EYE CATCHERS: PARIS! Pt.2

'If you can’t be better than your competition, just dress better.' 

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EYE CATCHERS: PARIS! Pt.1

'So soon as a fashion is Universal, it is out of date.'

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S/S 13 INSPIRATIONAL MIX!

Style is an expression of individualism mixed with charisma. Fashion is something that comes after style.

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THE MAN: MR PICASSO!

Also known as: 

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. Wow!

Were they bright red, breaking on two-tone shoes, or criss-crossed in loud golfer's check? Were they unexpectedly formal, hind parts of a bespoke suit, or baggy plus fours with argyle socks? Were they ever tuxedo trousers before they metamorphosed into summer slacks or shrank into jaunty pre-war Riviera swimsuits? 

They were all of these and many more, since Mr Pablo Picasso changed the way he dressed as often and as radically as he changed the way he painted. He was as instinctive a dresser as he was an artist, replacing one look with another every time something in his life or his fantasy prompted it. Many of the artists around him dressed quite conventionally, above all when success caught up with them. There was Mr Georges Braque in his cool white scarf, Mr Henri Matisse plumply avuncular in a waistcoat while sketching a nude, or Mr Wassily Kandinsky as formally attired as an old-school banker. Mr Salvador Dalí, it's true, put on a show, with the twirled mustachios, the fur coats and silver-topped canes. But Mr Picasso wasn't putting on a show. Whether dressed for the opera, disguised for a bal masqué or simply clowning about, he was always himself - or one of his many selves.

Picasso changed the way he dressed as often and as radically as he changed the way he painted!

"Only superficial people do not judge by appearances." said Mr Oscar Wilde - bless him! And I look forward to one day reading some learned thesis on how artists present themselves to the world and why. Mr Francis Bacon dressed in later life like a successful gangster, an upper-class, English Al Capone in tight, perfectly cut double-breasted suits with subtle stripes and threatening black leather coats, also tight, with epaulettes. Frivolous? I'm not sure. Everything he wore had its meaning for Mr Bacon, and you can even find the clothes he loved - particularly rainbow-hued silk shirts and desert boots - in his pictures. Is it merely anecdotal that Mr Alberto Giacometti invariably worked in a tweed jacket and tie, however caked in plaster, paint and clay they became? I don't think so. Challenging accepted vision every day in his Montparnasse hovel, Mr Giacometti clung to whatever shreds or threads of normality he could find. 

Style, they say, is the man. So how did Mr Picasso, the master artificer of the 20th century, choose to project himself? Did he limit himself to this look or that? Did he decide at a certain point to wear his trousers wide with a crease so sharp (like his friend, the poet Mr Jean Cocteau) that they could cut a Camembert in half? Of course not. He was a creature of infinite fantasy and infinite change. And having just looked through a few scores of photos of the maître at different moments in his long career, I can attest that he virtually never appeared before the camera in the same garb twice. Catch him if you can. During his early years in Paris he would be in vaguely artisanal dress, dark overalls and donkey jackets, occasionally spruced up by a broad-brimmed hat or Romantic lavallière. Then without warning he appears in clunky gaiters or, bizarrely, in an army uniform he had borrowed from his co-cubist, Mr Braque. These were early days, but it was already clear that Mr Picasso enjoyed not just dressing but dressing up.

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MR NICK SULLIVAN, FASHION DIRECTOR OF ESQUIRE!

The Way I Dress: Mr Nick Sullivan, the fashion director of US Esquire!

Born in Dorset, UK, but now based in New York City, Mr Sullivan is renowned for his impeccable sense of style, so MR PORTER  jumped at the chance to film him in his Brooklyn townhouse talking us through his approach to dressing. "I think I probably picked up a few things about style from my dad, and I'm slightly inspired in a way by photographs of him from before I was even born." Mr Sullivan says. Although he collects Edwardian clothing, and his look errs on the classic side, with a foundation in flawless tailoring, Mr Sullivan is not one to discount the importance of fashion in favour of style: "To me the difference between style and fashion is less important than what they add to each other." he says. Discover more of his views on style by watching the film below.


I think my first awareness of..I didn't know it was called fashion, but of clothes if you like, was jeans. I wanted a pair of Levi's, because that's what other kids had..

'I realised the difference between things that look right and things that are right.

You kinda want them to be right before you want everyone else to know what they are!'

I have a very short list of 'don'ts and I probably add one every five years. 

'No hoodies, No black, No tie clips..Definitely tie clips, but it's the people who like tie clips that I don't like, Hats'

But the truth is that style doesn't really stay the same even if people think it does.

Style, if you look at movies through the years, is evolved..And it doesn't evolve without some input from fahsion..but similarly fashion doesn't really mean anything unless it got some basis behind it, which is how a jacket should be made, how a trouser should be cut, and you can play with them all you like, but still the best, most revolutionary fashion designers are the ones who know how to make a SUIT!

SEASON'S MOST STYLISH!

"Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be."

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STREET STYLE ACTION, FW SPRING SHOWS! Pt.1

'I don't do fashion, I am fashion'

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STREET STYLE ACTION, FW SPRING SHOWS! Pt.1

"..fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening"

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B&W GENTLEMEN: BOWTIES!

'What a deformed thief this fashion is.'

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THE FASHIONDINNER!

One thing is for sure: We must never confuse elegance with snobbery!

As Mr YSL once said: 'Dressing is a way of life!'

If you find it difficult to believe rewatch, rewatch and rewatch the video below!

UNCONVENTIONAL CHIC!

 'Style is primarily a matter of instinct!'

A MATTER OF STYLE!

'When a person is in fashion, all they do is right!'

'Style is primarily a matter of instinct!'

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FASHIONSPAM'S PIECE OF ADVICE!

Whenever you can

Whenever you want

No matter what the situation