How do I look?

Each week on my LCF short course I’m given an assignment to complete. I thought that since I’ve got to write these things anyway I may as well throw them up on the blog for all to see.  Week one, the brief was to write a description of how I look, what I wear and what this says about me as a person. You might have seen I bragged on Twitter that when the teacher gave our work back the next week he said he always reads the best one out to the class and he only went and picked mine! As you can imagine, I was in teacher’s pet heaven. Here’s what I came up with to answer the question ‘how do I look?’

You know the supposedly ‘perfect woman’ that the Daily Mail will tell you every man really wants? The girls with the ideal size ten curves, ample bosom and long, glossy, chestnut brown Kate Middleton locks? Well imagine something like the opposite of that and you’ve got me.

Far from a perfect ten, I’m a scrawny size six, with a straight up and down figure almost entirely devoid of what my mother calls ‘child bearing hips.’ The word boyish is pretty spot on when it comes to describing my body shape. Topped off with a short shock of platinum blonde that my hairdresser reliably informs me is an ‘undercut pixie crop,’ and you get the picture – Kelly Brook I am not.

So when it comes to what I wear, you won’t find me in waist-cinching 1950′s skirts or cleavage-enhancing plunging necklines (FYI, I have no cleavage). Far from it – I know that a bit of androgyny is a far better proposition when faced with my willowy silhouette.

The advent of the skinny jean, circa 2004, was a godsend for me: I relinquished all my bootcut denim with gay abandon and haven’t looked back since.  Along with my faithful skinnies I’ve a penchant for, well, let’s call it ‘unusual’ knitwear – if it features a picture of a unicorn, or looks like something a jolly American soccer mom would have worn at Christmas in 1987 then chances are I’ll love it. Add to that a pair of battered brown leather lace-up boots and you’ve pretty much got my daywear uniform.

When it comes to night time and dressing up, I’m all about the eighties. I’m talking clingy, high-waisted skirts, tight velvet minidresses and plenty of sequins. After a decade of bargain-hunting on EBay and rummaging in charity shops I have amassed a collection of vintage prom dresses in everything from shiny metallic violet to deep emerald velvet. On the whole, they’re very short. I may not have enviable curves, but with fairly lengthy legs I don’t mind flashing a little bit of flesh now and then. My most very favourite dress is particularly thigh-skimming: it’s skimpy and black with asymmetrical orange polka dot sleeves – I can totally see Madonna wearing it during her Desperately Seeking Susan phase.

What does this all add up to? What do you see when you look at me? I hope you see someone who is comfortable in their own skin. Someone who knows their own style and likes to play with fashion, but isn’t a slave to it. Someone who knows that they may not have the ‘perfect’ body as dictated by society or the media or bitchy celebrity magazines, but dresses to suit that shape and, most of all, to make herself happy.

Katie Hillier and the BFC Rock Vault

As London Fashion Week fast approaches, it feels like we’ve reached the home stretch. While bloggers and press dust off their trophy trousers and finery, here at Style and Then Some HQ we have been pouring over schedules and highlights of the bi-annual fashion fest (along with some casual outfit rehearsals, au naturellement)

Year on year, the British Fashion Council constantly come up with new and exciting ways to showcase the city’s best design talent – and quite rightly so. After last year’s Royal Wedding, British Fashion Awards and the New Year’s honours list, never has London’s fashion had such a dominant presence on the international stage

But for me the most exciting news popped through our inbox today – namely, that this season there will be a dedicated platform for fine jewellery entitled the ‘Rock Vault’. Okay, so maybe it isn’t the most imaginative name but bloody hell do they have a stellar line-up that includes Husam El Odeh, Jordan Askill and (my new style crush) Hillier London, all curated by industry favourite Stephen Webster

It’s the new Hillier line that has really piqued my interest, though. Katie Hillier is one of those people that keeps cropping up when I think of my all-time favourite design houses. She was a brand consultant for the now defunct Luella label and created lines for fashion heavyweights that include Loewe and Marc Jacobs.

She also happens to be bessies with Victoria Beckham and you can see her cheeky influence trickle through VB’s new diffusion line, replete with rainclouds and flirty scalloped hems. It might sound a tad affected to talk about building a fluent design language but for all the labels I have admired from my teens to present, Hillier seems to have had a hand in them some way or the other.  Right now, I have an unhealthy obsession with her Bunny Love jewellery line and can’t wait to see what she has in store in February

Read more about the British Fashion Council’s ‘Rock Vault’ initiative here

Is there a highlight of LFW that you’re looking forward to? If so, give us a tweet to let us know @Style_ThenSome!

The eternal feminine: Valentino Spring/Summer 2012

I was such a big fan of Valentino‘s Autumn/Winter 2011 collection that the other day I was considering doing something that only die-hard fashion obsessives do: watch a live video of the Spring/Summer 2012 show in Paris. In the end, I didn’t have time, but when I got around to catching up on what I’d missed, I was not disappointed.

The hems might have gone up and down, and the pops of bright pastel throughout the show might have been thoroughly modern, but the billowy sleeves, intricate embellishment, high neck lines and elegantly nipped in waists were very late Edwardian. It reminded me of the costumes of Downton Abbey, when fashion teetered on the brink of the loose waistlines of the 1920s and it was all about masterful drapery.

The barely-there sandals made it look like the models were walking barefoot, ready to run through a field on a summer’s day with their hair in elegantly dishevelled crowns of plaits (and we know how I feel about those). The lace, the sheer, flowing fabrics – it was all so pretty and just very… well, sweet. As Lisa Armstrong put it, it was full of old school charm. What I love so much about the Valentino dresses is that they look like pieces of unselfconscious art, effortless in their understated beauty. They look like the kind of dresses you would want to pass down to your children and to their children, for each generation to tenderly unwrap from the tissue paper and wear to Gatsby-esque parties, where “men and girls [come and go] like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars,” and the band plays “yellow cocktail music” as the “lights grow brighter [and] the earth lurches away from the sun.”

Whether it’s just shy of the 1920s, or full blown Charleston-dancing, flapper style dropped waistline, there’s no doubt that the big trend for women’s silhouettes this year is a loose and yet feminine shape. These soft fabrics suggest, but never give it all away.