Madeleine Albright. Image by Vanessa Friedman.
Maybe, by watching the world’s most fashionable First Ladies, we’ve all been paying attention to the wrong high-profile women, at least as far as clothes go. Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state, put in a surprise appearance at Vera Wang, and as far as I am concerned, she left fellow celeb guests Serena Williams and Beyonce in the shade. Read more
J. Crew show. Image by Vanessa Friedman.
At the J. Crew fashion week presentation, which had bright-messy-luxe, sequins-and-slouchy, pretty-is-cool-ness (all of which, in its hands, manages to somehow not seem an oxymoron), I started chatting to Mickey Drexler, the company’s chief executive. Mr Drexler was standing with three of his board members, and all of them were wearing blazers and button-down shirts, no tie.
Anyway, we were talking about the show and the board, when Ikram Goldman, the owner of Chicago mega-boutique Ikram, and the woman who originally put the Obamas in J. Crew, came up to say hi to me. Then she turned to Mr Drexler. Read more
Dress from the Victoria collection. Image by Vanessa Friedman.
Not her personally — her company. This summer Victoria Beckham expanded both her family and her family business, and in New York she unveiled both results on Monday.
The first, Harper, her new baby, sat happily on her mother’s lap as VB showed the second: not a diffusion, not a licence, but a lower-priced, looser-fitting, all-dress line called Victoria. Maybe the best way to think of it is as an alternative sartorial personality.
“I think it is!” She said of the easy crepe dresses inspired by the cartoon character Emily Le Strange and printed with line drawings of cats, the colour bloc shifts and memory jacquards curved à la sac dress at the back. “It’s the other side of my wardrobe.” In other words, there are no corsets, the basis of her signature collection, here. “Sometimes you don’t want to worry about the tummy area,” she acknowledged. Read more
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Vanessa has been the FT’s fashion editor since 2003, and is based in New York, though she lived in London for 12 years.
