Milkwood Fashion Market
Vintage is everywhere right now, even Kate Moss is visiting her local Oxfam for a classic 1980s leather jacket, and Cardiff is embracing this fashion phenomenon with open arms.
Walking along Albany Road in Cardiff there isn’t much variation between charity shops and takeaways. Look beyond the tired shop fronts and take a stroll down to the end of Angus Road where you can tap into one of Cardiff’s best-kept secrets. The hidden treasure trove of the Milkwood Gallery, opened last October, is somewhere everyone should visit.
The art studio can be found in the heart of Roath and stepping through the doors into a room flooded with light you enter an ever-changing space celebrating art, music, fashion, and antique collections.
Milkwood Gallery caters for your entire artisan needs and while it holds an ongoing art exhibition, there are also regular events like the flea market and art swapping nights.
Last Saturday this Aladdin’s cave was filled with antique dresses, broaches, badges and every possible treasure imaginable. There were men and women’s vintage clothes and accessories, collectors fashion magazines, hand crafted jewellery and a random selection of other beautifully designed items, some vintage and some new – all at pretty reasonable prices.
If it’s a 1950s halterneck polkadot dress, a 1920s flapper outfit or an outfit to impersonate your favourite punk rock band from the 1970s, Milkwood had everything on offer to fulfil your vintage needs.
Highlights of the stallholders were Love Vintage, which featured homemade badges, scarves and broaches made with recycled vintage fabrics and materials. Natalie Dias’ collection of beautifully handcrafted ceramic pieces were also a delight.
After all the shopping exhaustion, handmade cakes and tea were availble, served of course on beautifully vintage bone china. The market saw a steady stream of shoppers throughout the day and most of the stallholders regularly attend vintage markets in and around Cardiff.
The flea market is a chance to find a unique, reasonably priced item and at the same time promote sustainable living. Gail Howard, one of Milkwood’s co-owners, is keen to set up a regular flea market at Milkwood on the last Saturday of every month – a definite date to keep in your style diaries.
Dressing in your Granny’s old prom dress with a pair of killer heels thrown in is the look you want now, so before heading to the generic high street chains, do some research and visit one of these markets held all over the city throughout the year.
Buffalo and Milgi bars hold monthly vintage markets and in April there will be a big fair at Wenvoe Community Centre in Cardiff.
LOVE
This month Love magazine has used naked pictures of eight people they consider to have the most beautiful bodies in the world. There are eight different covers and inside the magazine a huge photo shoot of these super beauties.
Editor Katie Brand used the models to show how much each differ physically but each are still considered beautiful. The women’s measurements are also given to show the point that perfection doesn’t mean being an identical morf of a supermodel and a flawless image derives from being different.
Calling All Citizen Models
Dove started and now American Apparel are leading the search for normal, everyday women in their advertising campaigns. Recently Hugo Boss opened up their facebook group to find new citizen models and now desgners around the world are following suit.
Forget citizen journalists, the newest strand of the everyday person becoming a professional over night is citizen models.
Shattering the perfected illusions of photoshopping the brand, along with Benetton and L.e.i jeans (Walmart’s own), have all announced new citizen model ad campaigns.
American Apparel does not conform to regular standards and in keeping with its ultra sexual ethos, it is holding search for the best bottom in the world. The brand are looking for the new ‘face’ of their intimates and briefs lines and potential models across the globe can email in pictures of their behinds, but be warned these will be rated and commented on by visitors of the brand’s website.
Winners will then be flown to LA for a photo shoot and will appear in an online campaign and receive $300 in AA’s clothes (which will probably just stretch to one of their ultra-scene body con sculpture dress).
http://www.americanapparel.net/storefront/UGCStyle/BestBottom2010/
Benetton’s It’s my Time campaign takes a slightly more routine route. The autumn/winter campaign will include real models who are able to submit videos and photos to the website until March. This move by the Italian designer aims to match personal style with personality to create models who will ultimately sell more clothes.
And the last company jumping on this online-real-model-bandwagon is L.e.i jeans. Who? exactly. This brand is available to US fashionistas only and is searching for three model citizens to star in its next campaign. As with the other brands, L.e.i is searching for real models to upload pictures which will then be voted on by a panel of judges including Chanel Iman and Teen Vogue editor-in-chief, Amy Astley.
By launching these three similar campaigns the designers are showing they are prepared to feature real women in their campaigns but also tapping into a huge money making scheme. People are tired of over air brushed models and these citizen model searches can cut the cost of a PR agency and also encourage more people to shop.
It is unclear if this fashion phenomenon is due to financial constraints or the increasingly criticism over size zero models, the fact is clear that most labels are increasingly relying on social media and active participation to boost revenue.
Homeless Chic
Two words you probably never thought would go together, but somehow legendary designer Vivienne Westwood has done it.
Known for her kooky, eccentric and sometimes controversial fashion style, the designer dressed models in everything from sleeping bags to whitened hair to emulate the homeless look.
The idea of using clothes worn by people who can barely afford to survive is ludicrous, however the audience of fashion darlings seemed pleased with the collection and applauded loudly after the last cardboard boxes left the stage.
Apparently the idea was inspired by Westwood’s Austrian husband who has been involved with a homeless charity. It is a clever marketing idea, and despite the questionable themes the clothes were accessible, bold and wearable.
The idea to dress the models to look like they slept rough was aimed at sending the message to people to buy less clothes and to treasure each item in your wardrobe and give it a good shelf life before splashing out on something new.
I am sure most of us are guilty of owning the same black dress in slightly different cuts, or five pairs of jeans in varying shades of denim. Most wardrobes are stacked with clothes but as a nation we keep on buying – next time you’re looking for a new outfit it might be worth rooting through your old clothes and with the help of a few embellishments you can create a new item from something old.
Using homelessness to illustrate this is not be the most sensitive thing the designer could have done and buying a dress for £500 is hardly helping the issue. Maybe Westwood could donate a percentage of the profits to a homeless charity, like Shelter, and actually make a difference to the thousands of people sleeping rough throughout the UK.
Westwood’s collection, for Milan Fashion Week, declared: “Perhaps the oddest of heroes to emerge this season, Vivienne Westwood found inspiration in the roving vagrant whose daily get-up is a battle gear for the harsh weather conditions . . . Quilted bombers and snug hoodies also work well in keeping the vagrant warm.”
Most of Westwood’s clothes are priced way above high street standards so most people could only buy a few key items from the designer in their life time. The vagrant was not the only style “hero” to emerge with this collection. One model posed with an orange boiler suit – a Guantanamo-esque-look? and another wore a jumper as a pair of trousers – a reflection on Westwood’s message about recycling?
She said: “I’m saying to people as well, buy less clothes. Only buy things when you really need them and really like them. Wear them and wear them.”
In a grand finale to this collection of fantastic clothes and contentious ethics, Westwood was wheeled out on a paramedic’s stretcher to rapturous audience applause…fashion gone mad? or just a very effective publicity stunt?
Pretty Powerful Stuff
Ladies, it’s 2010 and this is a decade for change and celebrating real women. Brigitte started and Sadie followed and now Bobbi Brown are joining this power list.
The famously luxurious make up brand is starting a new beauty campaign: Pretty Powerful. The company have taken real women, friends and family of the make up artist, and shot a series of before and after videos documenting how each woman uses make up everyday.
Dove’s ‘real women’ campaign highlighted the issue of using real women as opposed to models and although the marketing campaign is first and foremost, to generate revenue for the companies involved, I think it’s great these multi national companies are beginning to change and celebrate how beautiful normal women are,and showing you don’t need to be a size zero, or stringently photoshopped to be beautiful.
The company is also launching a contest, first mentioned in beauty blog StyleList, encouraging women around the world to record and submit their own before/after transformation videos. Once loaded the videos will be on the website and people can vote for their favourite. The beauty company will also donate $1 for each vote to a charity that supports underprivileged women in their careers.
Burberry’s 2010 Look
Classic, clean and British. Burberry has once again found the perfect prose for its new season.
Emma Watson, 19, her brother, and three other effortlessly beautiful models have been picked for the Spring 2010 campaign.
The four men accompanying her are not just any run of the mill models. Along with her brother the three other beauties are; George Craig, frontman of indie band One Night Only, Matt Gilmour, the son of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, and model, Max Hurd, a grandson of the former Foreign Secretary, The Lord Hurd of Westwell.
Watson has proved she is not just Hermione; after modelling for Chanel, she has been picked by this truly British company because her traditional, English features represents everything about the brand.
Sadie Bares All
As guest editor for Grazia this month, Sadie Frost has made a bold statement posing naked with no air brushing for the magazine. The 44-year-old model turned actress and ex of Jude Law is proud of her body and unlike most in the fashion world is prepared to show it unedited.
Despite the fact that her body is immaculate, Frost is sending a message to the media that she doesn’t have to go through Adobe’s photoshopping process to show off her figure. She is confident in her own skin and showing a positive image to women everywhere.
The mother of four said it was time for women to stop torturing their bodies into unrealistic shapes and start celebrating them.
“You can be naturally fit, yet feminine – happy and healthy in your own skin. You don’t have to have that perfect body, because that perfect body doesn’t really exist.”
By posing, Frost is telling woman to stop trying to look like the women we see in glossy magazines, as they have all been edited. The perfect size zero figure does not exist and we should be aiming for a healthy, and happy body instead.
The naughties were about an overarching obsession with size zero, surgery and suffering to obtain this unrealistic image.
Lets make the next decade about celebrating having a healthy, feminine body and being happy in our own skin.
Kings of Leon – The final sell out?
In another sell out, this week Kings of Leon have announced a new exclusive fashion line, available at the ultra chic The Shop at BlueBird, on the King’s road in Chelsea. The band, who are not known for being particularly stylish, have created the line with the company Surface 2 Air. The 12-piece range (as pictured above) also includes a black leather jacket which will only set you back £720…
Fame seems to have overwhelmed the band into thinking their manufactured look means they now have the authority to become fashion designers and they are not the first to try and cash in on this industry. Perhaps they should have looked at Liam Gallagher’s Pretty Green fashion label as a lesson in why musicians should stick to what they know best.
KOL are hardly likely candidates for fashion icons of the year. Before their last album make over they hardly had any fashion sense at all. The band are known for their dirty, country look and laid back attitude. Maybe the mistake of their latest album was caring too much about what they were wearing and not the kind of music they were making.
A band more likely to feature on the catwalk is The Killers. Brandon Flowers’s distinctive style is a frequent tabloid filler and he has even appeared in a fashion shoot for the Guardian magazine. Flowers is known for wearing quirky, one-off pieces (check out the feathers in the video below) and a clothing range could be a good idea for them if the gold supplies are ever running low…
The fact that KOL have no style is shown in this range that basically lets you dress like the band, for a price most people would never dream of paying. Still not put off? You can have your very own red and black checked bandana for £63 or to complete the classic American cowboy meets 2010 rock star there are plaid shirts, skinny jeans and leather belts a plenty in the collection.
The clothes are generic and unoriginal, nothing more than Topman’s finest with a huge price tag whacked on.
Surely the Southern rockers can’t be short of cash? Or have they just lost the plot? Whatever the case 2010 looks set to be a rocky one for the band tipped by bookies most likely to split up this year.
Need a reminder of how good they used to be? look no further….
Too fat to be beautiful?
The Christmas and New Year period are all about indulgence, just looking at the bombardment of food adverts on TV is enough to induce a heart attack. Mince pies, yule log and all the trimmings are served again and again and as it’s only once a year people tend not to hold back on this guilt free dining.
Not however if you belong to world-wide dating site Beautiful People. The site axed almost 5000 people after christmas because they no longer met the strict requirements of being beautiful. The members were emailed to say they had put on too much weight and would only be welcome back after shifting the pounds. A selection of recommended bootcamps were also sent out.
The website is described as ‘the sexiest in the world’ and promises to only set you up on attractive dates. It is superficial and materialistic but at least upfront.
Members in the US, UK and Canada were voted off the site by fellow members for piling on weight over the festive period.
Robert Hintze, the site’s founder said: “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”
The US came out particularly badly but the UK wasn’t far behind. It’s a western tradition to over-indulge at christmas and eat on mass while sitting around not doing much. But it is only once a year and surely everyone deserves a break in the holidays?
1,520 US and 832 UK residents were judged too fat to fit in. The company still has 550,000 members in 190 countries around the world looking for love. The website promises glamorous parties and a jet set global network,approaches by leading film and TV companies and potential contracts from top modelling agencies…
If you want to join this exclusive network be prepared to face the critics. Existing members look at submitted photographs and profiles before passing judgment and if you don’t make it through a banner on the front page says: ” Too ugly to join? browse our beautiful members”.
The fashion world is about beautiful people, you can’t glance at a something like Vogue without being dazzled by the flawless models.
In 2010 is it really ok for a dating website to equate being over weight to being ugly?
Yes the UK has an obesity problem and being seriously over weight is a major issue, but becoming ugly because you’ve gained weight at christmas seems a little extreme.
