Vintage fashion feast

It's no secret that I'm a little bit obsessed with styles of the past so I'm super excited to be looking forward to not one but two major vintage fashion events this summer.

Frock Me! vintage fashion fair

The famous vintage fashion fair 'Frock Me!' branched out from its home at Chelsea Town Hall to set up shop (or stalls) down in Brighton earlier this year, and returns with over 70 exibitors of vintage goodies on 6 June.


The fair is the brain child of Matthew Adams, who studied Costume & Theatre Design in the 1970s and started selling vintage fashions and accessories at the, now defunct, Swiss Cottage Market in 19798. He went on to set up the popular Stables Market in Camden and started the first vintage fashion fair in Kensington Town Hall in the mid 1990s, later moving it to Chelsea in 2004 and changing the name to Frock Me (no relation to the C4 show).

The fairs have proved a massive success wherever they are based, as have the associated tea rooms, selling the obligatory cupcakes and afternoon tea on dainty kitsch china.

I can't believe I missed the two in Brighton earlier this year but have added the up-coming event in my diary as one not to be missed and will no doubt be going back in October and November for another vintage fashion fix. At just £4 entrance (£2 with NUS), how could you resist?

For those in London, the next Frock Me! fair is on 23 May.


Vintage at Goodwood festival

Vintage fashion plus music and food - what more could you ask for? The first of what is planned to be an annual event, the Vintage at Goodwood Festival runs from 13 till 15 August - the perfect timing for me to blag a ticket as a birthday present!

Over the three days in Chichester, acts old and new will perform on several stages dotted around the festival site, catwalk shows and fashion markets will exhibit vintage fashions and organic, free-range and ethical food and drink will provide shopping and dancing fuel.


Among the musical acts confirmed are Sandie Shaw, introducing her favourite female artists who will perform songs "that men sung that women should have", Motown legends Martha and the Vandellas and current favourites the Noisettes. Catwalk shows, running three times a day, will exhibit the creations of classic designers Ossie Clark, Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood, to name but a few, and will be themed around such fashions as 'Mods vs Rockers', 'The British New Look' and 'Future Vintage'. And over 320 vintage fashion purveyors will be selling their wares at the fair.

When it comes to refreshments, afternoon tea will be available, the WI will host a 'largest and funniest-shaped vegetable competition - then baking said veg in pies - and classic ice cream vans will tootle around the site.

Oh, and there will be a classic-car boot sale on the Sunday. It just couldn't get any better!

Day tickets start from £55, with weekend passes at £135. You can also camp on the site, from £15 for your own tent to £1,000 for a gypsy caravan and £2,000 for a Hotel Bell Tent.

For more information on the vintage fashion events, click on the links below:

Frock Me!
Vintage at Goodwood

All images used taken from the Frock Me! and Vintage at Goodwood websites.

Details confirmed for Brighton Fashion Week

The Corn Exchange has been named as the venue for Brighton Fashion Week’s catwalk shows.

Among the designers confirmed for the event, which will run from Wednesday 9 to Saturday 12 June, is Andrew Bannister, who honed his pattern cutting-skills on placement at Vivienne Westwood and launched his menswear collection at London Fashion Week in February 2009.


Joining him at the Couture Show will be one-to-watch designer Nikolo Bertok, Sarina Poppy, who uses silks, wools and vintage fabrics in her designs and Flik Hall, whose futuristic jumpsuits and body-con dresses accentuate the contours of the human form and are created with an eclectic mix of materials.


Playsuit Parlour, Ailsa, Orleans Designs, Ceci Tunn, Kerry Knowles, Kushion and Urban Chic are lined up to show at the ‘Ready to Wear’ event, where a market will feature stalls selling vintage and independent labels and accessories, free makeovers, goodie bags for the first 100 people through the doors and the chance to buy exclusive ranges from the catwalk.

For full events listings, times and ticket, visit www.brightonfashionweek.co.uk

Images: Flik Hall and Playsuit Parlour from www.brightonfashionweek.co.uk

Check mate

Since Christopher Kane chose gingham as the material du jour in his spring/summer collection, high-street designers have also been looking to Brigitte Bardot's Lolita for style inspiration. Gingham sun-dresses have been popping up all over the shops, going down a more traditional route with light cotton checks, as opposed to Kane's boudoir-inspired chiffon, cut-out designs.


Track down original or hand-made fifties-style gingham dresses on ebay or etsy.com if you want one-offs, or check out Lipsy's sheer baby-doll to get Kane chic at cut-price. The dress has even won a fan in Laetitia over at top fashion blog Mademoiselle Robot .

New Look £28 Miss Selfridge £35
Dollyfrocks on etsy $79
My Frock Shop on ebay $34.99
Lipsy £50

Christopher Kane catwalk image: Style.com

Rome: highlights and lowlights

Irish recently won a break to Rome, so at the weekend we jetted off for two nights in the Eternal City. We had a fantastic time and these are my highlights:

The history - it's free
Ruins, statues and churches are on every corner and on the grandest scale imaginable. While you could pay to get up-close-and-personal with the major landmarks, you don't need to. We saw some amazing iconic sites for free by just walking around the city and travelling on a hop-on-hop-off tour bus.

The Art Deco hotel
Although we were based away from the nicer parts of the city and there wasn't much going on in the area, our hotel itself was beautiful. Named the 'Art Deco', it very much lived up to its title, with period-style decor throughout. The staircase was grand, the lamps intricate and we had a lovely silk print, 1940's-style telephone and old radio in our room. The small details made our stay special.

The food
Who doesn't like pizza, pasta and ice cream? Fantastic for the taste buds, not so good for the figure, but hell, we were only there for two days so we pigged out. The quality cheese made the pizza melt in the mouth, the olive oil added delicate depth to bread and salads and just look at all that ice cream - yum. If you're going to indulge, try one of the many Blue Ice gelatos dotted around the city. Oh, and potato on pizza - a big yes.

The style
The stereotypes are true - men in sharp suits, half the city nipping around on chic scooters - "ciao" - and teeny classic-auto gems.

The lowlights

Like all big cities, Rome also has its bad points, which for me included:

The underworld - There were some very dodgy characters around the Termini and this put us on edge. Make sure to keep your bags close and closed and only take out with you what you need.

Tourist prices - 10 Euros for a watered-down cocktail in a plastic glass?! They saw us coming.

Extreme road rage - Road signs are treated as a rough guide in Rome - nothing to pay too much attention to - which leads to near-crashes as a matter of course, some very angry horn-happy motorists and nerve-wracking games of chicken each time you need to cross a road.

Johnnie b good

I’m becoming more disillusioned by fast fashion by the day. As I grow older and learn more about the fashion industry and consumer culture, I’m veering further from the cheap and cheerful and closer to the idea of investment pieces.

This is where brands like Boden come into play. Boden’s target audience is mums: Mums who like modern clothing that’s durable and not faddy, mums who dress their kids in head-to-toe Mini Boden, knowing that it will survive rough and tumble, and now mums who want to buy their teenage children good quality clothes that they’ll actually wear.
Enter ‘Johnnie b’ - Boden’s new youth brand. It’s been created by a new team of designers for the teenage market, and it’s great. The cuts are flattering, the prints current and the style timeless. And the best thing about the range? As a press girl at Boden’s autumn/winter preview proved, it fits twenty-somethings too. No longer does liking Boden make you feel that you’re turning into your mother.
My favourite pieces on display were a soft leather jacket – of which there was a lovely blazer version in the Boden proper collection – a cream prairie-style dress and red suede ankle boots: These alone create an outfit that could be rolled out time and time again.
The brand is obviously trend-aware – denim pieces were prevalent and a roll-sleeve grey marl jersey blazer hinted at Alexander Wang-inspired sports luxe – but all the designs are modern takes on classic pieces. Every wardrobe needs a few checked shirts, Breton tops and floral dresses. And my wardrobe definitely needs a bit of Johnnie b.

She's Always a Woman - thank you TV advertising

As a general rule I don’t dislike ad music because it has appeared in an advert, but because it has been chosen for a particular type of advert in the first place. Adverts for mobile phones and small cars usually go for the twee lo-fi alt-folk that I like to call ‘dancing squirrel’ music and which knaws away irritatingly inside your head. No better are the vacuous dreamscapes used to compliment the ridiculous melodrama of perfume films.

When covers are used, it’s often an indication that the film-makers couldn’t afford copyright of the original; a new young thing putting a cool gloss on a song that wasn’t so much of a classic in the first place or a new young thing ruining a perfectly good song.

But there are always happy exceptions to the rules, and John Lewis’ choice of Fyfe Dangerfield’s ‘She’s Always a Woman’ to accompany their film of a young girl’s life in full is one of those. I’d never heard the song before, but the advert struck me immediately as one with sincerity – or at least well-executed simulated sincerity – and the song as one with bittersweet depth.

I couldn’t get it out of my head, but after finding out that it was a cover of a Billy Joel song didn’t hold high hopes for the original. It’s pleasingly refreshing when my cynicism is proved unfounded.

Both versions of the song are beautiful, Fyfe’s more knowing but no less heart-felt – it could be his song – and Billy’s a charming discovery; innocent and folky, with a lovely flute accompaniment and of the 1970's singer/songwriter genre I’m so fond of.

It hasn’t made me want to shop at John Lewis - but I’m talking about it so that must be a win in itself - but it has made me add both songs to my current playlist.

Image: Fyfe Dangerfield

Love,want,need – the language of fast fashion

Love, want, need - a phrase central to the common ‘need desire’ language of the fast-fashion industry and the media. Created for the consumer.


Fashion is no longer just seasonal. It changes by the week, and even by the day, with the ‘fast fashion’ peddled by high-street mega-chains such as Primark central to the transient trends and enduring need culture. But it’s not just fashion that’s fast and fleeting; the instant and 24/7 nature of digital media also requires a continual stream of fresh content to keep readers interested.

So as publishers and brands become ever more dependent on each other to shift their products, they’ve developed a new language of ‘need desire’ which has been willingly adopted by young fashionistas – a status term itself a construct of this new idiom.

Shop, don’t buy

‘Love, want, need’, ‘must-have piece’, ‘shop the look’ - all phrases now in common use in fashion magazines, on fashion sites and fashion blogs are just a more sophisticated form of advertising, which has always been based on the creation of need and want.

‘Shop’ has become the verb of choice over the more appropriate ‘buy’, as shopping is considered a form of sport and an acceptable past-time - especially for the teenage girls and young women targeted by such messages. ‘Buying’, although it is essentially what shopping is, is too practical and, particularly during the recession, a word to be avoided.

But even in the financial crisis language was employed to maintain the need culture that the economy relies on: ‘Recessionista’ and ‘bargainista’ became common terms, adding status to and congratulating those who found a way to continue shopping throughout the hard times.


The language of love

The language of fast fashion is now just as widely used by consumers as the publishers and brands. They are, perhaps unknowingly, doing the job of the advertisers via new forms of word-of-mouth - on their fashion blogs, on social networking sites, on the high-street.

The idiom is emotive and passionate with words such as ‘crush’ and ‘lust’, once reserved to describe the emotional attachments of humans to other humans, now used to express desire for clothing and fashion accessories. It is as hungrily devoured by the consumer as the fast fashion items themselves – so widely utilised that girls don’t need to finish their sentences to be understood by their peers. “I love…” is attributed to objects of desire, as well as used as an expression of acceptance of another’s fashion choices. And where words aren’t required, making a heart shape with your hands expresses the same thing.


Fashion and content, sitting in a tree…

With everyone now a content creator, there is little difference between working on a fashion weekly and writing content for a brand – just maybe that there’s more variety of brands and products to promote in an ‘independent’ magazine. The fashion weeklies depend on the fast fashion industry to supply products to write about just as much as the industry depends on the weeklies to promote their products and help create the constant desire for the new.

Look magazine, for example, ‘Britain’s best-selling fashion weekly’, includes regular features ‘this week we need…’ and ‘fashion trends of the week’, and accompanies every calendar event with messages that the consumer needs to shop for it: ‘Your Bank Holiday Weekend Wardrobe Sorted’ shouts a headline on the front-cover of the most recent issue of the magazine. With a website to maintain the need for the new is ever intensified – reduced to hours rather than weeks - and such features couldn’t exist without fast fashion.

These would most likely have seemed ridiculous editorial concepts thirty years ago but it’s all advertising – just not as we know it.

Which other fast-fashion phrases have you heard? Do you use them yourself? Let me know in the comments box below.