Japan France America

My love for Uniqlo began when it collaborated with Jil Sander, allowing me to actually own clothes from a designer I previously could only dream of wearing. Together they produced really affordable, highly wearable classic pieces. I was sold! Previously I'd only thought of them as a sort of Japanese GAP and really who needed that?

At the time Uniqlo wasn't sold in Los Angeles so my dear friend Jimmy sent me some stuff from New York and then on a trip to the UK I managed to snag some more pieces from what was to be, the final collection between the two brands. (Jil Sander was about to return to Jil Sander, but only for a hot minute in the end).

Last month Uniqlo finally opened stores in Los Angeles and the city is awash with colorful down jackets and the like. I walked in today and found a couple of pieces from a collaboration they've done with a member of the Paris fashion scene's Royal Family, Ines de la Fressange. It's elegant and chic, just as you'd expect and at Revolutionary prices. Slim leg jeans, fitted jackets, classic knits, all pieces that reflect de la Fressange's own very French style, that sort of "I threw it all on but somehow it looks really tailored and pulled together" thing that so many women aspire to but never achieve.

Vive la revolution!

A visual feast

Dries does it again. 

The most delectable fabrics in rich combinations on the most inviting runway. His collections are always effortlessly cool and wonderfully exotic and van Noten is a master at combining textures and colors and prints and making it all wearable. It's like you're wearing a book of passport stamps (from back in the day when travel really was exotic) and have just blown in to town from your latest adventure. 

Dreamy!

Twenty is the new twenty.

Marni is, I believe, a label by women for women and Spring/Summer 2015 sees the brand celebrate twenty years of creating beautiful, sculptural, sometimes clunky-looking clothes. 

As I looked through the images I wasn't immediately in love with this collection; but I was being impatient. The first looks seemed to be toiles of the collection, as if they were highlighting the simple elegance of the pieces to the viewers eye before they really let loose. Soon monochrome and monastic gave way to bold and beautiful.

The Castiglioni's have spent twenty years honing the brand and this collection shines. Powerful, collected, beautiful and assured. Happy birthday Marni. I wish I'd been the same way at twenty.