fashion | Phillipa Fioretti

Just Like In The Movies

April 6th, 2010

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While loving the antlers and hunter-gatherer look of the pictures in my previous post, ‘Styled by a Sianach’, I felt a little sorry for the girls modelling the clothes. Willow-the-wisp bodies and unhappy, hungry faces, as if there hadn’t been enough woolly mammoth caught that season or they’d been living on moss and the occasional tadpole.

I had to address the scrawn factor with pictures of the glorious, womanly American model Crystal Renn. She reminds me of why it is I, like many other women, like vintage clothes. Before sportswear became everyday wear, breasts and bellies, thighs and rumps were factored into design. Tailoring and structure accentuated and flattered women’s natural body shape– okay, so they wore corsets, – but curves were accentuated not eliminated. Yes, I know it’s a generalisation, but this is a blog and I get to make generalisations here. All I’m saying is women didn’t eat moss, and were not expected to either.

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Styled by a Sianach

February 25th, 2010

I fell for these images straightaway. Not the clothes so much, but the feral styling with echoes of Ice Age shamanism. I’d love a little fur cap with antlers – it could hang in the cupboard next to my bird dress.

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Clothes by Topshop,
Styled by Katie Grand
Animal masks & hats by Emma Cook
Wild eyebrows by Hannah Murray,
Hair by Paul Hanlon

all images via Style.com

Blackbird Fly

February 15th, 2010

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Most haute couture fashion is beyond the finances of ordinary mortals but it doesn’t hurt to look and marvel and admire. My mother and I used to play a game where we’d look through various fashion magazines and choose the dress we liked the best. This quest was punctuated with ‘oo, I don’t like that,’ and ‘Oh, now that’s elegant,’ or ‘what a get up.’ We made different choices, as one would expect, but it was through this particularly female pursuit – teapot and biscuits handy at all times – that I became familiar with the names of designers in the fashion world.

I followed the careers and collections of a few, as you would a particularly interesting artist or author, but only through photographs I must mournfully add. And the death this week of one whose designs often intrigued – Alexander McQueen – really saddens me. In my imaginary salon I would have bought many of his clothes, particularly his bird dresses. Suicide leaves a feeling of despair in its wake and perhaps more so when such a bruised and beautiful creative soul gives up and leaves this world.

The muse has left along narrow
And winding street,
And with large drops of dew
Were sprinkled her feet.

For long did I ask of her
To wait for winter with me,
But she said, “The grave is here,
How can you breathe, you see?”

I wanted to give her a dove
That is whiter than all the rest
But the bird herself flew above
After my graceful guest.

Looking at her I was silent,
I loved her alone
And like gates into her country
In the sky stood the dawn.

Anna Akhmatova

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