Rethink your thoughts on fashion. It may come as a surprise but the clothes we wear; the way we wear them, the trends we cringe at and the shoes we bookmark in Vogue, have very little to do with designers, models or our beloved "style icons". Audrey Hepburn didn't give us that little black dress, neither did Givenchy. Coco Chanel didn't make the tweed suit and Karl Lagerfeld doesn't revamp it each season. You don't want a Mulberry Alexa because it's a nice bag and you don't covet the platform Louboutins because they look great on Kim Kardashian. Blame the journalists.
(sarah mower, karl lagerfeld, hamish bowles)
If you've ever seen "The September Issue", you must have winced as Anna Wintour held her poker face under giant sunglasses, awarding "contructive criticism" to prominent designers such as Diane Von Furstenburg and crushing the naive aspirations of aspiring talent such as Thakoon. You see the make or break power she exerts with a flinch and if she doesn't like your dresses, you will retire.
Anna's flagrant persona puts her at the top of the fashion journalist hierarchy, dangling her Manolo's above Alexandra Schulman, Hilary Alexander, Carine Roitfeld, Cathy Horyn and Hamish Bowles. And they're all great, they all walk tall with the same high fashion smugness, they all look good in black shoulder pads and they all sit in the front row, passing remarks with morse-code facial expressions and write reviews that are either nice or cruelly cutting.
Anne Hathaway hasn't starred in any offensive romcoms about her life, but Sarah Mower doesn't need that hype. My desperate grasp at fashion journalism begins and ends with her work and i know i'm not the only wannabe. I used to read her enigmatic quotes over and over, trying to rewrite them in my own iconic way but putting the pen down after sounding like a dickhead in 101 copycat sentences. In her telegraph columns and style.com reviews, she doesn't adopt that cartoon, vengeful brutality for the sake of it; she's honest and offers practical retrospective which not only helps frame the industry but also rights the crooked wrongs which attract those shallow attributions. She won't give you 10 different ways to wear a pencil skirt, but in written word she will capture the artistic catharsis that a designer marches out in what may be, on the surface, just a procession of work-wear.
When fashion week approaches, Mower throws away the red headmistress marker and adapts her perception of a collection to find the ingenuity and embrace the good. "A designer is good when they're able to articulate who they are while capturing something about the times-while making clothes that can be worn, that’s the key. A designer is bad when they're derivative, run after every trend and don't have the skills to make things properly."
In 2009, Sarah was appointed as the British Fashion Council's Ambassador for Emerging Talent, after having proved her aptitude for sourcing innovation throughout her renowned career. Designers, other writers, models, stylists and fashion crazed maniacs like me, cling to her style.com pieces which analyse the quality of fancy clothes, but more-so the relative impact of the design and that visionary ignition which conceives a McQueen or a Chalayan and she can find that - trust me, she can.
(sarah mower, karl lagerfeld, hamish bowles)If you've ever seen "The September Issue", you must have winced as Anna Wintour held her poker face under giant sunglasses, awarding "contructive criticism" to prominent designers such as Diane Von Furstenburg and crushing the naive aspirations of aspiring talent such as Thakoon. You see the make or break power she exerts with a flinch and if she doesn't like your dresses, you will retire.
Anna's flagrant persona puts her at the top of the fashion journalist hierarchy, dangling her Manolo's above Alexandra Schulman, Hilary Alexander, Carine Roitfeld, Cathy Horyn and Hamish Bowles. And they're all great, they all walk tall with the same high fashion smugness, they all look good in black shoulder pads and they all sit in the front row, passing remarks with morse-code facial expressions and write reviews that are either nice or cruelly cutting.
Anne Hathaway hasn't starred in any offensive romcoms about her life, but Sarah Mower doesn't need that hype. My desperate grasp at fashion journalism begins and ends with her work and i know i'm not the only wannabe. I used to read her enigmatic quotes over and over, trying to rewrite them in my own iconic way but putting the pen down after sounding like a dickhead in 101 copycat sentences. In her telegraph columns and style.com reviews, she doesn't adopt that cartoon, vengeful brutality for the sake of it; she's honest and offers practical retrospective which not only helps frame the industry but also rights the crooked wrongs which attract those shallow attributions. She won't give you 10 different ways to wear a pencil skirt, but in written word she will capture the artistic catharsis that a designer marches out in what may be, on the surface, just a procession of work-wear.
When fashion week approaches, Mower throws away the red headmistress marker and adapts her perception of a collection to find the ingenuity and embrace the good. "A designer is good when they're able to articulate who they are while capturing something about the times-while making clothes that can be worn, that’s the key. A designer is bad when they're derivative, run after every trend and don't have the skills to make things properly."
In 2009, Sarah was appointed as the British Fashion Council's Ambassador for Emerging Talent, after having proved her aptitude for sourcing innovation throughout her renowned career. Designers, other writers, models, stylists and fashion crazed maniacs like me, cling to her style.com pieces which analyse the quality of fancy clothes, but more-so the relative impact of the design and that visionary ignition which conceives a McQueen or a Chalayan and she can find that - trust me, she can.
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