Fash Mob »

• Strike a ball, strike a pose – a fashion show in aid of Respect

  May 14, 2012 @ 7:30 am | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  

  This Friday coming I will be testing my mettle by styling a fashion show in aid of Respect, a registered charity involved in fundraising for people with intellectual disabilities, in association with Absolute the Agency. The show is on in Dublin’s Mansion House, and opens with a performance by Youth Ballet West, a drinks reception with canapés, then on to the fashion show, MCed by Kathryn Thomas (above, wearing a T by Tahari dress from Arnotts), styled by me and with clothes from Arnotts, Divine, Project 51, Debenhams, millinery by Aisling Ahern and much, much more!

  Tickets are €45 – which yes, is a little pricey for a Friday night, but includes canapés, drinks reception, the fun of the fair and entry to the afterparty in Krystle nightclub. Tickets available here! Please consider coming along, and bring your friends!

• Celine A/W 2012

  March 7, 2012 @ 10:30 am | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  

  Celine‘s A/W 2012 collection was another resounding success – oversized coats, androgynous accents, tailored trouser, zips and block colours. No wonder it’s the label to own, covet, emulate (oh hai, Zara, we see what you’re doing). The jaunty neck scarves and cropped trousers added playful accents to what was otherwise quite an austere collection, with echoes of the past and hints of the future in the severe, clinical white coats. Can you tell that I loved it? In other, but related, news, I tried to find a Celine Trapeze bag online to buy today – and the only one I could find was €3,000. I still considered it. I think I may be unwell …

  

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• Hot off the presses: Chanel A/W 2012

  March 6, 2012 @ 2:30 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  

  Well, Kaiser Karl did it again with a seriously stellar Chanel show: ankle-grazing trousers, oversized coats, colour, texture and, above all, sparkle! Can I see the glittery eyebrows catching on? You just never know! I’d love to do a more detailed digest but my day job beckons so you’ll have to be satisfied with pics.

  Give me your verdict in the comments!

  

  

  

  

  Love the colour pops!

  

  

  And, as a bonus, a puppy! Enjoy.

• Meanwhile, in Paris – Balmain A/W 2012

  March 2, 2012 @ 12:30 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  

  I’m in two minds about Paris Fashion Week – that is, whether or not I’d like to be there. The first part of me is going, “hell, yeah I want to be there!” and the second is kind of hesitating, like, “do I get a driver?” Fashion week is tough, but I’d pretty much walk over burning coals in my most painful heels to have been at today’s Balmain show. The French fashion house combined its trademark tough fabrics – leather, velvet, brocade – with sexy, structured fits and luscious embellishment for one of its most show-stopping collections yet. (more…)

• A personal address – of sorts

  February 24, 2012 @ 6:00 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  So, I’ll be live-blogging the Oscars on Sunday right here! Or, at least, right on this site. Tune in to see what I think of everything and, y’know, who wins! We can stay up late together and, when it’s all done, I’ll tell you a ghost story.

  I also just realised that, what with all of the excitement with London Fashion Week – click on February’s archive, on the right there, to read all about it – that I totally forgot to write anything about New York, which, yes, did also take place. So tell me, kittens, do you want me to fill you in on what happened, sartorially speaking, Stateside? This question is slightly rhetorical as I’ve already decided to do a Man Repeller-style digest. I just want you to confirm that you want me, dammit.

  In other news! (Not for the faint-hearted …)

  

  You’re welcome! Happy weekend!

• Mary Katrantzou blows our minds – London Fashion Week A/W 2012

  @ 11:30 am | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  

  There are some shows that need to be seen in the flesh to be truly experienced; there are others, meanwhile, that can be utterly mindblowing when viewed from the comfort of one’s own home. I know this truth because this is how I watched Mary Katrantzou‘s A/W 2012 collection saunter down the catwalk and into the consciousness of the fashion elite (not to be forgotten, I suspect, for a long time) on the live stream – much like I watched Burberry. Take a look for yourself:

  

  It was, as so many people pointed out – on Twitter and otherwise (for a social networking analysis of London Fashion Week, incidentally, you could do worse than take a look at Editd’s breakdown) – a truly haute couture look at ready-to-wear, with stunning colours, prints and shapes. Such a step up for a woman of whom we already expected great things.

  

  Just look at the shape of this dress – the first to come stomping down the runway at the Topshop show space last week. Seriously stunning – and the messy top knots were, as they say, the proverbial icing on the cake.

  

  As you can see, there was a huge array of colours, shapes and styles – and, though they didn’t all adhere to one particular “look”, they all maintained Katrantzou’s carefully cultivated aesthetic, without being boring. And, like so many labels this A/W, Katrantzou included a red dress (is red the new black?):

  

• Style focus – Poppy Delevigne

  February 23, 2012 @ 12:30 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  

  It’s lucky that Poppy Delevigne is good-looking; with Cara Delevigne as her sister, she’d find it hard pressed to see the justice in life if she were anything else. But her looks are only half of the equation – in the past few weeks of fashion shows, Delevigne Sr has shown her fashion heft in an array of well put together ensembles, such as this Burberry look (above), at Burberry Prorsum’s A/W show.

  

  Here she is in Mary Katrantzou for Topshop at the Elle Style Awards earlier this month. And here are the rest of her fashion week looks. What do you think? Pics in full on the Fash Mob Facebook page!

  

• Review – Michael van der Ham A/W 2012 at London Fashion Week

  February 21, 2012 @ 10:30 am | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  After the previous day’s failed attempt at making it to the Topshop showspace at the old Billingsgate Fish Market, I finally made it yesterday for Michael van der Ham‘s A/W presentation. (If you’re interested, you can follow Michael on Twitter – I love it when designers embrace social media.) We started off with a glass of bubbly and some salmon and quinoa salad courtesy of the lovely guys at Bistrotheque and then settled in for the show … and there was a bit of a wait due to late finishing of Christopher Kane earlier on in the day, but, 30 minutes later (!) things got off to a cracking start.

  

  It was a somewhat typical show for van der Ham, whose trademark feminine prints and fabric mixes were juxtaposed with traditional ladylike shapes – peplum, peplum, peplum, folks! – and less traditional, almost futuristic colours and fabrics. Metallics, for instance, made a big bang.

  One red dress was a little too Vivienne Westwood for my liking, and seemed to jar somewhat with the rest of the collection, which was eclectic and playful – I remarked, at one stage, that one particular dress, with a sheer overlay, looked as if I could have made it myself, at the age of five – but overall the collection was fun, fresh and very fashion. Then, with a bang, it was over – far quicker than seemed normal! Perhaps it was the 30-minute wait that put me off.

  So what were the plusses? I loved the colours, prints and textures – especially the mixture of floral / digital print and metallics and the ladylike silhouettes. The styling was lovely, the Christian Louboutins were sick (in a good way) and the hair was incredible, very Lana del Rey meets old Hollywood glamour.

  And the minuses? The aforementioned make-and-do appearance of some (not many) of the pieces, that red dress and the length of the wait versus the length of the show.

  

  Check out the full show here, and let me know what you thought!

  

• Video – Burberry A/W 2012 at London Fashion Week

  @ 7:30 am | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  Sadly, I haven’t quite made it enough to be on Burberry‘s FROW list, but I did get to watch it almost on the FROW from the comfort of my home – as can you!

  

  I love the full skirts and stripes, continued from the stripe motif of S/S – and isn’t the finale just something else? I do think there’s something slightly obscene about making fake rain fall on the outside of the venue (is it just a little too much of a signifier of the vast disparity between poor and very, very rich?) but the umbrellas were such a beautiful touch and made for a stunning closing shot.

• Review – Paul Smith A/W 2012 at London Fashion Week

  February 20, 2012 @ 12:30 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  Another one of the very impressive venues being used during London Fashion Week are the Royal Horticultural Halls, where Paul Smith showed his A/W collection – a typically androgynous take on tailoring, with a lot of very British influences: heritage-style jackets, soft knits and a lot of tweed in a variety of sizes and colours.

  

  However, instead of an austere mode of formal dressing, cuts were relaxed and shirts were almost pyjama in style – silks, low waists, wrapover blouses and soft, vintage patterns with coats slung off shoulders and – my personal highlight – gorgeous large-rimmed glasses with chains that were somehow rendered very chic. Could this be … whispers … the return of the glasses chain?! I kind of hope so! They were so cute!

  As for beauty, hair was in a low, relaxed ponytail with the elastic covered by hair, kind of unkempt and loose – and make-up was, again, dewy and sheer, with bare, manicured nails. Gorgeous!

  

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