SA Fashion Week

Travel must be one of the most important to do things in life. This is something I have known all my life. As if it was yesterday I can remember my first trip – I was 28 years old all my friends went on overseas trips from the age of 18…. not me….. I had no money and so not a rich father to pay for it. Then I discovered that you do not really need a lot of money to go. I discovered the fly now pay later plan using my credit card so the only other thing I needed was a very strong sense of self control…. that is self control when it comes to money management – because it is one thing going and it is another thing just experiencing and not having the money to shop……… that was hectic – I mean can you for one moment imagine me in London, Paris, Italy and not shopping!!!!! I did buy the Vogues and all the alternative magazines I could lay my hands on though – I went to the Art Galleries, Museums and did a huge amount of window shopping – in fact I was the window shopping queen those years. In Paris they had a huge A1 trends newspaper – you could not buy it at the newspaper stands or in the bookstores – it was sold by people coming around to the coffee shops – how fab is that - if you could lay your hands on one of those it was a huge achievement – one of the places you could get it was at cafe de flore - this was a fashion and art hangout in Paris. Well needless to say that was one of my many missions….. to get one of these newspapers every time I was there. It was so big I had to store it behind my piano – you could not just page through it you had to lay it down on the floor or a table to look at it.
Anyway – I say travel X travel X travel. You have to make sure that you stay 100% focused on pure fashion when you do fashion. Of course you can go into the Top Shops, Bloomingdales, La Rinascentes and Lafayettes of this world but only after you have been to the Collettes, 10 Corso Como and looked at the real creators of fashion’s Collections and stores of names like Comme des Garcons, Mugler, Lacroix, Gaultier, Challayan, Yamamoto, Mc Queen, Galliano, Costume National etc. Then you still have to do the likes of Prada, Paul Smith, Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester etc, etc and only then can you go commercial if you have to.
Usually my NY first few hours looks like this:
JFK ,breakfast at Balthazar, Prada store, Dean and DeLuca (all in SoHO) – this gives me a minuscule picante taste of what is to come – a combination of fashion and food – the stores are across from each other…. Shows you. LB