A NEW (old) MUSE: TINA CHOW

Posted by Fashion Editor at Large

Tina Chow by Bob Colacello

There are very few well-known women walking around in the world today whose style and modus operandi I genuinely admire. We fill our magazines up with celebrities who gad around in lovely clothes, and I happily share that information with our readers. For me personally, though, I find fashion inspiration wanting from today's crop of young style icons.

Tina Chow with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol by Bob Colacello

I admire Alexa Chung's style; its cute and boyish and young. But where does it go from here? Can Alexa move it on? Kate Moss was someone who I once felt could do no wrong in the area of personal style, but she has, seemingly happily stagnated around a pair of grey skinny jeans, Alaia ballet pumps, and an old fox fur. Not to mention her increasing dalliances with peroxide.

Tina Chow by Andy Warhol

In the last few months I've been finding myself being drawn to iconic women from days gone by. One of them is Tina Chow, a beautiful former model who, through marriage to restauranteur Michael Chow became a fashion icon in New York during the 70s and 80s, as well known for her simple elegance and beauty as she was for her charm and ability to make people feel special. Tina was from Cleveland, Ohio the daughter of a german father and japanese mother and the Eurasian clash resulted in startling green eyes and an impish face that could be as boyish as it was beautiful, especially in conjunction with her signature crop.  Most people assumed she was chinese.

Eventually Tina became a couture collector  She had the best: Mariano Fortuny, Alix, Elsa Schiaparelli, Cristobal Balenciaga. She called her collection a "mad passion". She also said that "dedication and the pursuit of craft with integrity are the only values of life and cloth".  I couldn't agree more with that approach.

Tina Chow and the Kyoto bracelet

Her love of jewellery - she was rarely seen without an armful of Chanel or Cartier - led her to design her own and she created simple and instantly iconic work which today are collectors items. If you know me well and are reading this there is a Christmas hint in there.

After the Vuitton show in Paris I knew that Marc must have be having a Tina Chow moment too.

Backstage at Vuitton by Jason Lloyd Evans And the Tina-alike is wearing MY suit!

Tina with her husband Michael Chow

There is a sad end to the Tina Chow story. Following a separation from her husband, she embarked on a couple of affairs - apparently Richard Gere was a lover - which led to Tina contracting HIV, and in 1992 she died of an AIDS related illness at her home in California. She was only 41. Tina was one of the first heterosexual women in the public eye to be open about her HIV status, and her story was told by the New Yorker with an indepth profile by Michael Gross.

Tina Chow by David Seidner

To see more of Tina Chow's jewellery go to http://www.rarevintage.blogspot.com/

TOM FORD DEBUT: WOW, JUST WOW

Posted by Fashion Editor at Large

If there is one happening I wished I'd attended last fashion week it was Tom Ford's debut own label womenswear show held in New York. Sadly, I didn't make the cut of the 80 most important fashion editors in the world, and was denied the thrill of seeing Beyonce on the runway. Still, there is always next season.

The irony is not lost on me or anyone else in the luxury fashion business that Tom Ford timed the release of his images in print and online (they hit the web in a big way today, courtesy of Harpers Bazaar and the Daily Telegraph), to minimise the possibility of the clothes being copied by the high street.

There wasn't even a chance for a sneaky peek at the clothes in advance of the publication of the images shown here because Ford banned the audience from taking pictures. Ford's closed door approach to publicising his collection is the opposite to Marc Jacobs, who welcomes all comers. Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2011 collection is the most copied by the British high street, a fact I am sure he loves.  Tom Ford on the other hand is making super-expensive dresses for very wealthy women, and tightly controlling how and where we see the work, exactly how it worked in the old days of Haute Couture.

 He explained his thinking to US Vogue: "I do not understand everyone's need to see everything online the day after a show. I don't think it ultimately serves the customer, which is the whole point of my business--not to serve journalists or the fashion system. To put something out that's going to be in a store in six months, and to see it on a starlet, ranked in US magazine next week? My customer doesn't want to wear the same thing she saw on a starlet!"

Hmm. Wonder if he has a list of people he won't sell to?

Or Or maybe the animal print suit?

Tom Ford has really taken his time to build his own brand. First scent. Then sunglasses. Next some verrry high end menswear, and finally...finally he asks his friends Beyonce, Lauren Hutton and Daphne Guinness as well as woman supermodels to walk in a salon show which he comperes like a beauty pageant caller.

'It’s about individuality. Real clothes, real women. For a fashionable woman aged 25 to 75. That’s why I literally put many of my own muses in the show. I hear them say, "God, I can’t find that anywhere!"

‘There used to be a look for women who were older,' he told Harpers Bazaar, published next week. 'You didn’t wear certain things, you did your hair a certain way – but today, 70-year-old women who keep themselves together want to look just like their 25 [year-old] counterpart."

'I want this to be somewhere a woman knows she can go when she wants a great jacket—not a fake expensive jacket, something that has intrinsic value.

'I don’t think fashion has to change every five minutes. I’d like these to be clothes you can wear for a long time—ten, 20 years; pass on to your daughter. Why buy vintage when you can open your own closet!'


I say why buy Tom Ford when you can buy vintage?
My favourites are the animal print trouser suit and the sequin jacket and pendant on Stella Tennant.

All quotes from US Vogue/Harpers Bazaar UK.

AT LARGING IT IN RUSSIA

Posted by Fashion Editor at Large

It has got so that I'm almost embarrassed to start blogging again after the intense working period I've just experienced. I was hired by a start-up fashion web business as a consultant a couple of days a week, who asked me to accelerate them into BETA launch mode and set the agenda on how they communicate fashion.

After a few months diverting the energy for what I would be doing here to them, I felt rather empty, despite the huge online learning curve and sense of achievement for my client. A light had gone out. Last weekend I was finally forced to admit how much it means to me to have this as an outlet. I resigned from the start-up.

Now, I'm back and taking my ickle blog to a .com in January. Only something extremely special and worthwhile will take my attention away from this again.

There is such a backlog of thoughts to share, and I have got to start somewhere. So will start in St Petersburg, Russia. I visited a couple of weeks ago with Liberatum Global the organisation that, thanks to its inspiring founder Pablo Ganguli, (a fabulous 26 year old anglo Indian man with a penchant for eyeliner - below), brings together global leaders and creatives in the arts and culture, and parachutes them into a city so they can share and educate.

Pablo Ganguli with art critic/writer/film maker/dealer Danny "Boogie Woogie" Moynihan

Last June Pablo did Istanbul/Istancool. Then in November St Peters Ball with the Corinthia Hotel group. Last week he threw a dinner for Nobel Laureate V.S Naipaul at the Langham in London. Next year he takes his cultural caravan to Rio.

Pablo is passionate and totally inspiring. “It is vital to develop greater understanding between nations through cultural dialogues. People need to speak to each other face-to-face, as opposed to solely through the net, from different continents if we are to truly, broaden our minds and gain better understanding of each other,” is the kind of monologue he launches into daily.

The program for St Petersburg was somewhat stymied when a key component of the schedule, artist Matt Collishaw was rushed to hospital with a perforated ulcer a day before he was due to leave London. However other artists, including photographer Polly Borland, the taxidermy artist Polly Morgan and musician and Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrell delivered interesting talks to the culturally engaged Russians who came to the free events.

The divine Polly Morgan

One of the most striking things about St Petersburg was, of course, the Soviet hangover that lurks in the dark corners of the city like so many ghosts. It is a stunningly beautiful city, but even 20 years after the Soviet collapse it looks and feels a bit unloved.

Imagine being a fashion designer in post-Soviet Russia?

I was fortunate to meet St Petersburg's most famous fashion designer on day two of the visit, one Tatyana Parfionova (below). In the year following the fall of communism, Parfionova was the first Russian fashion designer to do the western thing and open a fashion boutique.

Now in her late 50s the designer remembers "We were all still buying food from street markets, the old system had collapsed. There was no new system, and in this situation I opened my shop. I put my name above the door. I put my name in the tag in the back of my clothes."  This many sound a perfectly ordinary thing to do to western ears, but it was revolutionary in Russia at the time, and Parfionova is an iconic figure for it.

Her designs are all handworked one-offs. The clothes have an indy folky couture element to them that harks back to the 1930s. When one of her evangelical staff informed me that "She makes one of everything, and only sells to you if she like you," I was taken back to the 1990's. Tatyana would have to change her approach drastically, if she were fighting to be recognised in the clamour of the London market.

If you want an exquisite embroidered shawl featuring a detail from a work at The Hermitage museum, Tatyana Parfionova is your woman.





Her distinctly old school work is all created by hand by her team of artisans, who specialise in embroidery. Tatyana spends much of her time painting flowers, (below).

Meeting Tatyana was an eye-opener, reminding me how lucky we are in the west to have the freedom to create without boundaries. Progress creates progress.


51 Nevsky prospekt, Admiralteysky 191025
http://www.parfionova.ru/

Photos: fashion editor at large