Do you Prefer Fashion Forward or ensembley challenged?

With a fashion history mock exam looming over me, what better way to revise than to blog about my favourite decade! The 90's!

From TLC to Tone Loc! From Sister Sister to Swatch watches! The 90s wasn't all plaid shirts and painful poetic dirges!

T-Boz, Lisa Left Eye and Chilli! '92

Sure, in a nod to the crispy seattle weather "Barnies," and "Betties," alike embraced the lowly lumberjack look.

Smashing Pumpkins bassist D'arcy Wretzky totally embodies the quintessential grunge chick!
With roots as black as her soul and the eyebrows to match, Wretzky and the likes of Courtney Love put grunge girls on the map!

Wretzky

However with grunge back in a big way and with big guns like Marc Jacobs and Co jumping on the band wagon unfortunately sexually frustrated school girls have sought solace and shot for the grunge get-up! Cue Taylor Momsen! 

MISS! 

And anyway, away, with all the misery and self loathing sitting around in the 90s. What about the Fresh Prince, Spice Girls, Trolls and obviously I'd never forget Cher and Dion!

Clueless costume designer, Mona May talks about fun 

fashion on the Clueless set!

Never ones to shy away from a pesky lil print! Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince! 

VIBES!

Ghettolicious! Salt 'N' Pepa Pulling off the 

Varsity in the Hood, vibe, ready for world

domination in the early nineties!

TROLLS! Put a gem in your belly button! (Don't!)

    

And finally a Clarissa montage!

Clash those prints! Dust of your DM'S! 

Clarissa Explains It All!

Lets hear it for the boys!

You might be forgiven for thinking that digital prints where for girls! 

Seen at McQueen, Holly Fulton, Versace and Giorgio Armani are but a few who have experimented with this technology within recent collections.

However these striking pieces, although having firmly made their mark on women's fashion, are still hovering in obscurity for the men.

Agi & Sam debuted their label at Fashion East as part of LFW last september. A print based menswear range these two are challenging the discernible fashionable male who enjoys the classic cut and a good heritage brand and offering something fantastically out of the ordinary.

Inspired by outlandish prints of the 90s and by The Fresh Prince Agi & Sam have created an exciting and vibrant collection to kick off the label.

Never one to shy away from a touch of the "Jazzy Jeff," I think Agi & Sam's use of colour, geometric prints and layering to create texture and fresh silhouettes for the male figure is set to storm the male market.

Although it's clear where the designers have drawn their inspiration from, with prints reminiscent of Keith Haring's work and with a distinctly nineties feel.

Agi & Sam's layering stops the prints from looking flat and breathes life into the design, giving it an air of playfulness along with it's creative and edgy look.

Haider Who ???

Whats the best thing to come out of Columbia?
Hmm yes! Belgian trained master of drapery, Haider Ackermann. That's exactly what I thought!!


Standout success at Paris fashion week and with a plethora of high profile supporters including the notoriously "picky" Karl Largerfeld, who chose Ackermann as "the one to watch," as part of the discovery edition of V magazine.


Originally from Columbia and trained at the Antwerp Academy alongside other acclaimed alumni, Dries Van Noten, Ackermann has caught the eye of the fashion pack with his avant-garde draping and his way with masculine leathers and soft feminine silks.

By taking two fabrics that embody vastly different qualities Ackermann creates interesting, juxtaposing  textures that appear both feminine and rugged at the same time.

With collections reminiscent of early Rick Owens collections and with his distinctive silhouette likened to that of the British designer Jonathon Saunders, it is Haider Ackermann who has been championed by the notoriously hard to please, French fashion press.

Ackermann knows the figure. He understands proportions and how to manipulate them using expert drapery in order to elongate the body, giving the wearer's of his clothes an almost swan-like quality. 

He combines drapery that would make any self respecting, toga wearing  Roman green with envy, with  sharp edged tailoring in stark contrast.

This is a designer who relies on pure technical ability to sell his clothes. A designer who understands the human body and how to transform it into the creature he desires it to be. There are no gimmicks here, the French are famously unimpressed by cheap tricks and gimmicks in order to promote a collection that is luke warm on it's own. Here they have definitely picked a winner, uncomplicated, striking and straight to the point Haider Ackermann is the one to watch!