Amelia’s Magazine | The Great Fashion Cycle

Today saw Menswear designer Lou Dalton bombard the opulent interiors of Kettner’s in Soho with his rustic AW 0/9 “Deer Keeper” collection. Inspired by the poet Lord Byron the pieces drew a stark contrast with the rather pristine surroundings of this small Parisian establishment. The show saw the quintessential English gentlemen invigorated with a contemporary urban twist. The collection saw felted flannel trousers and jodhpurs alongside denim shirts and gillets. Felt and velvet were a resounding feature throughout and was incorporated into the detailing in their flannel single breasted jackets, prostate healing trousers and shirts.

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Dense cable knits in luxury chenille and Merino wool conveyed a rather nonchalant feel, for sale find which was finished perfectly with oversized holdal’ s. The collection seemed more suited to a romp in the leafy terrains of the countryside then the heart of Soho. The aesthetic was finished perfectly with shoes by brogues by Grenson. Dalton also featured wax cotton macs which were reminiscent of the traditional Barbour jackets, he modernized the classic with a stylish ruched waistline . The colour palette for the collection evoked a autumnal feel with subdued charcoals,khaki’s,olives and browns.

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The collection had a real sense of fluidity, with each piece resonating as the next was introduced. Complimented perfectly with tracks by Alexi, with soaring and delicate melodies that had undercurrents of the iconic Smiths lead singer Morrisey.

Lou Dalton’s A/W collection showcased a revitalized interpretation of traditional silhouettes and tailoring which accumulated in a stylish yet wearable collection.

Is your wardrobe look rather lack lust-re of late? if your answer to this question was a resounding yes then never fear here at Amelia’s magazine we have the perfect escape plan for those discarded items lurking deep in the realms of your drawers! . This Sunday at Spitalifields market from 1pm till 4 will see an entirely unique shopping experience comically titled ” swishing” besiege the East end. The event essentially is a fashion swap, drug where participants are required to bring an array of unwanted garments, see the minimum required is one piece of clothing. Then they are free to rummage to their hearts content to find those hidden gem’s amidst the endless piles. To safe guard the whole swishing experience the team has a strict policy of no physical aggression, visit this so keep the handbags at home ladies!. So get trawling those wardrobes as this is a event not to be passed up. In the current climate there is no surprise the event organizer’s are hailing it a must for all “recessionistas”.

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images supplied by www.greenmystyle.com
Is your wardrobe looking rather lack lust-re of late? if your answer to this question was a resounding yes then never fear here at Amelia’s magazine we have the perfect escape plan for those discarded items lurking deep in the realms of your drawers!. This Sunday at Spitalifields market from 1pm till 4 will see an entirely unique shopping experience comically titled ” swishing” besiege the east end. The event essentially is a fashion swap, sick where participants are required to bring an array of unwanted garments, for sale the minimum required is one piece of clothing. Then they are free to rummage to their hearts content to find those hidden gem’s amidst the endless piles. To safe guard the whole swishing experience the team has a strict policy of no physical aggression, check so keep the handbags at home ladies!. So get trawling those wardrobes as this is a event not to be passed up. In the current climate there is no surprise the event organizer’s are hailing it a must for all “recessionistas”.

swish_image.jpg

images supplied by www.greenmystyle.com
DIY on the bank holiday weekend is a British as it gets. Whilst the rest of the country sits in hot and bothered queues to pass in and out of B&Q in the next few days, viagra order we will be very much the vultures of culture satisfying our ingrained urge to rebuild and improve down on the South Bank at this year’s aptly themed ‘Do It Yourself’ The Long Weekend, viagra hosted by the Tate Modern from 22nd May to 25th. With inventive interaction and active participation galore, there is certainly something for everyone and with all of the events, screenings and galleries free to go along to, we see no excuse to not get down there and be a part of it. Highlights for us include House of Fairytales, films by Jennifer West and the remake of 1971 iconic Robert Morris installation.

House of Fairytales
Taking place by the Riverside just outside the Tate Modern the lovely bunch at House of Fairytales will be laying on a fine spread for one and all. A self described ‘antidote to commercialism’ there won’t be many aspects of the arts not catered for; maypole dancing, making and playing instruments, shadow puppets, drawing, sewing and sculpture all taking place over the weekend.

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Only in its second year of operation, this innovative non profit production company brought to life by seminal artists Gavin Turk and Deborah Curtis is a way to pool creativity and ‘equip the next generation with the imagination needed for the future of the planet.’

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Friday 22 May 2009, 12.00–18.00
Saturday 23 May 2009, 12.00–18.00
Sunday 24 May 2009, 12.00–18.00
Monday 25 May 2009, 12.00–18.00

Jennifer West
Film strips, skateboarding, paint and a video camera. Four fairly unusual ingredients but Jennifer West’s recipes are tried and tested and no doubt this weekend’s live project will live up to our expectations of deliciousness. Staged in the magnificent Turbine Hall, a team of skateboarders will ‘traverse paint and ink-covered film strips, their wheels scraping into the celluloid and marking their movements in complex and psychedelic patterns’.

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The footage taken at the live event will become the following evening’s feature film, along side a selection of West’s previous cinematic work. Inspired by urban mythology, folklore and popular culture Los Angeles resident West is renowned for never editing her films, which lend themselves to being mysteriously hypnotic, fast paced and a bit out of this world.

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Friday 22 May 2009, 19.00–20.30
Skate the Sky Melon Grab Film
Performance
Turbine Hall
Saturday 23 May 2009, 19.00–20.30
Wheels, Ink Ho-Ho’s and Melon: Films by Jennifer West
Film screening
Starr Auditorium

Robert Morris: bodyspacemotionthings
38 years ago last month, the Tate was under the spotlight for a controversial exhibit by installation artist and sculptor Robert Morris. The series of sculptures, made up of tunnels, balls, platforms and slopes, were purposefully designed to be interacted with and posed something of an assault course for those engaging with them. The huge public and media interest mounted when the gallery was forced to close its doors after just 4 days due to injury from the unexpected over-enthusiasm on the part of the general public.

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Fast forward to 2009 and a recreation of the exhibit based upon Morris’ original plans but using contemporary materials such as plywood, stone and steel plate arrives this weekend at the Tate and will surely prove to be a focal point of The Long Weekend. New York based Robert Morris is a highly regarded and respected man in his field, and not only famous for his daring interactive exhibitions but choreographs, performs, paints, draws and writes.

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Friday 22 May 2009, 10.00–22.00
Saturday 23 May 2009, 10.00–22.00
Sunday 24 May 2009, 10.00–18.00
Monday 25 May 2009, 10.00–18.00

What will you be Doing Your Self this Bank Holiday weekend?
Ioannis Dimitrousis‘ penchant for traditional crocheting is given a futuristic fetish spin in his new collection.

Skintight, what is ed flesh-exposing, case fine-knit cocktail dresses that wouldn’t look out of place in Mad Max’s Thunderdome were the key staple of the collection – interwoven with swathes of thin chains and at one point, illness hundreds of silver needles. The palatte was a mix of greys and blacks – with flashes of silver complementing the chainwork. The one and only misfire was when the dresses went below the knee and were interpreted as high-shine, silver fishtail skirts – so skintight and unyielding they left the models staggering forward on the catwalk…

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The womenswear collection was supported by a selection of menswear pieces that carried the chainwork theme into exagerrated, masculine silhouettes; the best look undoubtedly being a series of armadillo-shouldered bomber jackets akin to a mainstream Gareth Pugh

Romina Karamanea‘s A/ W 09 collection offered us an under-stated selection of dresses in stone, medicine matt-black and red-wine as well as hotpant catsuits, store with a young and more edgy vibe. The models were detached and robotic with silver glitter make-up, leaving an overall edgy and urban feel as they stomped through the show. The collection stood out with short hemlines that were both soft and seductive, allowing for a subtle yet powerful feminine form to be revealed.
Karamanea used only three colours – stone, black and red, which was a simple combination, leaving you to examine the form of the garments. Suede was consistent throughout all the outfits, appearing soft to the touch but also structured. The looks were finished off with coordinating killer patent heels.

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Her futuristic designs filled with clean cuts drew attention to the neck and shoulders with use of piping creating structured original shapes that were intriguing to the eye. The intricate shoulder details stood proudly, reminiscent of 1950′s sci-fi combined with power shoulders for the modern day.
Corseted waists also emphasised the feminine shape to offer a seductive silhouette. The collection incorporated the human anatomy, with emphasis on the femininity of the wearer. It was a well-received and coherent collection that was unusual, accomplished and brilliantly ready to wear.

It was only a few seasons ago that the Vauxhall Fashion Scout welcomed newcomer and rising talent, find Christopher Kane…and now it seems, health fresh London College of Fashion graduate, William Tempest is taking his place and following in his footsteps at alarming fashion speed. He has designed pieces for Madonna, while Cheryl Cole has recently been spotted in his apparel.
Hype and excitement regarding his newest collection was ubiquitous; the audience in itself seemed an expression of this, anticipation struck all sorts of famous faces including that of Hilary Alexander, Fashion Editor at The Telegraph, a handful of Vogue editors, Colin McDowell and the lovely Emma Watson, who has been seen to be wearing custom-made Tempest dresses.

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Structure was crucial and all of Tempest’s designs revolved around this concept, creating a fierce yet not intimidating series of architectural silhouettes. We saw strapless dresses, with tight bodices that then dramatically billowed downwards after the waistline. Fitted blazers splashed with an array of bright colours were paired with simple, straight-legged black trousers.
William Tempest seemed particularly keen on a strange yet highly original print- it was used in regular doses throughout the collection and provided an antithesis to his otherwise calmer, more subdued pieces. While difficult to describe, it was a print that seem to lie between the realms of tye-dye and acid wash, while maintaining a modern artistic vibe. It was a contemporary take on an eighties print and resembled sporadic, faded paint splatters.

Highlights included the large, structured knee-length coats, whose exaggerated and stiff standing lapels and collars seemed to defy gravity in itself. Furthermore, the “lava dresses” with their tight bodices and layered, puffy floor length skirts looked lavishly other-wordly.
Shoes were understated, accessories were non-existent, instead Tempest encouraged us to concentrate on his clothes. The show was the closest to artistic expression that I have seen yet, and when the music stopped and people started to leave, I noticed Emma Watson scurry backstage…probably to greet Tempest himself…and I couldn’t help but to want to run after her and congratulate him too.

‘Urban Holographic’ was this year’s brief for the Fashion Awareness Direct student competition at the Vauxhaul Fashion Scout tent. Hmm yes…not quite sure what that means? Think 2001: A Space Odyssey, ailment and outlandish 60′s visions of a future generation living in space. By now we should all be floating about in pods, dosage preserving our eyeballs in liquid nitrogen, search and consuming our daily calorie intake with a single tablet (I’m sure that will go down well with the fashion crowd). Unfortunately Stanely Kubrick’s futuristic hopes have not materialised. But the aesthetics and fashion sense of this genre, known as ‘Retrofuturism,’ are still a major design inspiration.

Fourteen finalists from ten UK universities/colleges took part in the show. Each student presented two ‘uniforms’ for galactic hosts/hostesses. Baby-faced William Tempest (he can’t be older that eleven) announced the winners. Camilla Kennedy from Birmingham University received the 2nd runner up prize with her duo that wouldn’t look out of place on any high street.: a red playsuit with harem shorts and nipped in waist, and a tailored silver lame jacket with severe shoulders with black leather leggings.

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First runner up was Felicity Baggett with her menswear collection of subtle planetry prints and heat moulded spheres. I don’t know what it is about award ceremonies that gets me. While everyone scoffed and cringed, I gasped breathlessly right by Kate Winslet’s side. So finding myself sitting immediately next to the mother of the 1st runner up was just too overwhelming. At the first whiff of a proud beaming Mrs Bagget, I sobbed uncontrollably.

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It got worse when they announced the winner, Madrid-born Ana Belen Moreno. Her parents, who were sporting fabulous matching pastel pink sweaters and were filming the show on their camcorder, screamed. Yes that’s right all you reserved English people who hate over emotional acceptance speeches at the Oscars, they screamed and yelped and jumped in joy. It was beautiful. I really, really wanted to join them. Their daughter’s designs were definitely worth their enthusiastic appraisal. The two garments were striking and skilfully made, combining Tie –dye ‘cosmic cloud print’ with digital Op-Art and structured tailoring. Any intergalactic space steward would be proud to wear them.

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By all accounts, generic Moriarty, price have played in a mental institution, unhealthy a prison, a night train, a ruined Tuscan castle and the streets of Paris. Not a bad roster of esoteric locations, helping them live up to their namesake, protagonist of On The Road, the seminal bohemian road-novel. By comparison, Le Bistro at the French Institute, which I found a bizarre venue at the time, seems a fairly tame location. Not since I lived in Paris have I encountered a chicer gig audience, Moriarty are very popular in their native France and the shiny South Kensington petit France gang were out in force to see them.

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The clean, brightly-lit café shouldn’t have been this band of multi-national, raggle-taggle bohemians’ natural habitat – from their pretty and haunting folk-cum-blues-cum-cabaret-jazz music you feel they’d be more at home in dusty small-town Wild West – but they do a pretty good job of engaging their audience, perhaps because, in the flesh, they are not actually too far removed from them. Live, the more smoky jazz bar elements of the music override the rest, mostly due to the dominance of singer Rosemary’s clear but caramel-smooth voice and the decadent jewel tones of her dress. There are also shades of Nouvelle Vague in their cute French cover of Depeche Mode’s Enjoy The Silence – Frenchy, smoky cover of 80s classic. Another highlight is Private Lily, which they add enjoyable background to when they explain that it was written about a young cousin who decided, controversially, to join the army.

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On the whole, the band’s inter-song patter was engaging and witty, and just foreign enough to be cool whilst international enough to be lucid and funny. However, there were some slightly irritatingly contrived ‘comic’ moments in the performance, although these still went down pretty well with most of the audience, suggesting that maybe those clichés about French farce are true. However, they were doing all they could to overcome the slightly antiseptic environs of the occasion, which acted like a fluorescent light, highlighting everything, good and bad, unlike the normal, slightly fuzzier and dingier gig experience. Taking this into consideration, it was a really entertaining show by a band that I would definitely look out for in future.

Today was a pleasant day, drug as for the first time all week, our tickets and the show times correlated perfectly, meaning that the cloud of anxiety that descends as shows run 30/45 minutes late and you know your next one was due to start 5 minutes ago, was happily absent. There was only one hiccup, the venue listed for the Future Classics show differed on the schedule to the ticket – causing us to choose the wrong place and miss the show, but the ones we did see more than made up for that.

Josh Goot showed his A/W 09 collection in a concrete room in Covent Garden. We scanned the front row and spied more than a few members of the fashion elite. This is a good show to be at. In the seat next to me was Hilary Riva, head of the British Fashion Council and opposite, the wonderful Colin McDowell. It seemed the PR people had invited far too many people, as for some reason there were only two rows of seats and not much standing room, so it quickly got crowded and any spare seats were fought over. Luckily we had got there early for once and could just sit and watch the spectacle unfold.

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Australian native, Goot’s second season at London Fashion Week, brought us quite a muted collection. Monochrome and stone being the colour palette and colour blocking being the key technique used.
The Avsh Alom Gur show was a direct contrast in comparison and a wonderful surprise. The Central St Martins graduate went down the topical economic reference route, with some dresses emblazoned with ‘Credit Crunch’ and the soundtrack a mega-mix of money related songs, such as this Pet Shop Boys classic and a gem most of us will recognise from the Empire Records soundtrack. His clash of glam and grunge gave us these glorious pieces:

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The ballerina print gown and huge hair bow accessories (pictured below) were particular eye-catchers:

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I would go as far as to say that, on first sight, the Bora Aksu collection was my favourite. The heavier soundtrack included a Marlyn Manson number and was only bettered by the Ann Sofie Back playlist, which was composed of horror movie riffs, not only amazing but perfectly accompanied the show (find out more about the show here.)

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The models did the final walk en masse (pictured above), gang-like, perfectly conveying the attitude of the pretty yet edgy dresses. I want to own everything in the above picture. One day….
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Calling all avid cyclists, ailment have you ever seen the Eiffel Tower on two wheels?. If not then here is your chance courtesy of The Environmental Justice Foundation, viagra dosage which featured at this weeks Estethica exhibition at London Fashion week.The organisation are orchestrating” The Great Fashion Cycle” a mass 300 mile cycle on the 9th to the 13th of September. The event welcomes participants of all levels of expertise, discount all you need is the pedal power and determination!. The events aspiration is to raise awareness of the need for environmental security and the defense of human rights in the cotton industry. The foundation provides advocacy training to empower exploited workers and grant them the skills to create long term solutions to environmental and humanitarian abuses. The dilemma is world wide,mostly concentrated in Uzbekistan where the problem is at its most rife. As one of the largest exporters of cotton, thousands are put under the duress of forced labour. The campaign has seen avid support from leading british voices in fashion design, Zandra Rhodes ,Giles Deacon and John Rocha have all contributed t-shirt designs for the campaign.

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The t-shirts are made from 100% organic cotton and were produced with soil association certified printing. They feature an eclectic mix of designs from the vivid colours and sketchy illustrations of Betty Jackson to the elegant and delicate floral motif of John Rocha .Each design would be sure to make a unique accompaniment to any wardrobe, I have my beady eyes on the John Rocha one myself!.

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So pump up your tyres, pack your rucksack and pedal your way to a more sustainable and ethical cotton industry this September!.

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