First of all, do NOT panic.

The trend now is well tailored, high quality, hard to knock off
clothing. A look that demands respect. The look is romantic.
Feminine. In darker, somber colors. A gothic Cinderella if you
will.

That translates to quality, not quantity. With just 9 pieces,
you can rebuild your Autumn and Winter wardrobe from scratch,
and look totally chic as the temperatures fall. Every piece has
to be really well made. Go for the best you can afford. The look
for this season is ladylike chic. The kind that demands and gets
respect.

Get ready for plenty of somber black, plum, deep colors with a
light touch of pink
fashion pieces to lift things a little.

Choose your color scheme. Black, plum and bright pink, or
Navyblue, gray and pale pink are some ideas you could work with.
Pick colors that you look your best in and which go with one
another. Alternatively, try a striking combination of black,
white and red.

Once you have decided on your color scheme, stick to it. That
way, everything in your wardrobe can be coordinated with
everything else, giving you countless looks from those few
pieces.

Feel free to choose items with frills, ribbons and other
romantic details as these define this season’s romantic fashion
trends.

#1 Gorgeous women’s
winter coats (at least 1) or a fur vest. This is going to
be your main look whenever you are outdoors. The fur vest is the
latest thing for this fall, winter season though. And it really
dresses up everything you wear it with. Even a pair of jeans
looks formal when you put on your fur vest.

#2 Beautifully tailored women’s
suits (at least 1) in any of your 3 chosen colors. A well
tailored skirt and jacket combination that is feminine and
versatile. This is something you can wear everyday.

#3 Ok. I know that feminine, loose floaty clothes are in. What
with the tulip skirt and all. But seriously. Who wants to have
hips that look even larger than reality? No, you still need a
pair of jeans. I don’t care what the fashion magazines or
designers dish out to us. Women have a right to wear clothes
that flatter the real figure. What is hot, has always been hot
and always will be hot is a pair of tight jeans.
A pair that makes you look your very best. You wear the clothes,
not the other way around.

#4 Wool
tights, pantyhose or stockings. Again for warmth and class.
to keep your legs warm when you wear a skirt or a dress.

#5 A romantic women’s
blouse. This time around, the look is romantic. The
oversized man style shirt wouldn’t do. You need something
romantic. The blouse is the new season’s must have.

#6 A beautiful dress. What could be more romantic than a dress.
Dresses
are hot this season, especially now that the romantic look is
big. You need at least 1 blouse in your new wardrobe.

#7 A pair of boots that go
with everything in your new wardrobe. They keep you warm they
are versatile and give your outfit an edge.

#8 A pair of leather
gloves to keep your hands warm and which look really sleek.

#9 A knit top to stretch your wardrobe further. The classic
every autumn and winter is the turtle
neck. It looks elegant and keeps your neck warm

We take a look at some of her best outfits this season………………..

She looked effortlessly stylish in this, one shouldered and sequinned, on trend but not too ‘fashion‘. Good tone for her skin, young but still elegant, great.

PVC leggings from the Cheryl Cole school of  X factor fashion, but wow, she looked great. Again good colour, and still age appropriate without looking trashy. Alexandra manages to look sexy but not cheap, even though everything is tight.

Here’s not forgetting just what a brilliant stylist and personal shopper can achieve.

Faye Sawyer, we salute you, there have been some tricky moments (mainly with Laura White), but a personal IMDB reference is pretty impressive!

MODEL – Jourdan Dunn
Nominees – Agyness Deyn, Lily Donaldson

DESIGNER BRAND – Jimmy Choo
Nominees – Agent Provocateur, Paul Smith

ISABELLA BLOW AWARD FOR FASHION CREATOR – Tim Walker
Nominees – Pat McGrath, Terry Jones

MENSWEAR DESIGNER – Christopher Bailey for Burberry

Nominees – Richard James, Paul Smith

ACCESSORY DESIGNER – Rupert Sanderson
Nominees – Lara Bohinc, Jonathan Kelsey

SWAROVSKI EMERGING TALENT AWARD – READY-TO-WEAR – Louise Goldin

Felder Felder, Danielle Scutt

RED CARPET DESIGNER – Matthew Williamson
Nominees – Giles Deacon, Stella McCartney

SWAROVSKI EMERGING TALENT AWARD – ACCESSORIES – Nicholas Kirkwood
Nominees – Charlotte Olympia, Anna Vince

Excellent news for equal opportunities, as a black model Jourdan Dunn wins, maybe British Vogue will follow the lead of Italian Vogue earlier this year and feature her on the cover. Although slight concern that the winner has thighs the same size of her upper arms, models are thin yes, but Jourdan is extremely so.

Matthew Williamson also announced at his win for red carpet designer of the year, his plans to join forces with H&M for their spring/summer collection 2009. He will be in good company as previously Stella McCartney and Viktor and Rolf has also put their name to the Swedish high street brand.

2007 Model of the year, Agyness Deyn with Daisy Lowe

The British Fashion Awards return this evening, and as usual, the event will be attended by huge array of celebrities, key industry figures and  lucky fashionistas that got a golden ticket. The British Fashion council, who host the event, first introduced the Designer of the Year award in 1984 and then the British Fashion Awards in 1989.

The awards are about recognising not just existing and established designers, but new and emerging talent within the industry, as well as the models that represent them. Stephen Jones has been announced as the winner of the BFC Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Design in advance, with the remaining ten awards being revealed at the ceremony.

Hilary Riva, Chief Executive of the British Fashion Council, said:

‘The Awards celebrate the extraordinary talent within the British fashion industry, as highlighted in this year’s nominees shortlist. I would like to thank Swarovski for their support of the British Fashion Awards 2008 and for their sponsorship of the ‘Emerging Talent Awards’, which will help to support two of our newer talents as they establish their careers and businesses.’

Financial backers of all things fashion, Swarovski (great cororate branding there) are sponsoring the event and VP of communications Nadja Swarovski stated;

‘Swarovski is honoured to support the British Fashion Awards for the third consecutive year. This prestigious annual ceremony creates a platform that supports, recognises and celebrates the ongoing creativity and talent in the industry. This year, we are introducing two new awards, The Emerging Talent Award for Ready to Wear and The Emerging Talent Award for Accessories. We hope that this recognition and the financial support will enable up-and-coming designers to grow, while allowing their creativity to flourish.’

The 2007 winners were;

• Designer of the Year – Stella McCartney
• Red Carpet Designer – Marchesa
• New Generation Designer – Christopher Kane
• Accessory Designer – Tom Binns
• Best New Retail Concept – Marc Jacobs
• Menswear Designer – Christopher Bailey for Burberry
• Model – Agyness Deyn
• Designer Brand – Anya Hindmarch
• BFC Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Design – Dame Vivienne Westwood
• BFC Enterprise Award (sponsor: Swarovski) – Erdem
• Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creation – Michael Howells

2008 winners to follow!

There are plenty of women that would love to have their own clothing line. Launching your brand, on your 50th birthday, may well be all of these dreams comes to fruition. For most of us, this will never be a reality, but If there is anyone who can have what she wants, it’s Barbie.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, Vera Wang and Jeremy Scott no less, are helping Barbie (that’s Mattel then) to design the collection. What is different about this launch however, is that the clothing line is for actual people.

The February 2009 New York fashion week will unveil the collection, which will also include a wedding dress and a cosmetics line.

Is this a good thing? Turning up to an event with the same outfit as someone else, bad enough. But what if the ’someone else’ is a plastic doll? Worse still, her version of the outfit was made to measure! Social suicide indeed.

Here is Barbie, in her outfit for the Go Red for women charity event.

There have been a credit crunch busting 30,000 shoppers to the store (not the shopping centre, just the Ugg Australia store), making a total mockery of the financial crisis.

Lets not forget, the current bestselling boot ‘knightsbridge’ retails at £225. The company are opening a second store in Covent Garden at the end of the month, no doubt with the prediction of additional security requirements.

Not bad, for a boot that was worn by Australia’s version of ‘Chavs’. This was until 2003 when Kate Moss, fashion catapult (she launched Stella McCartney at her catwalk debut too), that wore them and brought them screaming into the UKs conciousness.

£250 million a year turn over later, the Ugg brand is so last season, this season and probably the next few too. For those of you that can’t quite afford them, TK Maxx have been seen selling the Ugg classic tall boots at £135 (pictured).

A new concept in shopping has been launched today, My Mall is the worlds first virtual shopping centre. The 3D graphics replicate a real mall with shoppers able to ‘walk’ around all 36 (yes 36) floors and go through virtual store fronts. The shop levels are even in categories to ensure that your money is much easier to spend on the 25 million products available.

The CEO of MyMall Ishmael Bahadur stated “We’ve created an actual shopping mall inside customers’ computers. Even those without broadband can access the site quickly, thanks to recent advances in 3D graphics. Anyone who can go shopping in real life can use MyMall.”

Adding “Besides being faster and more convenient, MyMall is also more environmentally sound. Based on average journey times, we found that 100,000 shoppers using MyMall instead of driving to their local shopping centre could save up to 65,400 tonnes of CO₂ every year. “

Over 500 brands, both international and from the UK are contracted, with more waiting in the wings, to sell their addition to the huge range of goods. Currently you can buy anything from clothing and the usual shopping centre fayre, to fast food deliveries and insurance.

“MyMall isn’t like any other online shopping portal. Instead, it replicates a real-world mall in a virtual world. That allows us to promote and brand ourselves just as we would in any of our actual high street stores. This is undoubtedly the next generation of online shopping.” Nicki Proctor from Gorgeous Couture

The press release goes directly into competition with Westfield, using a table to differentiate between the two;

Let the Christmas battle commence!

Vogue was started in 1892 by Arthur Baldwin Turnure, being published every two months. When he died in 1909, it was bought by the publishing giant Conde Nast. The magazines was slowly grown by the publishers and saw and unexpected increase for subscriptions during both the depression and World War ll.

In the 1960s, Diana Vreeland took over as editor-in-chief but more importantly was a well known ‘personality’. She changed the focus of the magazine to feature contemporary fashion and embraced the ‘free love’ spirit of the time by controversially featuring articles on sex.  

Vogue changed to a monthly magazine in 1973, when Grace Mirabella took charge, giving the magazine a fresh style and direction to reflect the changes in society.

In 1988 The current editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, is a huge celebrity in the fashion circuits, often labelled the most ‘influential woman in fashion’. In Anna Wintour turns up to one of your fashion shows, overnight the brand is a success. The film ‘The Devil wears Prada’ is allegedly based on her.

Other Vogue ‘brands’ include Mens Vogue (launched in 2005) and teen Vogue, not to mention the various country specific magazines, such as the UK (Alexandra Shulman is the current editor-in-chief since 1992), Italy and more recently India (2007).

If you want to know what to wear to look ‘on trend’ Vogue is your new best friend. However, if your circle of friends is more high street, pulling off PVC three months before it hits the shops may make you uncomfortable, go for ‘Glamour’, ‘Red’ and ‘In-Style’.

However with a recession looming, everyone has had to become a little bit more fashion savvy. Quality rather that fast/cheap/third world fashion and selling the good stuff on. Most of us have jobs/lives and although there is a pretty penny to be had on eBay, who has the time to get to the post office? Step in these stores, as featured in The London Paper, undercutting the 60% commission charges for selling your clothes and making your purchasing feel a little bit more refined than eBay. You’ll also make some cash, thus giving more money to spend, boosting the economy. Win, win!

They accept high street, designer and even unwanted vintage, and thanks to the stores’ central location, you can expect your stuff to get snapped up fast.

Best of all, Bang Bang buys your stuff up front – so you get the cash immediately rather than waiting for them to shift your style mistakes.

You get only 30 per cent of what they hope to sell it for, but it’s the only place we know that will sell on your cheapie high-street clothes.
21 Goodge St, W1, 020 7631 4191, 9 Berwick St, W1
Commission taken 70%

The Closet Bureau

How come nobody thought of this before? The Closet Bureau is a chi-chi new website that takes designer fashion and sells it for you on eBay.

Founder Sophia Greene (a fashion PR, naturellement) was inspired by her own mama. “Because they didn’t know how to use eBay, my mother and her friends would take their clothes to dress agencies, on a monthly basis, where they were charged up to 60 per cent commission for selling the clothes and got little  back,” says Greene. “We charge 35 per cent and take care of everything from cleaning to photography and shipping.”

Besides shouldering the admin, Greene knows all the ­insider eBay tricks. In fact, this canny clothes horse once sold a pair of Louboutins she bought for £200 at a sample sale for £1,200 . We’ll have a bit of that.
www.theclosetbureau.com, FREE collection from Zones 1-2
Commission taken 35%

Writen about in Vogue here

Seconda Mano
Don’t be confused when you arrive at ­Seconda Mano on Upper Street. The ground floor is a hairdresser, but below stairs you’ll find a cache of second-hand designer ­treasures (well, we say second-hand, but most of it is unworn).

Seconda Mano will sell your unwanted clobber at 50 per cent commission. It sounds like a lot, but their prices are quite high so if they sell your stuff you can still make a tidy profit.

They take clothes, jeans, shoes and accessories, but everything must be in mint condition, preferably with a designer label attached. In other words, that ill-advised Topshop playsuit need not apply.
53 Upper Street, 020 7359 5284
Commission taken 50%