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.

Catch The Wave

If you take your grooming tips from the catwalk, then you’ll have noticed that this season the design houses are professing a love for lived-in waves – with the likes of Prada, Bottega Veneta and Craig Green all opting for fuss-free tresses that typify a casual summer vibe. But while this style requires far less maintenance than a slicked-back Mad Men ‘do’, you can run the risk of looking a mess, so take note.

Beach waves suit most guys, whether your hair is short or long, but to maximise movement and texture you’ll want to ask your barber for layers. Make sure the sides and back are cut using scissors alone for a softer, less utilitarian look. As for the go-to product – well, sea-salt spray is best for creating the texture and volume that marks you as a surfer. But the key here is to go easy on the styling. You want to look slightly dishevelled, not like you’ve been sat in front of a mirror since 5am.

Still, there are a few quick tips. If you have naturally wavy hair, you can enhance what you’ve got by applying a matte mousse to damp hair for extra bounce, then use pomade to finish and separate the ends. Meanwhile, straight hair can require a little more work – and if the texturising sprays don’t cut it, you’ll need go all Geordie Shore and invest in some curling irons. Taking two-inch sections of hair, wrap them in alternate directions around your tong - and deliberately avoid perfection. Because remember - sometimes, to be fashionable, you may need to look a bit rough.

7 Facts About Relationships That Everybody Should Know Before Getting Married

Contrary to what fairy tales may tell you, relationships take work.

So we collected some of the best social-science findings about what makes them last:

1). If you wait until you’re 23 to commit, you’re less likely to get divorced

A 2014 University of Pennsylvania study found that Americans who cohabitate or get married at age 18 have a 60 per cent divorce rate, whereas people who waited until the more mature age of 23 have a divorce rate of about 30 per cent

2). The ‘in love’ phases lasts about a year

The honeymoon phases with its “high levels of passionate love” and “intense feelings of attraction and ecstasy, as well as an idealisation of one’s partner”, doesn’t last forever, according to Monmouth University psychologist Gary W. Lewandowski Jr.

3). Eventually you realise that you’re not one person

Once you start living together, you realise that you have different priorities and tolerances – like, for instance, what does or doesn’t constitute a mess.

4). If you get excited for your partner’s good news, you’ll have a better relationship

In multiple studies, couples that actively celebrated good news (rather than actively or passively dismissed it) have a higher rate of relationship wellbeing

5). The happiest marriages are between best friends

A 2014 National Bureau of Economic research study concluded that friendship could help explain the causal relationship between marriage and life satisfaction

6). The closer a couple is in age, the less likely they are to get divorced

An Emory University study found that couples with a five-year age difference were 18 per cent more likely to divorce, and ones with a 10-year difference were 39 per cent more likely

7). Resentment builds quickly in couples that don’t tackle chores together

Over 60 per cent of Americans say that taking care of chores plays a crucial role in having a successful marriage. You’ll save a lot of collective time if each person specialises in the chores they’re best at.

Theresa May: does it matter what the new prime minister wears

Wearing a colour-blocked Amanda Wakeley jacket as you deliver your first speech as prime minister is not a style statement. Style statements are for those who think a printed silk scarf is, you know, a bit “jazzy”. In context, last Wednesday’s airing of neon yellow and black tailoring was the action of a leader who unashamedly enjoys fashion. Theresa May has a subscription to Vogue and the keys to number 10 Downing Street and, unlike any of the post’s previous incumbents, she does not see a conflict in that fact.

This is the woman who famously told Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that a lifetime subscription to the glossy fashion magazine would be her one luxury item if she were a castaway. Whether you care about clothes or not, you know that May does, and her interest in fashion has not gone unnoticed. Almost as many column inches have been spent discussing the navy Roland Mouret Bitzer dress she wore to the Conservative conference last October as they have to last week’s analysis of the speech she made at that event. Social media has been jumping with chat about what exactly it is we admire about May’s wardrobe (Is it her neckline? Her fearlessness? Wait, is liking a Tory wardrobe even allowed?).

Reliably, the tabloids have taken this to the extreme. The Sun’s front page splashed a picture of May’s signature leopard-print shoes standing on the heads of various male Tory politicians with the headline: “Heel, Boys.” It would be shoes, wouldn’t it? And May’s kitten heels are now forever cemented in Westminster folklore as the natural descendants of Margaret Thatcher’s pussy-bow blouses. International newspapers were unable to resist, either, with the Russian government’s paper falling into the sexist preoccupation of ranking female leaders’ wardrobes against each other. May’s look is apparently “more attractive than the featureless jackets of Angela Merkel”.

However, to rate Theresa May’s style isn’t just patronising and sexist, but it entirely misses the point. As she told the Women in the World summit in October last year: “One of the challenges for women in the workplace is to be ourselves, and I say you can be clever and like clothes. You can have a career and like clothes.” (She didn’t add that you can be clever and like football. Unsurprisingly, male leaders have never felt the need to spell that out.)

Arguably, May is a political leader who actively likes fashion, as opposed to reluctantly trying to manage the semantics of it. Other female leaders have a pragmatic and often difficult relationship with fashion. Hillary Clinton ricochets between diffusing fashion critique by wearing a uniform of what Tina Brown nonetheless derided as “Sgt Pepper trousers suits”, to embracing thousand-dollar Armani pieces. Meanwhile, Angela Merkel has hammered the Pantone jacket approach into not-worth-commenting-upon irrelevance. May, by all evidence, uses fashion to please herself, and her love of clothes allows her to dress boldly. Wearing over-the-knee patent boots to meet Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, as she did last year, is not the action of a woman who subscribes to the “dress to negate analysis” chatter.

What is telling about May’s penchant for fashion is why we care so much – and more so why we criticise it so readily. Would we condemn a similarly frivolous preoccupation in a male leader? It will be interesting to see whether May is allowed to continue to freely enjoy clothes or whether her advisors will judge her fashion to be too loud – was it an advisor who thought May’s necklace was too showy and suggested she remove it on the day she announced her prime ministerial bid, or was it just annoying her? Let’s hope the latter. Because, for many of us, watching May enjoying her own clothes will be a precious form of light relief in the coming months.

Reasons Why Clever People Like Love Island

The only thing that’s bright about Love Island is the constant sunshine. Lunkhead contestants, an infuriating voiceover, a soundtrack that would shame a Now That’s What I Call Music album - smart telly it ain’t.

Yet when the current season finishes tonight, it will be in front of an unexpected following - university graduates, bibliophiles, intellectuals who listen to Radio 4 in the morning and watch Love Island at night. For reasons as yet unexplained, the ITV2 programme has become the guilty pleasure of the literati - and they're not afraid to shout about it.

So what’s made Scandi Noir’s loss, boneheaded reality TV’s gain? Here, we explain all...

Sweet escape

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Love Island’s hold on the intelligentsia has tightened in the year when everything else went to pot.

“My brain is so tired of dealing with all the drama of Brexit, Tory leadership and all my Master’s work,” says Tanya McKinley, an MA History student at the School of African and Oriental Studies.

Tanya, who is writing her dissertation on the gendered and sexual violence of the 1965 Indonesian massacre, explains: “There's something about tuning into all that petty drama after a long day that's really relaxing.”

Self-awareness

There is no denying that the contestants aren't exactly University Challenge material. But the programme itself, argues Ophelia Stimpson, a 23-year-old Oxford graduate, “operates on a number of levels and is actually quite a clever show because it does sort of create this theatre, which panders to ‘intelligent’ viewers.”

She explains: “Caroline Flack actually refers to the people in it as the 'cast' and 'characters', which is interesting.

“It’s hilarious because the way it's edited makes it look like they can only comprehend the situation in front of them, with zero emotional depth.”

Dumb comedy

That said, there’s clever editing and then there’s the simple relaying of conversations. “What’s the Lake District?”, Adam asked Sophie.

“It’s... a district with lots of lakes,” she started hesitantly. “You’ve got Belfast there…

“What’s the stretch of sea between England and Ireland?” she then asked the contestants across the swimming pool.

“The English Channel?” one of them suggested, making GSCE Geography holders snigger up and down the country.

It’s a bit like university

If you’re a student, you watch Love Island because you have nothing else to do. If you’re a graduate, you watch it to take yourself back to those carefree days of lounging around and falling for classmates.

“Eight weeks is not a very long time, but these guys fall in love and plan their futures with each other and go all crazy for each other in the space of two or three days,” says Tanya. “Kind of reminds me of Oxford actually.”

Caroline Flack talks Love Island and radioPlay!

Masochism

“It’s so brutal it’s anthropologically interesting,” says Rosie Litterick, a 24-year-old University of York graduate. “From a feminist point of view, all the men are awful and treat the women terribly but they still air it.

“Like, Tom telling Sophie she was behaving like a 'slag' is abuse. And it should have been treated like abuse, but it wasn't - it was on air for all to see.”

Ophelia agrees: “It’s slightly masochistic because it's so retrograde.”

And the rest

Let’s not pretend that to enjoy Love Island as a degree holder is to spend a snarky hour wallowing in metatheatre.

King’s College London graduate Simon, 24, says: “You could probably make an argument that it's all about gender/society, but personally I think people like it because it's junk TV and they're sexy.”