Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life review

If you're looking for a last-minute Christmas present for a fashion-loving friend, you can't go wrong with Justine Picardie's captivating biography of legendary French fashion designer Coco Chanel.

Full of glorious images, thrilling tales of passionate love affairs and a well-researched account of Chanel's rise to the top, and the battles she faced along the way, this book has put Coco firmly on my list of my female heroes.

Read my review here.

Web wonders

I spend a lot of time on the interweb - it's my job to help fill it with lovely words and links - and recently I've come across some pleasing new ventures.

While researching high-street fashion social media sites, I discovered that French Connection's current tongue-in-cheek "The Man" campaign is accompanied by its own 'Manifesto' blog; a charming commentary on how "men have lost the ungentle art of manliness".

"The man in the street doesn’t know what to bring to a knife fight. He gets nervous around large fish. He can’t tie a full Windsor. It’s time to man up". Take note boys.

Highlights include games of internet chat roulette, an illustration on favourite facial hair styles and a review of a mod jacket in which the model reports that: "Wearing it to the pub made strangers buy me single malts. Wearing it on the bus made schoolgirls giggle into their crisp packets". Brill.


With more high-brow direction, my brother alerted me of another great site which is still in its infancy. Created by one of his clever Oxford chums, Brainwaving.com is full of juicy articles about consciousness, creativity and human happiness. Since taking a course in consciousness at degree level I've regularly tied my grey matter in knots contemplating the various theories and look forward to a bit of gentle untangling.

And then there is laluminita.co.uk/magazine, a "sustainable design and trends" blog for which I attended the launch party last week. In the absence of any announcement, or even a "look what we did, woo! Now let's get drunk", I'm not entirely sure what these guys are about, but am interested in how they will position the "eco" angle on fashion, which is inherently unsustainable.

My favourite decade for style: The Fifties

In the first of a new series in which guest writers tell us about their favourite decade for style, journalist and lindyhopper Katie Allen champions the Fifties rockabilly look.

I first got into Fifties style through my love of rockabilly clubs and music. A pair of ballet pumps to dance in one week, a full skirt the next, and suddenly I was tracking down frocks at vintage fairs and rifling through shop rails for pencil skirts and lace blouses. Here, at last, was a fashion that suited my figure too - I'm five-foot-nothing and euphemistically an hourglass-shape; Kate Moss I'm not and skinny jeans make my legs look like parsnips. But give me a high-waisted skirt and I feel a hundred times more, well, feminine.

It's the rock'n'roll side of Fifties fashion I am drawn to most. The New Look, which in 1947 turned a world of women from boxy jackets and 40s deprivation onto yards of tulle and white gloves, is a little too staid and impractical for 21st-century girls who need to work and catch buses. Plus I am far too clumsy to cope with fragile Lucite handbags and delicate pin-tucks every day, and I save the hair-rolling for special occasions.

I prefer the sassier style of the rocking gals who tied their shirts round their waists, wore rolled-up jeans and Winehouse-style eyeliner.

I'd have to say my style icon of the era would be, perhaps predictably, pin-up queen Bettie Page. I love her flat, black "bangs", fitted wiggle dresses and leopard print obsession.

My favourite item of clothing, a vintage blue-flowered frock, is far more traditional though. The gathered skirt and scoop back feel so much more flattering than anything modern and stretchy, and unlike a cheap Primark number, some far-flung factory worker hasn't suffered to get it to me for £6. The passion and care of whoever made it is evident in every tiny stitch and carefully placed pleat and gather. Plus I was able to wear it to my dad's wedding two summers ago in the knowledge that no-one would have the same dress on.

Katie is the editor of www.fat-quarter.co.uk

My so called second-hand life

Second-hand shopping has claimed more column inches since we fell into recession, but while the impetus for the growth in popularity of charity shops, boot-ique sales, and vintage fairs may have come from necessity, such outlets have flourished thanks to the increasing number of people searching for the unique in a consumer market saturated by fast-fashion and mass-produced style statements.

Not only is second-hand shopping often cheaper than the high-street, the experience can be constructed as a sport. Where it may be easy to find stylish home accessories in Habitat, for example, it takes a more tuned eye to spot the gems in a car boot sale, or down the local Oxfam store.

Our increased inclination to peer fondly backwards rather than strain forwards – this season’s top fashion trends; body-con dresses, statement shoulders and leggings all made their catwalk debut in the 1980s; and Cath Kidston’s 1950’s-housewife-inspired prints have found appeal well beyond the yummy mummy market – has also helped propel second-hand shopping into the mainstream.

Fashion seems to have become self-referential to the point where we have come full-circle – when wondering which defining trends from the noughties will make it onto the moodboards of future designers; you have to ask which trends from the noughties didn’t borrow from eras past. Thus it’s only natural for full-skirted 1950s dresses and kitsch homewares to have become more fashion-forward than fuddy-duddy.

To me, second-hand shopping is a discipline, in which to excel I have to put in the hours, but from which the reward - the buzz of finding that unique item to help create my individual style - becomes slightly addictive. And if said item originates from my favourite decades in style – the 1960s and 70s – all the better.

A few of my favourite vintage finds from around my home:


Bought for £3.50 from a Brighton flea market.


Dressing table, bought for £40 from Gumtree. Vintage bags £3 and £4 from a charity shop.


Coffee cups and saucers, bought from a flea market in Amsterdam - 10 Euros for the set. Flask £1.50 chairty shop. Clock £5 Ebay.


Metal tea pot bought from a charity shop for £2.50. Cup and saucers part of the above set.


JH Lynch print, bought from an street market in Amsterdam for 7 Euros.


Old knitting magazine cover, bought from a Brighton flea market for £1.50 and framed.


Bought from a charity shop for £1.


Bought from a charity shop for £1.