Colin’s Column | Are Fashion Exhibitions Measuring Up?

Colins Column | Opinion

Valentino: Master of Couture | Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Europe

LONDON, United Kingdom — Did the world stop? Did it move? Were we changed? Did fashion leap into the public consciousness as a result of the 2010 Alexander McQueen exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which broke a number of records, not least in sales from the gift shop? I would answer in the negative. The Alexander McQueen exhibition was about tragedy, darkness, drama, fame, notoriety and even horror much

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Colin’s Column | Fashion Tomes of the Times

| Opinion

An image by Annie Leibovitz and Grace Coddington from Vogue: The Editor’s Eye| Source: vogue.com

LONDON, United Kingdom — The making of fashion books for the Christmas market has become a serious business for the publishing industry, no doubt targeting shoppers increasingly desperate to find presents for kids, wives and husbands (not to mention boyfriends and girlfriends) that will interest them, have “cool factor” and not cost too much money. But all too often, the books on offer are potboilers with no real interest in them

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Colin’s Column | Looking Back at London

| Opinion

Backstage at Erdem’s Spring/Summer 2013 Show | Photo: Morgan O’Donovan for LFW Daily

LONDON, United Kingdom — Are we talking about London Fashion Week or a festival of childish self-indulgence? For me, fashion design is about cut, shape, body and proportion, as it always has been. But sadly, many of the recent London shows featured banal shapes hidden under a riot of digitally created patterns, sometimes in the crudest of colours. Just imagine if there was an embargo on the use of colour and pattern and designers

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Colin’s Column | Remembering Diana Vreeland

| Colins Column

Remembering Diana Vreeland | Photo: Priscilla Rattazzi, dianavreeland.com

To coincide with the release of the documentary film “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel”, contributing editor Colin McDowell recalls the legendary editor of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. LONDON, United Kingdom — I first met Diana Vreeland at lunch in an Italian castle just outside Rome in the late 70s. It was a hot and sultry day and, although everyone there spoke English, albeit heavily accented in many cases, I think she was

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Colin’s Column | What Fashion Can Learn from Vidal, Hughes and Piaggi

Colins Column | Opinion

Anna Piaggi Doppie Pagine | Source: happyvintage.glamour.it

LONDON, United Kingdom — To lose three people of great cultural value in a couple of weeks seems a cruel deprivation. First, Gore Vidal, then Robert Hughes and, finally, Anna Piaggi — belles lettres, art criticism and fashion knowledge lightly worn. They will be missed in their different ways. But each one of them had something to contribute to fashion, though I suspect that many, inside and outside the fashion industry, may not

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