My taste in fashion fluctuates all the time but there's one designer who's always been a constant source of lovely.Luella Bartley is a woman who knows a thing or two about horses, British-ness and fashion and after naming her first collection 'Daddy, I Want A Pony', she became a firm favourite with the fashion quirks like Daisy Lowe, Lily Allen and even cooler Thandie Newton. The current SS09 collection is a real mix up of colours, patterns and net veils - like Anna Piaggi exploding into 20-odd looks - lilac, the brightest orange and pink, purple
(as well as some beautiful equestrian nods with the riding hat and jacket) and more than a few more! I also like the way it slowly becomes muted towards the end of the collection, with granny-purple brocade trousers.. Not to mention the florals (some of which make me feel I've seen them before..) which brings me to what I like about it - I like that it seems to obviously resemble 'recycled fashion' (something we're easing into now we're firmly in recession) with all these fabrics sewn together to make one garment ('Frankenstein's Monster Styling' anyone? I can certainly imagine her shrieking "it's alive!" after creating the collection) as well as the way it resembles 'inhibitionless' (?!) old ladies who seem to wear anything and everything they own all at once (fig 1. your grandmother) - a hideous generalisation in 'Ask Hadley' supported this when someone suggested all Italian women of a certain age start to wear fur coats and ooze glamour (I added the last bit, I love fur coats.. ...faux fur, I'm no murderer)But back to Bartley, I giggled like mad looking through the collection, baffling in colour/fabric clashes as it was, it was still genius.
