Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Simone Marchetti - Outside Bottega Veneta, Milan


If you have been following my blog for a while, you would know that I rarely post pictures of stylish gentlemen. I'm not sure why that is but I guess I feel that I understand ladies' style a bit better. However, this time whilst in Milan, the penny finally dropped and I was overwhelmed by the amazingly dressed Italian men. No peacocking, just elegance combined with practicality and great tailoring.  

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Natalie Joos - before Jil Sander, Milan


Natalie Joos wearing No21 and a Corto Moltedo clutch. Check out Natalie's manicure - a number of fashionistas were sporting the multi-colour mani at MFW. Just saying... :)

Monday, February 27, 2012

Out with London, In with Milano

Super quick post re my first ever season in Milan. Milan is hectic to say the least. I mean I thought Paris was hectic but Milan is like Paris taken to an extreme. The locations are all over the city and public transport is pretty much non-existent. Oh wait, yes there are trams... where I almost got mugged and it left me paranoid of everyone around me for the rest of the trip. On a brighter note, a lot of the locations are beautiful (especially Missoni) and shooting there is pure joy. Whilst others... like Dolce & Gabbana are a massive hazard. Picture this: a busy street split by two lines of traffic, two tram lines and a narrow footpath. Well, street style photographers are an easily adapting bunch... so what do we do? we put the fashionistas on the tram tracks in the middle of a busy intersection to shoot. The backdrop is very pretty with the light and the trees and the tram track veering into the unknown. The biggest challenge - to make sure you huddle up the subject of your photograph off the tracks at least 3 seconds before the tram passes. I mean lets face it - no one wants to die for a photo... unless of course it's a photo of Anna Dello Russo in which case we all blissfully ignore the traffic by running backwards into it.

Anyways, here are some BTS photos from Milano - dont judge these are my 'quickies' taken on the run and are not at all edited... and street style shots will be coming very shortly xx

 Protesters outside Emporio Armani
Bloggers and photographers gathering before the show (p.s. this is about an hour before the show and the crowd that you see contains very few actual attending guests at this stage)

The heavyweights - Tommy Ton and Nam 


Emporio Armani - guests exit after the show

Unfair advantage - Milanese bloggers cycled from one show to another whilst we were wondering the city trying to navigate the map.. or a Google map 

Outside Jil Sander - Mr Newton, Natalie Joos, Anya Ziourova

London Fashion Week - takeaways

Oh my goodness! This has been crazy two weeks so far. Every season I'm giddy with anticipation of the fashion month as if its Christmas and after the first week I inevitably ask the same question - WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF???!!!!

I dont know if the day will ever come when I will be able to at least enjoy and revel in the misery of being a street style photographer at fashion week without having to switch on and off between my day job, my limping social life and basic chores like doing my laundry... I just want to be happy and tired because I've been standing outside the shows in the cold for 8 hours! :)

As expected London in the middle of February was miserable - no miracles here. Rain, freezing cold, wind, bipolar suffering sunshine - you name it.

I'm not going to dwell on the London Fashion Week because to be honest with you this season in terms of street style it was a bit of a disappointment. Too many predictable outfits straight off the Topshop windows, too many try hards and too many posers - dont know whether it's just me but this season all of these were in even greater abundance than usual.

A few take aways from the LFW2012:


  • Top of the chart - the 3 annoying teenagers who.. what's the word to describe a situation when someone constantly stuffs up your photos by being in them?? Boneheading, is that the correct term? Well, these 3 'lovely' individuals managed to make lives of dozens of photographers very difficult both before and after the Mulberry show. They literally clung onto every possible A, B and C grade celebrity and took "selfies"* with them. By the time they were done, the celebrities had no love to give to the photographers and snuck straight into the show. Result - I have about a dozens portraits of Pixie Lott/Olivia Palermo/[insert name] with about 70% of the photo being taken up by silly mugshots complete with braces, acne and oily hair.
  • Spotted - Leigh Lezark looking lost... loitering outside the Vivienne Westwood Red Label show for long enough so that the general public started questioning the fact that she had a legit invite... awkward ever so slightly...
  • Disappointing - the lack of Pyjama trend and Sporty Neon from the resort collections in the street style. 
  • Loving - Olivia Palermo's style - everything she wore looked perfect
  • Surprising - not enough vintage looks at LFW. I always thought that London fashionistas were the best when it came to doing vintage... Nowhere near enough vintage inspired looks this season.
  • Key trend - flower print is the new black
  • Trend well done - military jackets    
*selfie - a photo taken from a distance of a stretched arm... normally means that people in the photo will be missing parts of their bodies because you cant see what you are photographing

    Tuesday, February 21, 2012

    A complex outfit, London




    When I saw her, I immediately knew I wanted to shoot her although she is not necessarily the type I would normally go for. I just thought her outfit was so complex with the colour and the jacket and the hat but the best part was the ease with which she wore it. At fashion week you get A LOT of people who dress up because it's fashion week or to attract attention or to get a bit of PR but in most cases those people stand out as being uncomfortable in what they are wearing. In this case, my subject was so confident and comfortable in her own skin, you would think she rolls out of bed looking like this. That's why I wanted to shoot her.

    Monday, February 20, 2012

    Pyjama Pants - before the show


    Saturday, February 18, 2012

    Red and Navy - Outside Simone Rocha, London

    Wang Xiao after Simone Rocha

    Sunday, February 12, 2012

    After the show, Moscow



    Wednesday, February 8, 2012

    How to wear a winter coat?

    So its been FREEZING in London.. snow and everything! And it is always so hard to make a winter outfit look cool. So I thought I'd pull out these "oldies but goodies" from my trip to Moscow last year as evidence  that even a winter coat can be cool... well as cool as they get without becoming impractical.