I love press days because they give the opportunity to see what designs are coming for the new season, from high street to high end designer.

Bold accessories featured strongly this time, including this amazing fringed bag that I nearly took home with me

From bold reds to subtle monochrome pieces, this was one of my favourite selections of the day.

As well as the simple statement of a white silhouette, bright citrus colours were also a feature.

Thank you everyone at Bloody Gray and all the designers for an amazing day!

www.bloodygray.com

Banging on the window to get the attention of the driver, we drag our backpacks off the bus onto a bridge four miles downhill from Salento, a small cowboy town in the Colombian department of Quindio. We’re at ‘Camping Monteroca’, a campground offering ‘exotic lodgings’ in a nature reserve on the Río Quindío in La Zona Cafeteria; the coffee region.

“Do you have any tents available?” we ask in basic Spanish of a curt Colombian gent who greets us at the entrance. “Hrrmph” he grunts with effort. Then finally, “Si”. While he goes off to find the owner, my boyfriend and I exchange a look. We thought this place seemed a bit more groovy from the website. After half a year backpacking in Central and South America, staying in hostels where guests are herded in and out like cattle, we were looking for a truly unique experience.

“Hey guys, welcome to my place! You’re gonna love it.” Ah. This is more like it. Al Pacino in camos bounds up to shake our hands and slap us on the back. This is the owner Jorge. And Camping Monteroca is his baby.

One of Jorge’s staff shows us to our lodgings and leaves us to settle in. We’re in ‘American Camping’, a roomy Cherokee Indian-themed tent with built-in toilet, double waterbed, kitchen and a fridge painted with a mural of the plains of North America. Dreamcatchers hang from the ceiling and the walls are adorned with animal skins, warrior masks and Native American paintings. Not a detail has been spared.

“Hey guys, you like my place?” Jorge is suddenly at the door of our tent. “What you wanna do? You wanna smoke a little?” This is more hospitality than we’ve come to expect from a proprietor. Jorge lights a pre-rolled joint from his top pocket, stands tall on his heels and claps his hands, animated suddenly. “I’m gonna show you around.”

For the next half hour we stomp across Jorge’s acre or so, passing lodgings under wax palms and lime trees, up steep ravines and over a waterfall. Jorge stops now and again to admire a flower, tease his giant Mastiff puppy Fiona, or rub a fistful of fire ants on my boyfriend’s hand (“good for the vitiligo”). There is room for 200 campers here; perhaps optimistic, but with real promise to be the next new discovery in a newly-safe country now realising its potential as a backpacker haven.

There are 12 themed lodges, from ‘Safari’, to the 70’s psychedelic vibes of the ‘Hippie Hilton’. A couple of the tents give the feeling they’ve been built with your better drug-taking experience in mind. “You take some LSD in here and things go CRAZY”, he tells us as he turns on the blacklight in the brain-themed Synapsis tent.

Pulling back vines on the side of a hill, he leads us through to a jewel in his crown; ‘Polar Expedition’. Hidden from view by wild plants is a treehouse adorned with stag heads and thick anchor chains, dressed up like an Arctic explorer’s lodge. On one wall is an enormous polar bear skin, killed in Alaska in 1950. The hunter’s son donated it to Jorge, not knowing what else to do with it.

Creating an authentic experience for his guests is everything to Jorge. He’s spent the last 15 years building and growing, adding piece by piece the small details that create the magic. “Oops, missed one”, he says, yanking off the only claw left on the bear. “Don’t want people hurting themselves.” He’s not hung up on the relics in his lodgings getting nicked. He just wants people to love them as much as he does.

The next morning Jorge is back at our tent. “Come on guys, I gotta show you something GREAT!” Today he’s less Al Pacino, more Willy Wonka, the military cap and hippie shades replaced with a wide-brimmed straw sun hat and loose shirt, yesterday’s peppy zing replaced by a cool repose. We follow him into his den, find a perch on a couple of antique chairs and he opens a giant jar of jelly sweets, dropping handfuls into our laps. A DVD of ‘Vangelis’ ‘Music for the NASA Mission: 2001 Mars Odyssey’ is on at full volume and he’s enraptured. The music fades out and he inhales deeply and shakes himself out of his trance. “WOOO! Can you believe that? WOW.”

And then quite suddenly, there’s one more thing we have to see. His magnum opus, just finished. Overlooking the rest of his lodges up the steepest hill is ‘The Rasta House’. A cabin decorated from floor to ceiling with Bob Marley memorabilia, Marley family tree, hanging double bed and an enormous mahogany marijuana leaf mounted above it. And the fridge mural? Bob Marley smoking in the moonlight of course.

[Show as slideshow]

Photos: Alan Chant // alanchant.com // @bonchant

Splitting his week between Dubai and London, William Tempest is living the true jet-setter life-style that comes with being one of Britain’s most celebrated young designers. Famed for his offerings at New York and London Fashion week, dressing celebrities and most recently teaming up with Disney to create a red carpet inspired dress, for the European Premiere of Oz the Great and the Powerful. William maintains that despite all of his success, he still takes most joy from making people look and feel good.

After studying at the London College of Fashion and working with the likes of Giles Deacon and Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, William moved to London to launch his own fashion label. Taking inspiration from luxury evening wear and modernism, he creates custom made couture dresses that balance seductive glamour with eye-catching statement designs.

“I found my aesthetic, which is quite decadent, timeless and elegant,” says William. “The way I work is that I design individual dresses for private clients, I do a series of sketches for them and they choose the ones they like. Doing this has been really good for me to learn what suits different figures. I have to compromise a lot on what I want as a designer and what clients want.”

When creating clothes for clients, designers must strike a balance between what will make their client happy and what makes that design synonymous with their brand. William explains, “It’s made me really think about compromise and how am I going to make something that they really like and I like as well. From ready to wear, to working with private clients, and then going into high-street design it’s allowed me to get a good understanding of all different areas of the market. I’m always hoping that what I am doing will help to inform my next project.”

Through meeting Donnatella Versace at Fashion Fringe, William realised how much of an emphasis there is on celebrity fashion and that he wanted to incorporate all of the glamour and the exposure that comes with celebrity into his label. He says, “It really rubbed off on me that today we live in a age where it’s all about celebrity, and you only have to pick up a magazine to know that everyone looks up to these celebrities, and often it’s not really for any reason. Although it is good for sales, if a celebrity wears my dress then I am going to sell a lot of them, that’s just how it works.”

“I started to dress people like Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss, Emma Watson, Alexa Chung, and Nicole Scherzinger. It’s really good fun working with them, but most designers do that for the exposure. Although one celebrity I’d really like to dress Angelina Jolie. She seems mysterious, I don’t quite ‘get’ her and I think she always wears dresses that are quite a lot like mine anyway. So, I think that would be quite a good partnership.”

Using celebrities to market designs is a common way that designers elicit interest in their collections and can be the most effective way of creating press attention. William says, “ The usual trade off is that if I make this dress for them, they get to keep it, but I get the exposure. So it works both ways.”

In light of all of his achievements William still gets most satisfaction from knowing that he has done his job properly. He says, “The most rewarding part of my job is probably when I get emails from people who have worn my dresses and they tell me that they wore my dress to their daughters wedding or to a birthday party and it was special and it made me feel great. That tells me that I’ve done my job well.”

“I wouldn’t say that it is dressing any celebrity or winning any award because at the end of the day that’s all PR. It’s not real, it’s all smoke and mirrors. Never believe any of that stuff.” Continuing his passion for creating clothes that will make people feel good, William hopes to expand his brand to incorporate menswear in the coming years.

Still based in their original factory and producing all of their Goodyear Welted shoes from Northampton, Crockett and Jones have been producing quality shoes since 1879 and are now in their fifth generation of being a family owned business. With shops in London, Birmingham, Paris, New York and Brussels the company are not only at home on Jermyn Street but are worldwide.

As Sales director it is Peter Reed’s job is to liaise with customers and buyers in the UK, Ireland, Scotland and the Far East including Japan. Having worked for Crockett and Jones for 13 years there is very little he doesn’t know about the production of Crockett and Jones’s Goodyear Welted Shoes and why they’re coveted by consumers worldwide. He says, “The strength of Crockett and Jones is that the world wants quality merchandise. One of the reasons that HRH Prince Charles visited this year was our heritage connection. The fact that we still make shoes in absolutely the proper way and we’re still trying to recruit young people to teach them skills reflects this. When I started in the shoe industry, there were about 150 factories in this area all predominantly making men’s shoes. Now there’s about a dozen left and generally, those that are left are the ones that maintain very high standards and high quality.”

There are over 200 processes that go into making Crockett and Jones’s Goodyear Welted shoes many of which require the skills of experienced clickers and machinists. Peter describes why Goodyear Welted shoes are different to others found on the high street. He says, “Generally I would say that the shoes that you wear are cemented, that means that the shoes are just glued together. Whereas Goodyear Welted shoes go through a rather complicated process where by the soles are stitched to a welt, which has been stitched onto the uppers. It’s a very traditional way and it’s also the best quality way in terms of the shoes quality, and for the shoes lasting, their durability, and the repairability of the shoes.” For extra comfort a layer of cork is also used in between the welt and the upper of the shoes, this helps the foot to mould to the shoe more effectively.

It’s not only production that makes shoes desirable to the consumer; shoes must also have the right style and fit. In order to create the right balance it is crucial that new designs are tested before being sent into production. One of the most important parts of a shoes design is that it has a well structured ‘last’, this is the mould that gives the shoe its shape and helps to guide workers.

With most of their shoes now being sold to export, Crockett and Jones have seen demand for their shoes increase. Once making 1,700 pairs of shoes a week, the factory must now produce 3,000 a week to keep up with orders. Peter explains that one limitation to the company’s growth is a lack of young talent in the industry. He says, “We have to train people and we’re doing our best to do that. It’s not easy to get young people to work in a shoe factory but we’re still managing to increase our production.”

Although Crockett and Jones produce both women’s and men’s shoes Peter does not think that the company will focus on the production of women’s shoes. He says, “As far as women’s shoes are concerned, we probably make 98% men’s shoes and 2% women’s shoes. There is certainly a demand for women’s shoes of this type, but when we can’t fully cater for the demand we have for men’s shoes it doesn’t seem workable to spend money on machinery to develop production we cannot sustain. Also, the fickle finger of fashion is more a part of the demand of women’s shoes. It wouldn’t be sensible for us to pursue women’s shoes and invest more equipment to make ladies shoes when we can’t make enough for the current market.”

Buying a pair of Crockett and Jones shoes comes with a fair expectation, typically most of Crockett and Jones’s shoes retail at £300 or above and the factory offers a repair service for £120 per pair of shoes. However, with demand out weighing the production capabilities of their historical factory it’s sure to be an investment for anybody looking for their next pair of shoes.

“From a young age I always wanted to do something creative,” explains Mazza. Having studied Textiles at A-Level, her passion for the fashion industry and knitwear in particular was born. Noticing a talent in her, her tutor taught her to knit outside of class and from then on she was hooked, taking every possible chance to practice and improve in her spare time. After gaining a place on the prestigious course at LCF, where she explored mutliple textile techniques including embroidery and print, she decided to focus purely on her first passion.

“I always knew I was going to end up knitting. I love the way in which we can create our own fabric, shape and make it as individual as we want,” she says. “I always liked using unusual materials and prefer to challenge myself by staying away from conventional wool.”

She’s graduating at the perfect time, as innovation in technology means designers are able to experiment in ways that have never been seen before. Mazza has already taken the opportunity to intern with some of London’s coolest trend-setters in knit, including Craig Lawrence, and the future looks bright for this young designer.

“If I said I already planned my life for the next couple of years, it would be a lie,” Mazza laughs. “I plan to take life as it comes. If a good opportunity should arise I would not be scared to take it.But for now I am just focusing on designing to build on my portfolio.”

We can’t wait to see what’s next!

Image Credits:

Cover Image: Sarah Mazza
Photographer: Josh chow
Hair and Makeup: Naoko Mabuchi
Model : Ayesha Tan-Jones

Post Images:
Photographer, James Rees
Creative Direction, Rob Phillips
Beauty, Pace Chen, Melissa Wong
Nail Art, Lauren Michelle Pires
Model, Sarah Dick at Models 1

If you haven’t managed to snap up tickets to David Bowie Is at the V&A, you’re in luck because we have two to give away to one of our readers! As Nadia covered in her opening night review, this is one exhibition that well and truly lives up to the hype: no mean feat since it smashed the V&A’s records for fasted selling show ever and has been hailed as a success by anyone and everyone who has seen it.

All you have to do to win the tickets is Tweet or Pin the picture below and complete the phrase, “#DavidBowieis”

Remember to include a link back to this blog so that the guys at The V & A know which competition you are entering. The person who gets the most retweets or repins wins!

This competition will be closing Friday 12th April. Remember to ask your followers for RTs to win!

Good luck!

They pounded the slimy floor of the Astoria – God rest it’s soul – and tramped up and down Camden Lock narrowly avoiding getting doughnut filling, drops of Hooch and fried chicken grease all over them. My best friends and I would save our cash for gigs and train tickets, our trainers scrawled with the names of the bands we’d seen in sharpie and tippex, over and over, descending into a grey mess. They traveled to Reading for my first mudbath of a festival, escaped unscathed yet caked in beer-soaked slime, never to be the same again. For the longest time, I refused to buy new trainers; my hi-tops had been good to me. I probably still have that first pair in a box somewhere, a scabby monument to carefree teenage years. They begat a good few more pairs raging in fabric from shiny silver to brown corduroy that would see their own fair share of adventures.

These same best friends and I still do a marginally more mature version of these outings – think merlot over Hooch and Nando’s over Chicken Cottage – and shake our slightly older, wider butts in new slimy clubs, our trainers now, as once they did, allowing us to bounce like 15 year olds. Although now we have the daily grind of work and responsibility the next day rather than just rushing bits of A-level coursework, we can still briefly forget about it and let off steam.

The new Converse campaign makes me think of exactly this feeling, being messy and stupid and living in the moment. My trainers may not be covered in tippex now but they’re still serving me well…

Sponsored by Spreaditfast

I pretty much leaped out of my chair when offered the chance to go and see this and walked around the exhibition with a big fat grin on my face from start to finish. It’s honestly that good.

I know no one who dislikes David Bowie. His music seems to transcend boundaries and add an uncannily celebratory power when played. The end credit sequence of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville; Young Americans played over images of Depression-era families and children is so powerful with or without the context of the film it gives me goosebumps every time. And what kind of person didn’t kind of fancy the Goblin King in Labyrinth? I mean, come on now.

But I digress…

It would be impossible to categorise ‘David Bowie Is’ as simply an exhibition of music memorabilia, it is so much more. Part fashion retrospective, part art installation, it tracks a journey from small town anonymity to all-encompassing, boundless expression, floating through space and back again, through drug hazes, ludicrous outfits to piercing, stripped-down clarity. Sure, I’m gushing a tad, but rightly so. The curators have included every conceivable variety of memorabilia, from scrawled lyrics on cigarette packs to some of his most iconic images.

This exhibition is fantastic in so many ways, a beautiful multimedia celebration of a career so varied and intertwined with popular and niche culture. Every facet of Bowie’s ever-changing image and artistic intention is lovingly explored through a mixture of photography, video installation, literature and, of course, costume. It chronologically charts his progress through varying sounds and identities yet still allows him to remain enigmatic.

I was half expecting him to be roaming round the galleries himself, disguised and slipping unnoticed around the journalists and bloggers. Alas, he wasn’t.

The breadth of Bowie’s immersion in and influence on culture is astounding and thought-provoking. Unlike the majority of today’s crop of “out there” performers, Bowie put a great deal of consideration into his influences, twisting them into something new rather than simply referencing. The exhibition pays special attention to the influence of the work of J.G Ballard, George Orwell and Stanley Kubrick on his music and image, with key pieces of their work positioned in the context of Bowie’s vision. The hollow, savage worlds of Ballard are dangerous yet fascinating, referencing the strange beauty of huge abandoned swimming pools and high-rises while emphasising aggressive sexuality in the smallest of facial curvature, magnified beyond all recognition, as in The Atrocity Exhibition. The exploration of inner space brought out by these works fascinated Bowie and allowed him to construct new identities, new worlds for his music to play in. He invites transformation and expression in himself and his fans, an aspect the exhibition pays homage to.

His lavish and iconic costumes populate the space on thin white mannequins; of particular interest are an Alexander McQueen tyre track printed suit and the extravagant shapes and textures of  Kansai Yamamoto’s all in ones. There is such a kaleidoscope of colour and effect in these pieces it’s quite difficult to absorb all at once, but the curation places them in the context of transformation and evolution, it all somehow makes sense. For me the most impressive part of the collection is the huge video installation in the central room, thirty foot high translucent screens with concert footage projected, speakers cranked to the hilt. Completely immersive and awe-inspiring, it is an experience that will stick with me for a good long while.

Whether or not you’re into David Bowie you can’t deny the effect he has had on music, fashion and the way we express ourselves. The exhibition is truly comprehensive, and regardless of if you view him as a highly skilled plagiarist (no) or a trailblazer who was / is way ahead of his time (yes!) it’s well worth spending a good few hours in.

The exhibition opens on the 23rd, as far as I know tickets are selling fast so get in there swiftly…

For more photos check out my Pinterest board at http://pinterest.com/nadiaramoul/david-bowie-is-press-viewing/

@NadiaReads

On a chilly Thursday evening the exclusive Rossano Ferretti Hairspa played host to True Religion Brand Jeans’ exhibition, ‘The Art of Jeans’. Tucked away from the bustling crowds of Oxford Street and Regent Street, the luxurious location with its black chandelier light fittings, black carpets and cream walls was a perfect backdrop for the striking pieces of art put together by Christopher Heeney, visual brand director at True Religion.

The exhibition was a chance for Christopher and True Religion to show how they pushed their denim wear “beyond the blue jean” alongside promoting their extensive and exciting range of womenswear. Across two floors of the hair spa were Pop Art influenced prints and large frames – each one uniquely distressed and vandalised to suit its feature. The jeans were displayed as three-dimensional pieces, somewhere between prized objects and art installations, the neon canvas backgrounds referencing the iconic work of Andy Warhol.

The choice of artistic influence was particularly relevant given the status of denim jeans as classic pop cultural items. Ever since they traversed from practical outwear for cowboys into staple wardrobe items and fashion statements, they have formed an intrinsic part of pop and youth culture. Wearable by the young, old, rich and poor, the humble denim jean has democratised casual wear while blurring the lines between formal and the informal (the dress code ‘smart casual’ was made for a good pair of jeans and a nice top), which mirrors the way Pop Art meshed together the worlds of high-brow exclusive art and low-brow mass consumption.

But back to the jeans! The pieces displayed on the walls were actual works of art, with lots of frayed elements, eye-catching tie-dye and tropical sun-seeking prints only deepening the longing for the ever-elusive British summer. It was a great opportunity to show the quality and detailed construction of the jeans which after initial completion go through a two-week process of hand finishing to perfect each detail and distressed element. One particularly stand-out frame featured a multi-textured jacket, gloriously adorned with studs and woven fabrics while other pairs of jeans included Native American motifs, patchwork construction and a pair of suspenders, all adding to the nouveau Americana vibe of the brand.

Some of the canvases were so great to look at that I was tempted to inquire about the price of them, but seeing as we are still in a recession, restraint got the better of me and I guess the artistic side of me will just have to settle for a pair of True Religion jean – can’t be mad about that though!

Words and Images by @JENDELLA.

Every time a group of people get together to enjoy some delicious food and some engaging conversation. You’ll find yourself sitting next to some of the city’s coolest foodie folks, whether that be someone from the industry, a blogger or just someone who loves great food. Everyone brings some wine, which is shared around the group. Entry to the dinner is dependent on a trade, which could range from offering a service or just buying a cool gift that you think Scott and the guys will love. 

We started out with a seafood dish with Turkish bread, which I have to say was my favourite as I LOVE seafood. Next we had gorgeously soft baked pork with peach and lentils, followed by a classic cheesecake, which you can see Lei Lei and Nadine drooling over below!

The dinner takes places in different locations, depending on who offers to host. This time we were lucky enough to eat at the chic and stylish Andaluz Bar. It’s long been one of my favourite places to eat in Perth and the whole team there are really lovely. If you’re a local and you’ve never been, it’s seriously worth checking out, if only for the salted caramel, chocolate and chili salt bites, which are unbelievably good.

The photos in this post are by the lovely Jane Bennett, who attended the dinner and runs a great photography company in Perth.