Phoebe Philo’s Website Is Now Open For Registration

One of the most awaited fashion moments of the year is the return of Phoebe Philo. The designer, who defined the way women dressed in the early Noughties through her work at Chloé and later in the 2010s at Céline, has been gestating her own namesake label since at least 2021, when news broke that she was returning to the industry. When an Instagram account suddenly appeared in February of 2023 bearing her serif logo, it sparked mini-hysteria among the style cognoscenti.

Today, the Instagram account posted a new update, announcing that the website is now open for registration – the only way that customers will be able to shop her new offerings. The all-black website reveals no new details about her upcoming vision, but that’s not really going to stop us. So drop what you’re doing, head to PhoebePhilo.com to register and start saving up your coins. It’s go time!

Julien MacDonald Goes Into Liquidation

Julien Macdonald — the celebrity-adored brand that has dressed the likes of Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian and Bella Hadid — announced plans to enter liquidation on Sunday. Insolvency practitioners FTS Recovery cited cash flow issues and inflationary pressures as causes for the decision.

In a statement, FTS Recovery Directors Alan Coleman and Marco Piacquadio said that the company started facing issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, "which has affected all aspects of the retail sector," and that the brand lacked "a significant proportion of revenue" after British department store Debenhams shuttered its brick-and-mortar locations in 2020. (The brand had signed "long-term, lucrative contracts for secondary collection" with Debenhams, as reported by WWD, but suffered when it winded down retail operations. In 2020, it also signed a three-year deal for a collection of apparel, accessories and homeware with Freemans Grattan Holdings, of the German retail giant Otto Group.)

After having worked with Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel and with Lee Alexander McQueen, Macdonald opened his namesake brand in 1997. He made a name for himself with his bold, glamorous eveningwear featuring daring cutouts and shiny beading that became a regular sight on the red carpet. After a three-year break from the runway, the designer returned to London Fashion Week this February — but the comeback didn't suffice.

"Due to the loss and under performance of several key contracts, including its main UK retail licensee, along with a previously growing licensee based in the United States, which severely impacted cashflow, the company is now in liquidation," Coleman said, in the statement. "The cashflow issues were compounded by general inflationary costs, which impacted on all aspects of the business." FTS Recovery is selling stock and other assets to attempt repaying creditors.

Manchester Will Play Host To Chanel’s Next Metiers D’Art Show

From sub-Saharan Africa to the North of England: after whisking the fashion crowd to Dakar last December, Chanel has revealed its next metiers d’art show will be staged in Manchester. The 2023/24 collection – a celebration of the savoir-faire of Chanel’s metiers d’art – will be unveiled on 7 December, the house confirmed today.

A specific venue for the show is yet to be revealed, but Chanel’s past destination spectaculars have seen guests watching from a pontoon moored on Shanghai’s Huangpu river, and the rococo salons of an 18th-century palace in Salzburg. In Senegal, Pharrell Williams and Naomi Campbell took their seats on the front row inside Dakar’s former Palais de Justice. Perhaps the most fitting venue for a star-studded spectacular from a heritage fashion house in Manchester would be its unofficial place of worship, Old Trafford?

As the birthplace of both rave culture and Britpop – not to mention the spiritual home of the WAG – Manchester has been influencing Britain’s style DNA for generations. More recently, designer Haider Ackermann (a Timothée Chalamet favourite) chose to unveil his collaboration with sports giant Fila not in his adopted home of Paris, but in a disused rail depot in Manchester. The city is also abuzz with the arrival of Factory International, a multi-million pound new arts destination that is currently home to the pioneering Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s (she of the spotty Louis Vuitton collab) biggest ever immersive environment.

The forthcoming influx of tweed, camellia flowers and double Cs seals it: Manchester is having a moment. Could the prospect of Chanel in the North tempt Oldham girl and Lagerfeld favourite Agyness Deyn out of runway retirement? More importantly, will famous friends of the house stick around to sample some traditional local fare? Princess Caroline of Monaco eating a barm cake is the front row moment no one saw coming.

Carlos Alcaraz Is Louis Vuitton’s Newest Ambassador

The meteoric rise of Spanish tennis star Carlos Alcaraz, named the youngest-ever world number one in men’s singles tennis following his US Open win in 2022, is one for the history books. And today, less than a week after reclaiming the world number one title at the Queen’s Club Championships in London, the 20-year-old can add another string to his bow (or at least his racket). In an announcement from Louis Vuitton this morning, the French fashion house named Alcaraz as its newest ambassador, noting it is “delighted to welcome Carlos on this collaborative adventure ahead.”

For Alcaraz, the root of the partnership lay in his burgeoning interest in fashion over the past few years. After discussing the possibility of branching out into this new terrain with one of his agents, the conversation with Louis Vuitton developed quickly – and felt like a no-brainer. “For me, Louis Vuitton is really a brand that I have always looked to and when the opportunity to work with the team arose, it instantly felt like a perfect partnership,” says Alcaraz. “I was really invested from the start.”

Alcaraz explains that he’s been spending the past few years educating himself on where fashion is at today, and how he might make his entry into that arena. (Eagle-eyed tennis watchers will already have noted Alcaraz’s penchant for a jazzy sneaker, and he’s previously expressed his admiration for the late Virgil Abloh’s playful approach to blurring the lines between sportswear and high fashion.) “I really want to know more about it and be more into fashion,” says Alcaraz. “I think it’s a very interesting world and it excites me.”

Still, Alcaraz admits that his personal style is ever-evolving. “It’s difficult to define oneself,” he says. “What I can say is that I like having a wardrobe with basic timeless items, and then combining them with more fashion-led pieces.” One thing he’ll never pass up, however, is the opportunity to slip into some sharp tailoring. “I’ve started wearing suits more frequently, and I really like wearing them on occasions when I need to – and adding a fresh or modern touch, but without taking away from the elegance of the garment,” he says. “I like that it hugs your body, that it’s fitted rather than loose.”

Alcaraz has plenty of forebears to look up to when it comes to blazing a trail through the worlds of both fashion and tennis (he cites Félix Auger Aliassime as a particular hero on the style front), but the parallels between the new generational chapter he’s helping open in tennis and the sea change currently taking place at the house of Louis Vuitton isn’t lost on him, either. “I’d been waiting for Pharrell’s first collection since he was named men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton after the passing of Virgil, who I’ve always really appreciated because of the legacy he has left in the world of fashion,” he notes. Turns out Pharrell’s first collection for the house, which debuted at Paris Fashion Week Men’s on June 20, wasn’t just a hit with the fashion press, but with Alcaraz too. “I have seen all the looks and it’s really difficult to choose one favourite – there are so many I like!” he says.

With a breathtaking run at Queen’s under his belt – and his subsequent return to the number one ranking – Alcaraz is in pole position to mount a serious challenge to Wimbledon favourite Novak Djokovic as the tournament gets underway this week. Yet even within Alcaraz’s career-defining year, the Louis Vuitton ambassadorship still feels like a feather in his cap: “The truth is that I feel very proud,” he says.

Jane Birkin, Musician, Actor & Style Icon, Has Died At 76

Jane Birkin, the English singer, actor, and Francophile canonised for her spitfire Sixties style, died on Sunday 16 July at the age of 76, according to a report from Le Parisien. The news comes after Birkin was forced to cancel a handful of concerts in May due to health concerns, and less than two years after Birkin suffered a minor stroke. She is survived by two daughters.

Birkin’s later body of work included politically charged songs and saw her appointed OBE in 2001 for services to acting and Anglo-French cultural relations. But her fame first inflated after she appeared nude in Michelangelo Antonioni’s cult 1966 film Blow-Up. Provocatively performing vocals on Serge Gainsbourg’s 1969 duet “Je t’aime… moi non plus” also served as an important catalyst for her six-decade-strong singing career.

The scandalous number one hit – which featured Birkin’s erotic breathing in verse originally written for Brigitte Bardot – was banned by the BBC and condemned by the Vatican. “We never thought for a moment that the song would become such a symbol of freedom – all over the world,” Birkin told Vogue France in 2018. “People listened to it in secret, from Spain to Argentina.” Birkin and Gainsbourg continued to collaborate until his death in 1991.

Releasing over 20 albums and gracing 65 films including La Piscine (1969) and Death on the Nile (1978), Birkin – who lived most of her life in France – received the French Ordre National du Mérite in 2004 and 2015. Her first solo album Di Doo Dah was released in 1973, and in 2017, aged 71, came Birkin/Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique – Gainsbourg songs set to Nobuyuki Nakajima’s orchestra. She toured the tunes from Calais to Carnegie Hall, New York.

An enduring and undisputed fashion icon, Birkin’s androgynous aesthetic first charmed from Chelsea to Cannes. There were gilt minidresses, laissez-faire men’s shirts, bell-bottoms and braces. “When I see photos of me in 1968, with my doll’s eyes accentuated by eyeliner, the exaggerated mouth, and the fringe, I think they’re horrible,” she told Vogue France in 2018. “My most interesting period was when I was 40. I started wearing singlets in Scottish cotton, Agnès B men’s shirts over trousers that were three times too big, paired with a thin red leather belt and sneakers with no laces.” Her namesake Hermès bag – which came to be from a chance encounter in high-flying circles – was released in 1984.

“I was on an airplane when a plastic bag holding all my things broke and everything fell out – my date book, papers, everything,” she told T: The New York Times Style Magazine in 2010. “Just as I was saying how I wish Hermès would make a bag that could fit all my things, the man sitting next to me happened to work for Hermès – it was Jean-Louis Dumas, the head designer! They already had the Kelly bag, named after Grace Kelly, so he began work on the Birkin bag. I went down to the atelier and he had made it in cardboard. And we talked about it and I said they should make some changes, like making pockets bigger. And that’s how it was made.” In 2015, Birkin asked Hermès to remove her name from its handbag following a PETA investigation into the manufacturer’s alleged treatment of crocodiles and alligators.

Her personal taste was more primitive. Her favourite carryall was a Portuguese wicker basket purchased for under 10 dollars from a London market, in which she would swing her second daughter Charlotte into Parisian nightclubs.

Jane Mallory Birkin was born on 14 December 1946 in London, England, to actress mother Judy Campbell and Royal Navy lieutenant-commander David Birkin. She attended private school in Kensington and later boarding school – which she hated – on the Isle of Wight. She had early ambitions of nursing, “…or to open a clinic like Dr Schweitzer – The Nun’s Story sort of stuff. To be a do-gooder!” she told the Financial Times in 2010. But fate stepped in and she first trod the boards in a Graham Greene play, Carving a Statue, alongside the late Sir Ralph Richardson, in 1964. She married James Bond composer John Barry – 13 years her senior – in 1965, with Newsweek calling him “The man with the E-Type Jag and the E-Type wife.” Her first daughter, Kate (who died in 2013, aged 46) was born in 1967, but Barry left Birkin and they divorced the following year.

In 1968, she travelled to France, taking a part in Pierre Grimblat’s Slogan (1969) film, and fell in love with her co-star, Gainsbourg. “It was very reassuring, after a disastrous marriage where they left you with your not-even-one-year-old child; at 19, I thought life had ended really,” Birkin told American Vogue in 2018. “So when I went to France and met Serge, he made me feel wonderful, absolutely wonderful. He gave me confidence in myself and managed to efface all the pain from what had happened before, and I think I probably did the same for him because he had just gotten over a love affair with [Brigitte] Bardot. So, in fact, we were two rather miserable souls who picked each other up.”

And then a role in La Piscine (1969) alongside Romy Schneider. “The film saved me and enabled me to stay in France,” she told Vogue France. “I’d just finished Slogan and was due to go back to England. Serge was heartbroken and cried for a whole night lighting his face with a candle so I could see his tears.” The couple had a daughter, Charlotte, in 1971 and although they never married, were together until Birkin left Gainsbourg in 1980. “I escaped to get out of being just a sort of beautiful creature that he wanted me to be,” she told The Telegraph in 2009. “I didn’t want to be told what to do anymore or not allowed to touch anything in his sitting room...”

She had a third daughter, Lou, with French film director Jacques Doillon in 1982. Birkin starred in two of his films, La Fille Prodigue (1981) and La Pirate (1984) for which she was nominated for a César Award. She was also nominated for a Best Actress César Award for her performance in Gainsbourg’s first film, Je t'aime moi non plus (1976).

Pondering death for Vogue France in 2018, she said: “Before when I was asked how I wanted to die, I would answer: ‘The first.’ Alas, life has decided otherwise. We are all a little scared of death when we feel it approaching. The idea is so distant, so abstract. We have trouble imagining it. Over the last three years, I have come close to it twice and, surprisingly, I didn’t panic. I was more frightened of not having time to say what I wanted to say, to leave things in order, to be forgiven.”

Margot Robbie Transforms Into Her Most Regal Barbie Yet

Margot Robbie’s Barbie reign continues! This evening in London, the actor – who is portraying the doll in Greta Gerwig’s upcoming film – continued her winning fashion streak by bringing yet another iconic Barbie look to life. This time around, the star and her stylist Andrew Mukamal tapped Vivienne Westwood to create a look based off of the “Enchanted Evening” Barbie, first released in 1960 and reproduced in 1995.

Imitating the doll’s glamorous evening wear, Robbie wore a Vivienne Westwood Couture draped corseted dress in blush-pink satin, which came complete with a tulle train and fuzzy white stole. To accessorise it, Robbie chose matte ivory opera glove, and finished off the ensemble with a crystal rosette at the waist. While it’s almost a spot-on replica of the “Evening Barbie” look, the design is actually based off the white “Moonlight” gown shown during Westwood’s bridal 2023 couture collection. In pink, however, it was totally worthy of Barbie World.

Now Kim Plays The Dolce & Gabbana “Bride” In Puglia

While the haute couture shows in Paris concluded last week, the extravagant fashion presentations continued as editors and affluent clientele descended on Puglia for Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda show. The brand attracted an impressive array of A-listers, including Dame Helen Mirren, Venus Williams, Christian Bale, Erling Haaland and Kris Jenner, among others. Notably, Kim Kardashian, who collaborated with Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana to creative direct the brand’s spring/summer 2023 collection, made an appearance in high-drama attire.

Taking her seat at the Alta Moda show in Puglia, the entrepreneur and Skims co-founder made a bold fashion statement with an ensemble of larger-than-life proportions. Her plum-hued gown crafted from the finest taffeta featured an off-shoulder neckline and a theatrical train that pooled around her feet on the front row. Kim completed her look with plenty of diamonds and a transparent PVC pair of pointed-toe heels.

Kim then stunned at the after-party in all-black attire, including a sheer black lace-trimmed veil, reminiscent of her sister Kourtney Kardashian’s Dolce & Gabbana wedding look last year. Kim also wore a corset top with sheer panels, a floor-length satin skirt, sheer gloves, and the same pointed PVC heels she wore earlier. To top it all off, she opted for a gold necklace adorned with a dazzling oversized star-shaped gemstone pendant. Perhaps this was Kim’s take on a gothic Dolce bridal moment.

Predictably, Kim’s chosen outfit has promoted much speculation on the internet. Many are questioning whether the look was Kim’s not-so-subtle dig at her sister Kourtney, after Kourtney accused her younger sister of copying her Portofino “wedding vibes” with the Dolce collection she curated back in September. Kourtney expressed her frustration during a confessional on the family’s reality show The Kardashians, asking: “What else could you take from me, could I have anything that’s mine?”