JITROIS CAMPAIGN AUTUMN/WINTER 2012

The Jitrois Autumn/Winter campaign that we shot at Aynhoe Park with Rankin has been released. My unbiased opinion is that it is stunning. I had a lot of fun along with Rankin's producers coming up with the story (see below), and to spend the day on set in such an incredible location was fascinating, if not a little distracting. I must have snapped hundreds of photos of taxidermy animals in hats & stuffed pythons. Nadine Ponce is the face that inspired my narrative - she has such a powerful, unique look and I know she will go far.

For Autumn/Winter 2012-2013, long-time collaborator Rankin turns his lens upon four mischievous heroes at sophisticated play... 

This game of seduction, an idea at the heart of the D.N.A. of Jitrois, is played out by a selection of characters evoking a 1920s country house mystery tale of the like of Agatha Christie: Masha Voronina, a listless Socialite; Chris Doe, a manipulative Narcissus; Tuuli Shipster, a Charming Blonde feigning innocence but playing Judas. The enigmatic Artist, Nadine Ponce, cuts an insouciant and androgynous figure, bringing a wave of modernity and sparking a dark, romantic revolution. With the arrival of The Artist comes a new, enlightened mood, more Bloomsbury Group than 'Bright Young Things'. Standing against bourgeois rituals and for shared ideas and shared love, the revolution shakes up the house of carefully laid-out cards, and some are revealed to be as intrinsically still and cold as the statues around them.
Our characters move through a labyrinthine mansion, a formidable character in itself played excellently by Aynhoe Park. Filled with objects and curios, this esoteric setting harks back to the age of 'Le Grand Tour' and represents the conservative moral and artistic codes of the last two millennia. In juxtaposition, dramatic tableaux of lovers are cast in the Orangerie.

Rich tones of ruby noir and midnight purple create a sumptuous, jewel-like colour palette, while smocked leather, crochet detailing and golden embroideries evoke a textural tapestry. Both complement the eccentric and diverse fabric of this incredible environ. Around the piano, hyper-feminine stretch leather evening gowns are juxtaposed against the androgynous tailoring favoured by The Artist. The latter, imbibed with a devastating power of seduction, dominates any love triangle. In Jitrois, three is a beautiful crowd. In Jitrois, three is a beautiful crowd.

SONAR

Here comes the sun, I think. Catching evening rays on my balcony in Paris 11ème, wearing Etnia Barcelona's Sonar Limited Edition sunglasses and a €1 dress, and dreaming of my September trip to Morocco. Photo by Matthew Thomas.

A MONTHLY COCKTAIL

A COCKTAIL OF THINGS WHICH HAVE BEEN ON MY MIND THIS WEEK MONTH.

Springtime postcards from Paris (1.) My friend Adam climbed to the top of the Pompidou centre one evening to take this snap. I said it looked like the Eiffel Tower was laying a golden egg. (2.) 'Maddalena' by Anouk Aimée in La Dolce Vita. Those eyes! Those dresses! Fellini films are sending my monthly bills for eyeliner (L'Oreal's precision pen, to be precise) spiralling. I have now also resolved to live out the rest of my life the next few weeks entirely in Fellini black and white, captured on my Nikon FM2 (3.) , my 22nd birthday present from my boyfriend. So I made the most of exhibiting myself in my natural state, a.k.a. colour shock, when heading to the first Vogue Festival last month in London. (4.) Russ McClintock snapped me rushing into the venue (fashioniably late, of course) but doing pretty well to trot in my comfy new Jeffrey Campbell 'Fiona' boots courtesy of Vice magazine. In case you were wondering, yes I have invested in fake tan since this picture was taken. The maximalist I am, I felt so at home in the realm of James Perkins - the formidable Aynhoe Park (5.) in Northamptonshire, where I was on location shooting the Jitrois Autumn/Winter campaign with Rankin. Amongst statues, model aeroplanes, modern art and antiques, all the taxidermy animals wore jovial hats.(6.) Fabulous American service : On a recent work trip to New York I was honoured to stay in the glorious Mercer hotel. And yes, the rumours are true - they really do do the best cheeseburgers on the whole of the city. Meanwhile on the other side of the pond, the summer of bindi love has been kicking off (7.) mainly on the dancefloor in Le Baron. I just stocked up at one of my favourite jazzy bindi sites here. Also at Le Baron, Yvan Rodic made me this DIY tulip corsage for my Chanel bag (8.) last time I bumped into him. I'm sad it couldn't have been a permanent addition. Being the bad person I am, I bought myself these Valentino shoes (9.) as a early-birthday-pay-rise-celebration present to myself. They are the most expensive things I have ever bought, but I am proud to support the luxury European fashion industry, which is now not just my passion but my livelihood. I also think my favourite photographer Helmut Newton would approve of their studded stiletto qualities. Naturally I was thrilled that his first major retrospective since his death was to be hosted at the Grand Palais in Paris. One of my favourite of his photographs is his portrait of Karl Lagerfeld (10.) Another major exhibition of 2012 is of course Yayoi Kusama's lifetime retrospective at the Tate Modern (11.). Much as I enjoyed the exhibition, if there is one thing I was a little disappointed in it was the curation. For an artist whose whole creative aesthetic is based on mania, I felt that this could have been better expressed through the layout of the rooms of her work - it was rather clinical. I did enjoy the gift shop however, spending £28 on postcards - possibly a new record. Who's the manic one now?

SEPTIME

"
I don't like white paper backgrounds. A woman does not live in front of white paper. She lives on the street, in a motor car, in a hotel room." So said Helmut Newton. The same man also declared that he perferred always to photograph what he knew best, rarely straying more than 2km from his home, or if on location, his hotel, for a photoshoot. I have admired this restaurant (above), Septime, for nine months. I  see it from my balcony, I walk past it every day - have admired its teal shuttered facade, the handprinted daily menus on the window. It's expensive, hence why I have only seen the outside. But then one day last weekend, I saw it differently. It must have been the 'graffiti' - only in Paris. 

Photo by Matthew Thomas. I wore Topshop kimono, vintage shirtdress, Jitrois leggings, Valentino shoes & Aspinall purse.

SWATCH FROM THE STREETS - THE HEART OF SOHO

Swatch From The Streets is a global 'city-off' between some of the world's coolest locations. Naturally, I was intrigued to find out which was chosen for London, in collaboration with i-D magazine. This is England actress Vicky McClure is representing, and she chose Old Compton Street in SoHo. I wholeheartedly agree. 

Like Vicky, I feel that this postage stamp piece of London has always had such vitality. Squashed in between the tourist-traps of Theatreland and Oxford Street, it's a rollicking, neon-strip lit, 24hour-license-corner-shop kind of a place by night.  And by day, you can still catch the old guard (Brit Art, Brit Pop, Blackadder actors...) scurrying between Black's and The Groucho. It has become gentrified since the 70s, but's it's never become dull. When I was an intern at Esquire, and later at Vogue, SoHo was my after-work stomping ground. A friend of mine at the Groucho once took me on a 21-stop pub and club crawl on a Tuesday night starting at Paramount on top of the Centre Point building ( it has since opened it's doors to non-members) and ending in an Addison Lee car somewhere near Bow Church.

Vicky has cheated a little bit and she's also managed to wangle her hometown of Nottingham into the clip. I can't say I've been, but I'll take her word for it...

PHOTOGRAPHED BY MICHAEL STEPHENS

I AM VERY FORTUNATE TO BE ABLE TO CALL MICHAEL A GREAT FRIEND OF MINE. NOT ONLY DOES HE HAVE THE MOST INCREDIBLE NATURAL EYE, BUT HE HAS THE UNCANNY ABILITY TO MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING. WHEN I WAS FEELING ROTTEN IN FEBRUARY, HE WAS THE ONLY ONE I WOULD ALLOW TO TAKE PICTURES OF ME AT FASHION WEEK. IF HE HAD HAD HIS WAY, I MIGHT HAVE GONE OFF TO LE BARON IN JUST THE LEOTARD...BUT WE'LL SAVE THAT LOOK FOR ANOTHER DAY. WHEN MICHAEL ISN'T BEHIND HIS PENTAX ANALOGUE CAMERA, YOU'LL FIND HIME SCRIBBLING PIECES FOR i-D MAGAZINE. 

EDIE SEDGWICK PRINT DRESS BY LISA PERRY. ROBE VINTAGE. FUR CUFFS FROM ASOS. BOOTS TOPSHOP.

THE JITROIS 'ROY' DRESSES

It was, and is still, a huge honour that I had my name dedicated to not one but FIVE of the pieces from the Jitrois Spring/Summer 2012 collection. The four ROY dresses and the IMOGEN green suede skirt have done pretty well in the press too, suggesting that a little of the attention-seeking nature of their namesake rubbed off on them. The 'Imogen' skirt was hastily conceived when I walked into the final fitting with Jean Claude Jitrois and the Creative Director the day before our presentation. I was wearing my €1 yellow pleated skirt from Freep'star and it was literally grabbed off me and taken to the atelier to be 'Jitrois'd' up. The green suede looks absolutely sensational. If I say how much it costs your eyes will pop out of your head and into your Earl Grey, so I'll keep mum. 

Above: Jitrois ROY V dress in black in Vogue Germany's March issue; Below model Sarah Marshall wears the dress at the Prix Mont Blanc awards in Berlin, pictured with Teri Hatcher; The dress in the SS12 lookbook.

Above: ROY BRODERIE dress in LOVE magazine's March issue. Below: On Arizona Muse in January's Vogue Paris; and in the SS12 lookbook

Above: Imogen suede skirt in L'Officiel March, below in the SS11 lookbook. Below right: The shortsleeved ROY crochet dress in the SS12 lookbook, also available in black.

Below: Jean Claude Jitrois poses with a model wearing the Imogen skirt for Jewel magazine.

A MAXIMALIST AT HOME

James Long womenswear 12-13 at the London Showrooms in Paris 

Call it what you will : the Downton effect, Diamond Jubilee influences or simply a post-recession neo romance explosion, but the current fashion mood leaves no hiding place for minimalists. When I went to visit the London Showrooms in Paris last weekend to 'meet' the James Long and Mary Katrantzou A/W 12-13 collections, I went around blessing each handcrafted piece as if at an altar. 'My time has come' I almost whispered aloud, 'this is my time'. A self-diagnosed maximalist, the more extravagant the dress, the better. The opulence in the beadwork, embroideries and textures cast in these rich colours really hark back to a time when clothing was called 'costume', and for good reason.

I'm trying very hard to think of a season in my living fashion memory when things came close to being even nearly as opulent, and I'm failing. We're all familiar with the royal portraits of duchesses, French, English, Spanish... simply dripping in finery. If you were fortunate enough to be born the right side of the palace gates form the 15th-19th centuries, when you got dressed, you got dressed. You had to outshine your own furnishings for a start. Coasting through the Katrantzou, Long, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Miu Miu collections from this new season is almost like revisiting those royal portraits again,-complete with the velvets, brooches and gold buttons- just with shorter skirts and free of the persecuted corset.

Clockwise from left: Miu Miu, Prada and Louis Vuitton. Photos by Morgan O'Donovan for Dazed Digital.

When I visited the Chateau of Fontainbleau this weekend, I immediately caught snatches of A/W Prada in the furnishings. The Chateau is about 40 minutes Southwest from Paris, and was the inspiration for the Chateau of Versailles. I liked the mélange of architectural styles, which you don't see at Versailles because it was all built in one go. The Kings of Fontainebleau however, commissioned their own extensions in the style of the day from the middle ages to the 19th Century. Napoleon was the last resident here : his bed is the tiny green and gold one at the very bottom of this page.

Mary Katrantzou drew her inspirations this season from gardens and stationary, but she is of course most famous for her inaugral trompe l'oeil 'inside-out-interiors' motifs, featuring  sashed window and chandeliers. Even Louise Gray's silver studded  breastplate wouldn't look out of place on a suit of armour. The point is, it's a great time to be dressing up like Marie Antoinette's furniture.

Detail shots from James Long, Mary Katrantznou and Louise Gray's collections.

WOMAN WORSHIP - AND WHY THE HELL NOT?

I was aware of Giovanna as early as a few years ago. I recognised her distinctive bold sartorial style around shows in Paris and on the streetstyle blogs: strong colours, big shapes, lots of jewellry, and not dissimilar from my own. But it was only really in the last few months that I made the connection between the editorial pictures I had on my walls at university and the image-maker behind them. It seems Giovanna has been helping me make decisions about how I dress for a lot longer than I realise.

Around the same time that I became hooked on her Gio's Journal column in W magazine, for whom she is contributing fashion editor, that same magazine published an article on girl crushes. Commonly a romaticised phenomenon occurring in single-sex boarding schools, girl crushes are often first formed for glamorous older girls in house common rooms. Although I never had one myself, I read about them in the novels of Enid Blyton and Karen Wallace. In the article, Thessaly la Force (what a name...!) describes the nervous 'first date' shakes she experienced on having the opportunity to meet one of her female icons. And she was far from boarding school age: she had a rather glamourous job of her own at The New Yorker. The writer jokes about her silly attachment, but she makes a very valid point. 

 "The “girl crush” may sound ­silly, but sometimes it takes something ­unserious to get us talking about a serious subject: the ambitions of young creative women and the need for ­worthy role models [...] Each of them has accomplished something the rest of us dream of doing. And because they’ve done it, we feel we can too."

My 'girl crush' on Giovanna - now that I can call it that - goes far beyond her sense of style. It's a crush on her career, her aesthetic, her playful and self-deprecating attitude to herself, her professional outlook, her lifestyle, her wacky habits and her relationship with her colleagues. She has my dream job - fashion stylist at a number of top International Conde Nast publications, and additionally, Giovanna is ten years older than me, and therefore allows me to imagine what my life when I am her age now. 

After catching up over dinner last night at Chez Jeanette, I brought the topic of Girl crushes up with Shini, Jen and Dvora as we walked through the streets of Paris.  Jen mentioned Carol Issa of Tank magazine, while we all swooned over Candice Lake, with wistful 'Oh-s!' and 'Oh-she's-so-amazing!'s' Both Candice and Carol are exteriorly and interiorly beautiful women. Humble, kind, ambitious, brilliant. Women I could add to this girl crush list off the top of my head : Diane Arbus, Olivia Wilde, Tavi Gevinson, Zadie Smith, Patti Smith, Christa d'Souza, Laurie Penny, Camilla Batmangheli...

La Force also brings much needed attention to an ideology which takes a fair bit of bashing from time to time, as trends rise and fall, namely that of the cult of woman worship. What could be healthier than the admiration, respect and appreciation of an individual of our fellow womankind, who has earned attention for doing something outstanding? Sadly, the girl crush is not universal. You only have to leaf through the tabloids or any noxious gossip weekly to see that in some parts of society, woman-on-woman hating is positively encouraged. The endless sharp-tongued criticism of Victoria Beckham is the perfect example. On paper - as a woman who formed part of one of the biggest pop empires the world as ever seen, then went on to individually start a luxury business from the ground up, is the mother to three children and balances a steady marriage, constantly under public scrutiny and yet manages to remain scandal-free - she's a legend. Yet many female journalist prefer to focus attention on the fact that she wore high heels while pregnant, as if it were on the same scale as smoking 20 a day for the 9 months.

La Force observes that professional girl crushes are also a reassuring confirmation that the professional realm once dominated by men is evening out. True, my girl crush works in the female dominated world of fashion, but you only have to look at the video above or on W's website to see that Giovanna is a 24/7 powerhouse, loving her work, loving life, and running her own shop entirely. And cordially, too. I haven't met Giovanna yet, but I know that my 'first date shakes' will surely rival those of La Force's when it does happen.
And of course, we can't ignore her style. I'd like to call it 'Me, but luxe'. Perhaps in ten years I might have as enviable a wardrobe. 

Above: One of Giovanna's editorials for Vogue Japan. Below: Whilst picture researching for this post, I made two fascinating discoveries about Gio and I. First - Our shared taste in Bollywood style crop tops for parties. Second - we have the same party Game Face.

COMING UP FOR AIR

What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. `Explain yourself!' `I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, `because I'm not myself, you see.' 

You may have noticed, I have been away. Although I hated to let it go for so long, this blog was not a priority. A wise man said recently that the words "I don't have time," have dangerously infiltrated our daily lives, used to buffer off ideas up to twenty times a day. He suggested replacing "because I don't have time" in your head with "because it's not a priority" to help re-evaluate your decisions. Suddenly, "I'm not going to the doctor because I don't have time" sounds stupid. Of course health is a priority. Perhaps even the greatest one of all. So is getting enough sleep, getting out from under the prison trap of a computer screen, and going out and seeing your friends. 

A friendship you really can't risk losing, is that which you have with your body. When your body suddenly lets you down, you know you're in the doghouse. I have a lot of reconciling to do, but I'm getting there.

To prove that I haven't been horizontal for the last 6 weeks, here's evidence of what I have been doing.

... I shot a lookbook for Jitrois. Ok, so it was more of a line-sheet, but it was my first shoot directing models. Lordy do those things go on. I was hunched over my camera for 10 hours straight, shooting 90 looks.

... I took the time to look up. And I liked what I saw. Clockwise from left : Musée d'Orsay, La grande salle, Paris; Comptoir Général, Paris 10th; The Westin Grand hotel, Paris; The Fig & Olive, Islington.

... Taught those models a few of my own tricks backstage at men's fashion week in Paris.

... 'Strange people sitting opposite me at shows' was Jeremy Langmead's (he of Mr. Porter) visual diary on his twitter account during men's fashion week in Paris. There were some far stranger people sitting behind me at the Issey Miyake show, but I didn't feel audacious enough to turn and snap them, so I had to be content with this amiable  bunch.

... Took friends to galleries. Truly one of the best things to do, ever. And I did it a lot. I saw the post-modern collections at the Centre Pompidou, Jean Paul Goude at Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Diane Arbus at Jeu de Paume and Yayoi Kusama at the Tate Modern to name a few. Friends who know me well, know I tend to have great epiphanies in art galleries. I had lots of those. Then I conclude the manic episode by going stir crazy in the gift shop. I ADORE art museum gift shops. It's a terrible but delicious habit I've inherited from my father. The Musée des Arts Decoratifs shop is one of the best in the world, there's literally nothing in there you wouldn't want. And there's absolutely nothing in there that you need.

... I saw some fashion shows. Men's week seems so long ago now but I've only just had the chance to really think about it. Qasimi (above) was briliant. They put men in skirts, FULL long skirts, and even hobble skirts. Now that's exciting. The Rynshu collection (below) seemed merely a sideline to the enormous 350-page graphic novel the designer had created, which we found in our goodie bags. Now that certainly beats a press release!

... Tweaked a nipple backstage. Jacques, our make-up-artist, got a lot of attention. Well, darling, if you will insist on wearing tank tops to work..!

... I indulged. And then some. I don't think I have eaten out so variously, and so regularly, as I have in the last 6 weeks. Restaurants and cafés were just a foreign entity to me before. I had completely forgotten how utterly delicious, and endlessly fascinating food was. Now I have tasted the honey. However - it is a slippery slope to fall down. I think I am eaten my fill now for 2012.

... I read books. That isn't quite correct, I inhaled books. When I got sick, I reached for my bibles. Literature is the best medicine, or is it laughter? No matter...I consumed words with a ferocious energy, reading 1000s of pages. It was good to get away. But now I am back.