What Is London Fashion Week And Can You Get Tickets

What is London Fashion Week, exactly?

London Fashion Week spring/summer 2017 is fast approaching. One of the most exciting times of the year in the fashion calendar, fashion journalists, buyers, press and bloggers assemble to see the exciting new collections from top brands from Burberry to Alexander McQueen, discover changing trends and scout out brilliant new designer labels. This 5-day showcase kicks off on September 16th and runs until September 20th.

What does London Fashion Week mean for you?

Armed with this information, you’ve panic dry-cleaned your best outfit and learnt your Instagram filters inside out, so now what? If you don’t work in the fashion industry, LFW can seem like an elusive occasion. For some, its bi-annual existence is obvious only by virtue of the curiously clad individuals who flock to London’s Soho in a flurry of fabric.

If you neither move nor shake in the industry, it’s exceptionally tough to get into the shows (unless you have a *fashion blog). Despite the fact that fashion month is becoming increasingly inclusive – last September French fashion house Givenchy offered 820 free tickets to the public to watch its spring/summer 2016 show in New York, while young French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus offered 40 members of the public the opportunity to attend his Paris Fashion Week show, simply by entering their email address into a prize draw on his website – if you don’t work in fashion or have your own blog, there are many other ways to get involved in the shows, activities and celebrity-spotting taking place across the city that don’t involve ever having to use the line ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

You can also watch the shows rooftop-cinema style

Last season the British Fashion Council teamed up with Ocean Outdoor – who specialise in large-format digital billboards – to stream show footage at 60 outdoor locations across the UK including Birmingham, Edinburgh and Manchester. They’ll be doing this again this season but the details are all still hush-hush for now. Check our the official LFW digital schedule too, as some shows can be streamed live from the comfort of your own couch.

Or hit up Regent Street

Regent Street are getting involved in all the fashion month excitement with a range of activities including: the chance to be sketched by a famous fashion illustrator, attend talks from leading voices in the fashion world (including fashion designers Henry Holland and Amanda Wakeley), and have your purchases made bespoke at a ‘customisation station’ by an up-and-coming designer.

What is London Fashion Weekend?

Following London Fashion Week’s 5 days of shows and splashy parties, an open-to-the-public series of events called London Fashion Weekend kicks off and yes, you can buy tickets. What does it entail? As well as trend and career talks from industry experts (this season’s style icons and fashion insiders include chef Laura Jackson, TV presenter George Lamb, stylist Martha Ward and fashion editor Alice Casely-Hayford), intimate Q&A interviews, panel discussions with industry experts, and catwalk shows, you can shop over 150 fashion editor approved brands. So far, the designer catwalk shows you can get a front row seat at include Preen, J. JS Lee and Sibling. Tickets start at £20 for the basic experience package, and reach up to £200 for a ‘premium’ package.

Lisa Loeb loves the revival of '90s music, but not its fashion

(CNN) - The '90s will always hold a special place in Lisa Loeb's heart.

"I'm a very sentimental person," Loeb told CNN. "I love thinking about the past. I have very clear memories, but I also like to keep moving forward."

Loeb's 1995 hit "Stay" was the heartbreak anthem for teens at the time. She returned to the stage to sing that song and more on Tuesday during a throwback concert sponsored by Crystal Pepsi. En Vogue, Biz Markie and Salt N Pepa also headlined the event.

"I didn't feel comfortable doing something lumped in with the '90s," Loeb said. "But I finally do feel comfortable. [The audience] can take a lot away, have their memories, and it's also very current too."

Loeb said performing with the other artists who also rose to fame in the '90s has widened her circle of friends. "Like Coolio, he's in my phone and he's my friend. Those are cool friends to have in your phone."

While she's enjoyed the recent revival of '90s music, Loeb said she doesn't want to revisit the fashion trends of that decade.

"I don't want mustard yellow mock turtle necks to come back although, they kind of are," she said. "The oversized leather jacket! Someone just posted a pic of me with it on Facebook. Ugh! And wearing pajamas under them from Army Navy, or a bustier with cut off shorts. No."

But the smart phone free culture of the '90s, Loeb loved. "I miss -- from the earlier '90s -- when there were no cell phones. There was just a little bit of a slower pace and less input. More room for creativity and pondering life. I think we are very distracted in this new world and we want to capture everything."

The crying game: why fashion likes tears

In the moody, luxe noir video for Kanye West’s new single Wolves, he cries. The emotional outpouring is as big as the video, which doubles as a Balmain campaign. As a sweep of models (including Joan Smalls and Alessandra Ambrosio) catwalk around like the beautiful undead, West, dressed in the same bejewelled denim coat he wore at the Met Ball, shoots a perfect double stream of tears from his eyes, as his wife, Kim Kardashian, does the same.

Shot by Steven Klein, the director/photographer known for making Rihanna cry gold tears on the cover of this month’s W magazine and the likes of Colton Hayes and Madonna reach for the tissues, the clip makes crying look beautiful. The trickle of saltwater complements the glistening diamonds on the Balmain clothes and Kanye and Kim look regal in their perfect sorrow.

Balmain is a label driven as much by as the otherworldly luxury of the garments, as it is by creative director Olivier Rousteing’s personal story. He was taken into an orphanage when he was seven days old, and adopted by white parents at five months. He told Vogue last year: “When I was living in the orphanage, I was always crying.” Wolves is an emotionally bruised, paranoid song and in the context of Rousteing’s narrative, tears are the ultimate symbol of unending anguish.

Still, there’s a limit to the how teary a face can go, because fashion’s relationship with tears is an aesthetic one. Think of Lara Stone’s two single, perfect drops on the cover of LOVE magazine. Or the glitter-tear trend, where tiny pieces of glitter are placed below the eye, à la Pierrot clown, and, at the Burberry AW16 menswear show, a bit David Bowie. Jeremy Scott subverted the idea when he gave the models star-shaped tears at his AW womenswear show.

What’s significant is that these artful, prettified versions of tears are at the different end of the spectrum to “ugly crying”. From Carrie on Homeland and Gwyneth Paltrow at the Oscars, to memes such as Magic Johnson crying, that scrunched up, torrent of tears is a little bit too real for the catwalk.