New York FashionWeek Day One   As the New York collections open the international fashion season, one special date is marked on the global calendar of cool. No, it is not the latest looks from Marc Jacobs or Rodarte. Another company has grabbed the attention as an online digital clock marks the hours, minutes and seconds […]

New York FashionWeek Day One   Pharrell Williams – music entrepreneur and king of cool – wants more than to be known across the world. He wants to save the planet. And he has already started. The first G-Star Raw for the Oceans collection, in collaboration with the Dutch-based denim company and curated by Pharrell, […]

New York Fashion Week Day One   “I’m 28 going on 78!’ said Wes Gordon, looking cool in a tailored suit and white shirt as he sent out into New York’s sweaty September heat his collection for summer 2015. In his comment about age, the designer was referring to a certain grace and restraint which […]

Graphic black-and-white lines are drawn like a draughtsman’s plan. They run down a narrow space, following a geometric floor pattern, past the framed photographs of graceful models and down to a cluster of dresses on mannequins. On the wall at the opening of this exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London is one word […]

An angular style to express the spirit of the Roaring Twenties. Café Society? I stood in the empty Paris theatre gazing at the audacious jewels strung in architectural shapes, wondering where Coco Chanel came into this story. From researching “The Windsor Style”, about the lifestyle of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, I knew that […]

 Suzy Menkes pays tribute to Yves Carcelle, following his death at the age of 66. The news of the death of Yves Carcelle, the irrepressible architect of Louis Vuitton as a cool, must-have brand, brought back many memories. There was Yves back at the turn of the millennium, with his silver bob, showing me a bag with a […]

Victoire de Castellane transforms Dior’s high fashion in to High jewellery   How cute, how clever, how fashion, how Dior! The jewels, set among the haute-couture clothes that inspired them, was the idea of designer Victoire de Castellane, who not only placed rounded pieces beside Dior’s famous, curvy Bar suit, but made jewels in frills […]

Chaumet waters its thirsty hydrangeas. The secrets of Chaumet’s savoir-faire shared by Pascal Bourdariat, the 12th Workshop Master of the Maison. The hydrangea was invented as a house symbol for Chaumet by artistic director Claire Dévé-Rakoff. She showed what the French call the “horstensia”  in her debut collection last year for the Place Vendôme jeweller. […]

Snowy diamonds and Elizabeth Taylor turquoise on show at Piaget I looked at the white clouds whipping across a sapphire-blue sky above the Place Vendôme in Paris – and I cursed. It was not because of the construction work that had turne­­d the square’s noble central statue into a skeleton of scaffolding, nor because the Ritz […]

How art and science fell into step for Salvatore Ferragamo. Two gilded bronze feet – one from ancient Rome, the other by Henri Matisse – vie for attention with monkey pads, a ballerina’s arched instep and the tiny toes of a toddler taking his first steps. I took a crash course about the human foot and […]