Wednesday, February 22, 2012

THE MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF LFW AW12

Posted by Bethan Holt, Fashion Junior at Large

There's a thing called the #lfwtimeline. If you have a look at this hashtag on twitter you'll see that it tells you how late (or not) a show is running. We've worked out that this timeline is perhaps not the most reliable of sources- its default setting for each show is "the XXX show is running 10 minutes late' even though sometimes it is 15 mins and others it's 30 mins. Anyway, when you do manage to be punctual, there's almost always some cool music playing and setting the tone for what you're about to see. And once the show begins, the music has a massive impact on how you start to interpret the collection.

Here are a few of our favourite songs from the week...

Azealia Banks hasn't even released a single yet but that hasn't stopped her becoming a YouTube hit, as well as being enlisted to perform for Karl Lagerfeld. She also appeared at last night's Topshop party, celebrating ten years of NewGen. Her 212 song was heard all week, including at House of Holland, Mulberry and Topshop Unique.



One of the Fashed's favourite tunes at the moment is 'I'm His Girl' by Friends. We heard it at Emilio de la Morena and Felder Felder among others.



In terms of music, last LFW was rather overshadowed by a certain Lana del Rey and her (then) fresh new voice in 'Video Games'. We still heard this song a few times over this season including at Aquascutum. Oh, and in case you hadn't heard by now (where have you been?) then Mulberry have named their new bag, the Del Rey, after the former Lizzie Grant. Plus she rocked up at their show, but we didn't need to tell you that did we?



Meadham Kirchhoff were bound to deliver on the music front, given their obsession with teen girl tunes. Their show closed with Abba's Dancing Queen.



The new Muppets movie is out now. What with Miss Piggy guest editing Grazia, it's hardly surprising it was on the mind of designers. Mulberry closed their show the Ma Na Ma Na song.



Hanna Hanra took charge of the music at Louise Gray. before the show began, she played some Whitney. The show was all about 90s house music, including Work It Girlfriend by Jack and Jill.





Pringle's show took place to the sound of INXS 'Need You Tonight'...



And finally, Marios Schwab's entire show was based on Mahler's Adagietto from Symphony no. 5.

LONDON FASHION WEEK: BETWEEN THE SEAMS WITH MERCEDES-BENZ

Posted by Melanie Rickey, Fashion Editor at Large

Mercedes-Benz is one of the official sponsors of London Fashion week, and as such convey many of the major editors, buyers models and celebrities around the city from show to show in fabulous cars. In that capacity they make fashion week do-able, and we love them for it. Mercedes-Benz also have a fashion website created especially to share the stories of all the people they work with in London, me amongst them, over the five days of the shows. In my case, I literally share my stories from this blog, so most of the London Fashion Week previews published here are over on voicesoffashion.co.uk too.  My  favourite aspect of the experience over on Voices of Fashion are the slick videos; one for each day of the shows. We get to find out a day in the life of a fashion buyer, thanks to the amazing Ruth Chapman, owner of Matches - sheesh - and I thought we journalists had it hard. Not to mention the HILARIOUS films by my friend Brix Smith Start with her little black leggy pug, Gladys. I have been laughing out loud at the video of Brix taking the dogs for their fashion week outfits at Mulberry.

The first film is funny and cute. The second one is super-informative. I'm in the second one for about five seconds btw, though I'm not sure I made much sense, though. I'll leave you with these, and get back to creating our summaries of fashion week, the models of the week is done (see below), to the most popular music played and of course what is trending..


Gladys In The Hood


Day Four of Fashion Week, including Tony Berardi, Christopher Kane, Matches, me, Brix and Tim Blanks