THE CADBURY COLOUR PURPLE

Posted by Bethan Holt, Junior Fashion Editor at Large

Cadbury purple, less commonly known as Pantone 265c, has been on our collective visual radar for the past 100 years, ever since the Birmingham chocolate company switched the colour of its packaging in tribute to Queen Victoria's favourite colour. We're used to seeing it, ripping it, scrunching it and gifting it but how about wearing it?

Cadbury purple at Balenciaga (via catwalking.com)

lilac at Christopher Kane (via catwalking.com)

At the latest round of SS14 shows, there was lots and lots of lilac. If anything's going to move us on from pink next summer then it will be a pretty light purple- lilac ball gown skirts, lilac sweatshirts, lilac denim, lilac anything and everything. But coinciding with Cadbury's long-running legal battle to secure copyright on its signature hue came a smattering of true deep dark purple outfits which made me think, very shallowly obviously, that I would really like to buy some purple clothes soon. Cadbury even sent a model down to LFW dressed in a Cadbury purple dress to promote their cause but still unfortunately lost their five year fight. Nevertheless, I still think that we will always associate the colour of Dairy Milk bars and Milk Tray boxes with Cadbury rather any random given confectioner who decides to jump on the purple bandwagon.

Cadbury purple crops up in the new Wes Anderson (via itsnicethat.com)

Cadbury purple at MaxMara (via catwalking.com)

Marc Jacobs uniform jackets for SS14 (via catwalking.com)

Anyway, I was reminded of this new fashion need again this afternoon when I clicked through to the trailer of The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson's latest offering. Lo and behold, the lead character Gustave H is a hotel manager and he, along with all the other members of staff at The Grand Budapest, wears Cadbury-coloured uniforms which also have a hint of the Marc Jacobs SS14 Victorian jacket about them. These are niche fashion observations I know but it never fails to amuse me how various cultural threads can chime together so that it seems like they might have been planned. The hotel is even this season's candy pink in case you're not ready to move on to lilac and purple yet! Now I know that that purple thing I want is a shiny-buttoned uniform jacket.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is Wes Anderson's new film (via itsnicethat.com)

10 FABULOUS PHOTOS FROM FASHION MONTH

Posted by Bethan Holt, Junior Fashion Editor at Large

One of my favourite times of year, fashion-wise, is these weeks after fashion month when you're back at your desk drinking in the new season and planning everything which you're going to do with it- stories, trends, moods. It's a case of getting elbow deep in a huge pool of images, notes, reviews, social media posts to dissect everything which is going on. I would love to have the time to pull together a definitvie list of every single possible way we can now see a fashion show; maybe you sit front row, or perhaps you're crammed in at the back on your tiptoes, you might follow the action on Twitter, tune in to the brand's live stream, click "refresh" over and over on Style.com until the review is posted, make a Pinterest board or stumble across an image you like as you're flicking through a magazine six months later. It's quite mind-boggling. My new favourite post-fashion week way to see the shows is clicking through American Vogue's backstage imagery which is insanely beautiful and makes me feel as if I am seeing the shows via a fly on the wall wearing magically filtered glasses.

The main photographer is Kevin Tachman, who also made an intelligent photo series called "Overexposed" the other day which he called "an attempt to capture that sense of disorientation" which shows throw up. I like it. The Max Mara images- the headscarf lady is my absolute favourite- were taken by Taylor Jewell, of Anna Wintour #voguestagram fame while the Saint Laurent is by Victoria Will. Even if you were at the show, this photography adds a whole new dimension.

All images via American Vogue

At Dior

At Max Mara

At Max Mara

At Dries van Noten

At Christopher Kane

At Givenchy

At Givenchy

At Saint Laurent

At Louis Vuitton

At Louis Vuitton

A NEW COAT CONCEPT FROM TOOGOOD

Posted by Bethan Holt, Junior Fashion Editor at Large

I read this morning that people employed in farming, fishing and forestry are the happiest. If you work in the media, you are less happy than quite a lot of other professions, apparently. Oh dear. While this news is a bit depressing in itself, it does shine a light on why Erica and Faye Toogood might have struck on the idea to 'pay tribute' to eight different trades with their new collection of coats, which launched during Paris fashion week. Admittedly, it's rare that one goes to PFW and ends up having a conversation about the particular details a bee keeper might require from their outerwear.

The Chemist coat

The Toogood passport

You may already know the work of Faye Toogood. She's a furniture and object designer whose studio has collaborated with the likes of Humberto Leon and Carol Lim of Opening Ceremony/ Kenzo fame and Phillip Lim. She teamed up with her pattern cutter sister, Erica, about a year ago to work on the Toogood coats collection. As with all great fashion concepts, there's a lot of theory backed up by thoughtful details. For example, each coat comes with its very own "passport". A label which details who your coat was designed and made by and who sold it. The idea is that you then add your own details as a constant reminder of the trajectory which each coat has taken. "There is no hierarchy here," comments Erica, "we wanted to create a feeling of transparency about the process of making a coat."

Each unisex coat comes in 6 sizes and is handmade in London. Faye does the design while Erica deals with bringing them to life by cutting innovative patterns which reflect how each worker's coat might have been worn over time, see the deep pockets on The Chemist. For The Courier, a fitted waistcoat with short cape, there were 17 toiles made before the fit was just right. The sisters mimic the movements of each worker to show me why certain details have been included, like the curved seams on the sleeves of The Mechanic or the slits on the cuffs of The Roadsweeper. The fabrications are like nothing I've ever seen before which makes trying on these coats a properly novel experience. Imagine a shell-like back created from melted bin bags, the bumpy texture of a baked latex print or the super-shiny and squeaky effect of sprayed and splattered rubber, a job which the sisters commissioned a guy who usually paints cars to complete. The coats are as hard-wearing as their names suggest too, cut from rot resistant canvas. It all sounds terribly tough and rough and ready but some of these shapes are akin to an elegant opera coat or a chic biker, in many ways. The ultimate aim, of course, is that you make it your own. Faye insists, 'we want our coats to look and feel just as beautiful on a 60 year-old man as they do on a 25 year-old girl'.

THE COATS

The Beekeeper

The Courier coat

The Milkman

The Oilrigger

The Roadsweeper

THE TOOGOOD MANIFESTO

DISPATCHES FROM THE SHOWROOM: COMME DES GARCONS

Posted by Bethan Holt, Junior Fashion Editor at Large

One of the many benefits of flitting to Paris during fashion week is that even if you don't get there in time for a particular show, or if you are too low down the fashion food chain to be awarded a ticket, then you can still get up close with the clothes which are shaping up the forthcoming season with a visit to the showroom. In many cases, you could argue that these are even better places than a catwalk show to understand the shapes, the colours and the fabrics.

And so it was that today I stopped off at Comme des Garcons' home on Place Vendome. Having diligently studied the show reviews in advance, I was fully mentally prepped for the fact that Rei Kawakubo's approach to SS14 was mostly about forgetting that she was designing clothes. She apparently had no ideas for clothes and so sought to create a kind of art installation centred around the body. The ultimate expression, perhaps, of the SS14 mega-trend for art? Anyway, the main point of this Comme des Garcons collection was probably that it was viewed in the complementary space of a show venue where each outfit had its very own soundtrack and, like an art gallery, the light and sound were under complete control. The showroom, by contrast, is a bustling room full of busy buyers and sales agents closing deals on taking these apparently non-clothes (or more truthfully, their more commercial counterparts) into stores across the world. It's the place where that vital link from catwalk to shopfloor is really made.

I might not have been able to imbibe Kawkubo's entire seasonal ethos but it was super interesting to experience the show pieces laid out neatly on tables and displayed clothes-like (not to sound churlish) on mannequins. Many of the dresses you see in my tumble of pictures below are made in a defiantly non-fashion fabric which I have been trying to fathom all day; it's something like a jay-cloth, very polyester-ish and very, very similar to the hydrophobic sort of thing which might make-up a mattress protector or lining for something around the house. One thing's for sure, it's probably never been pleated, stuffed and stitched in Comme way before. Equally fascinating was the footwear which was entirely sole-less so that really they were only footwear covers- these came as brightly coloured bootees and childlike, painted lace-ups.

A new reason to look forward to next Spring... seeing how this is going to translate for street style stars and on the floor at Dover Street Market A.K.A how will non-clothes become fashion?

FASHION REFERENCE OF THE DAY: MOPS

Posted by Bethan Holt, Junior Fashion Editor at Large

Vileda supermops. In fashion?

"Humdrum domestic world of wipe-clean tablecloths, abandoned takeaway boxes and vileda supermops" read J.W Anderson's SS14 press release. Those references seemed so singular that surely no other designer could match them? A quick flick through the latest pictures from Paris shows that this mop reference is alive and well however. On the Rochas catwalk this afternoon, Marco Zanini showed shoes which would easily double as cleaning implements, as observed by Eric Wilson.

Eric Wilson ‏@EricWilsonNYT33m

These shoes are like Swiffers for your feet. At Rochas.

Rochas mop shoes (image via @ericwilsonNYT)

Are we entering a new functional era of fashion? I, for one, am looking forward to seeing an outfit entirely fashioned from mops at some point very soon. A challenge for the DIY-ers and customisers amongst you.

J.W Anderson SS14

Wipe-clean plus mop feet at Rochas SS14 (via style.com)

Wearable Swiffers 

SS14: STREET ART AT PRADA

Posted by Bethan Holt, Junior Fashion Editor at Large

Art has, as ever, played an important role in the Spring/ Summer collections so far; from Roksanda Ilincic's Brazilian neo-concretists to Gucci's Erté illustrations. But none have been quite so brazen as Mrs Prada who yesterday commissioned six artists from around the world to create huge murals for her show space and then transposed the essence of their work- "the multiplicity of guises that women assume  in the course of a day, or a lifetime"- onto skirts, dresses and coats to become part of her Spring collection. As Sarah Mower points out in her review for Vogue, it is quite impossible to see the scale and drama of Prada's project via the runway images alone. Very kindly, Prada sent through a comprehensive booklet with details of each artist and the work they produced for the show.

The essay which begins the booklet sets out the thinking behind this project which seems to have been born not just out of Prada's feminist message, but also from a wish to concentrate very much on the idea human-human interaction, not via technology from multiple locations but from being physically near one another. It's an idea which sort of goes against the grain of the way so many shows are now conceived, with maximum shareability and digital involvement at the forefront; "In many ways, this projects contradicts the prevailing cultural condition of disembodied, networked communication. There is a creative energy that can only result when everyone is physically working together in one space".

A final, fickle note before the tumble of gorgeous art begins. This might be street art taken right off the street and into a space where only select people could see it for real and then onto clothes which most of us will never afford. But, how incredible will this street art look when it finally becomes street style?

MILES "EL MAC" GREGOR

MESA

GABRIEL SPECTER

STINKFISH

JEANNE DETALLANTE

PIERRE MORNET