Licentiate Column 02/06/11: Made In Cork

Cork Fashion Week is a bit of a misnomer. A fashion week is industry only. In Cork, shows are ticketed and open to all. The clothes you see on a runway are shown six months ahead of production. What you see in Milan in February, you won’t see in Brown Thomas until September. In Cork, what you see is already, or very soon to be manufactured. Fashion weeks are intense, fraught and cloaked in mystique, albeit a mystique that dissolves a little bit as each season passes.

In Cork, we take a much more leisurely pace. It’s both our idiosyncratic advantage and the perpetual pebble in our shoe.

It was with that in mind that I went to ‘Made in Cork: A Prequel to Cork Fashion Week’ in the Woodford Bar last Sunday. As I was waiting to go in, a possibly drunk, possibly homeless man tried to climb a tall, spiked, wrought-iron gate opposite the bar. He made a decent go of it, but impaled himself in the groin over two spikes and had to be lifted off the gate by a bartender and a slightly wobbly passer-by, who managed the whole procedure with a cigarette clamped between his teeth.

A Garda van pulled up, obscuring the view. Then, the sound of denim ripping and a very loud, sharp intake of breath. It was time to go inside. An inauspicious start in any circumstance.

I hoped that this wouldn’t be the marker for the event. Taking a seat inside the smoking area afforded the best views and elbow room, so that was where I sat myself, with a notebook, an unfortunate looking BIC pen and an endless supply of fizzy pop.

The crowd was a mix of models, photographers, fashion lovers and one small, very bored looking boy in Communion garb. Unlike London fashion week, where everyone is stressed beyond belief, the attendees looked genuinely happy. They were smiling, greeting each other with hugs, buying pints (of champagne), trading bon mots and making plans for the evening.

It was as if they were actually glad to be there (with the exception of Communion Boy, who had a pout that Andre Leon Talley would spontaneously combust with jealousy over). This is not the fashion week the world was used to. I was bamboozled. Pleasantly bamboozled.

The first half of the show was excellent. Trends were expertly curated. The preppy looks were a particular favourite - all white jeans and jumpers casually knotted over shoulders, ready for a game of tennis in the Hamptons. The vintage dress selection from Miss Daisy Blue was excellent as usual, with a mix of psychedelic print maxis, prom dress and LBDs that looked classically and contemporary.

It’s always good to see something grow and expand. I’m very proud to have been a witness of such growth from Cork Fashion Week’s inception. This September promises to be the most diverse and exciting Fashion Week yet.

Each year it gets a little bit bigger and, as Cork become even more creative and focused on fashion niches, the community at large adapts and rallies around it. Even if it’s something as ridiculous as lifting a stuck wino off a gate.

"If you wear a ringer, you're Indie Rock. Period."

Wise words, Daisy von Furth, wise words.

X-girl is the sister to Japanese label X-Large and, as I type, is only available in Japan. In 1994, when the label was launched, the brands directors were Daisy Von Furth and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth *cue fangirl squeee*

While is lasted in it's RIOT GRRRL format, it was pretty darn cool. With all the clean lines and simple tailoring, it reminds me of a no boys-allowed Fred Perry.

X Girl editorial for Vice Magazine 

Did you notice a very young Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola in the video? And Chloe Sevigny was their original fit model. ANDandand and and... *fades into silence*

EDIT - While we're on the subject of music in fashion, you can watch a video of myself and Dawn of Skinni Peach talking about fashion in music with our playlist on the Teen RTE (think Irish BBC) website .  The video will be on the website for a week, so have a click and see what we like!  You'll get to see me move and speak (a bit like an Irish Daria Morgendorffer) and display abysmal posture.  What an incentive.

Distilled: Paris Fashion Week A/W '11

This is the last in the series.  Paris, following on from New York, London and Milan, is probably the most-hyped fashion week, with a record number of high-profile designers showing collections (and a lot of monotonous flicking through photographs on style.com for me).

Here are some Parisian picks, arranged by trend - I use the word 'trend' in the loosest possible terms, because I've just made most of them up.



all photos style.com



Row 1 - Anne Demeulemeester, Cacharel, Haider Ackerman

Row 2 - Chanel, Maison, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen

Row 3 - Jean Paul Gaultier, Miu Miu, Tsumori Chisato

Row 4 - Loewe, Louise Vuitton, Valentino

Row 5 - Carven, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Sonia Rykiel

Row 6 - Chloe, Christian Dior, Lanvin

YAY TRENDS

• Row 1 - Absolutes - Make outfit statements in one colour (or two) - emphasis is on texture and silhouette.
• Row 2 - Come together, fall apart - Deconstructed, zipped and ripped apart outfits.  I shouldn't love this because these are oriented towards the willowy of body, but I do anyway.
• Rpw 3 - Little old ladies - Pour talcum powder in your 'do, amp up the boxy silhouette and invest in a furry shopping trolley, as seen at Gaultier.
• Row 4 - Night porter - Leather trenches with very little little on underneath for the dominatrix vibe.  Christian Dior jokes optional.
• Row 5 - Plaid - pensive plaid at Carven, Playful plaid at Castelbajac and Sonia Rykiel - it's all good.
• Row 6 - Textures with pattern - wooly snakeskin at Chloe and flower print gazar fabric at Lanvin. 

NAY TRENDS

• None - though when it comes to Paris, I have rose-tinted specs.  Perhaps there was an overabundance of fur, but that seems to have been an overarching trend covering all four weeks.

What are your PFW picks?

Distilled: Milan Fashion Week A/W '11

First there was New York and London, then there was Milan...

Soon, there will be Paris and I can stop annoying my boyfriend into making me more of these photocollages.

L-R (in convenient alphabetical order)

Row 1 - Alberta Ferretti, Blumarine, Bottega Veneta

Row 2 - D&G, Dolce & Gabanna, Etro

Row 3 - Fendi, Gucci, Marni

Row 4 - Missoni, Moschino, Versus

YAY TRENDS

• Milan didn't let us down on the glamour front; colours are richer, pants are shinier and a sense of humour is always apparent.
• Mixing textures - leather with tweed, wool with silk, hand-knits with aforementioned shiny-pants material.
• Intense colour pops - from crayola brights at Blumarine to cloying candy colours at Missoni.

NAY TRENDS

• Milan's glam does have a flip side - and that's it's (debatable) overuse of fur and snakeskin, evident on the Gucci catwalk.  I've stated before that I'm fairly ambivalent towards fur, but seeing this much is a bit like eating too much rich chocolate cake; you feel a bit of disgust at the overindulgence.
• A distinct lack of trousers.  Case in point: no pants at Prada.

NOTES
Pic 4 - Can't you picture MIA wearing every single item from the D&G show?
Pic 8 - Apart from the whole 'fur-discomfort' thing, the Gucci show was beautiful.  Drawing inspiration from 70's era Angelican Huston and Helmot Newton = WIN.
Pic 9 - Marni was my favourite show, which came as a bit of a surprise.  Pattern mix-and-matching from the masters.

What are your thoughts on Milan?

I have two words for you...

..and those words are 'CLEAR MACS'!

It seems that Jeremy Scott was definitely on the right track.  Now give me a plastic rain mac and let me splash around in some puddles, Burberry Prorsum-style.


To watch more, visit catwalkreport_v2.aspx?seasonid=23&seasonday=2011 02 21&day=4
via londonfashionweek.co.uk

Press play to watch the highlights of Day Four of London Fashion Week, which has been the best so far (in my incredibly inflated, self-important opinion).  An LFW round up will appear on the blog on Friday.

*Apologies for the shortness of this post.  Have you ever been so tired that you look at what you're writing and it's total gibberish?  Not badly-written or poorly thought out sentences, just actual unintelligible burble, like a toddler mashing the keyboard with his fists.  So, in a way, I'm doing you a favour by writing a twitter-length missive.  You can thank me later.