Jimmy Choo for H&M collection behind the scenes video

The new Jimmy Choo for H&M collection launches on Saturday in 200 stores worldwide, and I have been sent an early release of the behind the scenes video clip of the advertising shoot which took place at The Standard Hotel in New York's Meatpacking District.

The campaign was shot by Terry Richardson, Charlotte Pilcher was styling, with Lisa Butler doing makeup, and hair by Jimmy Paul. The models are Sasha Pivovarova, Edita Vilkeviciute & Anna Maria Jagodzinska.

Not only is it the first time that H&M have collaborated with an accessories brand, it's Jimmy Choo’s first foray into clothing - which looks lovely on Sasha et al on the video above. It remains to be seen what it looks like on us mere mortals.

After all, as all fashion editors know, sometimes it takes a supermodel to make the High Street look good, but at least there's less problem with fit with shoes & bags.

It seems that the public desire to get designer names on inexpensive clothing shows no sign of abating. This must be one of the most buzzed about H&M collaborations since they kicked off with Karl Lagerfeld back in 2004, (Although, as I have pointed out before, some of the collaborations that H&M have produced have been downright tacky - Cavalli, or a little leftfield for mainstream tastes: Comme for H&M springs to mind.)

Let's hope the Jimmy Choo for H&M collection ticks the right boxes this time.

Selve: covetable everyday handbags

Four years ago I had the perfect pair of black calf leather boots custom made for me by Munich based bespoke shoemakers Selve (US), or (UK). I had been looking for a replacement for my perfect pair of Sigerson Morrison black boots for two years, but had found nothing. (The main problem was my skinny calves - the SM shop girls had told me that no one else had been able to do up the zips on the boots I bought. Their loss, my gain - at the time.)

It also isn't helpful that I have absurdly narrow heels, high insteps and one foot half a size bigger than the other, and very precise, anally retentive fashion editor requirements as to heel height & shape, toe shape, and height of leg. Selve managed to accommodate all these, in addition to lining the boots with gold leather.

I thought I had died & gone to heaven when my boots finally arrived.

Noodling around their website today, I was struck first by this teaser for the new winter collection:



The Saffron black boots, the St James brogue & the Venus Overknee are all lust worthy - and I love love that Selve can make these in any colour - or leather- of your choice.

I see also that they have added a small selection of bag shapes since I last looked. These aren't truly bespoke, but you can choose the colour of the bag and the strap. They don't come cheap, but they are beautiful.

I usually carry two bags in the winter, something for my laptop & papers, and a small one for lunches & cocktails.

This is my Selve favourite. The Sorbonne in Black Leather, perfect for laptop toting. £495/$650



But I also rather love the slightly smaller Montmartre in Brown Suede for weekends. £375/$550



And am completely beguiled by the Montmartre in Red Suede with a magenta strap but, like What Possessed Me, would find it hard to justify investing in a bright bag for everyday. £375/$550

Moxsie: a new on-line home for independent designers

I’m not the slightest bit surprised that the only area of retail growth right now is on the internet. I buy everything I can on-line. In fact, on-line shopping could have been designed specifically with the procrastinating freelancer in mind, the one who prefers to spend her hours playing on the internets, rather than constructively pitching stories and doing paperwork.

I did most of my shopping for this trip on-line. From the sleeping bag I needed for a story in Big Sur and my California guidebooks, through to the pepper spray I promised my mother I would buy and my new summer shoes, it all arrived blissfully at my front door, cheaper than in any real world shops and requiring no outdoors action on my part.

My latest discovery from my hours of, um, research, is on-line fashion retailer Moxsie. I’m fed up with logos and brand names; I want to support younger, independent designers, who think carefully about how their clothes are made and whose quality of make matches up to the quality of their designs. Which is why Moxsie appeals: they only sell product from independent clothing, jewelry, accessory and shoe designers.

I’m rather liking these elegant and simple sunglasses by Cassius eyewear, from New Zealand based designer Jason Ng. He launched the label in August 2008, naming each limited edition (300 in each style) design after an architect. They’ve got proper scratch-resistant, UV400 lenses and make a pleasant change from over-priced, logo’d up sunnies. These are the Pawson frames:


These are the Corbu:

I particularly like that, in addition to supporting independent designers, Moxsie donate a portion of its proceeds from each purchase to a charity, chosen by the shopper from a list including The Hunger Project, Dress for Success & Save The Children.

What Jane Did Next

We knew Jane Shepherdson had something up her sleeve after she left her job as brand director at Topshop. You don't become arguably the most influential woman in British retail and then leave to spend more time with your cats/children/lover.*

But who knew she'd be getting in bed with Baugar? It was announced today that she has finalised a deal with investment company Baugur to purchase Whistles with immediate effect. Jane becomes CEO of the retailer and is joined by Finance Director Keith Wilks and Marketing Director Jo Farrelly, both of whom worked with Jane at Topshop.

As a result of the management buy-in, Whistles will be separated from its former owner Mosaic Fashions through a newly-created company owned in part by Jane and her team. Commenting on the development of the brand Jane said, "We see a great opportunity to create something unique for the woman who loves great design, isn't scared of a little edginess and who wants to reference but not slavishly follow trends."

I adore Whistles. Not for its own label safe knits & trademark pretty tops, but for its clever buy of labels like Antik Batik & Michael Stars. (And I love its bargain sales too.)

But my love of Whistles goes way, way back. My very first black tie outfit came from Whistles in Oxford. When I was 16, my contemporaries all seemed to sport taffeta evening dresses with sweetheart necklines and poofy skirts (this was in 1988 before fashion had filtered down to teenagers) and, if you were really cool, you wore black DM lace ups or eight hole boots with your dress. Laura Ashley and Monsoon were popular, or else girls made their dresses in the Textiles classroom after school.

Me, I wore a curvy nipped in waist, black double breasted wool evening jacket with a low square neckline and long sleeves, matched with a staggeringly trendy (at the time)Ghost anthracite, dropped waist, full circle knee length skirt in Ghost's trademark wrinkled viscose. No one 'got' my outfit, but I loved it -and I loved my mother more for buying it for me from her meagre salary. I remember that the jacket cost £125 - an absolute fortune back then, and the skirt was £85. I still have both pieces, but the skirt no longer works now that I have hips, and the jacket strains over my bust. I've wrapped them both in tissue paper, and stored them in my parent's attic.

*delete as applicable

Marks & Sparks

I was absolutely astonished on my trawl through the West End with Miss P last week to see that Marks & Spencers have substantially lowered their pricing. Where a pair of black lace knickers used to cost £12, with the matching bar chiming in at a painful £30, I picked up some very cute undies for a mere £5 for the knicks and £9.50 for the bra. Whilst I am the first to complain against overly cheap clothing, I have to say that I have never understood how knickers could be so very expensive for a mere sliver of fabric. Of course it doesn't help that I am a 32G (eek!) so I do need some underpinning, but still...I can only assume that with Primark lowering the price bar so successfully, that M&S have had no choice but to follow. Maybe this in some way explains M&S's less than stellar Christmas trading figures.

I also bought this dress for £39.50 after much humming & hawing. It seems so spot on trend for this SS08 season. If I was living in the UK, I wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole - I have no desire to wear such an instantly recognisable dress out & about, but I reckon in the US there's zero chance of bumping into anyone else in it.

I succumbed to temptation...

Thrift is to be my watchword this year. And I have the best of good intentions. It’s just that I do wish that New Year’s Resolutions didn’t coincide with the winning combination of a new season and the sales. Especially when I’m in London with all these lovely fast fashion shops that don't exist in New York.

Because, believe me, whilst America excels at fashion in the £100-£350 bracket (just take a look at the Intermix and shopbop websites if you don’t believe me), it truly sucketh in the below £100 category. There’s Forever 21 (New Look on acid. It gives me a headache), Banana Republic for office-y staidness/suburban housewife gear, and then the ubiquitous international chains (Hennes, Zara & Mango, which has just landed) if you want to look just like everyone else. The slightly more upmarket British High Street stores are starting to make an impression: French Connection, Sharon Millen and Reiss all have a strong presence in Manhattan but are the same price or more expensive than they are in London, which makes no sense at all with a 2:1 dollar/pound.

There is no equivalent of Topshop (which I think is over rated, but still), Miss Selfridge, New Look, River Island, Wallis, Warehouse, Principles, Oasis, Dorothy Perkins, or M&S Limited Collection: the stores where a savvy shopper can pick up interesting pieces to perk up her designer & vintage-filled wardrobe, and experiment with new looks.

I spent the whole of Monday in the West End with Miss P, helping her fill her new season wardrobe gaps and I was so super-restrained. But it killed me. There was a delicious fitted black blazer for £80 (reduced from £180) in Whistles, edged in navy blue grosgrain which I really, really want. But, all I bought was a pair of on-sale dancing shoes in New Look. They were £10/$20, so I think I can be forgiven?

J Crew cashmere & Loro Piana

Cashmere Cardigan $2650 by Loro Piana at Neiman Marcus.
You may not have heard of Loro Piana, the venerable cashmere company who make some of the world's softest, and most expensive woolly garments. Apart from clothing multi-millionaires from their fancy-schmancy boutiques in the fashion capitals of the world, they have become the world's largest cashmere maufacturer and have a thriving fabric wholesale business making cashmere, vicuna & wool fabrics. This much is in the public domain. There have been rumours for years on=line that they sold their cashmere to J Crew and my personal little birdy in the fabric industry tells me that J Crew buy in such vast volume that it makes commercial sense for Loro Piana to supply them. Anyway, that certainly explains why J Crew cashmere always seem to be such good quality for the price point.
Photo: jcrew.com

Family commitments

Both my sister & my mother, fondly known amongst my friends as Mrs Mad, have descended in some state upon Manhattan for five nights. My days shall therefore be filled with shopping, museums and eating. Forgive me if I am a little dilatory in posting.

Off now to worship at the various temples of retail uptown. Specifically the Holy Trinity: Barneys, Bendel & Bergdorf.

Kate Moss TopShop collection launch party at Barneys New York. Yawn

To Barneys last night for the launch of Kate Moss' thoroughly unexciting TopShop collection in the US. The pocket sized model turned up - on time - looking decidedly low key in a city where grooming is a given not an option. After the blonde 30's vamp of the Oxford Circus store, this time we got a scraped back knot (they aren't called Croydon face lifts for nothing), a blousy off the shoulder print smock dress cinched with a black belt, accessorized with a yellow clutch and rather unappealing zebra print ankle strap heels. If she was trying to convince New Yorkers that she was stylish, this so wasn’t the way to go.

Even though Mairead and Tabitha from the Queens of Noize did their best to get the room moving (their fave track of the evening: the Headman remix of Virginia Plain by Roxy Music), the party, to be honest, was less of a knees up, and more of a press feeding frenzy. The list had been kept super tight, which in reality always means a half empty room. La Moss and Sir Philip (with a protective arm twined around her waist), circled the room for 45 minutes chatting with reporters & TV crews, whilst everyone stood, gawped & snaffled the truffle, caviar and smoked salmon canapés.

Interestingly, bugger all A list turned up. Suzy Menkes told me that in her opinion the Yanks see Kate as a latter day Marianne Faithful, a rock chick rather than as the cultural & style icon that she is perceived to be in England. I bumped into Naomi Campbell getting into the lift on the way out in some truly bizarre ballerina get up; her habits haven't changed with age - she was arriving as everyone else was leaving, Kate having left the main room 40 minutes before. Christopher Kane was on excellent form, especially after having spotted the excellent forms of the extremely hot waiters. Sister Tammy wore his designs as normal and looked ineffably chic, whilst Agnyess Deyn jumped around in a Kane frock in a corner with the Queens of Noize (looking they were having their own private party).

Apart from that I spotted Jonathan Newhouse lurking on his own looking saturnine, Hilary Alexander looking more and more like Mrs Tiggywinkle each day and um, well, that was about it. Oh and Harvey Weinstein & girlfriend Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman. Yawn.