On Saturday, Lyns and I toddled along to talk style and MJ conspiracy theories with the fashion bloggers of Dublin.
This time, it was at the Lee Jeans showroom, with champers provided by Fallon & Byrne. The disco beat came from Trenspot's DJ Colin Brady and some of us (ahem) only went and won ourselves a pair of FitFlops! Good times.
Thanks go to them and to Ireland's leading voice on fashion, Annmarie - for coralling us all together every month. See our blogroll on the right for some cracking style reads from this fabulous bunch.
The lovely Sophie Ellis-Bextor clearly loves both great design and mockumentary, being as she chose to wear a piece by Jojo and Malou at the recent London premiere of Sacha Baron-Cohen's Bruno movie.
The new home of London Fashion Week, Somerset House, was the venue for announcing the current winners of New Gen sponsorship. Sarah Mower, the BFC's new Ambassador of Emerging Talent, got the pleasure of giving 17 designers the news.
Amongst the deserving winners were CG's very own LP.BG who won a presentation slot, where the audience will be able to view their collection in close up. They will also be in the exhibition at LFW in September 2009. Our old favourite Fred Butler was also sponsored again! Well done guys, we're very proud.
It's great when you know the story behind the clothes that you wear; where they were made, whether they were a labour of love or just plain hard labour and of course, who designed them.
Modern technology means that these days, you can get to know the personality behind the collections as more and more designers are taking their thoughts to Wordpress.
Some of the Catwalk Genius designers who regularly pop up in my RSS reader are:
Fred Butler - as well as charting her meteoric rise on the London fashion scene, the colourful accessories designer always has interesting news and interviews with some very cool friends, employees and idols. See Fred's exclusive design for Catwalk Genius.
Tour de Force - Camille, the designer behind the brilliant hair accessories label, has a great eye for the beautiful and unusual. The blog asks some interesting questions about fashion and art, while entertaining at the same time. View the Tour de Force Catwalk Genius shop.
Kelly Love - the talented designer of sumptuous eveningwear and lingerie has a brand spanking new blog that has already seen activity at Australian Fashion Week, as well as giving a behind-the-scenes peek at her design work. Shop Kelly's collection on Catwalk Genius.
Stansfield - the uber-cool menswear designers who have created some unisex pieces for Catwalk Genius discuss the inspiration behind their work and give fans sneak previews of what's to come on their blog.
We can heartily recommend subscribing - and if you know of any other great designer blogs or Twitter accounts, let us know. If we like them too, we'll give them a shout on here!
Well 2009's Graduate Fashion Week (GFW) is now officially over. We couldn't make it to Earls Court to see the creations for ourselves, but we have been keeping an eye out for our faves. Here they are for your viewing pleasure:
Kate Hamilton, Kingston University
Jamie Russo, Birmingham City University
Lauren Champion, UWE Bristol
Yasmin Siddiqui, Ravensbourne
And the River Island Gold Prize goes to..
Myrto Samou, UCA Rochester
For a full list of winners, head to the Fashion156 blog or keep an eye out on the GFW site.
If you took our survey recently, thanks very much. Everyone who left an email address should have a free share promotional code nestling in the inbox tonight. One of you has some info about a discount for £100 too.
It's Coutts London Jewellery Week and if you're a fan of innovative bling, you can see pieces from over 40 of the most exciting names working in British jewellery at the Treasure exhibition.
It's that time of year again where the smell of student fear infuses the air and the critics gather to raise a quizzical eyebrow/applaud generously as they see fit.
The last week saw Central Saint Martins BA show, lookey:
L-R: L'Oreal Professional winner Marie Hill, then runners up Dean Quinn and Luke Brooks.
That was followed closely by the London College of Fashion grad show:
L-R: Collection of the Year winner Hoi Lam Wong; Alicija Aputye, who won a textiles award; Alice Morton.
From Sunday, Graduate Fashion Week kicks off and the rest of the fashion grads can show off their skills.
Sarah Mower, BFC's new Ambassador of Emerging Talent. Photo: Andrew Crowley.
We were delighted to see that the British Fashion Council have appointed respected fashion journalist Sarah Mower to be the Ambassador of Emerging Talent.
Speaking to Vogue, Sarah said: "In Britain we have a phenomenon on our hands at the moment: a uniquely vibrant, varied and collaborative flowering of talent that is some of the most exciting on the world stage. I'm delighted to put myself at their service to help project that incredible energy and originality at home and internationally."
We couldn't agree more with those sentiments - congrats, Sarah.
We'll also pull one email address out of a hat and that person will get a discount code for £100 discount on anything in our Boutique or Shop Floor.
The deadline for entry is Sunday 7th June. Remember to leave your email address, or we won't be able to get your code to you (they won't be used for spamming, promise). We'll contact winners with their codes the week beginning 8th June.
You can buy the jacket and other items from the same Ostwald Helgason line from their Catwalk Genius shop, including the gipsy print leggings, shirt and scarf:
'Bulletproof' is the next single from London based electro-pop duo La Roux. These guys clearly have very good taste in fashion, as they featured Fred Butler'sDodecahedron Necklace in their latest video.
Check out their video below or if you fancy treating yourself, purchase the necklace here.
If you like Ghulam Sakina and are a little bit creative then this may be the competition for you!
Ghulam Sakina are celebrating the launch of their new website by inviting you to 'Design a Doodle'. Simply doodle whatever happens to be in your head and submit it to their studio. You could win £750 of Ghulam Sakina clothing AND they will use your doodle in their new clothing or home range.
Pretty cool stuff. Get full details on their blog and check out their new website too.
The CWG line up is continuing to grow with some uber cool new designers coming on board. Meet Aimee McWilliams.
Aimee spent her early years at Metropolitan Glasgow before moving to London and graduating from Central St Martins in 2004. She won Designer of the Year at the Scottish Style Awards in 2007 and has recently been commissioned by a London Hotel group to create a capsule collection inspired by 5 hotels.
Now her pieces are available to buy right here at heavily discounted prices. Cool huh?
Graduate Fashion Week (GFW) has been running since 1991 and for those of you less familiar, it was launched as a forum to showcase some of the UK's best graduating design talent. 2009's GFW will take place from 7th to 11th of June and features over 50 of the top fashion and textile Uni's in the UK and overseas.
This year sees the launch of the GFW Protégé Project to help new graduates find work. Graduating students can compete to win short term contracts to work with River Island, Mulberry, Asos, John Lewis, Peacocks and the Pentland Group. The project aims to give graduates commercial as well as design acumen, which might just help them run successful businesses in the future.
Any initiative like this which can make things even slightly easier for graduating students, can only be a great thing for the industry. Nice.
Jessica Au, Ravensbourne Graduate 2008
Poppy Dover, Kingston Graduate 2008 Images courtesy of www.catwalking.com
Fancy your chances at re-invigorating the fashion industry in London? Do you think your designs can make you a strong and viable business?
The Fashion Fringe was first launched in 2004 by IMG and is an annual project looking for undiscovered British designers. If you win, you will gain access to experts and benefit from their mentoring, business advice and potential development grants.
The fashion bloggers had another brunchy outing on Saturday, courtesy of Saba - Dublin's most scrumptious Thai & Vietnamese restaurant.
The food was spot on - Hoisin duck rolls, veggie curries and an outrageously indulgent chocolate pudding.
The talk ran the gamut from life-changing decisions to clumpy mascara and the best methods for stalking Russell Brand.
The goody bags contained enough ingredients to attempt to replicate the meal (a folorn hope, given my cooking skills) as well as some veg-tastic Yes to Carrots body lotions. Thanks to Annmarie for hooking us all up, as usual.
Fred Butler
Tour de Force
