Last-Week Links: 7 June 2013

I started the week with a squeal of delight when I learnt that Luella Bartley was coming back to designing and, what's more, moving with Katie Hillier to Marc by Marc Jacobs. I can imagine my pinterest board won't know what's hit it once we finally get to see the results. To be honest, it's still reeling after only just discovering Olympia Le-Tan's Spring 2013 collection. I'm not quite sure I missed this given my devotion to Ronnie Spector. The collection was inspired by her love of girl bands, and this was celebrated in its presentation, where girls shimmed around in cute early 60s dresses (like the one above), buttoned skirts and shorts to a soundtrack of the likes of Little Eva and the Marvelettes. Ronnie even made a special at the end of the show: you can see footage of the event on Lucky.

And another squeal of delight when I heard The Clothes Show - responsible for my first awareness of the world of 'fashion' - is coming back as a programme. I'm delighted that Caryn Franklin will be involved in some way too - I saw her recently talk at a V&A event which only confirmed what a cool woman she is, someone prepared to put her head above the parapet to challenge the fashion status quo.

Challenging fashion, and politics were the topics of Vanessa Friedman's interview with Franca Sozzani for the FT - though, as one of the comments says, I don't think this interview offered that much insight into what Sozzani wanted to achieve through her position and Italian Vogue: for more I should probably start reading her blog regularly. I've also been enjoying Mira Duma's style on Vogue's Today I'm Wearing, especially the colourful skirt above. While the content of her Buro 24/7 remains beyond my language skills, I hope that it has something fresh and brave to say for itself: perhaps the future of fashion is Russian? Someone who has more than enough to say for themselves (and most of it not too pleasant) is Karl Lagerfeld. Now some of his most (in)famous quotes have been collected together for a new book The World According to Karl. 

As an antidote to Karl's bitchiness, let's look at some awesome women. Got A Girl Crush has been great recently - I loved learning about Mexican wrestler and singer Irma Gonzalez (don't we all know a mandilon?), as well as 60s skateboarder Patti McGee. I was also delighted to see Gillian Wearing's commission for Transport for London, in the news this week. Supposedly featuring a 'Total Stranger', only the 'stranger' she picked out at random was none other than the lovely Olivia who works on Oh Comely. There's something very nice about thinking that the stranger on the tube is actually someone you've met. And, finally, I'm looking forward to hearing from some fabulous ladies when I go to my first Pamflet, where the speaker is Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, author of the Diana Vreeland book, Empress of Fashion.

If you want some other things to distract you over the weekend, I can recommend Joni Sternbach's  gorgeous images of surfers, made using the early wet plate collodion process, as featured on Miss Moss; a fascinating insight into the life of music tour bus drivers on Spin; and an engrossing dissection of the fashion of every single episode of Mad Men on Tom & Lorenzo (again a Miss Moss suggestion - she's just so good!). Read them, then get out and make the most of this beautiful weather. Oh, hello sunshine - it's really been far too long.

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