There are some people who have a gift of making you feel special, they take time when they speak with you and look you in the eye - it sounds so simple but it’s become so rare, so when it happens you fall under their spell and you can’t help but adore them. Joan Burstein is the face, heart and soul of Browns. She and her husband Sidney created Browns 1970 with a small boutique on the ground floor at 27 South Molton Street, the shops grew and now there are five connecting townhouses with number 23 being exclusively for men. Browns is one of London’s most important fashion destinations: not just for shoppers but for designers as well: if your collection is in Browns it’s like a stamp of approval. Joan Burstein is credited with discovering such talents as Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan and Commes des Garcons: she first spotted John Galliano at his degree show, and gave a teenager, Manolo Blahnik a job in her jeans department.

She always had pieces that are exclusive to Browns and she cultivates her relationships with designers, helping them to grow and develop.
Most of all is she’s very kind. She makes you feel at home in her shop - all her staff are like that - it feels very genuine, she knows her designers and understands her customers.

Although Browns is very well established it still feels like one of London’s best kept secrets. I think some Londoners are intimidated by the shop, they’d feel more comfortable in a big department store where you’re anonymous and nobody speaks to you - but once you get past this fear and walk through the doors of Browns it’s like you’ve come home. I think I was a bit nerves the first time I went into Browns - you know it’s special and important but none of the staff are pushy or condescending, it’s just warm and welcoming and just being in there makes you feel special.
Marcio & Mrs Burstein are in the photo.

PPQ on Conduit Street.

There are so many people in fashion that are always trying to look hip and just end up looking pretentious and then there is the group of girls who are just super cool without trying and these four girls truly are the super cool!

Model:Lianna Fowler 

Another cool girl from Pop magazine wearing a great coat, it’s her grandmothers) and I love it with the white shirt, it’s strong and sexy! Lots of fur at this party!

Alvin - a mens & womens wear designer stocked at Patrica Fields, with a model wearing his designs.

PPQ celebrated the new Nokia 8800 Arte and Sapphire phone; this is Rihanna the PR from Nokia!

Loved this girl from Vice Magazine!

Great eye make up -very rock and roll!

Super cute Jessica Bumpus & Leisa Barnett of Vogue.com

Photographers waiting outside to get pictures of the rock and roll fashionistas!

Two very cool girls: Charlotte Duck Condé Nast’s mobile editor and Phoebe Frangoul of Glamour.com

PPQ is Amy Molyneaux’s and Percy Parker’s label. You might wonder what makes this label so unusually hip, is it the girly dresses, the cool prints, the drain pipe jeans? Or is it that PPQ commissioned illustrator Hannah Bay, whose artistic career began in record cover design, to create a series of pen and ink drawings that are installed in their Flagship store? Fashion and music belong together but so often it’s not genuine and the one thing about rock and roll is it’s suppose to be genuine! It just makes sense the PPQ’s love for music and fashion is a true marriage, how many fashion houses can say they have a record label, 1-2-3-4- Records produces glam electro-house music - no wonder the music was so great at the party!
PPQ is stocked on Conduit street -their flagship store (47 Conduit Street, London W1S 2YP), in Liberty, Souvenir, asos.com, Ztampz in Hong Kong; Capital L in Sydney and over sixty stockists in Japan.

Me, Alexander and Alexia Somerville - birthday girl!

This club was on New Bond Street in London.

Designer Amechi Ihenacho, London editor of Flux Magazine


Girls having fun & being fabulous!

I love this necklace by Lara Bohinc!

I met up with designer Karen Brost this morning at her London showroom. She’s presenting her new Autumn Winter collection to buyers this week and I had a private preview! It’s 80% classic luxury and 20% rock and roll - the details are in the leather buttons, “fox fur shoulder pads”, the fabrics and signature red and purple lining. In general I find classics so understated that they goes unnoticed and are boring - this is classic with an edge - which makes it modern and with attitude! So many women have worn Karen Brost: Dita Von Teese, Cameron Diaz, Sharon Stone and Gweyneth Paltrow!

Karen’s collection will also be exhibited Paris fashion week at Vendome.

I’ve had some really great fashion assistants over the years and for some odd reason, unknown to me they are often called Chloe or some form of Kate. Anyway my assistant Chloe is so hard working. She’s been running all over central London this week picking up and returning items. She has sore fingers from sewing and she’s been steaming and ironing all day long! A talented fashion assistant is a rare breed. You always hear people say that fashion is so competitive and in many ways that’s true -but I think the rules are simple  - you’re either 110% committed or you’re not - and most people aren’t.

Most people know Gemma from playing Lisa Hunter in Hollyoaks for five years and most recently from ‘I’m A Celebrity, get me out of here’. Gemma looks friendly and she is, she’s also quite funny and super tall, I feel like a midget beside her!

Last night The Feeling played at the Porchester Hall. It’s beautiful location: it has an old world opulence of days gone by, with dark red velvet curtains, lots of English oak and walnut, and ten huge crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling. It’s quite an impressive building and it’s the type of place one would expect The Feeling to play! Of course Dan look magnificent in his white ruffle shirt - it suited the place perfectly!

The images that I took are during sound check and after the show. During the show I’m too busy enjoying the music and dancing around then to take picture, so if you’d like to see more images check out Front Rows, Pits and Pavements’!

Some days are less exciting then others, and most people don’t realize how much running around a stylist does. I have three shoots this week so there has been lots of prep work to do. Today was a day full of errands and visiting PRs. I like visiting PRs and seeing all the clothes and most of all I like having a coffee & a good chat!

The photographs are from a London PR that represents over 30 brand from Triumph motor bikes to Aldo shoes!

I went to visit Jamie from Muks and chatted about her upcoming collection as she has lots of great sexy boots for next winter! Kate Moss was one of our her first customers since then, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Beyonce Knowles also wear Muks!

Most importantly, Jamie has the most handsome and statuesque dog that I have ever met. He’s called Jasper and I want to use him in a photo shoot!

One of the wonderful perks of my job is going to lovely places for dinner and last night we had dinner at Gordon Ramsey’s at Claridge’s! The dinner was to celebrate a new range of shoes by Geox. The shoes have a unique cooling system, yes that sounds a bit odd but it’s meant to help your feet from sweating - which is a good thing - smelly feet and bad body odor is such a turn off…Anyway my images for some reason came our quite dark but as you can see it all felt quite grand. The two girls in the photos are Natasha Cowen (she’s Hilary Alexander’s Fashion Assistant) from the Telegraph and Sharon Ridoynauth is from Style at The Sunday Times.

The shoes are quite nice and moderately priced. I love the first pair because I have loads of carrier bags in the same pattern!

I love dresses and wearing a dress is my fashion preference. I’m also partial to shorts but that’s another story. Anyway dresses are simple and easy, and most women look good in a dress. We’re going to be seeing lots of floral for spring - it’s inevitable and always a great trend. Floral might not be revolutionary but no one said it has to be, it’s just that spring and flowers go together; the silhouette keeps changing so now the floral dresses are shorter, flirty and sexy!

The dress on the right is from D&G 08 and the other dress is from Rare - who sell in TopShop. I’m not really a floral girl although I like florals and I love flowers. When I was very little my mum made me lots of floral dresses, and now maybe I’d wear a floral dress on a trip to Barcelona or Cape Town. In London I’m more likely to wear and want something from Aganovich or Bora Aksu, but you never know: on a hot summer night a sexy, easy, floral dress might be the perfect choice!

Aganovich

Bora Aksu

An easy summer dress from Allegra Hicks.

I really enjoyed watching Wim Wenders’ film Notebook On Cities And Clothes (1989): the story follows Yohji Yamamoto in Paris and Tokyo as he prepares for his Paris fashion show. The second image is a picture that I took of the film on my television screen. It’s a shot of Yohji Yamamoto editing all his clothes for his fashion show. I loved how he lays all the clothes out to see how they look together; it just seems like such a better method then using a rail!

Liberty of London: Designs of Our Times

Anna Buruma is the archivist at Liberty of London and she spoke at the V&A’s Friday evening talk. (You can see her in the 3rd image, she’s wearing a black dress with a red necklace). I wanted to go to this lecture because Liberty has been such an important part of London’s fashion history for more then a century and I also love some of their handbags!

Sir Arthur Lasenby Liberty opened his first shop with three employees on Regent Street in 1875, where he sold ornaments, fabrics, antiques and artifacts from Japan and the Far East. Liberty quickly expanded to include fashionable clothing and furniture as well as decorative items such as vases, clocks, jewellery, textiles, and wallpapers. In 1877-78 the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) purchased antique embroideries and rugs from Liberty.

Liberty catered for an eclectic mixture of popular styles while developing his own distinct style. Although many designers and artisans worked for Liberty, the store’s policy of maintaining the anonymity of its designers allowed the shop to create the Liberty Style. In 1890 Liberty opened a shop in Paris, and the shop became synonymous with Art Nouveau, so much so that in Italy the new style became known as Stile Liberty!

In 1884, Liberty asked architect-designer Edward William Godwin to set up the “Artistic Costume Studio” to showcase Liberty designs and fabrics. They made dresses for its elite clientele, including Isadora Duncan and Mrs. Andrew Carnegie. Proust bought his ties there, and Gilbert and Sullivan dressed their casts in his fabrics. The demand Liberty created for his fabrics was greater than the resources of his suppliers and he decided to import ready woven fabric and dye and print them in the UK. Liberty relied on the experts of two printing companies: Thomas Wardle of Leek, in Staffordshire and Edmund Littler of Merton Abbey in Surrey. By the 1890s Merton Abbey was sending its entire production to Liberty and in 1904 Liberty purchased the company.

Liberty had become famous for its prints and textiles and by the 20th century Liberty fabrics were used by great designers like Paul Poiret, Yves Saint Laurent, Cacharel and Jean Muir.

It’s important to understand how relevant and popular these prints still are today. Just take a look at Luella using Liberty prints for her Spring 2008 collection!

Sir Arthur Lasenby Liberty - timeline:

Liberty of London, of course, continued on well after the death of Sir Arthur Lasenby Liberty, expanding it’s operations even further:

I had a great day shopping with Adele Silva. We were in Manchester for a photo call and managed to squeeze in a short but productive shopping trip at The Trafford Centre! I even got some great gloves from Reiss on sale!
Adele is best known for playing the character Kelly Windsor in Emmerdale. People know lots about Kelly’s dress style but what most people don’t know is that Adele’s got great taste in clothes and has a weakness for Balenciaga dresses!

I have always loved colourful shoes and tights. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s because I have small feet (size 37) and ok legs. Lately I’ve been very happy that I can buy colourful tights anywhere. I’ve always had to go to a stall at either Camden or Portobello market to find bright crazy colours & patterned tights from Jonathan Aston or Pamela Mann. Also, when ever I go to another country I’m always looking for great hosiery. I got some great socks in Amsterdam, and I love Paris for hosiery. For the past few seasons hosiery has become an essential part of mainstream fashion so it’s much easier to find. In London I like to go to Tabio or American Apparel and sometimes I’ll go to the hosiery department at John Lewis. I have so many kinds of socks; stockings, tights, short socks, 80’s disco thigh highs from Portobello market. The only socks that I’m not too keen on are toe socks; I find them so uncomfortable and hate how they look!

Fashion is everywhere and so many little girls are having fun being designers & stylists. There is a new fashion game by Mattel called Barbie iDesign; it’s an online fashion design game for girls with cool outfits and a runway show. It still reminds me a bit of paper dolls but a far more updated version that I would have loved as a girl. I love the packaging; it comes with a CD-ROM, a USB-connected scanner, and a selection fashion cards that can be “swiped” to transfer the cards’ outfits and accessories onto the computer.

Check out super cool blogger, Laura Moncur at Gadget Pages, she attended the 2008 International CES in Las Vegas and wrote the best blog about Barbie Girls and Barbie iDesign!

So many people ask me why I moved to London. It’s a normal question but really it seems silly: I can’t imagine where else I’d like to be, although there are moments when I’d love to be in NYC. Right now, today, I can’t imagine being anywhere else but in London - I love London fashion! When I need to be inspired or just go somewhere that feels like home I go and visit Mei Hui in her shop Respiro. She’s just recently moved around the corner to 33 Marshall Street, London W1F 7EX. It’s a lovely new shop and I want everything in it!

If you’re looking for a pre-loved authentic Chanel 2.55 bag French Touch is the place to find one. Samantha Thayi is the owner and she’s collected so many delightful little bags, scarves and accessories!

French Touch
11 Shelton Street
Covent Garden
London WC2H 9JN

I think the most recent fashion design that’s so over before it’s even begun is Manolo Blahnik’s slingback shoes – for men! In all truth I think they’re great and would love to use them in a shoot. I just can’t see them catching on for the masses - but do we really care about the masses? These shoes are for the true fashionisto. I’m sure I’m going to see them on some handsome men in London this summer.

There are several other shoes in the collection that I think are fabulous and great for most men. A word of advice though, please get a pedicure. (BLOWW does a pedicure especially for men). It’s so disgusting to be in the tube and see so many awful looking feet and overgrown toe nails. No matter how stylish you look if you’ve neglected a basic grooming routine you can never look good!
The collection is available in London in February 2008.

Manolo Blahnik
49-51 Old Church Street
Chelsea, London, SW3 5BS
Tel: 020 7352 8622

It’s raining out and nobody’s shopping so it’s a perfect time to check out the new accessories at Topshop and dream of summer. I love these big summer floppy big hats and these 80’s clutch bags.

This is a Chanel 2.55 inspired bag by Marc B and it’s only £35!