

Men don't have to be men

The pressure is off, boys. Dress like you did when you were a kid raiding your mother's wardrobe. That seems to be the big message from a fashion week where the gender lines have never been more blurred.

We have had men in dresses aplenty before on the Paris catwalk but never has the male wardrobe itself been so comprehensively feminised. Blur's "Girls & Boys" could have been the soundtrack for a week where genderless meant men borrowing all the best bits from the girls to sex up suits, shirts and trousers.

Margiela's John Galliano said the time had come to "liberate" men from their sartorial shackles. For him that meant silks and satins, daring to be "louche" by going shirtless under a suit, and most of all wearing clothes cut on the bias -- the technique he has used for years to make his clothes for women so fluid and sensual.

"Gender doesn't matter any more -- it's 2018," Kim Jones told AFP before his triumphant debut at Dior Homme where he showed a transparent organza and tulle shirt embroidered with tiny, delicate white feathers.

Flowers and floral toile de Jouy blossomed out of a long run of other pieces, "but it is still menswear," he insisted.

Loewe used not a little humour to herald fashion's rebirthing of man, opening its presentation with a naked young man sitting on a chair sauvely fingering his trumpet.

Pink power

Naturally in such circumstances, pink -- once the "boy's colour" before it was supplanted by butch blue in the 1940s -- was in full blush. From Dior's pale pink double breasted suits and trench coats to Thom Browne's Vichy check and bubblegum pink lobstar coats and the old rose of timeless Hermes, the colour threw its puff powder hue everywhere.

Vuitton's Jones said it was time to bury the old wussy prejudices. "In LA kids in the street wear pink all the time. So it's not, 'Oh it's pink, I won't wear it', anymore," he added.

Fashion’s Love Affair With Guns Is on an Indefinite Hiatus

When the late British socialite Tara Parker-Tomkinson was detained for hours at Zürich Airport in 2013, she made the best of it. She played backgammon with the authorities; she tweeted about the ordeal. It was all due to a mixup. When her luggage was scanned, security spotted what looked like two guns in her belongings. But the objects that raised alarm weren’t quite the real deal. They were Chanel’s Miami Vice platform sandals — stilettos designed to look like pistols.
                                                       

             
The brainchild of Karl Lagerfeld, the shoes debuted as part of Chanel’s 2009 Resort collection. While the pumps that appeared on the runway were reportedly made of actual gun casings, the shoes for public consumption were made of plexiglass. Yet Tomkinson couldn’t easily convince airport security that the heels, also faves of Madonna and Ashlee Simpson, weren’t deadly weapons. In fact, in 2011 Parker-Tomkinson’s shoes wound up in customs for five days because of a similar misunderstanding.

Named one of Footwear News’s “10 Most Iconic Shoes from the Runway,” the Miami Vice shoes exemplify how two worlds that seemingly have little in common — high fashion and gun culture — have intersected. After Chanel released its pistol pumps, Saint Laurent debuted its Fall 2014 ready-to-wear collection, complete with gun-print shirts, dresses, purses, and jewelry worn by celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Rihanna. The pop star has also carried the “Guardian Angel” tote gun bags designed by Netherlands brand Vlieger & Vandam; those totes are still available. In 2016, country star Miranda Lambert jumped on the gun chic trend, showing up to the ACM Awards in a pair of $849 Joyce Echols gun holster heels. Those heels remain available for purchase as well.

But as calls for gun law reform have grown their loudest, and celebrities are more likely to wear orange flag pins for gun violence awareness than to mix couture and firearms, fashion has to reframe its relationship to guns, say industry experts and gun control advocates.