Today there are thousands of girls aspiring to be the next Kate Moss in an age when perhaps it has never been easier to get into modelling. Yet there was once...
Fashion Thinking
OPINION: Better Lives – Interrogating Fashion
It is my contention that fashion as a discipline needs to extend and expand its influence, to counter the traditional stereotype of fashion as a lightweight...
SUBLIME: Making it Big
Feeling stuck in a rut, bored with your job – or just glad you’ve still got one? For students and workers in the creative industries, raw talent on its own...
SUBLIME: The Fur’s Flying
Designers are working with animal pelts again, both real and faux. With demand high, now that farming conditions are better than they ever were and the...
Yohji Yamamoto
This is a video of me in conversation with Yohji Yamamoto, one of my favourite designers.
SUBLIME: Evolving Shopping
We usually apply the concept of evolution as a biological reference to the sequence of events that result in the development of a species or group of...
SUBLIME: Education as Alchemy
‘There ain’t going to be a next big thing because it’s all spinning off into a magnificent diversity for the first time in our tribe’s history…. There’s an...
SUBLIME: Going Forward, Looking Back
In his essay, Dialogue between Fashion and Death, Giacomo Leppardi has Fashion making the case to Death that as sisters: "I’m saying that it is our nature and...
The Art of Dress: Tuxedo
When Steven Dell first conceived the idea of a project for the BA (HONS) Bespoke Tailoring course he had no idea how far it would travel, and the wonderful...
SUBLIME: A Philosophy of Clothes
If you google philosophy and fashion, over 20 million possible connections come up. A cursory run through some of the pages reveals that the main theme -...
SUBLIME: The Journey
Johnny Chin. MA Fashion Footwear The concept of the journey, both external and internal, is at the heart of all my work: artist, educator and researcher....
SUBLIME: The Fashion Body
The concept of the fashion body provokes in me a number of ideas and thoughts. For example, the role I play in an industry which is dedicated to style,...
SUBLIME: McQueen’s Legacy
One of my most treasured possessions is a small black evening clutch bag which my partner brought me some years ago. It looks vintage, with a classic shape...
OPINION: Reflections – Yves St Laurent
The recent death of Yves St Laurent is a pertinent reminder of the role a great fashion designer can play in altering the way society expresses itself through...
SUBLIME: Luxury
“Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy, For the apparel oft proclaims the man.” Hamlet The relevance of this...
SUBLIME: The Skin You're In
A recent trip to New York was revealing not because of the shopping or food although they were as varied and wonderful as ever, but I was struck by the number...
Wardrobe Dilemmas
Traditionally, spring is the time for out with the old and on with the new: a time for blossoming ideas, often about how we might take responsibility for...
SUBLIME: In Through the Out Door
At this time of year my thoughts always turn to our graduates. They face the challenges and triumphs of turning the skills they have honed, combined, with the...
SUBLIME: Through The Looking Glass
The received notion is that wisdom comes with age, far away from the sharp smartness of youth. Yet combined together they give us the possibility of...
London Leaders
"We launched the London Leaders programme in 2007 to catalyse change - the kind of change that we need to tackle London's most ingrained problems. In December...
SUBLIME: Having it all
The Oxford Dictionary definition of pure is that an artefact, substance or being is unadulterated by another material or that it is of unmixed origin or...
SUBLIME: Going Full Circle
“Could it be, I wondered, that our need for distraction, our mania for the new, was, in essence, an instinctive migratory urge akin to that of the birds in...
SUBLIME: Fashionable Soul
Clothes are inevitable. They are nothing less than the furniture of the mind made visible, the very mirror of an epoch’s soul’ - James Laver, Style in...
OPINION: The Politics of Fashion
Fashion is a vast industry which sells us a dream: buying a dress, a handbag or even a fridge, restaurant or holiday will make us feel more beautiful,...