Street Style...KERPOW!

A little KERPOW tee-shirt action on CJ from the Philippines:

Oh yes, and then there would be the Louis Vuitton Stephen Sprouse Graffiti Neverfull GM carried by CJ and the Speedy from my London Fashion Week archives (below):

I love the little skull details on this guy's trousers and bow tie above. You can't really tell from this photo, but CJ was carrying a skull print scarf in his Vuitton bag!

Street Style....Checks and Balances in the London Sun

Sherilyn (from Brisbane in Queensland, Australia- yay!)

Gary (below):

Street Style....Barbara Hulanicki

This is one of my favourite photos thus far on my photographic journey. I was SO excited to meet the fabulous Barbara Hulanicki, the legendary founder of fashion label, Biba. For those of you who aren't fashion aware, Biba was THE most iconic, hip label in London in the 1960's and 1970's. Barbara has just designed an exclusive capsule collection for Topshop (Barbara Hulanicki for Topshop will be available in-store and on-line from 28 April) which has received pre-launch rave reviews from the fashion press. Fittingly, just as I was asking Barbara if she would mind if I took her photograph, a hip young girl sauntered past wearing one of the t-shirts Barbara designed for Topshop! She apparently picked it up at the preview party at Miller's Academy of Arts and Sciences the other night. I think Barbara was a little bit pleased at seeing one of her pieces on the streets already....thinking back, I should have got a photo of the girl with Barbara as well - damn!

Barbara now lives in Miami and works as an interior and exterior designer (she has worked with Chris Blackwell on many of his hotels in Miami and the Bahamas, as well as on private commissions) in addition to designing a range of bags for Coccinelle, a range of wallpaper for Habitat and Graham&Brown, and a small jewellery collection with the V&A. Phew- I am exhausted just typing all that :)

Fabulous!

Street Style...Hey, Who's That Girl?

It's Emily!

For me, taking someone's photograph is immensely pleasurable but what makes it even more so is when someone I've photographed before remembers me or stops to have a little chat on the street, even if they are super busy. Despite being 'street photography' and maybe having a minute or so to get a couple of shots, there is still, for me, a very personal element to what I do.

And so it was with the beautiful Emily, who works for Vanity Fair magazine, and who I've now photographed twice. I love the way Emily dresses - timeless classics with an edge. And all topped off with her amazing mane of strawberry blonde hair.

Street Style: Leather Jackets...with leopard print, stars and stripes and florals

Okay, so I know that Verner isn't exactly wearing leopard print but he was sitting on it so he was kind of like wearing it. Kind of :)

However model, Verner, was definitely wearing a J.Lindeberg leather jacket, some very cool new Karl Lagerfeld shades, Armani jeans and Onitsuka Tiger trainers.

And gorgeous model Amber was wearing a Blauer leather jacket with a little Topshop floral sundress:

Check out Amber's boots - the right one she customised with an American Apparel chain:

Street Style....Bow Ties

There was a rather good article in The Times, Luxx magazine, on the weekend about Lanvin's head menswear designer, Lucas Ossendrijver. I liked what Lucas had to say about men's fashion right now "For men, dressing has a lot to do with codes and uniforms," explains Ossendrijver. "But it's interesting to think about why we wear what we do at certain times or occasions, and then to erase the boundaries a little bit, without being too extreme. I am concerned with evolution more than revolution, with slowly altering some of these codes. But I do think men are changing, and they are more open to new things in fashion.....Certainly, people want to have clothes that work, that are desirable but are wearable," says the designer, "but they still have something new to them, not so much on the outside but on the inside. We don't try to be fashionable. We try to touch people by making clothes that are special and have a soul."

The combination of Lucas Ossendrijver and Alber Elbaz (as Lanvin's Artistic Director) is clearly a winning one.

I spotted a couple of bow ties (an Alber Elbaz/Lanvin trademark) on the streets this week:

Benjamin (above), an actor, was wearing all 1960's vintage:



This guy (he is a fashion (textile) design student at Central Saint Martins) was wearing an oversized Lanvin bow tie and the cutest little Miu Miu ladybird brooch:

From the archives (London Fashion Week):

p.s. Anyone manage to see the Matthew Williamson for H&M collection tonight? I walked past the HUGE line-up for the preview at the Regents Street store at around 6:15pm. I suspect the collection is going to be ridiculously popular if the queue was anything to go by. Let me know if you managed to snag any pieces....or even a ride home in one of the Matthew Williamson decorated cabs which were waiting around the back :)

Street Style....Christopher Kane's Denim Ruffles

A little bit 80's in the noughties.

I am aching to capture someone wearing the "Gorilla" print dress from Christopher Kane's Spring/Summer 09 collection.

Street Style...Men Behaving Stylishly (Round 2)

Um, I could talk to you about the fabulous clothes these guys were wearing (Dolce&Gabbana, above; Miu Miu (I think), middle; Gieves&Hawkes, bottom). I could also tell you how lovely they each were when I asked if I could take their photograph for this blog. But no, I am just going to be completely unprofessional and tell y'all that DAMN SKIPPY, these guys were HOT! Like so hot me and my camera almost had a nervous meltdown right there on the pavement ;-)

And do y'all note what they have in common? Yep, that's right - they've all got a little bare chest action going on. As I was saying last week, the sun comes out and you start seeing a teeny bit more skin on show: for the girls it might be a wee bit of sunblessed leg or arm, and for the guys? It's all about the plunging neckline.

In Sydney, the plunging neckline for guys is pretty much de rigueur for long summer days (my friend Dale had a slinky Ksubi t-shirt that plunged almost to his belly button!) but I haven't seen it as much on the streets of London. Let us hope that this is one trend which sticks around for the (hopefully) long, hot summer ahead.

Embarrassingly, I may have asked this guy if he was a model.....Um, helllllooooo, of course he is a model - just look at him! Some days I wish the bitumen would just swallow me up.

I love the way this guy has taken a really simple shirt and completely s*xed it up by unbuttoning those 3 extra buttons (and note his little tank or tee underneath?):

This beautiful trench is from Gieves&Hawkes. He has teamed it with a little American Apparel tee: Savile Row with a little High Street. We like :)

Street Style...Spring Dressing: Green

Today was the first day of Alternative Fashion Week at Spitalfields. Despite the fact that I am coughing and sniffling in a rather unbecoming manner and lugging around what feels like half a chemist shop of flu medications (have you tried cough mixture lately? Urrgh. It tastes NOTHING like the sweet lolly water I was spoonfed as a child), I went along and got a few shots.

These are not those shots :) Maybe I will post them later in the week.

No, these shots are of two girls I spied wearing some very pretty Spring outfits, worked back with black tights, while I was wandering around Shoreditch and Liverpool Street.

Street Style....Ochre Yellow Tights

You know when you first meet someone and within a minute of talking to them just know that they are a lovely person and you could be friends? Well, Isabelle O'Carroll is one of those people. Instantly likable, she is also a walking, talking encyclopedia of all that is hip and happening in the fashion world as editor of Catwalk Queen , an online fashion and style blog published by Shiny Media. If you are keen to find out the latest insider fashion news and gossip, then pop Catwalk Queen into your Favourites folder. It is one of those blogs where you just go on for a sneaky quick peek and end up whiling away half the morning clicking through the archives. After chatting to Isabelle, I suspect that she has a magazine and blog addiction as hideous as mine - oh um, yeah, but she gets paid for hers!

Oh yes, and Isabelle has a rather fabulous pair of legs which she had encased in these ochre yellow tights and little snub-nosed booties (which kind of remind me of traditional Dutch clogs at the front?). I had to scurry to catch up with Isabelle to ask if she would mind if I took her photo....luckily she is a stylestalker herself and regularly takes photos for Catwalk Queen's "Love what you're wearing" section so she didn't think I was a complete weirdo! We like that :)

Street Style....Team Marc Jacobs on the Streets of London

The Marc Jacobs Spring 2009 collection (shown in NY on Sept 8 last year) was described by Nicole Phelps at Style.com as thus:

"Mary Poppins goes to Dubai. The King and I meets The Postman Always Rings Twice. Yves Saint Laurent's Ballets Russes collection redux. There are as many meanings to derive from a Marc Jacobs collection as there are crashers at his shows. But listen to the litany that Jacobs himself provided after all 53 of his Spring looks—each one more colorful, more multilayered, and more zanily accessorized than the last—had circled his Stefan Beckman-designed Hall of Mirrors runway: 'America, womanly, Broadway, Perry Ellis, country, naïveté…'

...This season, nothing escaped Jacobs' roving eye or his melting-pot mentality. And in his hands even a thing like a farm-girl apron gets tweaked and reinterpreted until, impossibly, it becomes the very definition of contemporary chic. "It's about the joy of dressing up," he finally said backstage. And how."

One of the things (there are many!) I adore so much about street style/fashion blogs is that you get to see "real" people (not that stunning, genetically blessed models on a catwalk aren't "real" people, of course, but you understand what I am getting at) wearing clothes that were featured on the runway or at least interpretations of the clothes. How people style themselves and take inspiration and/or individual pieces from the catwalk and make them their own is a source of endless fascination for me.

I photographed Sabrina, Marco and, um, did a bad and didn't get the other girl's name - sorry! (above) before the Marc by Marc Jacobs event at Liberty the other night. They were all wearing pieces from Marc's Spring/Summer '09 collection (each works for the brand) and looked utterly fabulous. Importantly, they didn't look like they had just stepped off the runway - they had taken key pieces from the collection and worked them back to suit their own personal style.

Love the brocade of this dress cinched tightly at the waist with the wrapped fabric belt....oh, yes, and the Robert Jennifer quilted bag :)


And this jacket on Sabrina? Wow! The jacket (I kind of think it looks a bit American marching band inspired) was incredible. When I got close-up (I really wanted to touch it but I think I would have been overstepping the mark just a wee bit!) the little details - check the stars on the elbows, the gold zip at the front, the contrasting fabric on the pockets, the beautiful metallic tweed fabric - were fascinating. This is the kind of jacket that a little girl would love: either in her dressing up box for now (albeit a very expensive dressing up box piece!) or wrapped up in layers of tissue paper and put away until she is old enough to wear it "properly".

You can't really tell from the photo, but Sabrina had little navy leg-warmers over her pants:

Marco:

Street Style....Spring Florals

Yesterday in London: the sun was shining, the temp hovered in the early twenties, the birds were tweeting, the flowers blooming, my head was throbbing, my eyes streaming and my nose, running. Hmmmph, the dreaded summer flu - it kind of ruins the pretty picture I was conjuring up, huh?

But Anouk (I think it might have been the gorgeous Dutch model Anouk Hagemeijer?) cheered me up with the fab floral handbag she had hooked over her arm yesterday. Florals are BIG this Spring/Summer and it is nice to see some flower power filtering onto the streets.

Anouk's last purchase? The leather leggings she is wearing in the photographs.
And on her fashion radar? A pretty summer dress!

And the lovely Gemma gliding along in her floaty, floral maxi dress?

Her last purchase was a practical one: a pair of Converse

On her wishlist? A not so practical pair of purple sparkly heels from Irregular Choice :)

Tomorrow: Photos of the London Marc Jacobs team

Saturday: The wonderful Isabelle from Catwalk Queen

Sunday: Superhero Day - a blue cape and a pair of very Superwoman shoes :)

Street Style......Rock Chic

I am writing this post slightly inebriated. I may have just got home from the Marc Jacobs event at Liberty store and I may have just drunk an indeterminate number of delicious vodka and chambord cocktails before stumbling my way home on the Tube :) This is despite the fact I have the flu AGAIN (I am like a receptor for every germ buzzing about London at the moment) and probably shouldn't be combining cold&flu tablets with alcohol. But what's a girl to do when faced with tall glasses of gorgeous pale pinky-mauve raspberry concoctions, racks of glorious Marc Jacobs summer clothes and handbags? Drink up of course! Um, and tuck that credit card firmly away :)

This is Luke from the band, King Cannons. He IS rock 'n' roll.

Check out the band on MySpace here.

And the girls? A little bit rock chic don't you think?

Mmmmm after all those cocktails I'm feeling a bit rock 'n' roll myself.... Or maybe that's just the Sudafed kicking in :)