Wednesday 25 November 2009

Colin McDowell


Today at uni I attended a lecture by the famous Colin McDowell!
Colin is one of the best fashion commentators of our time. He is the founder of Fashion fringe (organisation to help your talented young designers), has been the chief fashion writer for the Sunday times and is the author of various fashion related books. Through all his years in the industry he has great and respected points of view. One of the reasons he is so good at his job is because he knows a lot about the making and designing part of fashion, as well as the business part.

Collin defiantly had the whole lecture theatres attention, giving a very entreating view on the industry and various designers. He spoke about a number of things throughout the lecture, giving his opinions and thoughts.
In the 20th century Colin's favourite designers that truly made a difference were Madeleine Vionnet, Cristobal Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein and Armani. He believes that the 50’s is the last period in which the age of fashion could really produce and take in elegance, and was the last period of ‘true’ couture.
Chanel was a good designer, but more of a great activator. She showed that women were not only equal, but also better than men! This created the women’s movement and had effected/changed a lot of things within the 20’s.

In his opinion the current top three designers are Galliano, Prada and Marc Jacobs. Galliano is his favourite designer, never running short of new inspirational ideas! When it comes to Prada he believes that she’s a great designer but part of the reason she is able to come up with new crazy ideas is because she can be brave and strong with your thoughts when you have the money to back it up with.

He says currently there is no strong lead for fashion designers to take on because the generation of fashion is now a lot younger, like there has been in the past. There is also no strong demand for any certain type of clothing. A lot of fashion is no longer made for what is best for fashion, but instead are made more with money in mind.

Colin thinks there defiantly need to be some new great menswear designers! The fact that men are very ‘one way’ in thinking, most males are not experimental, so they want fashion to be easy and risk less, therefore some new designers need to give this to them.

Thanks you Colin McDowell for your openly frank speech on the fashion word.

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