My Fashion Life

So you start off the evening with a couple of drinks coupled with great company then head off dancing in a pair of heels so cute that you’re lavished with compliments all night! By midnight you decide you just don’t care, you’ll go on barefoot if you have to, if only just to make the pain go away! Sounds crazy….I know…but welcome to my world. I forfeited comfort over style a long time ago when it comes to footwear. The majority of my shoes were not made for walking let alone dancing, so the idea of an adjustable heel is a dream which should have come true years ago.

The CAMiLEON heel allows those of us who put our feet through this un-necessary hardship to adjust a 3¼” heel down to a comfortable 1½ “ as and when desired. A steel rod in the heel with a flexible, yet sturdy leather sole makes this heavenly concept possible. The problem is the idea was developed with the working woman in mind - think Melanie Griffith in Working girl - which is understandable but perhaps explains why the shoes available for sale just aren’t appealing enough to make me want to part with my cash. Hopefully in time this will change but until then the trade off between comfort and style continues.

If you’ve seen the ultra stylish touch screen phone courtesy of Prada and cant decide whether to buy The Prada phone when its launched in February or wait for the much anticipated iPhone then read here. Although personally after watching this I don’t think it could possibly compete and I doubt very much that Apple were even worried in the slightest. I reckon it’s going to take a lot more than an aesthetically pleasing handset by Prada to beat the utility of Apple’s golden ticket.

Apple has finally unveiled the iPhone to much anticipation. So what does this mean for fashion? Do we care? Should we care? The short answer is yes! This latest gadget from Apple combines your mobile with the internet and MP3 player costing around £250. (start saving now)

What’s more the iPhone can screen television shows and films, take photographs with two megapixel camera, browse the internet and send emails and text messages. Hang on an apple picking minute…my phone already has these features! (then again I never use them) So what’s all the fuss about? What Apple have done is bring all these features together in a sleek, sexy, stylish device and made them EASY to use. Basically the nice guys at Apple have made it with you and me in mind.
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Julie Fredrickson and Phil Leif over at Coutorture.net launched this week a new section to the site, Coutorture It. A social fashion news service, and the first of its kind for fashion, the service allows readers to submit and vote for their fave fashion stories.

Submissions can come from any source, be it online mags, websites, blogs and forums. As more users start submitting and voting it should become a very valuable source of info!

Going live today, Riya launches like.com a visual search engine which aims to completely change the way we shop online.
Rather than spending a lifetime searching for items on the net with text, like.com allows for a search on favourite items to be placed based on appearance, finding items with similar colours, shapes and textures.
For example, you like Mischa Barton’s earrings.

Click on the section featuring her earrings and like.com will find matching styles. If you prefer to search for more items based only on colour or texture or shape, then dial up or dial down your preference and place your search.

With 200 retailers currently participating, like.com will be adding over 30,000 items to its catalogue each day and in the coming months consumers will be able to search using their own pictures. CEO and co-founder, Munjal Shah, confirms at the moment like.com only specialises in accessories however in the coming months will expand into clothing and home and garden.

So what does this mean for fashion online? Well it definitely makes searching the net that much easier, especially when it comes to looking for items with a specific detail such as a buckle or strap or even when looking for perhaps bags with a certain pattern. And for online shopping, hopefully it will allow for healthier competition with more online retailers in one arena, consumers will be given greater choice.

Everyone at the moment seems to be speculating about fashion’s future with Time magazine suggesting the industry is in a “state of medical emergency” and rightly so. Fashion is undoubtly stagnant and stale and with the number of celebrity labels which have infiltrated the market it is no wonder that it has become solely about marketing, i.e Topshop and Kate Moss.

Watching footage of Hussein Chalayan’s show at Paris fashion week Spring/Summer 07 showed and gave hope to all that there is a future and an interesting one at that. Not the first designer to mix technology into fashion, (there are others before such as Alexandra Fede.)

However Chalayan communicated the idea that technology could play an important role effectively and successfully. Using technology to create movement with zippers, hemlines and sleeves and to transform structure. He’s connected the two industries at a time when we are all in desperate need of refreshing and new ideas.

The relationship between fashion and technology got off to a slow start and I must say I doubted if it would work and whether consumers would be accepting of it. But I’m absolutely certain now that technology is fashion’s future.

It’ll be exciting to see the different ways designers will incorporate technology into fashion to create style in their collections.