Fashioning February: The Look Show

For the third season I attended The Look Show last Friday. There was a change of venue, instead of the lavish Saatchi Gallery on Kings Road it was held at Victoria House in Bloomsbury Square. I guess this made sense as it is only throw stone away from the Fashion HQ of Somerset House. The event is organised by Look magazine and the idea is to celebrate the best of the UK's fantastic High Street and to also show the trends that will be hitting our streets next season. So unlike the major designers who are showcasing looks for this Autumn and Winter, this event will show us looks for the pending Spring and Summer. In previous years I have enjoyed myself at The Look Show so I was really looking forward to this event. Before the show there was the usual champagne reception with nibbles as well as various stands offering beauty treatments and other activities. There were also a splattering of celebs such as Keisha Buchanan (stood right next to her thinking to myself that she looked familiar till I saw her picture in 'The Daily Fail', Lucie Jones from X Factor, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and IT Girl, Olivia Palermo. We were treated to a performance by Jay Z's protege, teen sensation, Alexis Jordan. Now onto the clothes - I hope you like the 70s as much as I do because this summer the High Street will be full of it. I warn you, you won't be able to move due to Saturday Night Fever and Studio 54. Shops such as French Connection, River Island and Mango are working their inner Bianca Jagger and Fleetwood Mac by using bold colours like bright orange, sunshine yellow, pillar box red, electric blue and bright purple.

These are the key pieces that will dominate the stores:

Jumpsuits
I love jumpsuits - they provide the perfect combination between glamour and comfort. Dorothy Perkins made a statement with their range of bold jumpsuits, French Connection had some classic black ones and New Look had palazzo halterneck jumpsuits that were divine.

Shorts
Start getting those thighs into shape because shorts are going nowhere. Next had brilliant white shorts on display as well as some fab short dungarees and French Connection are unleashing some seriously sexy tailored white shorts to go with a tuxedo blazer.

Maxi dresses
You could not move last summer without seeing a maxi dress and it looks like the summer of 2011 will be the same. Monsoon had really gorgeous maxis and there were floral maxi dresses from French Connection but Warehouse really out did themselves with their offer of really feminine maxi dresses.

Hats
Get one! A large floppy one - not only do they save your life when you are having a bad hair day, they also look fabulous.

Also corsages are back in a big way, no longer regarded as a hideous item reserved only for prom nights, corsages add a lovely touch to a large hat or a dress. Overall the girly girly look is still in and this was exercised very well by French Connection with their Parisian chic and 70s Riviera feel.

For more information about The Look Show check out the website where you can not only see clips from the show but you can also purchase the items.

In the top picture is Olivia Palermo and editor of Look magazine, Ali Hall.

Reality Heaven

She may have made some enemies on The City and earned herself a reputation as a snooty cow but there is no doubting Olivia Palermo's star quality. Her distinctive style has made her the toast of New York and glossy magazines galore and her feisty attitude appealed to many including me. So no surprise to hear that Madame Palermo has landed herself her own reality series which will show her life as a socialite fashionista about town and follows her launching her own fashion label. The show is in the very early stages so has not been picked up by a TV network. The gig is very similar to the one that Lauren Conrad has; the former start from The Hills is set to appear in a one-off reality show that features the launch of her fashion label called Paper Crown. The programme will be in the same mode of The September Issue and will be aired on MTV. The details of Olivia's own show are yet to be released and she only dropped the news last week during an interview in Vogue Espana and not surprisingly blogsphere and the rest of the media went into overdrive.

I am kind of over celebs launching fashion lines so the fashion projects by Palermo and Conrad do not really interest me but what I am into it is the reality shows themselves that depict the glam lives of these IT girls who appear to have it all. Looks, wonderful careers, great wardrobes and apartments and lots of fabulous friends. I mean who wouldn't want to live that sumptuous life? I loved watching Whitney in The City and other shows such as The Rachel Zoe Project and Kell on Earth are my 'not' guilty pleasures. So I cannot wait to see both Palermo and Conrad juggle working on a fashion line along with their personal lives in New York and LA respectively.

While I was researching the projects by Olivia and Lauren I came across this fantastic illustration in Bloomberg Business Week that looks at the pivotal points in Lauren's career. The model is created by Frazer Harrison and you can have a proper look at it here.

Whitney in the City

So Whitney Port made her debut in her new show, The City which aired last night on MTV with a bumper edition. The City is a spin off of the popular so-called reality show, The Hills which is set in LA and in which Whitney is a co-star. After spending many years as an intern at Teen Vogue and stylist at PR company, People's Revolution as well as lending a sympathetic ear to the doe eyed Lauren, Whitney has swapped LA for NYC. She lands a plum job as PR for Diane von Furstenberg (DVF) and moves in with her old mate Erin Williams in a cool apartment in the Gramercy area of Manhattan. The perks of moving to a new city means meeting new people and checking out exciting bars and restaurants. We are introduced to Whitney's co-worker, the divine Olivia Palermo who is a high profile socialite or social as she prefers to be called. Olivia is quite clearly the catalyst to Whitney as Heidi is to Lauren in The Hills but with much better connections. Erin offers the fun factor and a lending ear particularly when it comes to guys. Talking of guys this is where the intro to The City differs from The Hills in that the guys are featured in the opening credits. One of then is Jay Lyons, a musician who Whitney met when she came to NYC for her job interview. She is quite clearly smitten with him but whether he feels the same way about her is to be seen. Then there is Adam Senn, a restaurateur and Jay's flatmate who is new to NYC as well.

This new reality show has been covered extensively in the media and blogsphere which is no surprise considering the phenomenon of The Hills. Aesthetically, The City is definitely easy on the eye and with the almighty Big Apple as a backdrop, how can you go wrong? As a TV show the plot leaves a lot to be desired; a considerable amount of time was spent on Whitney's love life. Is Jay a two-faced, two-timing snake? The answer is that Jay lacks so little charisma and presence that it was hard to care. Aside from her first day at work and New York Fashion Week, very little is seen of Whitney in her workplace which is very worrying as it was Lauren and Heidi's glam jobs that made The Hills the success it is. Olivia is a very different proposition; yes she has a life fuelled with dinner parties, lunches, fashions shows and celebrity galas but she has an edge to her that makes her interesting. For a start she is described as a real life Blair Waldorf; she even has her own publicist and is constantly being mentioned in gossip blogs and newspapers and she even has a fan blog that focuses on her life. Rumour has it that she runs her own PR agency which would make sense as she is trying to build her brand. I would say that The City has a long way to go before it earns the right to be called the reality version of Sex and the City. Still it was good to see Kelly Cultrone in the programme and more interesting are the reports that Kelly is to get her own show.

Check out the official blog for The City here.