BURBERRY: ELITE MEETS STREET

Writer: Simon Morgan

Trading figures for Burberry, just out, show Britain’s biggest luxury brand is doing OK despite the wider economic woes. Even so, the company’s had a tricky few years. In the late 90s, Burberry moved to take its own share of the burgeoning market for designer labels. Advertising spend increased and its trademark check, once tucked away discretely in the linings of its raincoats, was applied to everything from socks to handbags. However, Burberry was quickly taken up by a demographic it would have preferred to avoid. Another core British brand, the football hooligan, claimed the label for itself. In 2004, some anxious pub landlords even barred those dressed in Burberry from their premises.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO

Writer: Emily Monaco

Yohji Yamamoto was born in Yokohama, Japan in 1943. He did not always know he wanted to be a fashion designer: he attended Keio University and graduated with a law degree before going on to the Bunka College of Fashion and, later, to Paris, where he studied fashion and fashion design until 1970.

For two years, Yamamoto devoted himself to custom clothing. He is often described as an avant-garde designer: he ignores current trends in favour of creating styles that express his own desires and ideas for clothes instead of the fashion du jour.

BOUDICCA

Writer: Emily Monaco

The masterminds behind fashion label Boudicca are Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby. Both designers graduated from Middlesex Polytechnic and went on to establish the label in 1997. Their designs first debuted in London in a show in the fall of 2000, and ever since, they have guarded their reputation as an independent and avant-garde duo creating both couture and prêt-a-porter lines of clothing.

FASHIONS FASTEST FIX

Writer: Paul Taylor

There is an age old saying that fashion changes like the weather, one minute a trend or style is in and the next it is more out than George Michael in a public restroom. If indeed fashion does change like the weather and with today’s global warming effect making weather so unpredictable, fashion should be constantly updated rather than just being all about Spring/Summer or Autumn/Winter.

A TRIBUTE: ALEXANDER MCQUEEN

Writer: Emily Monaco

Alexander McQueen knew since childhood that he wanted to be a fashion designer. Now a famous household name, McQueen has come a long way from his early childhood as the son of a taxi driver growing up in East London, to become one of the most prominent British fashion designers.

In his youth, McQueen had already begun to design clothes for his three sisters, certain that this passion would become his career. At sixteen, he got his first job in the fashion industry: an internship with a tailor, where his clients included Prince Charles. At twenty, he moved to the Italian fashion capital of Milan, where he began working for Romeo Gigli. He later went on to receive a Masters degree in Fashion Design from Central Saint Martin’s College of Arts and Design in London.