FASHION Magazine

One of the highlights of this year’s London Fashion Week is going to be inspired by an unlikely albeit adorable muse: Minnie Mouse and her famous polka-dotted ensemble will be the sartorial reference point for a whole slew of designers, who will be collaborating on an exclusive line in honour of the fictional mouse.

“Minnie Mouse Must Haves” designs will be unveiled during LFW, with Richard Nicoll, Katie Hillier, Giles Deacon, Terry de Havilland, Lulu Guinness and more contributing Minnie-inspired looks. Like Daisy Duck and the rest of her crew, Minnie had an unmistakable flare for fashion: bows, polka-dotted dresses and white gloves were always in her repertoire (not to mention her big, round ears), so expect the dot trend to hold strong on the spring 2013 runway.

It’s hard to believe that in the space of 13 years, Robin Kay has taken Toronto Fashion Week from a single-sponsor, $25K-budgeted event to the second largest fashion week in all of North America. With today’s huge news that IMG Canada (in collaboration with IMG Fashion) has bought World MasterCard Fashion Week in Toronto, it truly seems like the event has fully come into its own.

Quick post today, since a gazillion traffic accidents prevented me from actually getting to half my shows on time—or at all. Regardless, catching Mary Katrantzou’s stunner of a show (which, for the second season in a row, kicked off the last day of London Fashion Week) made it all worth it. Deceived by the first few looks, which were dominated by silvers and shadows, I imagined that this would be a toned down collection (at least in palette). Boy, was I wrong. Stiff pleats and equally stiff peplums were bolstered by every shade of blue, green, and pink you could imagine; if anyone can invent a new colour or colour combo, it’s Mary. Also new were her prints: spoons, pencils, curtain tassels, typewriters, and other household items were blown up and their digitized versions lent the collection a quirky air. The standout pieces for me, however, were the dresses fashioned from layers and layers (I counted four on one dress) of printed mesh—each had a half inch–thick banded hem that curled the edges of each layer, lending enormous volume to the pieces. Nicholas Mellamphy of the Room at the Bay called this series of dresses “mille-feuille,” and that is exactly how they appeared.

It brings a tear to my eye that London Fashion Week is almost all over for another season—but my feet are not-so-silently rejoicing. A 9 a.m. start at Peter Pilotto meant leaving the house just past 8 this morning, but it was worth it. The Topshop venue, which is the old Billingsgate Market this season, always serves up coffee, tea, and all sorts of yummy dishes (yesterday there was a creamy soup with truffle oil; today there was porridge for breakfast); there’s also the NewGen pop-up where I scored the Erdem tank with a blue porcelain print and white lace collar and the Mary Katrantzou floral tee. Breakfast, shopping, and a show? Every day, please.

View the many (and we mean many) Mulberry celeb attendees »

Where to begin. With the celebs? Lana Del Rey (carrying the namesake Del Rey bag from the ever-growing fashion house), Michelle Williams, the surprisingly petite Elizabeth Olsen, Leigh Lezark, and Ladies Mary and Edith Crawey—I mean Michelle Dockery and Laura Carmichael—all sat front row at Mulberry; and then there were the models (Jacquetta Wheeler, Irina Lazareanu) and It girls Poppy Delevigne and model/It girl/socialite Caroline Sieber at Matthew Williamson.

Day two of London Fashion Week was a day of literal show themes. First off was Moschino Cheap & Chic, showing in London for the first time—its “Make Up Your Life” Fall collection set in Portland Place (random factoid: this is near the Portland Hospital, where everyone from Victoria Beckham to Claudia Schiffer have given birth). Before the show, we were treated to cocktails and lemonade in the grand living room of a Georgian house; makeup chairs had also been set up to go along with the theme, though the Brit celebs I spotted—Nicola Roberts, Pixie Lott, and a pregnant Peaches Geldof—didn’t seem to take notice. Also present: Olivia Palermo.

What better way to start London Fashion Week than practically getting physically violated at Topshop, where Mary Katrantzou‘s collection launched this morning? Not! But forget that—on to the shows!

We’ve all seen leather-skinned, sunspot-covered ladies and gents (we’re looking at you D*n*t*ll*a), who’ve committed too much of their lives to soaking up the rays, and we can’t help but take mental note to wear sunscreen for the rest of our lives. Well, U.K. modeling agencies may save many from future irreparable skin damage—and worse, skin cancer—by banning the usage of sunbeds by their models.

So far, 11 big league U.K. model agencies including Elite, Premier Model Management, Storm and Next, plan to shed a non-UV light on the hazardous beauty regimen, with the signing of a zero-tolerance policy on tanning beds to support cancer research with U.K.’s R UV UGLY campaign.

CEO of Elite Model Management Michelangelo Chiacchio says: “We hope that this will help to send out a strong message to young girls and guys, that sunbeds will have a negative impact on their appearance.” Snooki, take note!

With startling cancer research statements like: “The first time use of a sunbed before the age of 35 increases the risk of malignant melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, by 75 per cent,” it should be a no brainer to boycott their use.

With so many alternative and safe tanning products available, we’re sure designers will have no trouble using rub and spray-on self tanners at London Fashion Week.

Good news for gentlemen everywhere—the British Fashion Council has announced the creation of a new menswear fashion week. Dubbed London’s “fashion long week(end),” the new shows will run for three days starting June 15 and also precede Milan and Paris men’s fashion weeks every January and June.

The planning committee, run by GQ editor Dylan Jones, has been under pressure to re-establish British menswear—the fashion long weekend’s previous incarnation as a one-day event lost buyers and press because it overlapped with the first day of Milan womenswear collections. This year there may still be some timing conflicts: the debut shows are expected to be a big to-do, as they’ll fall smack dab in the middle of the London 2012 Olympics hullabaloo.

For the past few months, we’ve been following reports that Britain’s Revenue and Customs is planning a raid on the fashion design houses that benefit from the use of unpaid interns. Yesterday, all 102 companies that participated in last London Fashion Week were issued a warning: starting in 2012, no fashion house, regardless of its size, is allowed to enlist the help of unpaid interns. Each company must either pay their interns at least the minimum wage of £6.08 an hour or find a way to do without.

For some companies, the switch is a fast and easy one—Stella McCartney has already changed its policy, and starting in January will offer paid positions only. This will be more of a challenge for newcomers and smaller designers, whose budgets don’t include being able to pay their extra help. “Most people who are starting out in the industry just don’t have the funds,” explains SIBLING’s Cozette McCreery to Elle UK. “It’s just done with love, and that’s it. When the main designers aren’t getting paid—if you can’t find money to pay yourself—it’s really difficult to find money to pay others.”

You’ve already heard about the kafuffle caused by fashion week scheduling next fall, that timing for MFW is going to overlap with both LFW and PFW. Quelle horror! To make matters much worse, a press release surfaced this morning from the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana in which Milan responds to New York, London, and Paris’ unwillingness to alter their fashion week schedules, and claiming that a written agreement from 2010 had MFW scheduled to take place between the 19^th and 25^th of September—as per usual—and which they’ve decided they’ll stick to. Dun dun dun…

But here comes the real drama: today’s statement from the Italian board of directors reads: “Such an accuse, in addition to representing an aggressive and arrogant attitude towards CNMI, used unfair argumentation in order to impose—in a unilateral way—not shared decisions. In conclusion, the Board of Directors and the Designers’ Roundtable have unanimously decided to confirm the schedule as it was previously announced on March 17th 2010: [MFW] will be held from Wednesday 19th to Tuesday 25th of September 2012.”

“It’s all about a red wine–stained, snogged mouth,” said Lucia Pieroni of the makeup at Giles Spring 2012 show, applying M.A.C’s lip pencil in “Brick” onto the inside of the mouth and “Burgundy” on top, blended outward with a Q-tip. “There’s no defined line around the edge, but it’s quite dark in the middle.” The rest of the face was quite bare—a smidge of “Russian Red” lipstick on the cheeks, rubbed in with a large brush and a bit of lip balm on the eyelids, tops of the cheeks, and on the bridge of the nose for a bit of highlight.