You Wore What?

Fast Fashion and the future

 

In 2011, fashion has proved to be faster than at any time in history prior to now - technology has seen to it that all forms of design, production and distribution are smoother and more efficient than before.

Fast Fashion means that events like the recent Royal Wedding become as much a fashion spectacle as anything else - with bloggers and fashion sites picking up on the  style minutiae of the event - even the bride's sister's shoes caught the attention of many.

How fast can fashion get though? Well, don't expect it to slow down any time soon. In the future fashion could even be real-time - or close to it - when 3-d printing comes of age. 3d printing is an amazing process where products are built up layer by layer in (you guessed it) 3 dimensions - amazing stuff. I don't think it's been used for clothes yet, but it's likely that one day it will be.

In the meantime - enjoy the speed of fashion, since it's something that was unavailable to previous generations, who had to wait months for on trend affordable gear to hit the shops.

 

 

Working in Fashion Retail: A Speedy Guide

Landing a job in fashion retail isn’t always straightforward – the rags trade can seem rather hostile in movies and the scramble to find an outfit for the interview is stressful. But luckily UK retailer Peacocks are on your side to help make applying for a job easier and friendlier with The Sun’s Sunemployment recruitment drive.

The company are joining the UK-wide campaign to help find prospective employees, ready to launch a career in Peacocks, whose exciting celebrity fashion collaborations have been catching our eye of late. Vintage inspired lace and floral tea dresses designed by Pearl Lowe anyone?

Recruitment drives are a great way to get your foot in the door, so to help anyone thinking of approaching Peacocks at Sunemployment or applying for any other fashion retail jobs, here is our speedy guide to the interview:

Talk About Your Interests: Your own knowledge of fashion can help sell the latest trends which stores like Peacocks sell, so show you have a varied knowledge of designer and celebrity trends by discussing them at interview if appropriate.

Smile: Remember when people are shopping for fashion items they need to feel at ease, so show the interviewee you are able to help do this by smiling and being friendly.

Use Your Experiences: Demonstrate that you can learn or implement the skills needed to deliver excellent customer service, operate the tills, merchandise and effectively contribute to the business by drawing on what you know and applying it to the job.

Be Calm: Despite popular belief, most of people working in the fashion industry are lovely. Generally, stores are happy to meet potential new staff - Peacocks are asking people to come forward, so don’t worry about anyone being unfriendly.

Royals 2011 -

Womens dresses - mini dress or maxi dress?

You won't need to be a trendspotter to have picked up on the main fashion theme of SS11 - it's subtle, it's stylish and it's 70s.

Now, whereas it was once thought that the terms 'style' and '70s' cancelled each other out in oxymoronic irony, we have seen the light. The 70s are back, but without the daft shoes.

Fashion in the mid- to late 60s was all about chic jetset and clean lines, and the skirts and dresses were of the mini variety. When the 70s rolled along in its groovy VW Van of earthy good vibes, the styles relaxed and the hemlines fell. Kind of what we see today with the maxi dresses on sale in the shops right now.

What I'd like to know though is where are the Texan bars, Spangles, Bartlett's tinned pears, and New York based cop shows on prime time terrestrial? Ah, well, you can't have everything.

Fashion

The title You Wore What? could hardly be better applied than to David Bowie. These days a dapper gent in his 60s, Bowie's earlier professional life was responsible for some of the most You Wore What? moments in pop. Well, this side of Sigue Sigue Sputnik anyway.

Crunch clothes and shoes

Well, it looks like the credit crunch has been replaced by the cuts explosion - the headlines these past few weeks have been more filled with cuts than a Saturday afternoon barber's shop.

The best way to navigate through tough financial times is to - at the risk of sounding obvious - spend as little as possible. While that might sound a but obvious, it's actually quite tricky to spend as little as possible. Like, if you spend too little you might buy into false economy goods and end up spending more in the long run. Like, I once bought a really awful bottle of diluting orange - tasted like some kind of industrial wash mixed with rust. Nice! Poured it doen the sink. 

So while we're after style at a budget price, we're also after quality - cheap shoes that make the grade on build for the price. 

Summer clothes - a YWW? Special!

 

Something about the UK in summer means that there are those who leave any idea of style or sensible dressing at home. At the first sign of sunlight no matter how watery weak, the mad shorts and t shirts start to appear. However, this is a cultural thing rather than a weather thing. take a walk round any Spanish city in high summer and the local still dress smart. In fact it would be seen as a touch (ahem) egregious to be going round city streets in beach wear.

So the trick for the truly stylish then is to avoid lloking like you've just spent the morning on Bondai sands, and more like a Tubbs/ Crockett type 2010s analogue.

Cottons shoes, linen suit, open neck shirt = sorted.

For women this year floral prints are in, so a floral dress has the fresh summer look but is still smart.

 

 

 

 

Men's clothing is no need to be boring

Check out this cool eagle print t-shirt

It's normal to wear a lot of drab stuff if you're a bloke but you need to wear a shirt with an eagle or a dragon on it now and again. Mens clothes don't need to be boring - there just needs to be a break from business suits and monochrome tones every now and then.

Working Chic - Clothes For The Working Week

 

January. Month of low expenditure after December for most. Back to work with a spring in your step, and all is good. But you want some new gear for the new year, so how to get an entire week's work clothes without too much pressure on the debit card?

Step forward Working Chic, an ingenious new collection from Peacocks. The idea is simple - a week's worth of work clothes for less than £100. The collection even includes skinny jeans for dress down Fridays.

So whether you just want to refresh your look, or you're going after a new job, Working Chic offers you the chance of looking your best without too much of an outlay.

 

Star Wars fashion

 

A long time ago, on a blog far, far away, someone featured Hong Kong based illustrator John Woo's Star Wars fashion stuff. 

I only just found out about it, so if you've not seen these either, take a look - it's well worth it.

I dunno about the way the guy has interpreted the characters - Darth Vader in the style of New England preppy? I'd have had Darth wearing stuff a bit more cool than that, maybe some gear by Paul Smith or Hugo Boss?

Best of the bunch is Jango Fett wearing Comme des Garçons - knitwear space cardigan vibe LOL.

There is of course often quite a lot of influence on fashion that comes from films, but rarely is it this direct. Which leads me to think - what other films could do with having their characters updated in modern designer gear?

Blade Runner is definitely one that could do with this treatment, also Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker is a film badly in need of a style update. The main character's mad balding two tone hair is a start, but the characters pretty much look like they got their duds from a jumble sale.