Ahead of the curve

I don't know much about the new designer at Balenciaga and I can't say that the Spring/Summer 2017 collection was entirely my cup of tea (but of course maybe in 3 seasons when huge shoulders and the resulting triangular silhouette is everywhere I'll eat my words). 

That said I did have a certain fondness for this weird latex-looking hooded cape. It reminded of a favourite French and Saunders sketch where a school girl, sponsored by Curly Wurly, sets out to sail single-handedly around the world and makes a video-diary but gets no further than the edges of Poole harbour. At the onset of some bad weather she is forced to do up her waterproof coat and when things clear up can't unfasten the hood. It's a classic.

French and Saunders were always ahead of their time. Maybe Demna Gvasalia is too.

Old world charm offensive

Stella Jean's collections are beautiful and romantic and elegant and in a world that is increasingly none of those things I'm touched by the sense of old school charm.

This collection was like receiving a vintage postcard from a mystical Caribbean locale that brought with it the sounds and scents, the tastes and warmth of a sultry summer afternoon. It reminds me of a scarf my gran had folded in a drawer that she had brought back from one of her trips in the early 1960s in a pea-green boat called the "Delight" that they took down through the Continent.

Different times and days of naive innocence evoked through Stella Jean's easy silhouettes and pitch perfect colour palette.

And ps those stripy mules are to die for.