MASATO

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MASATO

Hattie

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HATTIE YOU'RE PICTURES

GERMANY : Designer Chang Dreizen in a Hattie Tshirt.

History : Hattie came from animated design of Masato based on the look of the model Jessica Lambert you see very often modelling Masato clothes.

The Tshirt was released on February 28th and available via our online shop

http://www.shop.masato.co.uk/collections/t-shirts/products/hattie-masato-ltd-edition-tshirt

NEW ZEALAND : blogger Prada Junky in Masato

Another blogger the elusive Lil Miss Fashion with the exclusive Hattie

The original print of Hattie

DESIGNER MASATO JONES IN "HATTIE" FROM MASATO LONDON LTD IN NUREMBERG, GERMANY

Masato in Germany Fashion Days

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Pictures from our show at Fashion Days courtesy of GHPhotography thanks Gregor.

February 28 - March 3 2013

Dr M Ltd edition by Masato

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From Nuremberg Germany our show at Fashion Days

Masato Jones as done it again and produced a limited edition design that as gripped Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest by storm, released on February 22nd this as been our most succesful Tshirt to date. As with our Bunni Tshirt we are going to post the pictures of you wearing them.

Michael Barley who bought online and tweeted his picture thank you
March 16th 2013

First to tweet himself in the new Dr M is @Anasok70 thank you 25th February 2013

Open Mouse Charity Tshirt

2013-01-21T07:00:00.000Z

Masato's 3rd Tshirt design is solely for charity commissoned by " The Mental Health Struggle" £30 will help the work of the charity.

Idea behind the design of the mouse, comic mice are cool, light green as it's friendly, open means open you're mind to mental health and be mindful to anyone that is going through a mental illness or episode.

This design will be printed on white or grey t-shirts made from the best 100% natural, organic, incredibly soft cotton. If you want one then simply check out the rewards section to see how much you need to pledge for your own mousey mental health t-shirt.

Here it is http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/92794717/the-mental-health-struggle-from-agoraphobe-to-ceo/posts/389483

Ossie Clark is back

2013-01-20T10:41:00.001Z

He was the undisputed King of King's Road in his 60s and 70s heyday. Beloved by stars including Marianne Faithful, Mick and Bianca Jagger, Twiggy, Liza Minelli and The Beatles, Ossie Clark - and his daring prints and fluid cuts - became synonymous with the fashion of the time.

Since then, his clothes, which have become highly sought-after vintage pieces that change hands for thousands of pounds, have been worn by the likes of Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell, who own carefully preserved original pieces themselves.

Manolo Blahnik, a man who knows a thing or two about form and design, said Ossie 'created an incredible magic with the body and achieved what fashion should do — produce desire.'

And now, the legacy of the iconoclastic designer, who died in 1996, is to be revived with the launch of a new Ossie Clark collection online and at Debenhams..

Ossie Clark Biography
Born: Liverpool, England, 1942

Died: London, England, 1996

Ossie Clark was the youngest of six children. Born into a poor working class family, Clark and his siblings were evacuated to Oswaldtwistle, a village in Lancashire during the Second World War. Encouraged by his school teacher, Clark began to study architecture, geometry and construction at Warrington Technical College. He followed this by attending the Regional College of Art in Manchester in 1957. Here he met Celia Birtwell, which started a long term partnership.

With his talents growing, Ossie secured a scholarship at London’s Royal College of Art. Graduating with a first-class degree in 1965, his final collection was incredibly successful. A dress featuring flashing light bulbs was shown in every major newspaper and fashion publication. The success landed him a feature in British Vogue.

Ossie collaborated with Alice Pollock of Quorum boutique in 1966. Featuring a collection of dresses in the boutique, Pollock encouraged Clark to work with Birtwell, who was commissioned to produce special textiles for his collections. Birtwell and Clark’s collaboration marked the beginning of some of the decades’ most beautiful dresses.

At the epicentre of the swinging sixties, Clark’s work was bought by department store Henri Bendel in New York. Clark was the first young British designer to have his clothing exported.

By the late sixties Clark and his business partner Pollock were deeply in debt. Together they decided to sell Quorum, through which Clark’s products were retailed, to fashion house Radley. Keen to promote Ossie Clark as a brand, Radley funded annual fashion shows, expanded Quorum’s retail business and the distribution of Clark’s designs.

In 1968 Clark designed his first diffusion line for Radley named Ossie Clark for Radley. The following year he married Celia Birtwell and they had two sons together.

Adopting the hedonistic lifestyle of the 60s and 70s, Clark began a downward spiral. Divorcing from Birtwell in 1973, Clark faced legal difficulties and bankruptcy. In 1977 Clark had a brief revival. He went into business with Tony Cadler and Peter Lee, but the partnership lasted only two years. 1984 saw Clark return to Radley. However, he left again in the same year.

By the 1990s Clark had left the industry and turned to Buddism occasionally making garments for private clients. In 1996, aged only 54, Clark was tragically killed by a former lover.

Ossie Clark’s design aesthetic can be seen from his comments to the Sunday Times in 1970, ‘I don’t care how much anything costs as long as it’s beautiful.’ With a legacy of extraordinary dresses, Clark was known for his plunging necklines, flowing silhouettes and prints. Using sensuous fabrics, Ossie Clark’s designs were perfection.

Ossie Clark London Revival at Debenhams

King's Road dress £149

Mayfair dress £129

The extensive collection, named OSSIE CLARK LONDON and set to be a range of brand new designs inspired by the man himself plus a limited run of unreleased vintage designs, hits ossieclarklondon.co.uk today and will be available in Debenhams stores from 21st January.

The news that the Ossie Clark name was to be revived divided fashionistas when it was announced last year, many of whom felt his legacy should remain preserved as it was - or that without Celia Birtwell, who was so instrumental in creating the prints that went hand-in-hand with Clark's creations, the legend could not live on. The designer behind this is Nicolas Georgiou who as cretaed 45 inspired pieces launched tomorrow at Debenhams 21st January.

The Iconic dress will be available February 6th.

The first collection with a full collection in February will include 95 pieces ranging in price from £49 to £189.

‘Ossie Clark was one of the most influential and talented designers, not just in the UK but worldwide,’ Ossie Clark London Creative Director Nicholas Georgiou said in a statement. ‘Ossie Clark London looks to the present and beyond, benefitting from modern materials and new printing techniques but still retaining the flavour of Ossie’s original designs.’

Dorchester Dress available from March 2013 photo courtesy of Conde Naste International. http://www.ossieclarklondon.co.uk/

ABOVE: Ossie snake jacket, Oxford print trousers and St Martins dress

ABOVE: Regent Maxi dress, Tate trousers and Olympia dress

Masato review of 2012 Part 2

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Photo Mickey Lake Photography

May 2012 took us to our 2nd Brighton Fashion Week with the above gold leaf dress gaining much press attention, this as now been sold to a client and the original is archived and on tour the dress will soon be appearing in Beijing, China modelled by Kelly Knox. It is the most detailed intricate work from Masato to date and sold for £1000.

June 2012 brought Masato an idea since a boy he has also drawn a style he has developed the idea of a limited edition Tshirt came about meeting Tshirt printers Pink Sheep who developed the Bunni idea, based on a manic cuddly rabbit mascot we have in the studio. The original drawings are here.

Several colours were chosen, we chose the company colours of dark purple and dark yellow.

The Tshirt now as a fan base with a hall of fame where fans have sents their pictures of themselves. http://masatostudio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/new-tshirt-arrived-two-colours-for-both.html

A further Tshirt collection completely different to Bunni will run through 2013 with a launch of jumpers in Autumn of this year. The next Tshirt release date is February 20th, you will be able to pre-order from end of January.

Thanks to Sarah Jane Correll for publicising the Tshirt all over Europe and Liverpool and Fred Fairbrass from Right Said Fred for appearing on Vintage TV wearing the Bunni.

Photo copyrighted by Sipa Press

October 19th was the launch of our first ever Spring collection. Masato wanted to in this collection attract a younger audience as well as keeping our 30 to 55 target.

Photo Mickey Lake Photography

We chose to launch the collection in Liverpool for two reasons, London is saturated with designers and we had such a welcome in Manchester we felt it was right to do this in another Northern city, it was our biggest show to date at the Maritime Museum in Liverpool.

http://masatostudio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/spring-2013-masato-collection.html

November brought us a colloboration with Models of Diversity to show pieces from the Autumn and Spring collection at the Ideal Home Exhibition.

2013 will bring an extension of the Spring collection in Nuremberg, Germany February 28, March 1 and 2nd sponsored by BMW Mini to close each day with our show at Fashion Days, an autumn collection in September or October. This year so we can develop as a brand the collection of Autumn 2013 will be on season instead of being a season ahead. We will also be stocking more online and an open studio in Paddington and Hove for private customers and bespoke dreses.

2012 as been a fantabolous year so many people to thank Manchester Fashion Week, Helen, Joan and Dan Latimer, Donna Carter, 1880 Bar in Liverpool and especially Kelvin, Models of Diversity, Right Said Fred, Liverpool Fashion Week, Amanda Moss, Brighton Fashion Week, Essex Fashion Week, Gina Negus, Jessica Lambert the models and faces of Masato, James Alexander Lyon, Mickey Lake and the amazing Diesel Punk Studio's, Eve Gregory, Jane Warrington-Smith, Chris Keller-Jackson, Adam & Simon Ryan, Zoe Yates.

New boutiques and stockists thanks to Boutique 33, Chicboutiqueco, Snapbackboy and our long time stockist Scarecrow Boutique.

Masato review of 2012 Part 1

2012-12-30T08:30:00.000Z

Masato started 2012 exclusively designing for retail store Ghost, his designs for the store appeared in the Independent, This Morning, Fashion Telegraph and Geraldine James chose one of his designs to wear to the premiere of "Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" Due to a change of management at Ghost Masato left at the end of his contract in March 2012 to concentrate on his own label Masato and develop with his biggest collection to date this was launched at Manchester Fashion Week on April 11 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iJKXDYvjH4

http://masatostudio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/manchester-blogpost.html

20 looks of a period of 6 months were created for Manchester an area that boomed for private sales for Masato during 2012 despite having no boutique displaying Masato.

The collection came from the idea of a ghost story in York we decided it would be a tacky tourist thing to do, we missed one which was due to a late dinner in York's oldest pub, this led to the owner of the pub explaining the late one is the original and no gimmicks, the story and inspiration of this led to a collection based on ghosts and Masato expressed this in a collection which was shown in Manchester and Brighton. The original kimono jacket (shown below) was sold out within 3 weeks of the Manchester show.

The kimono jacket and the dress inspired from japanese past became the best selling piece from the collection, we were invited to do Brighton Fashion Week at end of May that year with a scaled down version of the collection it was made in a silver version.

The Autumn/Winter 2012 collection brought a colloboration of jewellers Latimer Couture Joan and Helen Latimer and tights designer Eve Gregory of Tights Fest.

http://masatostudio.blogspot.co.uk/p/aw-2012.html

We chose photographers Chris Keller-Jackson of www.crankphoto.co.uk and Martin Higgs to produce a photo shoot in a derelict mansion in Rusholme, Manchester (now used as a rock venue and club venue) to create a photo shoot to reflect the collection.

http://masatostudio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/antwerp-mansions-aw12-photo-shoot.html

Behind the scenes of our collection comes a huge team this was our Manchester team for the Autumn Winter 2012 collection our biggest and most expensive collection to date.

Photo features Donna Willoughby production co-ordinator and logistics, Jane Warrington Smith Public Relations for Masato, Chris Keller-Jackson photographer and visuals for our show in Manchester and later Liverpool, Joan Latimer at the far end from Latimer couture and centre front Masato Jones, Helen Latimer and assistant designer and studio manager for Masato Ltd Chiaki Yasmuro. Two names missing from photo credits hair and make up for the shoot. Help we can add this later please come forward.

Part 2 of Masato review of 2012 coming soon

Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition Rotterdam

2012-12-27T08:17:00.000Z

Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition as opened in Rotterdam at Kunsthal

The Kunsthal Rotterdam will proudly present the exhibition ‘The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk'. Gaultier has shaped the look of fashion over the last 35 years with his avant-garde creations and cutting-edge designs. The first international exhibition of this celebrated and famed French couturier's work provides a spectacular overview of his extensive oeuvre. Initiated and produced by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with the Maison Jean Paul Gaultier-Paris and in Rotterdam, with the Kunsthal, the exhibition brings to life the world of Gaultier and gives a unique opportunity to visitors to have access to haute couture, stage and movie costumes.

Pictures from the exhibition courtesy of the Kunsthal gallery.

Interesting links and review of the show from Meropole de la Mode

http://www.mdlm.info/

Jean Paul Gaultier – one of the most famous fashion designers of our times– was born on 24 April 1952 in Arcueil, Val-de-Marne, France. Gaultier studied at the Lycee d'Arcueil. Although he never received formal training as a designer, he was considered a prodigy when it came to fashion design. At age 13 he designed a collection of clothing for his mother and grandmother.

When only 14, in 1964, he started sketching his fashion ideas on paper and sending sketches to famous couture stylists. Pierre Cardin was impressed by his talent and hired him as an assistant in 1970.

Gaultier worked for Cardin for two years. He then spent a year designing for Jacques Esterel before joining Jean Patou, the famous couture house, as an assistant to Michael Gomez, then Angelo Tarlazzi.

Then in 1974 returned to manage the Pierre Cardin boutique in Manila, Philippines, for a year in 1974, where he designed clothes for Imelda Marcos.

In 1976 several of Gaultier's sketches were published in Mode Internationale, a French fashion magazine. The sketches were favourably received by the design world. That same year Gaultier launched his design career under his own label for a company called Mayagor, as well as continuing to design freelance ready-to-war furs, swimwear, and leather clothing.

In 1976 in October, he presented his first individual collection under his own name, at the "Palais de la Decouverte" comprising articles such as furnishings, table sets in plaited straw. Many of Gaultier's following collections have been based on street wear, focusing on popular culture, whereas others, particularly his haute couture collections, are very formal yet at the same time unusual and playful.

In 1977 he started his own Haute Couture firm. In 1978 he produced his first collection with partner Kashiyama.

In 1981 Gaultier changed his partner and Kashiyama went back to Japan, where he still produces Gaultier products under licence for Japan and the Far East. Sales in Italy were handled by Gibo for woven goods and Equator for knits.

In 1984 Gaultier achieved recognition world wide with his men's collection "men in skirts" In Brigitte Bardot's famous film "God Created Woman" men wore trousers like pencil skirts. This inspired his collection.

In 1987 Gaultier received the coveted French designer of the year award (the French Fashion Oscar Award).

In 1988 he launched a lower-priced sportswear line called Junior Gaultier, at first carried exclusively in a small store located in Les Halles, a funky area of Paris, and later sporadically sold in U.S. department stores. His other store, located on the chic Right Bank of Paris, contained his men's and women's readyto- wear bearing high price tags ($1,200 for a suit). These clothes were also sold in boutiques in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami.

In 1988 Gaultier launched his jewellery line.

Although Gaultier's designs are sometimes considered over-the-top, there is no question among the fashion historians or the retail fashion world that his multiple talents greatly influence the work of other designers. Gaultier imitations and sometimes blatant thefts of his somewhat insane designs often appear in more moderately priced department stores mere months after his runway shows.

Gaultier currently designs for three collections: his own couture and ready-to-wear lines, as well as the newly relaunched clothing line for Hermes, a French leather goods company well-known for their equestrian background, scarves, and expensive handbags.

i'm not an artist, I´m just a craft maker” That´s how fashion´s enfant terrible

Jean Paul Gaultier describes himself.

Without a trace of false modesty, the well known worldwide designer opened

the largest-ever exhibition of his works. The show Jean Paul Gaultier Fashion

Universe: from the street to the stars opens on February 10th 2013 in Rotterdam and closes in May 2013.

and it´s a complete travel to Gaultier´s career is sponsored by Instituto de Cultura

de la Fundación Mapfre and Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal

His never before shown first design from 1971 is displayed along with

136 haute couture and prêt-á-porter outfits created by the innovative

and unbeatable mind of the Parisian stylist.

Visitors can find the different periods that identify Gaultier´s work: mermaids,

sailors, nuns as well as garments that have become universal icons.

“It´s not a chronological exhibition, but thematic; my object men and my parisian women

are here” stresses Jean Paul. Dummies have been provided with humanised interactive

faces that simulate a dozen celebrities that have given their voices and images,

Gaultier himself included who appears with one of his unmistakable sailor outfits inspired by his love of stripes as a teenager.

That´s how we learnt that before designing the iconic bras worn by Madonna in her Blond Ambition tour in 1990

Gaultier, as a child, made a newspaper bra for his childhood teddy bear "Nana"

“By those years, I was born in 1952, a boy couldn´t play with dolls, so I had to play with Nana and make dresses for her"

At Mapfre´s exhibition, there´s a special contribution by

Pedro Almodóvar and the clothes designed by Jean Paul that appeared in

several films directed by the famous Spanish artist.”When Almodovar asked me to

design the costumes for Kika he was already my idol” assures the artist. Gaultier said that

he´s a fan of the Spanish culture and after saying sorry for his love for bullfighting,

declared: “I have loved Spain since I was a child and came here with my family” I have a

good connection with this country. I love especially the food, the people and their life-style.

They aren´t as snob as the Parisians.”

He also said that he liked Joselito,Luis Mariano and Gloria Lasso (Spanish singers)

Over 50 sketches, photographs and audiovisuals help to trace the evolution of one of

today´s most influential artists, a good example of plurality and tolerance.

“Beauty is in every single thing, we just have to open our eyes to see it and I want to claim

this difference. Difference have been always a source of inspiration and we have to

look at them without prejudices to discover a different beauty”

That´s how we can break barriers between good and bad taste, the poor and the rich”

-added Jean Paul Gaultier”

This exhibition summarizes Gaultier´s 35 years and designer and it proves that he

doesn´t lie. Interview extract taken from Spanish exhibition of

Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition and translated by Geneoveva Herrero for this blog piece.

Victoria Abril wears Gaultier in Pedro Almodóvar’s “Kika”, 1993

Notes the exhibition as been on tour in Montreal, San Francisco, Dallas, Madrid and now currently Rotterdam. Will this come to London as yet it is not known.

Masato Spring/Summer 2013 lookbook

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Add caption

Photography by Mickey lake photograhy

Models by Gina & Jessica

studio@masato.co.uk

thanks x

Edward Hopper artist appreciation

2012-12-14T20:15:00.003Z

I find the art of Edward Hopper interesting and ahead of his time. Hopper's was rooted in the presentation of the familiar and concrete.

Born in 1889 in New York he broke through he struggled in the 1910's and his art observations of everyday life started to breakthrough in 1923.

Hopper's art can be seen in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Hopper is famous for capturing the mood and feel of the mid-20th century in his paintings. From lonely diners and hotel rooms to houses on the shore, his paintings lend a vision of what life was like in those times.

NIGHTHAWKS 1953

In Hopper's most iconic painting, Nighthawks (1942) exhibited at the Art Institute in Chicago four customers and a waiter inhabit the brightly lit interior of a city diner at night. They appear lost in their own weariness and private concerns, their disconnection perhaps echoing the wartime anxiety felt by the nation as a whole.

Hopper wrote in 1953 in the journal "Reality"

"Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the human intellect for a private imaginative conception.

The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design.

The term life used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of existence and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great"

Gas 1940

Set at the frontier between day and night, between civilization and nature. The gas station has the appearance of a last outpost, where the human realm gives way, across the road, to the anonymous realm of nature. the edge of the woods rises like a dark wall in which no individual tree can be discerned. But our eye returns again and again to its warm hue. The bright, almost pure white fluorescent light in the gas station, in contrast, is almost painful to look at, and the eye shifts to the ribbon of road leading out of the picture to the right.

Fascinated by Hopper was Alfred Hitchcock and staged many of his early films of Hopper's 1920's paintings notably this painting "Night Shadows" from 1921 pencil drawing.

There's more than whiff of Hopper in TV's Mad Men Voyeurism, loneliness, isolation: these are themes that Hitchcock and Hopper share. Hopper’s style — using a still, often unpopulated scene to tell a story — matches Hitchcock’s approach as well.

Hopper's work was showcased in several further retrospective exhibitions throughout his later career, particularly at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; in 1952, he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. Despite commercial success and the awards he received in the 1940s and 1950s, Hopper found himself losing critical favor. His art continued to suggest that the individual could still suffer a powerful sense of isolation in postwar America. He never lacked popular appeal, however, and by the time of his death in 1967, Hopper had been reclaimed as a major influence by a new generation of American realist artists.

Masato Jones 14 December 2012

Masato in Lady M & Marcella Maybe

2012-12-13T21:44:00.001Z

In the final episode of our LadyM Connects interview series we thought we would finish with a bang. Masato Jones is a fabulous fashion designer and we just had to profile his work. We’ve been following Masato for some time on Twitter and he collaborates with Giles Deacon at London Fashion Week so we’ve been aware of his work over the seasons. What a great way to finish our interview series.

LadyM Connects with Designer Masato Jones

Masato Jones has a lot of fun things going on behind the scenes at the moment. Not all of theme we can tell you about, they are that big! But what we can say is, Masato Jones is currently working on a menswear line and working with the band Right Said Fred for their tour costumes. Let’s get cracking with our usual questions.

Q. When did you first start working in the fashion industry?

I started in 2005 when I passed the interview at Central St Martins, then I was found by Giles Deacon in 2008 took a gap year and worked as an intern I learned very quickly as the label was very hands on with the creative team to creative pattern cut, draping, tailoring. In 2011 my partner Mike and I set some money aside to launch my own collection which we launched at Essex Fashion Week, very quickly followed by Brighton Fashion week two months later.

Q. What encouraged you to get into this industry and what was your route into it?

I was a hair stylist in Tokyo, Japan and on visiting the UK, Brighton was first home learning English I realised I wanted to do fashion.

Q. What is a typical working day for you?

This depends on the time of year, 2 months to the start of London Fashion Week it is very much working with the Giles team to create his bi-annual collections.

Away from the London Fashion Week season it is designing my own bi-annual collections and making one-offs for the boutiques that stock us, working with regional fashion weeks to show these collections and researching new fabrics, meeting with fabric suppliers, my team which is 3 strong on what designs we are going to put forward. I also work closely with an accessories designer Helen & Joan Latimer of Latimer Couture.

Q. What do you love the most about fashion design?

Seeing my influences through clothes for the spring 2013 is based on Japanese tradition from goldfish or koi as the fish is called outside of Japan to the geisha cut. There is nothing quite like the feeling of seeing someone wear you’re clothes the way they move in the dress everytime it is different from catwalk model to client.

Q. Where are you based, how much of an inspiration is your city and what are your favourite cities around the world?

I am based in Paddington, London. The inspiration of my city Tokyo reflects in my Spring 2013 collection and in one garment from the current Autumn 2012 collection the kimono jacket and kimono dress.

My favourite cities around the world Liverpool so vibrant and love the river that surrounds the city, friendliness, buildings and it as it’s own lovely skyline like London you can make and see the shapes. Barcelona especially Gaudi influence the flavours of the city, the colours that Gaudi produces and lights up the city, also an amazing skyline. Venice words are difficult to describe as it is so awe inspiring city I found by walking the back streets of this city amazing more than being cocooned in the main tourist parts. Tokyo in itself is so different it’s home and there is no place like this a neon city with cultural heritage. Finally I loved the city of Zurich I need to revisit this city as now I have grown artistically.

Q. How would you sum up what you do in one sentence?

Providing fashion that shows a women’s shape no matter what age or size I recently made the next Spring 2013 collection for a wide age range, however it as been ladies of 25 to 55 who have invested in Masato.

Q. Who would you love to see Masato designs?

I always have this lady who is very smart and likes colours and a lady that knows how to laugh and smile. I see a Masato dressed lady that can be smart like colours, maybe a little self impressionist. I learn from life around me, places, cities.

Q. Have you seen the fashion industry or change in the last few years, have you had to adapt?

Fashion industry as changed immensely as boutiques are wanting as cost effective as possible which as an effect on the business. I do not compromise on quality I see and make excellence in all my designs which takes time, as this is an art form, it is a constant struggle to be financially stable. I constantly work up to 16 hours a day to provide excellence whether it is ghost designing to Tshirt designs. Social media which is run by my partner Mike has exposed my designs, shapes and styles and I feel social media helps this is why Mike & I like to expose up and coming designers as I do not feel there is competition there is more choice.

I will try as much as possible to hand make all my clothes in house rather than going to Turkey, China, Philippines for manufacture.

Q. What’s the most rewarding part of your work? What is your greatest accomplishment so far?

Being able to do what you want to do seeing an interpretation of art and technique making it into you’re own and seeing the piece moving is amazing. As for my greatest accomplishment so far my tailoring and always the last collection I have made I am always learning and always will be.

Q. What is next for yourself ? What are your goals for 2012/13?

We hope to launch Masato Streetwear in 2013 I have always done graffiti type of art or cartoonistic so I have plenty of idea’s I want people to reach out to see different aspects of my design. I am always looking at new aspects I have many male models say to myself or Mike I want to model male versions of you’re clothes “when are you going to do menswear I am open to this and want to pursue this in 2013.

Next year my aim is to grow as a designer explore France, Germany with my brand expanding the boutiques we stock in.

Bonus Question

Q. If you didn’t do the job you do now – what would be your dream job and where?

My dream job is fashion so what is the next question

Check out Masato Jones on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and of course his blog.

Photographs from Mickey Lake

LadyM Presents would like to thank all those fabulously willing people who have taken part in our interview series this year.

Check out LadyMPresents here http://www.ladympresents.co.uk/

From the States Marcella Maybe http://www.marcellamaybe.com

The aim of every fashion designer is to dip their brush in their own soul, and wrap it around your body, by artificial means and hold your attention so fixed that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, the clothing moves again since it is life. He creates every piece to be not only current in fashion, or a trend setter, but timeless a piece you want to stay in your closet, and be shared for generations to come. Masato puts thought in every cut of fabric, and detail in every stitch, construction is very important to him, because once you seen his designs you will remember his style. Masato produces his designs with one thought in his mind that each piece can say things with color and shapes that he couldn’t say any other way.

Marcella Maybe: What made you decide to be a fashion designer?
Masato: It’s always been in my passion, my DNA, my dreams, so I am now living the dream.

Marcella Maybe: What type of schooling have you had to get to where you are?
Masato: I applied for the prestigious Central St Martins in London and was accepted; also I was found by Giles Deacon and was taken at the right time as the studio was developing so I was learning tailoring from one member, techniques from another and creative pattern cutting. My first projects were creating from an initial idea accessory bags for the catwalk my most famous was the Dino bag.

Marcella Maybe: What designers influence and inspire you in your own work?
Masato: Lanvin, Balenciaga as designers, I have studied Galiano and McQueen and Giles the way he uses the fabrics and the design. Fabric is also an influence seeing the fabric there is so many types of fabric that can be made into outfits. Other influences for my designs have come from my own wedding, artist Norman Rockwell, Ghosts of people’s past, Japanese traditions and fish to name some as for the future I will tell you when we arrive.

Marcella Maybe: Have you ever interned under anyone, or were affiliated with any studios if so what did you learn from it, and take with you for your own work.
Masato: I have interned and worked for Giles Deacon, Kate Halfpenny (wedding dress designer), Kinder Aggugini, English National Ballet retail store Ghost, John Lewis and recently not interning but working for Henry Holland for a project. In between my own designs I hire myself out to designers and 6 to 8 weeks before London Fashion Week I go to help Giles Deacon for their collection.

Marcella Maybe: What is the realistic side of fashion design how hard is it to get established, and your own work out there to the public, or in the shows?
Masato: It is very tough I have met many people who think as you are a fashion designer you must be rich, you are forever designing or making or developing idea’s, so it is very much an artistic life and at times you do not know how you are going to eat next week. We have been lucky we have never paid for PR or marketing Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and bloggers like yourself have exposed my designs so we have had the public interest before the media and boutique interest. For fashion weeks we usually are approached these days to headline or guest, we have been approached from some far away cities such as Las Vegas, Vancouver, Melbourne, Berlin, Amsterdam we are keeping our options open for next year and trying to direct the business or sections of the business.

Marcella Maybe: What advice would you give looking back now that you wish you would have had?
Masato: I would have gained more knowledge into print I was lucky to have briefly an intern Ray-Ann who gave me an insight into T-shirt design and from this we developed for friends “Faces” we printed about 20 and then we developed “Psycho Bunni” I also would have gained more finance as fashion swallows up more money, gone to more fashion networking meetings than I did. I did go to Vauxhall Fashion Scout for seminars and advice my designs I was told were too chic, so going to Paris and learning from the masters would have also been a good path.

Marcella Maybe: For those out there who cannot sew, or are not that great at it, what are their chances in fashion design? The reason I ask this is I recall in Home Ec a teacher saying I’d never be a fashion designer because I did not sew well, but could glue gun like a champion.
Masato: I have been exposed to pattern cutting, tailoring, sewing techniques and I have learnt from costume designers to tailors to wedding dress designers. My initial ability was just drawing. I am told it’s rare for a fashion designer to be able to complete from start to finish on their own a design, but I’m not sure I only learnt this to keep costs down to a minimum. Some designers may have a print background, some may only know how to draw a concept. You don’t have to sew to be a designer just a flair for design.

Marcella Maybe: What type of fabrics are your favorite to work with, and detailing that is specific to your style?
Masato: I work with many fabrics from organza to cotton to silk, chiffon is difficult to work with and making ballet dresses creating a tutu well that is a different story.

Marcella Maybe: Do you prefer making original pieces over mass marketing?
Masato: I prefer original pieces however I have produced for Ghost and John Lewis mass produced garments (not under my own name).

Marcella Maybe: Do you accept interns, or students, who are working towards being a fashion designer.
Masato: Yes we receive about 6 a day however, I am fussy I choose self-starters that have a passion that I can teach but also have a gift as we are a small studio.

Marcella Maybe: What is your current collections inspiration, and what clientele did you have in mind when you made it?
Masato: Originally my clientele I had in mind was 28 to 50 the older woman as very little was out there and still the case, however I have just recently in Liverpool premiered my Spring 2013 collection and this I decided to broaden from 15 to 65 the reviews were amazing.

Marcella Maybe: For let’s say a girl like me in college what style tips could you give us to transition from a student look to an evening look?
Masato: Accessories your outfits and invest in good quality garments as well as high street.

Marcella Maybe: What should every business woman have in her closet?
Masato: Masato of course now online http://www.shop.masato.co.uk/

Marcella Maybe: What is the one thing men do not buy enough of, but should always have a pair of?
Masato: It depends on the man from what I see some men are similar to women and are fashion conscious although I would say on the high street men’s fashion needs a shake up, you have to really look to find something different. We are planning a men’s collection next year.

Marcella Maybe: What products do you have available, and where can we purchase them? What area do you send your products to? Do you ship to the States?
Masato: http://www.shop.masato.co.uk/ we always adding to the collection and yes we ship to the States please email studio@masato.co.uk

Marcella Maybe: Where do you see yourself as far as marketing and design go the next few years.
Masato: I am hoping more boutiques a tie in with a high street store, the development of Masato street wear which is my partner Mike’s idea I will do the designs and have our own select boutique.

Marcella Maybe: Do you do anything else outside of fashion that people may or may not know of?
Masato: I am a qualified hair stylist and T-shirt collector.

Marcella Maybe: Last question and most important how do you want to be remembered when it comes to your designs?
Masato: I want people to say, “Is she wearing a Masato?” this happened recently at Liverpool Fashion Week it was an amazing feeling.

Here are some of Masato Jones amazing designs you can also find on his website, and he is also on Twitter follow him to see more of what beauty he will create.

Personal Note from Masato Jones:
Marcella Maybe thank you for a thought provoking interview, very different in questions and technique.
Masato

Masato dressing Kelly Knox

2012-11-29T19:19:00.000Z

Pictures paint a thousand words let's paint.

We were given a wonderful opportunity to work with Kelly Knox and Models of Diversity for the Ideal Home Exhibition on the 14th and 18th November just received these amazing photographs. It was a pleasure to have support from our friend Richard Fairbrass of Right Said Fred with us and unusual for Masato to see his designs walk down the catwalk and not be backstage

The above outfit is from Masato's Spring 2013 collection the full collection can be seen here from Liverpool Fashion Week http://masatostudio.blogspot.co.uk/p/ss-2013.html

Moving onto the big finale piece is Kelly in Masato's most talked about dress the gold leaf dress from the Autumn 2012 collection regarded as Masato's masterpiece using gold leaf with his intricate design Kelly owns the dress in this as she glides down the catwalk with finesse.

Thanks to James Lyon for the photography, Angel Sinclair head of Models of Diversity, Latimer Couture provided Kelly's jewellery and the amazing Kelly Knox.

Masato photographed by PRIDE magazine

2012-11-28T06:41:00.000Z

The amazing Abigail Ayoola fashion stylist contacted us for Masato's clothes to be featured in PRIDE magazine they were shown in October issue here are the pictures

This dress at time of publishing is available from Chicboutiqueco, 189 Church Road, Hove

Features Masato trousers which are available privately email us studio@masato.co.uk

All from PRIDE magazine October issue

Thanks to Stylist Abigail see her work here http://www.abigailayoola.com/

Gender bender modelling

2012-11-27T07:17:00.000Z

Hedi Slimane picks Saskia de Brauw to front first Saint Laurent men's campaign

In fashion, even gender knows no bounds. Last week, we were introduced to Casey Legler (pictured below),

Casey Legler

the 6'2" female artist who is signed to Ford Models as a male model, and we're already well versed in the story of Andrej Pejic, the delicately featured male (pictured below) who works almost exclusively as a female model.

Andrej Pejic

And now, Saint Laurent Paris, the newly rebranded ready-to-wear branch of storied fashion house Yves Saint Laurent, is dipping its toe in the gender-bending water.

Hedi Slimane, the creative director of the label, has chosen Saskia de Brauw to front the campaign for his debut men's spring/summer 2013 collection. The 31 year-old from Amsterdam is the current model-of-the-moment and has already walked the catwalk for some of the world's biggest luxury brands.

But it's not de Brauw's first stint in menswear; she appeared in Givenchy's spring/summer 2013 menswear show (wearing the very same T-shirt that Rihanna donned as part of her 777 menswear marathon last week), her cropped hair cut and string bone structure providing her with a fast-ticket to androgyny.

Slimane is well-known for his love of the gender-neutral aesthetic - his signature silhouette throughout his work at Dior Homme was that of super-skinny trousers and slim-cut tailoring, so much so that much of his menswear was bought and worn by women. It's not surprising, then, that his menswear for Saint Laurent is suitable for both men and women - indeed, the campaign even states that all of the clothes featured are available to both genders.

World Luxury Fashion Week

2012-11-26T17:02:00.001Z

Jean Paul Gaultier launches World Luxury Fashion Week

World Luxury Fashion Week has been officially opened by the master of haute couture, Jean Paul Gaultier, to an ecstatic audience at Jumeirah at Etihad Tower, Abu Dhabi.

The evening, “Haute Couture 2012 presented by BMW”, featured two collections by Jean Paul Gaultier followed by a fine jewellery show from Garrard.

Mona Ibellini, MC for World Luxury Fashion Week, charmed guests and looked stunning in an Amato Couture evening dress, accessorised with fine jewellery by Garrard.

Later today, invited guests can look forward to collections from haute couture houses, Giambattista Valli, Alexis Mabille and ‘on aura tout vu’ by Livia Stoianova & Yassen Samouilov.

The final two evenings of the four-day World Luxury Fashion Week will showcase some of the most prestigious prêt-à-porter brands, featuring, amongst others, the likes of Ermanno Scervino, Carolina Herrera NY, Nina Ricci, Hervé Léger, Paule Ka ‘Black Carpet’ Collections, and acclaimed regional designers, Walid Atallah, Amato by Furne One and DAS Collection.

The organisers of World Luxury Fashion Week have also partnered with premium bottled water brand, evian, and its limited edition bottle designed by renowned fashion designer, Diane von Furstenberg.

evian’s latest limited edition bottle by Diane von Furstenberg is available in the Middle East for a limited period, and reflects a playful celebration of life and features a nod to the designer’s iconic mantras with, “Water is Life is Love is Life is Water is…,” gracing the bottle in her distinct handwriting.

Von Furstenberg drew inspiration from her personal relationship with evian water and her own love of life.

The result is a unique design that combines evian’s commitment to purity with DVF’s youthful and optimistic philosophy.

World Luxury Fashion Week brings together some of the world’s leading high-end fashion brands over a four day invitation-only fashion week hosted at the spectacular Jumeirah at Etihad Towers from November 25th-28th 2012.

Evian joins the ranks of other iconic partners of World Luxury Fashion Week, Abu Dhabi Motors, BMW, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, Jumeirah at Etihad Towers, Rowenta, Etihad Airways and Avenue at Etihad Towers.

Amazing Photography

2012-11-26T07:06:00.000Z

For some time on Twitter I have tweeted out some amazing photography I have come across recently Twitter as been hit and miss with the attached text, so let the pictures do the talking ...

Tim Warris

Miquel Rico

Sirina Goode

Scott Campbell artist and photographer

Finally Rotislav Pasechnikov, born in Russia, lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Please google all these photographer, artists, save the blog for future photography, art, fashion and Masato related items.

Yoko Ono designing fashion

2012-11-25T07:30:00.000Z

A collection of drawings created as a wedding present for Beatles singer John Lennon in 1969 entitled "Fashions for Men" has inspired Yoko Ono's quirky foray into menswear design.

Concept store Opening Ceremony, which recently launched in London's Covent Garden, will stock the 18-piece collection of from November 30. Highlights include suit trousers with a hand silhouette sewn over the crotch (approx £210), a jumper with eyelets cut out around the nipples and a battery-operated lightbulb bra which can be worn underneath said top (£160).

It is not the first time Yoko has colloborated in August this year she colloborated with Swarovski.

Key pendant £225 and bangle £240 Yoko Ono for Swarovski

Liverpool-born Lennon and Japanese born Ono collaborated together on an album just weeks before he was assassinated in 1980. "I was inspired to create 'Fashions for Men' amazed at how my man was looking so great. I felt it was a pity if we could not make clothes emphasizing his very sexy bod,"

She rather un-modestly continues: "So, I made this whole series with love for his hot bod and gave it to him as a wedding present. You can imagine how he went wild and fell in love with me even more."

Each piece from the collection, which also includes hoodies (around £50) and two styles of boots has a run of just 52 items. A softcover book comprised of Ono's drawings accompanies the collection, as well as sweatshirts and posters decorated with her sketches.

original 1969 sketches

"We loved the idea of sort of celebrating the holidays with Yoko with this collection" said Opening Ceremony co-founder Carol Lim, while fellow founder Humberto Leon explained: "I think she just fell in love with John's body and wanted to show off all of the parts of his body that she loved. There's something so beautiful about that sentiment. And we've realized these designs in pretty actual terms of how she drew them"

Ono is also keen on numerology and has thus arranged for each item to be produced in a run of just 52 pieces, a number which she believes is lucky (although posters and sweatshirts will be produced in larger quantities). These limited-edition pieces include a jockstrap, knee pads with eyes on them for when your jeans have holes, a pair of thigh-high boots, and another pair of boots with a conical incense holder at the toe.

The collection will drop in Opening Ceremony’s New York stores on Tuesday, November 27, London on November 30 and Tokyo on December 9.

Manolo Blahnik outstanding achievement award

2012-11-23T07:24:00.000Z

Manolo Blahnik CBE (60 years of age) will receive the Outstanding Achievement award at this year's British Fashion Awards. This special award celebrates and recognises one designer, who throughout their career, has made an impact on the global fashion industry.

The Spanish-born, Bath-based designer said the award, which was voted for by a panel of leading internationally acclaimed journalists and retailers was "a great honour", adding: "to be recognised for doing something I love is really wonderful."

With a career spanning almost 40 years, his elegant, ladylike designs have won over the likes of Victoria Beckham, Rihanna, US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and famously, Sex and the City character Carrie Bradshaw.

Pieces from the spring/summer 2012 collection (clockwise from top left): Lomeo £650, Plutania £620, Acantus £850, Bohu £820.

Previous winners of the Outstanding Achievement Award have been

Alexander McQueen

Revered globally for his fabulous tailoring, exciting, innovative and outrageous style, McQueen will be remembered as the most innovative and influential fashion designer of his generation. McQueen won the award posthumously in 2010.

Hilary Alexander

Hilary Alexander was the Fashion Director of The Daily Telegraph for 26 years. She has twice been awarded the British Fashion Journalist of the Year at the British Fashion Awards, in 1998, and 2003.

Hussein Chalayan

Hussein graduated in 1993 from London’s Central St Martins School of Art and Design. He was named British Designer of the Year in 1999 and in 2000.

Jean Muir

Jean Muir was part of the British design revolution of the 1960s. Jean Muir’s look was based on signature fabrics, colours, details as well as precision cut and fit.

Joan Burstein

Mrs. Burstein, has been instrumental in the initial success of household names such as John Galliano, Donna Karan, Alexander McQueen and Sonia Rykiel.

John Galliano

Revered globally for his exciting, innovative and romantic designs on the runway as well as on the red carpet, Galliano has established himself as arguably the most influential fashion designer of his generation.

Manolo Blahnik CBE

Manolo Blahnik is one of the world's most influential footwear designers and has been British Fashion Awards Accessory Designer of the Year three times in 1990, 1999 and 2003. Also 2012's Outstanding Achievement Award.

Paul Smith

Within 20 years Paul Smith had established himself as a pre-eminent British designer. He has the ability to anticipate and spark trends, not only fashion but often in the wider context of popular culture. Won 2011's outstanding achievement award.

Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones’ creations have graced the heads of some of the world’s most famous faces, as well as appearing on international catwalks, concert stages, cinema screens, and in prestigious museums of the world.

Suzy Menkes

Suzy Menkes is fashion's authority. As Fashion Editor of the International Herald Tribune - the only daily newspaper with a global reach - her reports on the international collections are read around the world.

Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood today continues to show in Paris, Milan and London. She uses the medium of her shows to talk about culture and politics, more specifically about the urgent need to act against climate change.

Zandra Rhodes

Zandra Rhodes was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1997 in recognition of her contribution to fashion and textiles, has nine Honorary Doctorates and is the first Chancellor of the University of The Creative Arts (Kent).

Valentino at Somerset House

2012-11-21T06:19:00.000Z

Valentino exhibition now open until March 3, 2013 Somerset House Embankment Galleries, South Wing

From the new exhibition looks amazing the largest ever exhibition of all Valentino's clothes up close and personal.

This major new exhibition celebrating the life and work of Valentino will showcase over 130 exquisite haute couture designs worn by icons such as Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren and Gwyneth Paltrow in an exciting installation created specially for Somerset House.

This will be the biggest ever exhibition of Valentino anywhere in the world.

Divided into three sections; visitors will start with a private view of Valentino's world through photographs from his personal archive, offering an intimate portrait of the life of the master.

The exhibition then unfolds into a couture fashion show where roles are reversed with visitors walking the catwalk to view a staggering one hundred and thirty Valentino haute couture designs. Valentino: Master of Couture promises to be a journey into the secretive world of Italian couture.

The final section will unpick the painstaking processes of crafting couture exemplified by the stunning wedding dress of Princess Marie Chantal of Greece, demonstrating the beauty of the work of les petit mains who sew each stitch by hand. In addition a specially commissioned group of films will allow behind-the scenes access to the Valentino atelier, where the craft of couture is demonstrated in a series of fascinating samples.

Finally, discover more about the man, the icon, by exploring the Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum.

Valentino Garavani and Natalia Vodianova at the Musée Nissim de Camodo in Paris 2011

5 reasons to go

1. The biggest fashion exhibition of the decade and the first time in history the entire Valentino archive as been in one place.

2. You can pick up your own tips on your own couture.

3. You can skate see the amazing Tim Walker and Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibitions

4. You get to see the Jackie Onassi's wedding dress up close and personal said to be stunning.

5. The shop everything on Valentino from books to perfume to Christmas gifts.

The exhibition will cost

£12.50/£9 concessions Opening times 10 am - 6pm daily - with late night access until 9pm on Thursdays

Warhol : Fashion

2012-11-20T19:00:00.000Z

Andy Warhol

Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years ends at the Metropolitan Museum, New York on December 31st with a celebration of Warhol's work.

I have admired this man and his influences, David Bowie, Basquiat, Velvet Underground, Lou Reed for many years.
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2012/steins-collect/~/media/Files/Exhibitions/WarholTimeline.pdf

We see images portrayed in a modern iconic fashion that was created originally by Warhol such as the original image of "Marilyn Monroe" which he screen printed 50 times he was fascinated with morbid concepts. Sometimes, however, the results are astonishingly beautiful, such as the resonating, brilliantly colored images of Marilyn Monroe. This was re-created using the image of "Kate Middleton" also known as the "Duchess of Cambridge" for Tatler in February 2011.

The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York is highlighting its growing commitment to contemporary art with an examination of the immense, amorphous influence of one of the most important artists of the 20th century Andy Warhol, the visionary Pop Art painter, innovative filmmaker, trenchant social observer, image thief, deadpan quotation machine, boho magazine publisher and forthright gay artist about town.

In the 25 years since his death at 58 in 1987 Warhol has become both big business — a staple of the current auction madness — and big art history, with scores of exhibitions devoted to individual aspects of his complex achievement. But the Met claims that Warhol exhibition is the first effort to tackle the whole megillah. With nearly 50 works by Warhol and around 100 by the other 59 artists.

Jeff Koons’s “Michael Jackson and Bubbles

Warhol deserves a lot of credit. He cut to the chase when it came to making an American art about American life in the mid-20th century. He eliminated a long-accepted filter between his various art forms and reality, letting the nation’s tarnished soul shine through in all its cheap, materialistic, radiant, often violent, implicitly erotic glory.

He trained his movie camera on real people doing nothing but staring back at the lens, sleeping, eating or kissing; on unscripted actors and nonactors making things up as they went along; on the emblematic Empire State Building which he filmed with a stationary camera for some seven hours one night. In painting he skimmed images from newspapers, enlarged them onto silk-screens and slapped them onto canvas, before or after adding splashes of off-register color. He was aided by a preternatural instinct for motifs of ever-growing resonance: portraits of Marilyn, Jackie, Liz and Mao, pictures of Coke bottles and soup cans, car crashes, race riots and electric chairs.

His two-tier process separated color from image, a radical move that made thinness a beautiful thing in itself, a perfect visual metaphor for the fragile, transitory nature of life and the basis for an indelible Warhol brand.

Organized largely according to subject matter, this show plays down that physical process and stints on Warhol’s influence on abstract painting. Its main interest is Pop art and its postmodern derivatives, and it mixes in older artists whose work developed almost in parallel with if not in advance of Warhol’s — Alex Katz, Richard Artschwager, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke — without sorting out who did what when.

Among the visual high points is Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Neo-Expressionist painting of an immense scarified head in the fourth of 12 galleries.

The fluorescent “Cow Wallpaper” and helium-filled silver pillows. with the music of the Velvet Underground, the house band for the Factory, Warhol’s famous studio-social salon, provides accompaniment in the 5th gallery of exhibition.

In terms of Warhol in fashion he is still with us corporately with Pepe Jeans and most recently with fashion label Issa London which was the cause of my look at Warhol based around the current exhibition in New York and how he still is influencing us today.

Below silk poncho £215 made by Issa London

http://www.issalondon.com/shop/seasons/cr-2013

Hugo Urlaucher

2012-11-19T18:01:00.003Z

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. Simonides

I love art this artist I see from time to time Hugo Urlaucher born in 1958 in Buenos Aries, Argentina and still lives there. Most of the spoken word about Hugo on the web is in spanish, however the paintings are amazing and speak for themselves I feel talking about art is personal for me I need to be looking at the canvas admiring and seeing all the colours soak into my mind this comes along with Hugo's work.

Paintings tend to have an angel theme deep in thought.

I love the strong colours he uses and can you believe Hugo had no artistic training he is completely self taught.

Blog post : Masato Jones 19th November 2012

Christmas List

2012-11-18T08:56:00.002Z

The Christmas List

On Twitter we have some amazing creatives following us from milliner's to men's fashion, from umberella designers to homeware, here is a selection.

Thomas Codd

Menswear designer Thomas Codd as been chosen by Ben Drew of Plan B to wear his bleach denim jeans and as a new Tshirt collection based on iconic figures such as James Dean and the Krays.

Thomas Codd is available from https://marketplace.asos.com/boutique/thomascodd-london/collection

Next one is Cut Out Girls

CUT OUT GIRLS’ designs are centered on quality and a perfect handmade finish, being manipulated through traditional craft techniques and practices. From creation to completion, each and every product is designed, sourced, hand-made and finished from their studio in South East London.

Bags available from http://www.cutoutgirls.com

I Love Umbrella's by Klair

http://www.loveumbrellas.co.uk/

What is the best present you can treat yourself to at Christmas ladies > Tights

Amazing tights from Tights Fest

From Vixen at £8

to Zipper Thigh Highs at £18.99

Tights Fest http://www.tightsfest.co.uk/

Quality hats from W.B. Threads

The flat cap style has been around since the 14th century, and today in the 21st century the style hasn’t changed one bit.

Est. in 1980, well to be precise 10 of September 1980 the birth of myself, a born wide boy, the modern age Del Boy as my mum call’s me.

For nearly thirty years now flat caps have been a big part of my life, pictured from the age of two wearing one, being one of three Frankie’s in my family the flat cap tradition has literally been passed from great grandfather to grandfather to me with probably over 90 years between the three of us with a passion for the flat cap.

I knew that one day I’d have something to do with something that has played a big part of my life. So when the opportunity came around that I was in a position to set up a brand I automatically jumped at the chance. I had the vision in my head but when it came to putting it onto paper I have no experience or qualifications what so ever, so I started designing and sketching what I came up with was ok but, from a little help and encouragement the W.B Threads cap was simply born, the unique style and pattern, and fabric gives it the edge into the 21st century not taking any of its history or heritage away what so ever, merely giving it a revamp, with a 19th century front and more fitted up to date back that completely snuggs the back of your head beautifully.

In Beige, Black, Grey and Navy £25 hard wearing hats your Grandad used to wear.

Available nationwide or from http://www.wbthreads.com

Male jewellery from Latimer Rocks

I have a few of these bracelets amazing is not the word made by Helen and Joan Latimer who also do divine female couture pieces

Two strands Latimer Rocks designed to stack and beaded in glass matt beads in our signature style with a crystal accent, this is £25 and they are more expensive pieces up to £65.

Available from http://www.shop.masato.co.uk/collections/latimer-couture

Finally but not least the Masato Tshirt "Psycho Bunni" is about to be sold out as a special offer for this post only you can order the Tshirt for just £20 follow the link below. Normally £25 plus pandp the offer is £20 with free postage and packing while stocks last.

Purple Tshirt http://www.shop.masato.co.uk/collections/t-shirts/products/psycho-bunni-tshirt

Yellow T shirt http://www.shop.masato.co.uk/collections/t-shirts/products/psychi-bunni

Grace Coddington

2012-11-17T12:12:00.000Z

Grace Coddington was born on April 20, 1941 to hotelier parents on the island of Anglesey, Wales. Her interest in fashion began in her teens, when she would anxiously await the arrival of a current issue of Vogue magazine, which was at least three months outdated due to the fact that she needed to order it on "Rush-Copy". She lived miles away from any designer shops, so Vogue was her only connection to the fashion world. She says that she loves "the whole sort of chic thing "Italinate culture" that was so entirely out of context compared to the lifestyle that [she] led". As a teen, she was pale-skinned and convent-educated and never went anywhere on her holidays, so she just looked at Vogue. Around the age of 17, there was a Vogue model competition, and someone submitted her pictures. She ended up winning the Young Model section. She then began her modeling career for Vogue. Coddington is easily the world's most influential fashion editor, famous for transforming photographic spreads into narratives, a signature she pioneered in the 1970s at British Vogue. Although other magazines have since adopted this style, she pulls it off with a witty, modern romanticism that makes readers feel they are flipping through a picture book instead of just looking at shots of models in pretty clothing. "I like fairy tales, and I like dreaming. I try to weave the reality into the dream," she says. "When readers pick up Vogue, I want them to smile. Everything should be a little tongue in cheek, a little dare-to-go-there."

Grace's new memoirs is out on 22nd November and published by Chatto and Windus £25

Grace Coddington is the creative director of AmericanVogue magazine. British-born, she won a Vogue model competition in 1959, and pursued a modelling career in London and Paris. Landing a job as junior fashion editor at British Vogue in 1968, working under the legendary Bea Miller, she was latterly fashion director under the young Anna Wintour. Lured to New York by Calvin Klein in 1986 to be his design director, she was invited back to Vogue when Wintour took over the American operation in 1988. More recently, Grace was the surprise star of The September Issue, R. J. Cutler’s documentary about Voguemagazine, and celebrated her seventieth birthday in 2011. She lives in New York City and Long Island with Didier Malige, her boyfriend of nearly thirty years, and their two cats, Bart and Pumpkin.

Extract of her memoirs courtesy of Chatto and Windus

There were sand dunes in the distance and rugged monochrome cliffs strung out along the coast. And Druid circles. And hardly any trees. And bleakness. Although it was bleak, I saw beauty in its bleakness. There was a nice beach, and I had a little sailboat called Argo that I used to drift about in for hours in grand seclusion when it was not tethered to a small rock in a horseshoe-shaped cove called Trearddur Bay. I was 15 then, my head filled with romantic fantasies, some fuelled by the mystic spirit of Anglesey, the thinly populated island off the fogbound northern coast of Wales where I was born and raised; some by the dilapidated cinema I visited each Saturday afternoon in the underwhelming coastal town of Holyhead, a threepenny bus ride away, where the boats took off across the Irish Sea for Dublin and the Irish passengers seemed never short of a drink. Or two. Or three or four.

For my first 18 years, the Trearddur Bay Hotel, run by my family, was my only home, a plain building with whitewashed walls and a sturdy grey slate roof, long and low, with the understated air of an elongated bungalow. This 42-room getaway spot of quiet charm was appreciated mostly by holidaymakers who liked to sail, go fishing or take long, bracing clifftop walks rather than roast themselves on a sunny beach. It was not over-endowed with entertainment facilities, either. No television. No room service. And in most cases, not even the luxury of an en suite bathroom with toilet, although generously sized white china chamber pots were provided beneath each guest bed, and some rooms - the deluxe versions - contained a washbasin. Three to four standard bathrooms provided everyone else's washing facilities. For the entire hotel there was a single chambermaid, Mrs Griffiths, a sweet little old lady in a black dress and white apron equipped with a duster and a carpet sweeper. I remember my mother being taken aback by a guest who took a bath and rang the bell for the maid to set about cleaning the tub. Why wouldn't the visitors scrub it out themselves after use, she wondered.

Grace Coddington's father, William, sister, Rosemary, and mother, Janie, holding Coddington in their garden at Trearddur Bay Hotel in Anglesey, 1941

Trearddur Bay Hotel, 1965

We were open from May to October, but the hotel was guaranteed to be 100 per cent full only during the relatively sunny month of August. Throughout the endless weeks of winter, the hotel was so deserted it wasn't worth the bother of switching on the lights. My sister and I would play ghosts. Wrapped in white sheets, we hid along the dark, empty corridors, each containing many shadowy doorways from which you could jump out and say, 'Boo!' We would wait and wait, the silence broken only by the tick-tock, tick-tock, of our big grandfather clock. But in the end, I couldn't stand the gloom, the suspense of waiting, the sinister ticking. It was too scary, so I usually fled to the warmth and comfort of the fireside.

I was a solitary and sickly child, suffering from frequent bouts of bronchitis and croup. I was stricken so often that my doctor thought I might have tuberculosis. Because of this, I missed at least half of each term in every school year. My parents even tried building me up in those pre-vitamin days by feeding me glasses of Guinness and a dark, treacly substance called malt extract that was totally delicious. I was pale, freckly, and allergic to any significant amount of sunshine. Luckily, whatever sun we had during my youth in Wales was filtered through heavy grey clouds. Later, when I was in my 20s, if I had too much exposure, my face would swell up. But I did love the outdoors. And right through to my teens I was always more outside than in, sailing, climbing and clambering over the rugged slopes of the nearby mountains of Snowdonia, or wandering along our island's country lanes, their hedgerows dotted with wildflowers.

Our family lived in what was known as 'the annexe'- the self-contained part of the building just beyond the hotel kitchen. We had our own private front door, a pretty clematis-covered porch, and a garden filled with roses and hydrangeas that was my mother's pride and joy. In the back we grew vegetables and kept geese, ducks and chickens.

The annexe was our own enclosed world within a world. It was furnished in a similar style and in the same taste as the rest of the hotel, but everything was on a much smaller, more personal scale. The paintings and tapestries on the walls, for instance, were all my mother's work. It was also extremely cluttered, because she could rarely bring herself to throw out so much as an empty jam jar. And so the clutter grew, to the point that, despite its being piled into cupboards or hidden out of sight behind curtains, I was too embarrassed to invite any schoolfriends back home.

From the time I began to read, children's comics transported me to cheerier places. My mother kept books, but I rarely looked at them, much preferring the traditional British weeklies such as The Beano and The Dandy, and a glossy new one called Girl, which remained a firm favourite of mine until I graduated to fashion magazines such as Vogue. We didn't have a television, but once a year, when we went to stay with my aunt, uncle and cousins in Cheshire, we rode their pony and were given permission to watch their television. But it was films that fascinated me the most. Once a week from my early teens, I was allowed to visit the local cinema for the matinee performance. So every Saturday, after making the beds, washing the dishes and finishing the remainder of my chores, I was off, walking the mile along the seafront to the bus stop by myself, darting to avoid the stinging sea spray. Then I would take the country bus to Holyhead, passing through a no-man's-land of derelict parking lots to get there.

The cinema was a crumbling old fleapit, a small-town cliche of a picture palace, complete with worn velvet seats and a young girl selling ice cream in the interval. Think of The Last Picture Show, only even more shabby. I would settle into one of the larger, more comfortable double seats in the back row - a place where the boys usually sat and smooched with their girlfriends during the evening show - and there in the darkness I would completely give myself up to the dream world of celluloid.

I remember being crazy about Montgomery Clift and James Dean. I loved all the boys with soft, sad eyes and lost souls. I loved horses, too: National Velvet, with Elizabeth Taylor, and Black Beauty, which was dreadfully sad, although not as sad as Bambi. When I saw that, I cried all the way through to the end. Duel in the Sun was another favourite - such a tragic love story. I adored Gregory Peck; his voice was so warm and reassuring. I was enchanted by The Red Shoes, with Moira Shearer and Robert Helpmann. Audrey Hepburn, too, was so chic and adorable in her skinny pants and little pumps. I loved Audrey, not only through her films but because of some reportage photos I saw in the magazine Picture Post that struck a chord. She was shown happily riding around on her bike and cooking in her tiny apartment. Everything was so clean and shiny. I aspired to live in exactly that same perfect way.

Back home I often attempted to make outfits similar to the sophisticated looks worn by the actresses on the big screen. Throughout my teens I made most of my own wardrobe - even suits and coats - on our Singer sewing machine, which you worked with foot pedals. All it took was patience, and lots of it. I would use Vogue patterns and fabrics from Polykoff's, a big old department store in Holyhead. I never made anything outrageous. My mother allowed me to dress only in relatively conservative clothes. Everything else she knitted for me. As many old photographs will attest, my mother seldom stopped knitting. She took her knitting everywhere, night and day, making things that were the bane of my life because they would become saggy, especially the knitted bathing suits: saggy and soggy.

Even when I was a child, Vogue was already on its way to being my magazine of choice. I used to see my sister's copy lying around the house after she had finished looking through it - so in a way, it was Rosemary who introduced me to fashion. When I was older, I would make a special trip to Holyhead to buy it for myself. It always arrived rather late in the month, and there were usually only one or two in stock. Presumably Harper's Bazaar was around then, too, but for me it was always Vogue. I bought it for the fantasy of looking at beautiful clothes, and I liked getting lost in its pages.

Leafing through the magazine, I was fascinated by the new styles, those ladylike 1950s outfits implying a softer, more approachable type of glamour than that which dazzled me at my local cinema. But what I particularly loved were the photographs themselves, especially those taken outdoors. They transported me to all sorts of exotic places - places where you could wear that kind of thing. Après-ski wear under snow-topped fir trees! Beachy cover-ups on sun-kissed coral islands!

Leafing through the magazine, I was fascinated by the new styles, those ladylike 1950s outfits implying a softer,

The images that stood out for me the most were by Norman Parkinson. He was one of the few fashion photographers back then who was a celebrity in the modern sense. Tall and skinny in an elegant suit with a small, bristling, old-fashioned military moustache, he was always putting himself in his pictures. I began to recognise his work for its light-hearted humour and irrepressible personality. Parkinson would come to play an important role in my life.

During the years after I turned 13, I spent even more time studying Vogue, since my sister left home to get married, and I inherited the sophisticated privacy of her room. It was very much hers when she lived with us; I wasn't even allowed through the door without an invitation. So the first thing I did was redecorate.

The funny thing was, after Rosie moved out, we became much closer. I even saw her more often. Our relationship changed dramatically: when I was younger, she had been able to push me around, and I bore the brunt of her terrible temper tantrums. But by the time she left home, I had grown a lot bigger and taller, and found I had a new way of dealing with things. The more someone gets angry with me, the calmer I become, a policy I have stuck to all my life.

By the time I turned 18, I knew I must leave my tiny Welsh island. Although I had nothing like a good alternative plan, there was no choice if you stayed in Anglesey. You could end up working in either a clock factory or a snack bar. Through my teens, people had remarked upon my height, saying I was tall enough to be a model (probably because most Welsh girls are pretty short). My old school friend Angela always encouraged me, saying, 'Let's go to London. You can go to modelling school, and I can get a job as a secretary, and we will see where it leads.' Before I left home, I cut out and posted a coupon from the pages of Vogue. It was a tiny paragraph in the back of the magazine promising, for 25 guineas, a life-transforming two-week course at the Cherry Marshall Modelling School in Mayfair.

Modelling seemed like an escape into a world of wealth and excitement, a chance to travel to new places and meet interesting people. At the very least, I reasoned, it could lead to a greater social life, a respectable home, and marriage, all of which would make my mother deliriously happy. Besides, I loved seeing beautiful clothes in beautiful photographs and dreamt of being part of it.

I am often heard grumbling about Anna Wintour. For instance, at the end of a fashion meeting at American Vogue in which one of my cherished ideas is arbitrarily dropped. Or if I'm required to shoot a difficult celebrity I'm not especially fond of. Or if I'm disallowed from shooting a model I mannered in that arty Italian Vogue way.

Funnily enough, I had no idea how cantankerous and argumentative I can seem until I saw myself in the film The September Issue . Small surprise that, in the past, Anna has said I am the only person in fashion who can actually grind her down. As the nuns who wrote my school report when I was 14 put it, 'Grace has a very nice way of getting her own will.'

I worked with Anna in London when she was editor ofVogue in the mid 1980s, and was hired to start with her when she took over American Vogue in 1988, but I remember her from way, way back in the early 1970s, when we were both working in London: I was at Vogue and she was a junior fashion editor at Harpers & Queen . We didn't communicate much, if ever. She wore layer upon layer of oversized baggy knitwear by the Scottish designer Bill Gibb and many other layered knitwear pieces by the fashionable Italian label Missoni. I don't remember her face so well because she seemed to be constantly hiding it behind layers of hair, too.

I remained at Vogue until 1986; meanwhile Anna moved to America in the mid-1970s, working first at Harper's Bazaar and later New York magazine . I would run into her over the years, and she was always very nice to me, although still with that shy little habit of ducking down behind her fringe.

Then one day when I was over in New York, I received a call from the child psychiatrist Dr David Shaffer, an old London friend who had relocated to Greenwich Village. He said to me, 'I'd really like you to meet my new girlfriend.' I joined him at the Algonquin to find him with Anna, who by then was working at New York and seemed far less shy.

'[Alex] Liberman [the right-hand man to Condé Nast's owner, Si Newhouse] likes her very much and wants to give her this job with a new title - creative director of Vogue,' David said. 'What do you think?' 'I think it's great,' I said, because it seemed to me at this point in the early 1980s that American Vogue had become, in contrast to BritishVogue , very bland.

David once said to me, 'The great thing about Anna is she doesn't care whether people like her or not.' I'm not so sure if this is true, but she never seems to falter when criticised. I care whether anyone - from the mailman to the dry cleaner - likes me. Maybe that is my weakness. But not Anna's. She does, however, care very, very much about her children. If one of them comes on the phone, I've watched her melt, which is not something you very often see with Anna.

More and more over the years, especially in public after Anna became American Vogue's editor in chief, I've come to see her as the possessor of an almost Margaret Thatcher-like, straight-faced control. One summer on her way into a Paris fashion show, for example, after being pelted with some gooey substance by the animal-rights people who are always lying in wait, she disappeared backstage, rearranged herself, had her make-up redone, and was still one of the earlier arrivals to take her seat.

And when the outrageous Alexander McQueen unveiled his new collection in New York one year, she kept her composure despite his show's deliberately provocative finale. At the time the fashion world was titillated by McQueen's design for 'bumsters' - trousers that barely reached the crotch in the front and hardly covered half the a-. One particularly mischievous model, Dan Macmillan (the great-grandson of a former British prime minister), was wearing them in the show's finale, which found him directly facing Anna in her front-row seat. McQueen stepped on to the catwalk to take his bow, and the entire cast turned to bow back at him. At which point the boy was literally mooning Anna right in the face. And she, unruffled behind her dark glasses, simply stared back.

Fashion magazines have totally changed in my lifetime. If someone like Madonna is a huge success as the cover story of the November issue, next time around there must be someone or something bigger. In the end I think Anna gave up on my styling covers since I'm not good with famous people. We used to use the occasional model, but the sales difference was so marked between them and celebrities that it's now 100 per cent pop and movie stars.

Fashion is just a part of what the magazine stands for today, which may be hard on old-timers like myself but is definitely the modern way. I'm grateful to have lived through the 10 years or so I did at American Vogue when fashion was the most important element. Since then Anna has broadened our scope momentously. Vogue now incorporates the worlds of art, business, technology, travel, food, celebrity and politics. And this is all largely due to her vision.

It was Anna's decision, for instance, the moment Hollywood talk turned to Zoolander , the comedy film in which Ben Stiller plays a knuckleheaded male model, that he should be taken to Paris and shot by Annie Leibovitz for a couture story. I have to say, I hated the idea, not merely because I respect Paris couture for its purity and exquisite workmanship but because an advance screening of the film revealed it to be a crass and truly mind-numbing experience. I think it was decided upon, really, because Anna had a crush on Ben. (She gets these occasional crushes - Ben, Puff Daddy, Roger Federer.)

Annie wanted Ben wearing clothes resembling his costumes from the film, which were so incredibly vulgar and nasty that I had to put my foot down and say how much better he would look in a dark suit. Even then I had reservations about the whole project. So when it came to choosing the models, I secretly went for the tallest ones around, girls like Stella Tennant, Oluchi and Jacquetta Wheeler, beanpoles who would effectively show up his short stature.

Annie then became obsessed with getting the tiny actor into a tiny pair of swimming-trunks in order to spoof a Helmut Newton photograph. He refused. She tried again. He ever so reluctantly agreed to wear them.

Overall, the end results, thanks to Anna's justified insistence on Ben, were, I have to admit, quite hilarious. Annie's wittiest decision was to reference key couture shoots of the past, even paying homage to the famous 1963 series by the American photographer Melvin Sokolsky, who suspended his models in strange futuristic plastic bubbles over the Seine and above the cobbled streets of Paris. Ben Stiller's frozen, panic-ridden expression, trapped inside his duplicate bubble, was priceless. He was a really good sport throughout for allowing us mercilessly to poke fun at him.

In 2005 I found myself working with Madonna. She was then married to Guy Ritchie and enjoying a very English life between homes in London and the countryside.

The British tabloids had embraced her to the point of fondly calling her 'Madge', as her current husband did, and expending miles of newsprint commenting favourably on how she wore tweeds, had taken up riding, and had been seen several times at the local pub. All the dismissive sneering concerning her involvement with Jewish Kabbalah had been replaced by approving articles on how its influence had turned her into a much more agreeable person with a plausible English accent. Our photographs were to take place at her country house, Ashcombe, once upon a time the estate of the multifaceted English artist/photographer/writer Cecil Beaton, whom I had worked with towards the end of his life. Our photographer was to be Tim Walker, a nostalgia-loving character whose body of work looked like he had conjured all his images from children's fairytales.

Tim had travelled down early to Wiltshire to discuss all the ideas. He and Madonna met in the pub, and when I and the rest of the crew arrived a day later he ecstatically reported that she had embraced every detail he had suggested. All of which surprised me, as some of his ideas were pretty extreme.

Our first shot of her was in the drawing-room wearing a pair of jodhpurs, and that went well enough. Then came a picture in which she was supposed to wear a dress with a very full skirt. She balked at it, saying, 'This makes me look like a 1950s débutante,' which, of course, was pretty much the effect we were after.

Things went comparatively smoothly with our next two set-ups. We took a picture of her in bed reading the newspapers with her children. Next we took a shot of Madonna out riding with Guy. Galloping back, she couldn't have failed to notice that we had started to turn all her sheep pretty shades of pastel in readiness for a picture later on. Then she started to grow testy. 'I'm going to do the picture of her in the martini glass next,' Tim told me enthusiastically while Madonna was upstairs changing. I do remember asking if he was absolutely certain she had agreed to this. 'Oh yes,' he said as she came down, looked out the window, and saw, on her lawn, an enormous martini glass with a giant cherry in it and a ladder propped at its side waiting to carry her up.

'I'm not doing that. No way,' said Madonna grimly. She firmly vetoed the image, and when he suggested another that involved her wearing a hat that looked like a cream cake, she angrily refused that, too.

Finally, she calmed down a little when we set up a photograph reminiscent of a Bruce Weber portrait of Debo, Duchess of Devonshire, feeding the chickens on her country estate at Chatsworth. But after that, even though there was another day to go, the mood was far too negative and the session was, for all intents and purposes, over. Sadly, the extraordinary dress - a huge crinoline that John Galliano had made specially for the shoot - was caught in the crossfire. She looked so gloomy in it that the photograph was never used. Despite all the problems, however, we ended up with a really charming evocation of Madonna's English interlude.

Every so often I have lunch with Anna at her request. These days, though, I get worked up beforehand, usually thinking, 'This is finally the time she'll say, "You're getting on a bit. You're looking tired. I think you should take it easy,"' as a prelude to gently asking me to step down. In fact, the last time we went out, I dared to say, 'I thought you were going to tell me to leave.' At which point Anna laughed and said, 'No, as long as I'm here, you will be, too.'

I never had an actual birthday party when I was a child. As with any other social happening, it was the sort of thing that made me far too nervous. Whatever anxieties I felt at seven, however, were magnified tenfold when I reached 70 and people started to mention the possibility of a large-scale birthday celebration.

As the day approached in spring 2011, Anna said, 'Your big birthday is coming up, and I'm going to give you a party. Have it where you like and however many people you like.' (Funny how she likes celebrating other people's birthdays but ignores her own.)

The party was, in fact, a roaring success. Anna made a speech. 'Grace,' she jokingly began, 'this is going to be your favourite part of the evening, when we all get to talk about you.' Then she continued, 'To me you will always be the heart and soul of the magazine, its guardian at the gate, its beacon of excellence. For about as long as I have edited Vogue, one person, Grace Coddington, has made me excited to come into the office every day…'

I was speechless. This from a woman who normally never pays you a compliment to your face! How could I possibly respond? I could click my heels in the air or turn cartwheels, but my regular sessions of Pilates were not quite that effective. I could laugh and cry at the thought that so many painstaking years of toil were held in such esteem. I could shimmy across the dance floor knowing I still had some life in me yet.

While these thoughts were running through my head, I looked at the many photographers, hairstylists, make-up artists, art directors, fellow editors and ex-assistants around me, and realised I don't really have a single friend who isn't in the business. Which is perfectly fine by me. So am I still that completely fascinated by fashion? In many ways, yes. Having worked in it for over 50 years, I gratefully accept that my world has expanded with time, not contracted.

For me, one of the most important aspects of my work is to give people something to dream about, just as I used to dream all those years ago as a child looking at beautiful photographs. I still weave dreams, finding inspiration wherever I can and looking for romance in the real world.

Extracts courtesy of "Grace a Memoir" Chatto and Windus £25 released 23rd November 2012

Grace Coddington will greet fans at Browns' South Molton Street store, London, between 12.30pm and 2.30pm on Thursday November 22

Weekly round up of who is wearing what

2012-11-16T20:50:00.002Z

Our weekly feature on Twitter on a Friday night as been plagued by Twitter omitting the text and tweeting the picture I know you look forward to this each week so here it is in a blog.

Thursday November 15, 2012

Keira Knightley stepped out in elegant, custom-made Erdem for the LA premiere of Anna Karenina on Wednesday night. Could the British-based designer be the creator of her wedding dress? We certainly hope so if this frock is anything to go by.

Monochrome must-have
Kristen Stewart 's 'Twilight' tour wardrobe may have veered a little on the sheer side, but the actress has nailed her edgy look firmly on the head with this black and white Julien Macdonald dress. Monochrome has been enjoying a lot of attention in the fashionistas' wardrobes of late, make sure you don't miss out. In fact this season black, white and gold are in.

Get spotted
Leopard print is the much-lusted after pattern on the fashion circuit, at the moment. Alexa Chung has proudly wielded a number of spotty garments of late, and Kate Moss modelled a Marc Jacobs leopard print dress to her book signing this week. Ergo, you should be wearing it.

Leopard print is definitely in with Ralph Lauren going for Leopard print belts £45.00 to Giambattisti Valli's amazing £2515 coat from Browns oh it's to die for and come back again and wear it so divine

http://www.brownsfashion.com/Product/Women/Clothing/Coats/Leopard_printed_trench_coat/product.aspx?p=4442289

And the more affordable Zara £195 newly released.

Oh look at the gnomes, the gnomes

Even wary fashionistas have dipped a toe in the matchy-matchy trouser suit and jacket pool by now. For die-hard trend followers and those wanting to stand out in sartorial pool of patternistas - fashionistas who can't get enough of patterns - it's time for suits to get zany. Shiny fabrics with unusual prints are the key. Channel Andrea Riseborough , and Mulberry's S/S '13 collection, for inspiration.

Finally Masato had one of his dreams come true this week which was his clothes placed on models over 50 and with disabilities at the Ideal Home Exhibition Thursday 15th November and here he is with Top model Kelly Knox.