Banana Republic SS08 show

Yesterday was the SS08 Banana Republic fashion show. Usual slick KCD set up: fashion editors perched on four rows of Philippe Starck Ghost chairs in a concrete floored & rather chilly photographic studio in the far reaches of Chelsea. Rather sweetly they had grouped the four English editors together in the front row: me, doyenne Lisa Armstrong of The Times, and two old friends. (With BR opening in London in the Spring, it behoves them to be nice by not shoving us behind a pillar.)

After years & years of attending the main shows during the fashion weeks where you know at least all the British contingent and, often lots of the international lot too, it's quite odd to cover American market events like this when you know absolutely no one at all. I really need to start engaging with the American side of the industry now that I live here. Problem is that I still write, in the main, for the English market and not often about American fashion.

But I am educating myself, and discovering new (to me) designers is always a pleasure. It helps that I have started writing a by-lined column elsewhere which allows me to profile upcoming American designers.

I will provide some lucid thoughts on the show when my head isn't about explode. My critical faculties are suspended 'till I am better.