Princesses are ubiquitous. Queens are epic. Here are a few of my favourite fashion queens.

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Pharoah Hatshepsut

Her story is a dramatic one. She is a woman who crowned herself king – and recorded her image as a man’s. Hatshepsut represents a very calculated, symbolic image-making. This is what fashion queens have in common.

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Empress Theodora

Another amazing story of transformation. Theodora remains a thoroughly charismatic enigma, a woman who used acting, style and bravado to win power and awe.

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Queen Elizabeth I

Another story of an unlikely candidate seizing and holding power. She used her clothes as literal armour of wealth, covered with pearls and jewels, and a literal halo of a ruff. At a time when both kings and queens liked to power dress, she overpowered.

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Marie Antoinette

I have to include her in every survey post I do, because she is the crux of modern femininity, or maybe a warning for what can happen when fashion takes over. Her use of image was amazing, prescient, ill-timed, and indelible. She may be dead, but her style returns to fashion over and over again.

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Empress Eugenie

The second empire restored the silhouette of Versailles with generous skirts and nipped in waists and tons of jewels. The romantic and super-feminine look was wielded with expert womanly wiles by Eugenie – another story of intrepid social climbing with style.

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Queen Alexandra

Her story is a sadder one, she doesn’t seem as much an agent of her own destiny as the others. But she is notable fashion-wise for bringing big emphasis to a collar of pearls, thus establishing the iconography for 20th century female power.

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Jacqueline Kennedy

Though not a queen, she was a modern, mortal queen – she dressed the part as if she had been born for it. In simple, spare strokes she wore the crown and the pearls with perfect modern sense.

Queen Rania

She is the most compelling modern fashion queen, an elemental beauty and aware of how she presents herself. She is a living queen who lives up to her role.

Modecast, the internet chat show on which Barima and I speak of style under the influence,  is coming back for a second edition. RSVP here for your email reminder and go get your refreshments for a silly Sunday night in.

Sunday March 11 2012 – 9pm GMT/5pm EST

Want to see Modecast’s inauspicious debut? The recording, such as it is, is here.

It may seem, from this blog, that I spend most of my professional life sketching at fashion shows and making pretty paper dolls. The lens of blogging can be a bit misleading because I also do a lot of hidden gigs – especially technical drawing and consulting. Having less glamourous work to do allows me the privilege of being choosier with my more creative projects.

Even though technical illustration may seem less enviable, I genuinely enjoy all types of work I take on. This type of project calls on my sometimes under-utilized specializations – like knowledge of garment construction and ability to sew. These instructional drawings were created for Colette Patterns, a home-sewing pattern company (with loads of adorable styles) based in Portland Oregon and shipping worldwide.

or, what final fashion is

Sometimes I say that Final Fashion is just a meaningless alliteration – but over the course of many years it has come to have a few definitions in my mind, the most amusing one being: that moment when reality intrudes on the fantasy of fashion.

I adore these moments. The other weekend while bedridden I discovered My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding which is a series of poignant, high-camp crashes between fairy-tales and physics. These young brides are enamoured with the gowns of Disney princesses, which they not only imitate but elaborate on. The brides ignore the fact that the princesses are two dimensional and the proportions of their dresses will not move with the same animated verve and bounce in reality. In fact, these dresses require their wearers to push them along with an oddly appropriate tough-little-girl kicking motion.

Every time I watch a gypsy bride kick her hem down the aisle, I think: that’s final fashion.

When an item of clothing or cosmetic procedure reaches the point of final fashion, it starts to physically impede, limit opportunities and even harm. Shoes that trip up entire casts of models, like in the Prada Spring 2009 show. Skirts that bind legs so tight walking is impossible. Glasses that no one can see through. Face tattoos that render people unemployable. Botox that paralyzes actresses’ ability to emote.

The instance where fashion fails to impress and instead absurdly breaks its own spell is the beginning of the end of a trend. That is final fashion.

Welcome to click click, the sporadic review of what I find worth clicking on the internet.

These diptychs of stylish couples swapping outfits by artist Hana Pesut delightfully bend and blend gender perceptions.

• One way or another, it’s gonna hurt – no one gets to coast. Pick your problems. More on the epic struggles of aspiring fashion design stars – Hungry For Attention.
• The Part of a Movie where the Girl Gets a Makeover – Rachel Rabbit White talks fantastic film transformations – whether gifted or self-directed.
• the day Teller gave me the secret to my career in magic – a magical message packed with practical insights for any creative careerist. Only recently I’ve been realizing the usefulness of channeling negative energy into compelling work, and Teller articulates this perfectly.
• Model economics – the gap between the got-its and the want-its is way wider than ever before.
• In Fashion – Louise Wilson – Central Saint Martins’ resident dragon discusses the alchemy of educating fashion designers.
• Power Dressing – visual leadership and style symbolism as it relates to the careers of female politicians. Also – there’s a blog about this.
• His. Hers. – when divorce goes to the court of consumerism.

Karma-matic for incoming linkers and commenters -

• The Blogust – one of the sweetest shoutouts I’ve ever received thanks to Michelle Bobb-Parris
• Bloggers Style: Spring Shoes – FLARE.com features my new blue brogues.
• Ruby Bastille – “books ~ style ~ food ~ fantasticness”
• life in the m lane – “A change of plans, a change of direction,  a need for adventure – life is meant for living, why not do it with wonderful inspirations.”
• Verging On Serious – “ramblings from a health-nut in New York City”
• The Blonde Muse – “21 year old hedonist queen of wanderlust”
• Farbenfreude – “My free time is spent on the beautiful things in life”
• Paper Doll Circle – “general paperdoll scuttlebutt – lavishly illustrated with great images of current, rare and unique paperdolls”

Photos by Matthieu Da Cruz

Tuesday was the last sunny day in the courtyard, and my last day street style sketching. As far as fashion weeks go, this one in London has been a bit adverse. I got food poisoning on the weekend and lost two days, missed a couple of the few shows I did get invitations for. Since then I’ve been operating on an empty stomach and Fear Of Missing Out.

Once I was sketching in the yard, I forgot how bad I felt. Tuesday was much busier – a lot more action. More people to draw, more people who came and said hey. It was non-stop until the sun disappeared around 3:30pm and I felt shivery.

At that point I was kindly handed an invitation to Aminaka Wilmont and got to go inside the big tent for the first and only time this season. As I sat down in my fourth row seat, I felt a veil of negative emotion settle over me. I don’t like to think of myself as much of a downer, but I think the effort I had asked of my shattered constitution had broken me down too far.

In that moment I understood that love is not the only intention you can channel into creativity. You can also use the negative. As I absorbed the show (it wasn’t like watching) I let my arm go like a limp automaton, not even trying to avoid spraying paint on my unlucky seat mates. The music and the beauty was appropriately dark, though I don’t remember much about the clothing.

The resulting sketches were wet and sticky, and without a doubt the best I had done all week. I put them on one of the big speakers at the end of the runway to dry as the audience was filing out. It was in this very conspicuous position, where the catwalk meets the doors backstage, where I felt as if all my years of hopes and dreams were dripping off of me like so much wet paint, and I burst into tears. I had been working all week, trying so hard to do good work, to get attention and appreciation, so I was both devastated and relieved to be completely alone and ignored in the blind eye of the hurricane.

I stuffed the sketches into my Sainsbury’s shopping bag, smudging and ruining most of them, and got on the bus to go home, disappearing into the crowd of London’s uncaring commuters.

On reflection, that must be how so many designers must feel in that very same physical position. Except they must feel it exponentially, because the stakes are so much higher. Imagine working so hard, season after season, long after your status as the hot new thing has cooled off. Any recognition you get stops feeling good, because no matter who says you’re great, you’re still struggling and any progress is so incremental. And no matter how much effort and money you spend, you could still experience a career-ending reversal of fortune on the fulcrum of fickle fashion.

An emotional hangover after fashion week isn’t uncommon, this one felt deeper and darker than usual.

When my invitation count ended up being, in spite of my utter lack of importance, pitiful, I decided to do something a bit different this season. I went to the art store and bought a travel easel so weather willing, I can set up studio in the courtyard of Somerset House and make my marks alongside the photobloggers as the beautiful people enter or exit or go blithely wherever they’re invited. This setup allows me to sketch bigger than I ever can on my knee at a fashion show, and unlike my fellow courtyard rats, I’m not chained to reality.

The sun has blessed me with a couple beautiful days and I’ve been burning through more ££s of paper than I care to contemplate. Here’s a selection of what looks good enough to post so far. Show sketches are on their way too – and I’m getting ready for another courtyard session this afternoon.

Dr. Martens Canada asked me to submit an image that represented “first love” which is an appropriate coincidence because my experience of first love was simultaneous with the acquisition of my first new (not second-hand) pair of Dr. Martens, a chunky, 90s-style 1460 quad, their much-worn appearance is recorded here.

The specificity of the boot style is important – as is the motorcycle (his first, a much-loved vintage Honda 400 if I recall correctly). The tightness of the illustration is important, because we both liked to draw, and descriptive detail and obsessive cross-hatching echoes the way we drew then. Everything else is just smudged in, obscured by obsolete technology, remaining only in our brains and perhaps boxes in our parent’s homes.

Welcome to click click, the sporadic review of what I find worth clicking on the internet.

These images of Paris front rows past are from a wonderful retrospective on The Cut.

• Intimate Hangover – I was thinking the other day about Agathe from Style Bytes – if you recognize that name you’ve been hanging around fashion blogs for as long as I have. This article, even in awkward translation, is a poignant retrospective on the euthanasia of a popular blog.
• Theatre of Fashion – it is rare that I come across a fashion blog as inspiring to me as this one. Amber posts about costume, history, theatre, film and fashion with impressive depth of research and a wealth of rare images.
• Made Better in Japan – obsessed with detail and accuracy, the Japanese are earnestly recreating new and improved vintage Americana. It looks exactly the same but the almost scientific theory behind it couldn’t be more different from the casual rebellion that the original styles represented.
• Thoughts on a Word – if the etymology of beauty fascinates you, there’s a deep well of content here. I’m only halfway through, to be honest.
• Who Can You Trust? – a wordy exploration on the practice of naming styles of garments. I’m not sure anthropomorphizing cropped jeans really is a poetic way to create warm quasi-relationships in a cold technological age. A good name won’t make a top seller – but it helps hit garment become more memorable – not to mention more searchable in the age of online shopping.
• New York Fashion Week: Why I slept through it last time, and why I sort of want to again – how much youthful hope and energy gets burned every season producing repetitive, soulless, quasi-commercial “content” – it makes you wonder why so many people have the magazine dream in the first place. Working at fashion week doesn’t have to be this way – pick your career (and your attitude) wisely and you can make money and have fun like Rachel at A Material World.
• The Best Clothing Inspires Fear – Cintra Wilson discusses aesthetic strategies of protest.
• What Your Street Style Pose Says About You – a “body language expert” takes on street style and… I don’t think she nailed it. See my take here. While we’re on the topic of streets and poses too, this is an amusing art concept.

Karma babes -

• WHO IS BOBB PARRIS – “girl. have camera. will shoot.”
• Curves, Patterns and Pins – “I’m Reana Louise, an Art History student with temperamental hair”
• cooking with paper – “fashion & culture journalism student, Cardiff based model, hopeful romantic & unorganized mess of a girl”