Here’s Lady Gaga, wearing a custom-made Chanel dress to open Gaga’s Workshop at Barneys New York yesterday: lucky Gaga.
Gaga’s Workshop is a pop-up store selling a range of… well, pretty much everything, really: there are clothes, accessories, books, music: the only thing they have in common is that they’re all either inspired by Lady Gaga, or chosen by her.
Not so long ago, the idea of an entire store (even a pop-up one) inspired by Lady Gaga would have had us calling for reinforcements, but we can’t help but notice that the lady’s style has been noticeably less “out there” lately. She’ll probably never be what you’d call “mainstream” (and thank God for that), but mixed in with the oddball outfits have been quite a few pieces that have made us say, “Hmmm, we’d actually wear that…”
A new word it may be, but this isn’t exactly a new idea: skirts this length would’ve been pretty commonplace during the early part of the 20th century (and at various times since), and as the name suggests, this is a hem length which falls somewhere between a midi and a maxi. Hence “midaxi”. Clever, huh?
We think we can probably predict what you’re going to have to say about this. ASOS, bless them, have done their best to make the midaxi look appealing, by making it in a bright red colour, and giving the model some skyscraper heels and a dinky little clutch bag:
Even so, this is a REALLY difficult length to wear without looking frumpy. Like it’s younger sister, the midi skirt, this skirt is going to have magic “stumpifying” properties for some of us, drawing a line right across the widest part of the calf, and if you hated the midi, you’ll probably hate the midaxi, too. Lacking the drama of the maxi skirt or the elegance of the midi, it can just hang there, all sad and droopy, just begging to have a large swathe of material chopped off the bottom.
It’s a lot more matronly and old-fashioned (as opposed to charmingly retro) than most shoppers are used to at the moment, so we’re wondering what you’re going to make of it. Will you rush to embrace the midaxi, pleased to have an alternative to the various other options available in the world of hemlines? Or do you think this one is best avoided?
Step forward, Charlotte Russe, you of the cheap clothes and “buy one pair of shoes, get the second pair for $10″ offers. You have been accused of taking “inspiration” from other brands a little too literally, and we’d like to know how you plead.
First, the evidence:
Christian Louboutin Vs Charlotte Russe
Valentino Vs Charlotte Russe
Miu Miu Vs Charlotte Russe
Pierre Hardy Vs Charlotte Russe
These are just a few of the shoe copycats we found at Charlotte Russe, and, to be fair to them, none of them are exact replicas (although some are closer copies than others), and when you see them side-by-side, it’s instantly obvious which is the designer shoe and which is the copy. So CR probably aren’t going to find themselves in court over any of these. What do you think, though? Have they gone too far with the “inspiration”, especially with the more visually distinctive shoes, or is it fair game for mass-market retailers to copy designers in this kind of way, given that they’re not passing the shoes off as belonging to the designer brand, and are likely to be targeting very different areas of the market?
We’ve talked before about single-sleeved dresses, and whether or not they constitute a crime of fashion, and the consensus generally seems to be “Well, not really, but they’re worth the watching.” In those cases, though, the dresses in question tend to be the standard one-long-sleeve-one-missing-sleeve affair, like this one:
The ASOS dress at the top of this post, however, is different. Unwilling to commit fully to the one-sleeved look, it’s chosen to be half-hearted about it, going for one short sleeve, and one three-quarter length sleeve. The effect is a strangely unfinished, lopsided kind of look, which makes us weep for the simple, stylish dress this could have been – and probably WANTED to be – had the designer not decided at the last minute to make it “edgy”. Too many good clothes have been lost to the scourge of “edginess”, readers. It makes The Fashion Police weep.
That’s how WE feel about this dress, then, but luckily for it, we’re not the jurors here: YOU are. We simply report the suspect and let you decide whether it’s guilty or innocent – which is exactly what we’re about to do.
Pippa Middleton got herself a thorough telling off from some sections of the media this week for allegedly committing a “Leggings As Pants” crime.
Now, at first glance, we had just assumed she was wearing a pair of black skinny jeans/jeggings. It can be hard to tell the difference these days, can’t it? It’s only when you see the rear view that the truth becomes apparent:
Of course, Pippa Middleton’s rear view is pretty famous, and regularly seems to be described as “perfect”. In fact, apparently it has driven many a woman to the plastic surgeon, in a bid to get one just like it. Does the “perfect” rear get a free pass when it comes to leggings as jeans, though, or is Pippa just as guilty as anyone else who goes down the slippery slope of replacing pants with … non-pants?
Lauren Pope attended the London premiere of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 in this slinky red number a couple of nights ago. And honestly, we wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still standing there, in that exact same pose. Well, would YOU feel comfortable moving around in THAT dress. There just isn’t enough Hollywood tape in the world. Or enough eyeball bleach.
Lauren, for those of you not from these shores, is one of the “stars” of the show The Only Way is Essex. You’ll probably be seeing a lot more of her. Probably literally. Just a quick FYI, there…
The Fashion Police’s undercover officers are infiltrating fashion retailers around the country in order to bring you honest, unbiased reviews of the clothing and footwear they find there. Today, they visit Le Redoute to investigate a bright green mini skirt…
Officer: The officer’s identity has been concealed in order not to blow his cover. We can, however, reveal that our officer is 6ft tall, with a waist size of 34″-36″, and is a MAN. Note: THIS IS NOT YOUR CHIEF OF POLICE!)
Sizing: Where do we start? This skirt is a UK size 6, which, in my experience (this is the Chief of Police speaking, by the way, although, once again, I feel I need to stress that I am NOT the gentleman in the photo!) corresponds roughly with the much-maligned US size 0. Most size charts will tell you that this is not the case, and that a US 0 corresponds to the rarely-seen UK size 4, however, as someone who shops a lot in both countries, I can tell you that while that may once have been the case, these days a UK6 = US0. Typically, you’d expect an item of this size to have a 24″ waist: our officer’s waist is at least 10″ larger than that, and while the skirt is obviously tighter on him than it appears on the model, that still tells you that the sizing here is seriously off.
What it SHOULD look like
In fairness to La Redoute, our officer didn’t zip the skirt up all the way in these photos, purely because it will (obviously) have to be returned, and we didn’t want to risk damaging it. However, although it would’ve been a bit of a squeeze, it could have been done without too much difficulty. I’d say that if you wanted to wear this, you’d have to go down AT LEAST two, maybe three sizes, to get anything like the right fit. If you normally wear a size 6, meanwhile, that’s too bad: Redoute do offer a size 4 in this particular item, but it’s currently sold out, and given how far out the sizing of this one was, I wouldn’t think one size down would be that much better.
Oh, dear...
Quality:
OK, now for the positive part: sizing aside, this was a really lovely skirt. The material is thick, high quality, and looks like it would wear well. It’s fully lined, and is very nicely made, with concealed pockets, a vibrant colour and a nice, 60s-style design. For £15, I’d say this would be excellent value for money IF the fit was truer to size.
Officer’s comments:
I was really disappointed with the sizing issues with this skirt. We’re all used to variations in sizing between brands, and even between different items from the same brand, but for something to be several sizes larger (or, indeed smaller) than it should be is just ridiculous, and, as I said above, sizes people at the smaller end of the scale out of the market altogether. If a UK6 fits more like a UK12, then you’re excluding everyone smaller than a size 12 from shopping with you, (I’m not saying this skirt would fit a size 12, by the way: I actually have no idea what its true size would be.) which seems pretty short-sighted.
Is this just a one-off? Sadly, I don’t think so. To answer the obvious questions, I double and triple checked both the size label and the dispatch notice to make sure I’d been sent the correct size, and they both labelled the skirt as expected. I guess there’s a chance that the wrong label was attached in the factory, but, having just returned a La Redoute order a couple of weeks ago – this time because items labelled size 4-6 were too large – I’m inclined to think they’re being generous with their sizing, although I’d be very happy to be wrong about that: they’re one of the very few retailers in the UK who stock size 4, for instance, so it would be a shame to see vanity-sizing take away that variety.
VERDICT: Returned.
Anyone else ever shopped with La Redoute? How did you find it?
Now, don’t get us wrong: we love shopping as much as the next fashion-loving officer. But as the Versace for H&M collection “lands” today, as fashion-parlance would have it, we find ourselves not-so-secretly relieved that our local branch of H&M isn’t one of the chosen ones to be stocking this collection. (We know it’s also available online, but the site has been down every time we’ve checked it today, so…)
Here’s why:
1. The queues
If you want to be in with a decent chance of getting your pick of the stock, chances are you’ll have had to queue up for it: possibly overnight. The Fashion Police don’t queue. Or not unless we absolutely HAVE to, anyway. And honestly, as much as love H&M, the idea of sleeping rough just to get into one is still just a little bizarre to us.
2. The rules
This is not shopping as we know and love it: this shopping has RULES. This morning, H&M was allowing only 20 people at a time into the stores carrying the Versace collection. Each group of 20 had just 15 minutes in which to shop, thus turning the event into a Supermarket Sweep-style exercise in acquisition. This is something of a triumph for H&M/Versace, of course, and for the other retailers who’ve managed to turn fashion into a competitive sport (The Missoni for Target line springs to mind), persuading legions of shoppers that it’s a good idea to grab armfuls of clothes and buy them before anyone else can, but we’re just not competitive enough to want to race other women to the checkout in order to have the same clothes as everyone else in the huge line outside the store. Shopping is not a sport: or at least, it shouldn’t be.
3. The hysteria
Let’s face it: we’re really just worried we’d get caught up in the hysteria and end up buying a pair of those palm-print jeans, just for the sake of buying SOMETHING…
That said, we do kind of love this collection (and we rarely say that about a diffusion line), so now that the H&M site is back up, we’ll be having a good old rummage. There’s a certain leather coat that looks a bit special…
What do you think about designer-diffusion lines? Do you get caught up in the excitement that surrounds them, and think it’s great that people are so enthusiastic about fashion, or do you see it as yet more evidence that the fashion world is, well, a bit mad, really?
