WHAT IS 'BLOGGER' RIGHT NOW? THE TOP TEN MOST BLOGGED ABOUT ITEMS NOW

Posted by Bethan Holt, Fashion Junior at Large

We've had so many responses to yesterday's post about the 'blogger' trend via comments, tweets and e-mails. We thought we'd have have a bit of fun today so have put together our view of the top 10 most blogged about items right now. Obviously there are so many blogs out there that we have no idea if this is statistically true but we've asked around and looked at what people have been mentioning so far. Do you agree? If not, what would you have gone for?

1. JEFFREY CAMPBELL SHOES

These clumpy platform boots have gained a rep as the bloggers' favourite boot. Nobody wears them better than Stella from Stella's Wardrobe. She's rarely seen with her Jeffrey Campbells.

Stella in her Jeffrey Campbell boots (image from stellaswardrobe.blogspot.co.uk)

Stella's studded Jeffrey Campbells (image from stellaswardrobe.blogspot.com)

2. PRADA- EARRINGS AND COATS

Prada always produces a hit piece or seven. At the moment it's anything bling from their SS12 collection, especially the earrings and jackets. For bloggers who want to get this look, there are loads of guides showing you how to make your own versions. These make your own guides are probably worth a blog post in themselves at some point- watch this space!

Susie in her Prada chandeliers (image from stylebubble.co.uk)

Meg Gray, whose site is Gray Gardens, in her Prada crystal jacket, as introduced to us by Susie Bubble (image from Tommy Ton on Style.com)

3. MICHAEL KORS WATCH

Need I explain? A big watch is de rigueur when you're looking for max impact in shots.

www.oh-so-glam.com

4. ACNE'S MINT KNITS

This is My-Wardrobe's most blogged about item.

www.houseofsartorialism.blogspot.com

Image from style.com

5. YSL RING

Many of those commenting said that the YSL ring was a bloggers favourite, I guess the fact it spans half the hand is a big bonus.

chicchefblog.com

6. 3.1 PHILLIP LIM BAG

Any one will do, but Mr Lim's structured, graphic and massive bags seem to be a big blogger favourite. My Wardrobe say this one is in their Top 10 most blogged.

www.dulcecandy.com

7. ASH WEDGES

Melanie wrote about these a while back. There'll be all kind of variations around for a while yet, given the gem versions I've seen about at press days.

lolafromvalencia.blogspot.com

8. WHISTLES WISTERIA

This is Whistles' hit print of SS12, now sold out almost everywhere. Olivia Palermo has been styling out the look on her blog this week.

image from www.oliviapalermo.com

9. H & M TROUSERS

I've seen these everywhere, both on and offline of late.

allaboutthestyle.net

10. JIL SANDER HAT

Another item with lots of how-to-do your own guides dedicated to it. Of course, the Queen of Bloggers and Street Style Stars, Anna Dello Russo is its most famous wearer.

bloggers.com

www.nitorlicious.com

Do you agree with our list? What do you think we should add to it?

FEAL team xx

FIVE GREAT GIRLS AT LONDON FASHION WEEK BY PHILL TAYLOR

Posted by Fashion Editor at Large

Girl #1: Abbey Lee Kershaw after the Issa show at London Fashion Week on Saturday. 

Look: Abbey is wearing a key look for A/W 11 - the grand gesture fake fur jacket.

I'm a moth to the flame of great photography, especially fashion photography. Recently added to that category for me is the art of street fashion photography. The last few years has seen it become a significant genre both online and in book publishing, complete with its own visual rules and power players. So many people want to be the 'next big thing' in street style photography it has got to the point that walking into any fashion show venue anyplace in the world is akin to a game of British Bulldog.

Of course most senior among the street-style photographers is Scott Schuman; I also appreciate the work of Tommy Ton and Garance Dore. I'm not a fan of Facehunter - his images feel bland and un-engaging to me. But I do have another name to add to my list and that is Phill Taylor.

Phill Taylor

Taylor is 28 and from Leicester, he is a professional fashion photographer who has worked with serious players, notably Nick Knight, Gemma Booth, Alice Hawkins and Ruth Hogben since graduating with his photography degree in 2008. Last year he started taking street style pictures with his Canon 5D mark II for his girlfriend Hannah Almassi (my former assistant, currently the junior fashion news editor of Grazia), for the magazine's Style Hunter pages, and started a blog with his unpublished works. In a short space of time his blog has gained a large following for its wry and warm written observations of the girls and women he captures, and of course for the wonderful photographs.

His work always stops me in my tracks. Unlike Tommy who has an penchant for the eccentric character (Anna Dello Russo, French turban-loving stylist Catherine Baba) and a sublime eye for capturing details and accessories, Phill has an emotional connection with the girls and women he photographs, and it is not predatory unlike some people I could mention. He captures them being themselves seemingly when nobody (especially a bloke)  is looking, except he is a guy. How does he do that?

Girl #2: Clara Paget attending London Fashion Week. 

Look: bright blonde hair, all-black leather and chiffon outfit with an animal print bag. This feels like the London look for now.   

"I learnt a lot from Gemma (Booth) and Alice (Hawkins,)" he told me today when he popped in so we could edit the pictures here to encapsulate five women and five distinct fashion looks that I feel are right for now. "I came to understand a more gentle approach through them. It doesn't feel abusive. When I take a picture, whether it is for a main fashion shoot or for the street style work, I'm guessing what this person is like, and how they are naturally. In a fashion sense I am trying to guess the character they are playing that day. I start a dialogue with them in my head."

Girl #3: Model Charlotte Free taking a pre-show fag break before the TopShop Unique show last Sunday. On his blog Phill wrote "Charlotte Free introduced herself to all the street photographers by bursting out the doors, [from backstage at the Unique fashion show, where she was modelling] leap- frogging over a wall and steps and screaming "oh my god, no way! I fucking love Geese!". She then proceeded to chase two Canadian Geese that had appeared from the Thames behind us."

Look: As for me I love tough girls like Charlotte. She is a total tomboy and full of angst. She is also a bit of a midge for a model, but I expect she will become a fashion icon in the space of a week (well she is to me already).

Girl #4: Bip Ling between shows at London Fashion Week this week. Look: The cute DJ and blogger is working a neck-to-ankle print look very successfully.

"The difference with me," says Phill, "is that I'm a photographer who shoots on the street, not a blogger who shoots street photography.  My work is an observation. On the blog I'm in a position to express how I feel about a girl's style and how they draw my attention when I see them walking down the street. I guess its an emotional response."

Phill's current favourite girl to capture on the fashion circuit is 20 year old Swedish model Dorothea Barth Jorgensen. This picture, he says, "makes me feel like Dorothea's about to get a flight in the mid-70s, except for the phone of course. I absolutely love this look and Dorothea is...just chic, polite and naturally beautiful."

Girl #5: Dorothea Barth Jorgensen. Look: cropped jacket and wide-leg trousers with platforms. The seventies remixed for 2011. 

ALL PHOTOS  © PHILL TAYLOR 2011

http://philltaylorblog.blogspot.com/

DON'T WHIP YOUR HAIR - SWISH YOUR SKIRT

Posted by Fashion Editor at Large

There's an abundance of light and playfulness in the new spring collections. Personally I am feeling very strongly for wearing long, to the point I can't imagine wearing anything shorter than ankle length for the next few months. This will be hard as currently I own only two long black dresses. (Time to click-and-buy the new Olivier Theyskens for Theory.....) Still, there's always trousers. The lightness and length that abounds in fashion now has a further halo of appeal: swishing.

Karlie Kloss swishing her heart out backstage at Lanvin by Jason Lloyd Evans

                                           Chloe SS11 backstage by Jason Lloyd Evans

As a little girl anytime my mother dressed me in a maxi lengths or circle skirts (it was the early 80s) I loved nothing more than spinning and swirling around watching the fabric float and undulate around me.
While perusing the backstage photographs of the very talented photographer Jason Lloyd Evans - he is the go-to guy for all the major brands and global fashion magazines for his backstage and beauty work - I saw the young models were having a ball with all the floaty, gauzy fabrics designers were using for spring.

D&G SS11 backstage by Jason Lloyd Evans

Even the grown ups were at it Milan , captured below by Tommy Ton during the mens shows. Do you think we ever grow out of this childish desire to enjoy a swish?

                                       Tommy Ton shoots skirt-swishing in action at the Paris Menswear shows

Photos: Jason Lloyd Evans, Tommy Ton 

MY NEW CROWN PRINCE OF STREET STYLE BLOGGING

Tommy Ton of Jakandjil.com photographing Sally Singer of US Vogue in Paris

I have always been a street style watcher. A fashion stalker. A lot of my trend ideas come from seeing what people choose to wear, how they wear it and where they are when they're wearing it. It is a language all on its own. I was checking into The Sartorialist long before it became a cult blog, providing pithy captions for his subjects in my head, and then whenever I saw the man himself, Scott, at the shows or outside the Paris hotel he and I used to stay in (not together) I loved to watch how he blatantly sized men and women up on the street. He got away with it because he had a camera around his neck. Lucky.

Recently, I have added another fashion-stalker street-snapper to my love list. It's Tommy Ton from Jak & Jil  who has an eye for a picture that makes me think he is a beauty editor, accessories editor, fashion editor and art director all rolled into one. He loves an amazing shoe and bag, and has an eye for the more unusual composition that I find stimulating in my fashion head.  

This week in my mothership publication, the wonderful Grazia, I did a piece on Tommy Ton with a selection of pictures, but we could only fit in one. Because Tommy so kindly gave us several pictures to use, I thought it would be a shame to waste them, so I am showcasing them here.

What I like is that Tommy is capturing this Dior show as we journalists see it from the front row, complete with photographers, standing people, PR's, show producer's, discerning couture clients and of course the beautiful model in her Christian Dior Couture finery, in view.

When I tracked him down for Grazia I spent ten minutes outside the Chanel couture show on Rue Cambon asking hooded figures with cameras around their neck, are you Tommy Ton? Finally the real Tommy revealed himself.  And here is Tommy! How cute?

Tommy is wearing Alexander Wang boots

Later that day I interviewed him on the phone while he was trying to tap into some free wi-fi on the streets of Paris so he could send his pictures from the day to his blog. And he told me his story. He is 25 years old, and lives in a suburb of Toronto called Oakville with his Vietmamese parents. He started Jak & Jil four years ago, documenting the “not very glamorous” local Toronto nightlife because he was bored. "There wasn't much going on in Toronto." So he decided to spread his wings; "I wanted to take photos in the fashion capitals at their fashion weeks," he says. So that's what he did. I remember him in Paris a few years ago asking all us fashion editors if he could photograph our shoes. (He has a shoe fetish, how perfect and shiny are his Wang boots above?).  His perseverence has paid off; his talent has been spotted and he has been adopted by none other than Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld who has given him a page in this month's Paris Vogue. Not only Carine, in fact, but Anna Wintour too who is tapping him for the relaunch of Vogue.com later this spring. “At the Dior show I was sat behind Anna Wintour, and she turned to say “Hi” to me,” he says in amazement. He deserves the recognition. His pictures are beautifully composed, yet surprisingly he is not a trained photographer. “I just click away and hope...” he says, being modest. He definitely has the fashion eye; and he is in love with with fashion. “Fashion is everything to me; it’s all I care about” he says. Aaah.

I am anti-fur by trade, but even I have to admit that coat with those shoes on that bike with those glasses and the turban looks amazing.

THANKYOU SO MUCH TOMMY!
Melanie xx
Photos (not of Tommy Ton) are by Tommy Ton for http://www.jakandjil.com/
Tommy Ton photos by an as yet unnamed friend....