Get Kaned!

As much as I love to keep up with the trends - and, of course, celebrate them in this little blog of wonders, one fad of the age I very much resent is the advent of text speak.  I'm not saying it shouldn't exist, being the slowest texter in the history of mankind I need to abbreviate anything I can when texting, but that's just the point; text speak - clue in the title - is a convenient means of shorthand expression for text messages only.  It's not a natural evolution of the English language, and nor should it be treated as such because, if anything, it's a devolution.  Much as I love to embrace modern technology, Microsoft excepted, I found myself at a loss as to whether to laugh or cry  the other day, when I came across a line of grooming products called OMG.  What will they think of next, I can't help but ponder, a line of incontinence pads called PMSL?  This would be a good cue for your gran to question what the world is coming to now that our beloved tongue has given way to lazy, incomprehensible gibberish, and she'd have a point!  A trend your nan possibly would more likely approve of, though I wouldn't, would be those charming "vintage style" floral prints all over the high street.  I don't have an issue with florals per se, I just feel like floral prints on the high street have become like a mild-but-irritating cold.  Even when you expect them to have gone away and rationalise that you and everyone around you is over them, they just seem to hang around and never entirely shift.  Simply put, I just feel like florals have reached a boring, predictable cul-de-sac.  Time to inject some inspiration from the couture crowd, methinks, work some Chic Cheat magic and bring it to the masses.  I found the perfect answer and the very kick up the arse the floral trend has been crying out for in Christopher Kane's brand spanking new collection from Fashion Week, spanking being the operative word.  No pansies in floaty frocks for his latest, oh no.  He teamed intricately embroidered floral designs with curve-gripping lace and body-conscious armoury of leather panelling, reworking the look and striking the perfect balance between sexy and girlie like a sparkling pink riding crop on a trussed-up rump.  Oooh, behave!

Harry Potter star, Emma Watson has already rocked the unique Kane-bound trend, and now it's my turn.  Watch and learn...

Difficulty

Hard

...Well, I say hard.  It's mostly pretty straightforward and self-explanatory but it really helps to be skilled at embroidery for this one.  The "hard" verdict was given mostly to cover my arse in this particular instance - something you might want to make extra sure the back panel does for this risqué frock!

Hours

Here's the bad news - we're looking at about 50 - what with embroidery being the mission that it is!  That's about 2 weeks worth of evenings, a social life on the backburner, blood, sweat, tears... but for a potentially fabulous result.

Total Cost

About £40

Save It!

£40 is still just over a forty-fifth of the price of the original.  That's a saving of £1735!

You Will Need

• Black lace dress- mine cost £28 from New Look


• 1 metre black silk satin - synthetic will do.  I know the original uses leather, but try embroidering through that by hand and I can guarantee it'll be a nightmare!  I got mine from Hobbycraft at £2.99 per metre


• Skeins of embroidery thread in the following colours, 85p/ea from Hobbycraft.

• Black thread


• Fabric scissors


• Sewing machine


• Beading and embroidery needle - like this one.


• Embroidery hoop - the bigger the better.


• Metallic gel pen whose ink is visible on dark fabrics.


• Pattern paper


• Sewing pins

Let's get Kaned!

First of all you have to cut your lining out of your lace dress if it has any, if you want your version to look authentic - and you dare to bare as much!

Now to draft out your pattern pieces. I got mine by pinning my fabric paper to the front of the dress and folding it into the right shapes, like so...

Your pattern pieces should look something like this...

...For the front and back panel.  And this...

...For the side panels.  Fold your satin and cut out four side panel pieces, and two front/back panel pieces.

Fold your fabric back by a centimetre at the side of each of your satin pieces and top-stitch it at the edge, so that there are no raw edges.

Now to embroider your flower design.  I copied the original by drawing it out before embroidering.

Which I turned into this...

...By getting the following textures:

To cover an area, simply stitch back and forth across it like so.  Make sure your stitches are as close together as possible so that there are no nasty gaps.

You can also stitch back and forth to cover small areas.  This, in turn, can build up quite a nice texture...

...And speaking of texture, you can build it up by doing one set of horizontal stitching on top of the other, like in the picture above.

You can also outline an area by stitching around it.  After you do a stitch and you're about to do the next one, bring your needle back out halfway through the last one, like the stitches in the above pictures.

You can also use the technique of starting each new stitch halfway through the last one to create a rough texture, like the one on the yellow leaf above.

45 crafty hours later, after you've embroidered your beautiful design, you've just got to sew your side panels onto the side of the dress, starting at the bottom, and your front and back panels to the centre of the bottom - and there you have it!

The Graceful Dead

Time for the human skull to make a cameo appearance...

Image: Moe Jackson

Alexa Chung.  Model, presenter, TV personality, fashion icon and, of late, skull-bearer - of the porcelain persuasion.  Who could not love her delectably individual style of designer-meets-vintage ...especially when they can get the look for £5.  Yes, 5 of our British pounds - a fiver, or less, if you're lucky with charity shops.  Intrigued?  Read on - and all will be revealed...

Alexa's necklace was one among the many masterpieces of the Italian Jewellery house, Iosselliani.  Its gotta-have-it cachet, I'd say, is down to its ingenious part-glamour-goth, part-vintage, part-precious-costume-jewellery originality (and 18k yellow gold to boot)... not sure if it's worth the asking price tag, though.

Difficulty

Easy

A piece of cake, in principle, but it helps if you're good at modelling - with clay I mean, so modelling of the 3-dimensional variety, not the catwalk one.

Hours

About 2 or 3 of them - hours, that is - required to make a cameo skull necklace, tops.  This has to be one of the simplest Chic Cheat projects I've taken on since starting this blog.

Total Cost

I made two necklaces, one of whose raw ingredients cost me a total of £4 and the other a total of £6, so a fiver per necklace, on average.

Save it!

The Iosselliani original will set you back - wait for it - £850, I kid you not.  Vogue can't be wrong, after all, can it, dear fashionistas?  That, in turn, makes it 170 times what the Chic Cheat solution would cost you, thereby making getting creative 170 more sensible!

You will need

• A necklace with a plain stone pendant - ch-check out your ch-ch-charity shop for some good bargains.  My necklaces cost £2 and £4 respectively.


• Classic white Fimo clay About £2 from Hobbycraft.


• Blue Ink (optional)


• Contact adhesive


• Narrow palette knife like the one pictured below:

You knead it in your life...

Cut out a blob about 3 or 4 mm thick out of your slab of Fimo and kneed it to get it soft enough to work with.  What I find helps, at this awkward beginning stage is pounding it hard and slamming it against your desk until it softens... No, of course I don't harbour violent or sadistic tendencies!

When your clay is nice and soft, cut it into a flat skull shape, about 2mm deep or thereabout, and no wider than the stone you have to fit it onto.  You can also use your pallette knife to sculpt the sort of textures that the skull in the original has.

You can dab it with blue ink to make it look like the skull on the original necklace, but be very sparing or it may look cartoon-like.

Bake your clay skull in the oven, for however long you're instructed to - ahem - stick it in.  If you get the Fimo I used, that'd be half an hour.

Finally, after leaving your skull for about five minutes or so to cool down, glue it to your pendant with contact adhesive.

And you should have something which looks like this:

...Or this:

Long live McQueen - Edited Highlights

For some hot fashion rocks, check out the following ankle boots from Alexander McQueen's latest collection:

Want to know how to make some?  Of course you do.  Please read on...

Difficulty

Medium/Easy

I don't want to shoot myself in the foot by promising an easy-as-falling-of-a-log outlook, but I'd say this one was pretty straightforward.

Hours

The work itself is doable in an evening but you may have to allow longer for the paint to dry at the beginning.

You will need

• Chunky black platform ankle boots mine cost me £15 from Raid


• Tiger eye stones


• Gold spray paint


• Clear lacquer - about £7 from Halfords


• 2 Broad gold chains - I cut some off hair bands I found on sale at £1 each in Miss Selfridge


• Black plaited leather rope - about 40p/metre from my local haberdashery


• 2 carrier bags


• Parcel tape


• Glue gun


• Newspaper

And this is how we do it

Cover your shoes with the carrier bags, except for the heels and bottom of the soles.  Secure the carrier bags in place with parcel tape, making sure you go right up to the edge.

Spray paint the bases and heels of your shoes gold, and also most of your tiger eye stones.  I suggest you do this on your newspaper to avoid damaging any surfaces.  Leave to dry.

After your gold paint has dried, spray on your clear lacquer.  This might well take a day to dry.

Using a glue gun, stick on all of your stones  for about an inch around the ball of the foot of each shoe.

Now for the chains.  If, like me, you used the aforementioned ones from Miss Selfridge, you need to cut away the ribbons and elastics.  Then, you have to take your black leather cord, cut it in half and weave it in and out of your chains.  Secure it with glue at either end.

Glue your chain in a spiral around the heel of the shoe and end it so that it covers the top of the heel.

And there you have it - creative problem solved- it really is that simple.

Rorschach Chic

Feeling uninspired? Maybe it's time to reflect.

Whether it was the recent remake of Alice in Wonderland or fashion's undying affinity for the classic Lewis Carroll story (references of which are too many to mention, and include a collection by the Tim Burton film's costume designer, Sue Wong, herself,  for all those with $300 -$600 at their disposal)  its classic English Rose aesthetic topped off with surrealism remains a favourite among the fashionistas.   Once again, this season, fashion has gone through the looking glass, this time with kaleidoscopic and reflected prints from the likes of Alexander McQueen and Mary Katrantzou, dancing around dress after show-stopping dress.  Here are a few designs from the poignant last collection by McQueen:

Sadly, I've yet to find (or indeed fathom) a way to re-create the elaborate motifs of the above McQueen designs, but I did find a design under the so-called "affordable" fashion category I wanted to copy- the following Karen Millen dress:

... because the flickers of colour were sexy and vibrant, and because the £150 price tag elicited a need to make do and customise.

Difficulty

Medium

Not that the slopping on of paint wasn't extra fun in this exercise, but going for the masterful-not-messy look proved a little more fiddly than expected.

Hours

1-2 hours for the painting.  A day or so to dry, then another hour or so to touch up with black paint.   One more day and a good ironing later, you shall have a rorschach chic dress.

You will need

• A plain, black short-sleeved dress in a stretch fabric. I found one at H & M for  £10


• Tailor's chalk


• Pallet knife -  about £3 from Hobbycraft.  Apologies, for the vague, ball-park figure, readers, but in atypical, non-Chic Cheat fashion I have lost the receipt.


• Pebeo 45ml Setacolour Opaque Fabric Paints in Cobalt Blue, Bengal Pink and Garnet Red (which is actually, rather confusingly, purple)- £3.79 each from Hobbycraft


• Magazines, carrier bags or something that isn't porous to put between the two layers of the dress to ensure the pain doesn't seep through.


• Black Dylon fabric paint - £2 from John Lewis - for correcting smudges.


• Small paint brush

Total Cost

About £25...

Save it!

...Which is a massive saving of  £125 from the original.

So, you...

Put your magazines or plastic carrier bags between the two layers of the dress.  If you're using the latter, you might want to pin them in place.

Trace out the design you wish to do using your tailor's chalk, on one side of the front of the dress.

Time to slather on your fabric paint with the pallet knife.  Do so fairly generously until all the chalk is covered.

Fold your dress in half so that it is reprinted on the other side and you get an exact repeat of the pattern.

If your paint smudges or you feel you would like to sharpen up your shapes a little, go around any rough edges with your black fabric paint.

Leave your paint to set and fix it by ironing....

...And you should have something resembling this:

Bal-mania!

So, this is my final post before the bi-annual holy grail of all things fabulous that is Fashion Week - or rather, before it's over, and Chic Cheat begins its foray into all the new trends.  Worry not, dear readers, for I'm not too far out to sea to know it's already started...and this time, with a new twist in the tale of fashion's ever-unfolding story.  As The Global Herald...erm... heralded, on Saturday in its Google-search-topping article, the "New Digital Era Spells Trouble for Fashion Bloggers". Now far be it for me -being but a humble fashion blogger, myself - to embark on a debate regarding the finer points of semantics, but read the article and I think you'll agree it's not the bloggers facing said trouble, but the journalists and editors who find themselves competing with them.  Hundreds of them.  Thus, the resounding sentiment felt by all those from the official, printed press, was one of concern.   And with the sheer amount, and pace, of media available, it has every reason to be - though I could only guffaw when the author wrote "quite clearly, we can’t go on running out of Danish pastries as a result of the presence of hundreds of bloggers " as if those are going to be the only pies their new-found competitors will be trying to dip their fingers in!

Needless to say, I can't wait to give LFW's gems (whether or not of the Swarovski variety) the Chic Cheat treatment.  But first, as promised, I must hie with haste to my Chic Cheat ode to Balmain's Spring/Summer '10 collection - on the double!

Difficulty

Medium

Think I'm going to put this one down as so-so, where level of difficulty is concerned.  It's generally straightforward, but has its moments, namely when it comes to assembling and attaching the epaulettes.

Hours

A day or two's work, most of which can involves idle gluing and stitching, and can therefore be done in front of the telly!  Good times!

You will need

The following customising ingredients, available from all good haberdashers.  Here's what I paid for mine, and therefore round about what you should expect to pay for yours.  Prices may vary and could well be significantly more in London:

• Olive green military-style jacket.  I got mine from H&M, at a cost of £25, and struggled to find anything cheaper.  However, I came across black and navy jackets for about £10 at Primark, so it's worth a look to see if your local branch has one in green.


• Bead and fabric glue - £1.75 bottle, Creative Beadcraft (www.creativebeadcraft.co.uk , 1 Marshall Street, London W1F 9BA , Tel: 020 7734 1982)


• Needle and golden brown thread to match gold trims and adornments.


• 1metre of black fringing, with a drop of 10-15cm


• Scissors.


• Sewing machine (optional).

Total Cost

Mine worked out pricey by Chic Cheat standards, owing to how elusive the style of jacket proved to be.  I think it came to about £44, however...

Save It!

...It's better than parting with $9000 (about £5844 if my computer's currency converter is to be believed!) the approximate asking price for one of the originals.  That's a saving of £5800!

And now, to soldier on...

First of all, you need to get the quasi-braided look along the neckline and about 26cm along the middle of each sleeve, starting at the cuff. Glue your gold braided trim to your fabric in the pattern below.  Make your pattern about 4cm wide and copy the following steps:

Now, for the epaulettes.  Cut out two of the following shape in your flat foam wadding and four of the following in gold lamé.

Place your wadding on top of a piece of lamé, in the centre, so that you have 1cm's seam allowance all round.  Then place another piece of lamé on top, mirroring the first, so that the wadding is in the centre.

Stitch the two layers of lamé together, 1cm from the edge, ideally by machine.  You can do it by hand, but make sure it's tight and secure.

Repeat this process with the remaining piece of wadding and two pieces of lamé.

Cut away some of the excess fabric around the edge.

Cut out two sets of 40cm of your fringing and fold them back on each other, so that you have two double-thickness sets of fringe 20cm in length.

Cut out as many 15cm pieces as possible out of your gold and brown leather string. Glue or stitch down at fairly regular intervals along your fringing.

When your glue has dried, stitch the top of your decorated fringing along the wide, round end of each of your epaulettes.

Stitch your gold trim around the edge of each of your epaulettes and over the side of the fringing.

Stitch your epaulettes along the shoulders of your jacket, with the fringing covering the top of the sleeves.

Left-right-left- right- left-and pose-and strut-and exude- and sparkle for the camera, darling- because there's no daily battle you won't be able to face in this simply chic solution!

Charley's Final Thought

Check out Balmain's whole collection, and you'll notice they brought Napoleonic wartime finery into the 21st century with a new take on epaulettes, straying, in some of their catwalk creations, from the confines of bristle and fringe normality to incorporate leather and chains.

Why don't you try....

Leather

No need to spend way into the double digits on a whole skin, rather trawl your local leather and suede-monger for gold, bronze or brown offcuts.  Then, simply, patch the leather pieces around your wadding, to cover it, and dangle some strips from the round part.

If you're lucky enough to call London your stomping ground, good places to look are:

JT Batchelor, 9-10 Culford Mews, London, Tel: 020 7254 2962

Alma Leather, 12-14 Greatorex Street, London E1 5NF,Tel: 020 7377 0762

Borovick Fabrics, 16 Berwick Street, London W1F 0HP, Tel: 020-7437-2180

Walter Reginald, Unit 6, 100 the highway, London E1 W2BX. Tel: 020 7481 2233

Chains

Even more straightforward, this one.  Invest in a pair of shoulder pads from Klein's for £2.50 (www.kleins.co.uk, 5 Noel Street (in London's Soho)  W1F 8GD , Tel 020 7437 6162 ).

Cover your pads in gold lamé, or leather - you can even use fake leather for this one - and simply stitch some chains to the edge.

You can buy chains in gold and silver by the metre at Hobbycraft.  Find your local store at www.hobbycraft.co.uk

A Mac Job

Image: Marcio Madeira for Style.com

Your new Burberry-flavoured Chic Cheat tribute, as promised, in my last entry.  A few words I never thought I’d say, and much as I enjoy taking on styles and labels I wouldn’t normally think to choose (namely which don’t entail roses, snakes, studs, skulls, a black and red colour palette and motorbike imagery) Burberry’s new puff-sleeved coat was something of an awakening for me.   The label’s public image took something of a battering when the chavs adopted their trademark check and emblazoned it across their baseball caps - a look we all have Posh (I don’t think so) Spice to thank for!  Ah, cherished memories indeed, but it would appear that bygone era is well and truly over and the label has emerged victorious with a sumptuous line of puff-sleeved coats and macs - and a key look for this season.

Difficulty

I’d call this one medium, myself.  It’s straightforward and reasonably self-explanatory, but putting the various pieces together on the sleeve can be a little on the fiddly side.

Hours

About 1-2 days.

Total Cost

Mine set me back about £33.  Veering into the territory of pricey by Chic Cheat standards, but not bad for a mac and…

Save It!

…better than forking out £2,395 for the original!  In fact, that’s more than 70 times the price of the Chic Cheat solution, so you’d be saving yourself a respectable £2,362!

You will Need

• A coat or mac in beige, that mysterious (-ly sexy) colour also known as buff - or nude, as it’s described on the Burberry original…so  insert your own gag.  For my Chic cheat equivalent I used New Look’s Belted Roll-Sleeve Mac (product number 1812028) priced £30 … and she’s a belter!


• 1 Metre of matching  beige coated cotton. I was apprehensive about finding this one, but it was Barry’s Fabrics to the rescue (1 Moseley Street, Birmingham, B5 6JX tel: 0121 622 6102)Where I found some for £2.95 per metre.  Good times.


• Matching thread


• Ruler


• Pencil


• Pins


• Sewing machine


• Iron and ironing board

And now, for the ‘Berry thing…

Fold your fabric back and forth on itself, as shown in the diagram, pinning it in place as you go along, until you’ve got a crinkled area 15cm into your fabric.

Cut your crinkled fabric out and repeat this process again.

You should have two areas of crinkled fabric 1m x 15cm.

Tack stitch your crinkles in place several times along your strip of fabric and take the pins out.

Cut along your fabric strips at 33cm intervals, so that you have 6 strips of crinkled fabric, 33cm x 15 cm.

Cut out 6 rectangles of flat fabric, also 33cm by 15cm.

Stitch each of the 6 flat pieces to 6 of the crinkled pieces.  Stitch 1cm from three of the four edges and then trim back the edges.

Press the crinkles in place on your newly sewn rectangular pieces with an iron on maximum heat (unless your fabric is synthetic, in which case you should iron on a much lower heat or with a layer of calico over)

Take your tack stitching out.

Turn your strips inside out so that no raw edges are visible except the unstitched ones.  Don’t worry about these, they will be folded eventually when they are attached to the mac.  Press the edges flat.

Now to attach them to your mac.  I find it helps to put something under the tops of the sleeves, like a hanger, mannequin or a cushion, so that it is easier to construct a three-dimensional shape on top of them.

Look at the following sleeve detail on the original.

Notice the deeply folded strip underneath the two fabric bulges at the back and front. Do this one first.  Place your strip of fabric along the top of the sleeve, as shown in the diagram:

Bend your fabric slightly and pin it about 10cm down the mac sleeve.  Cut away the excess fabric and fold it back on itself at the bottom.  Pin the bottom in place.

Slip-stitch your fabric to the mac along the top and bottom of your strip.

Now for the back piece.  Attach another of your strips of fabric to the top side of your sleeve, again, along the folded edge of your strip of crinkled fabric.

Scrunch the piece of fabric down so that it only comes about 10cm down your sleeve, and bend it around the side of the sleeve as shown in the picture below.  The scrunching should cause it to bulge upwards at the top of the sleeve, too, like it does on the Burberry original.

Finally, the front piece.  Attach another of your strips of fabric to the top side of your sleeve at the front, again, along the folded edge of your strip of crinkled fabric.

Scrunch the piece of fabric down so that it only comes about 10cm down your sleeve, and bend it around the side of the sleeve as before.

Repeat these last three processes on the other side of the garment with the remaining three crinkled strips of fabric.

…And you should be left with something like this:

Who would know you were not stepping out in New Bond Street’s finest?  Only instead, you’ve saved your pennies - now all you need is a rainy day!

Jacket In!

Spring fashion: What’s got my attention… and what’s got my goat

I’m 25, a quarter of a century, and I’ve only six weeks left before my next birthday which I’m not looking forward to.  Quite aside from the pain of reminding myself that it’s a case of one more year wasted, I’m officially a year older and I've still made less progress in my worthless, paltry existence than a monkey sitting a driving test, my main issue is how out of my control it all is.  Rather than the milestone or rite of passage people credit it to be, age just sort of becomes me, and there’s nothing I can do about it – I wasn’t ready to be a 16-year-old when I turned 16, I wasn’t ready to be a 21-year-old when I turned 21 and now the impending shock of hitting 26 is one that can only be equalled by immersing myself in a vat of freezing water as a 6”rusty nail is jammed into my head, coupled with an electric current of 5000 volts whilst enduring a drip-torturous soundtrack of UK Garage.

Further insult was added to injury when I came across an article called What not to Wear Beyond your Teens , which asserts that anyone aged 20 or older has no sartorial rights to skimpy shorts, midriff-baring tops, miniskirts, “loud” hair accessories, oversized handbags, neon or plastic jewellery, low-cut jeans, slogan t-shirts, high stiletto heels, cleavage on show, sequins and glitter or – my favourite sanction – “dramatic” patterns, lest they should look like mutton dressed as lamb.  Yes, that’s right, kids – stop the press immediately, get Anna Wintour for me on line 1 and send out a red alert to the British Fashion Council.  All these years they have, in fact, been quite mistaken in gearing celebrity-tinged directional trends towards the young professional woman… news reaches us that they’re meant only for those on a minimum wage of £3.60 an hour, who barely even qualify for a basic student debit card and only half of whom are over the age of consent… you heard here first.

With the tone of a pre-menstrual authoritarian headmistress, and a choice of words like; “Enough is enough,” and “tone down the sparkle for more demure attire” this article really is a great read for anyone who wants to dress so far down they make Ann Widdecombe look like Lady Gaga!  My personal howler of choice would be: “(Avoid) Message (and) Slogan T-shirts: Let the teens communicate their angst through slogans, phrases and coloured drawings on their t-shirts. Wearing ‘Kiss Me I’m Irish’ or ‘Blondes Have More Fun’ can err on the side of tacky in your twenties.” …Personally, I wouldn’t agree – I’ve seen guys knocking 40 at rock clubs in T-shirts reading “Dead Girls Don’t Say No” and I think it rather gives the place character!  As regards the article, both narrow and contrived in the choice of examples, how I revel in the irony that the author neglected to mention my Tee slogan of choice: “I’m sorry.  You must think I value your opinion!”

I love my wardrobe full of printed hearts, skulls, tattoos, roses and motorbikes, insane heels, studs, rhinestones, miniskirts, costume jewellery, half shirts, hipsters… and steel cap-toed New Rocks just in case I should have the misfortune of meeting that evil writer!  (Honestly, I’m not violent *adjusts straitjacket*)  I’ve still got one remaining issue with its content, though – my lack of winter clothes…

I’m not short of jeans, long-sleeved tops or jackets, yet I always find myself shivering to the point of convulsion from November through to March without fail, and feeling like the darkest, outer-most reaches of Antarctica are small game in comparison to the science-defying lows of my freezing body temperature!  So I have to wear my coat indoors, which always makes my mum stare in disbelief before adding: “Put on something snug – like a fleece!”  I hate fleeces with a passion.  Fleeces are dull, shapeless and add about 3 stone to your shape.  Fleeces are what ramblers wear with cagoules and wellies to trawl the Outer Hebrides in conditions mankind wasn’t evolved to withstand, or what your mum wears to do the gardening in because she doesn’t want to ruin anything nice!  I wouldn’t de seen dead in one, let alone choose to own one…

…But I definitely would like to get my paws on Balmain’s military jacket and Burberry’s new trench coat (Below)

As if by magic, these hot hot houses have come up with designs which are not only suitable for all ages, but for all weather conditions.  I’d even be prepared to compromise and wear a revolting fleece underneath, so I can brave the winter cold and yet still look spring fabulous.  So, coming to an IP address near you, the Chic Cheat solutions for both.  Stay tuned… and stay beautiful.  Ciao, darlings!

Coming Up: A Mac Job - get the look of the new Burberry Trench Coat!