Cakemodel

She spent most of the Nineties rubbing shoulders with Kate Moss and Niaomi Campbell down the catwalk but supermodel Lorraine Pascale has taken a new turn in her career path as a cupcake maker with each cake being £29.99, sold at Selfridges lets hope they taste as good as she looks.

Fashion Moment-Shoulder Pads

Are we taking hints from Margaret Thatcher in this time of economic crisis and latching onto her form of ‘armory’ in her power stages? The eighties are back in the limelight. We’re having a power dressing moment.

From Schiaparelli letting shoulder pads push their way down her catwalk in 1931 stuffed with sawdust, the 40’s and 50’s allowing pads to be transferred from jackets to dresses and the 60’s the age of flower power but trend-setters wanted high glamour and futuristic looks. Shown by Barbara Hulanickis shouldered fur coat and the rise of Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘Le Smoking’ jacket making shoulders for the sirens. The 70’s were all about volume. Ossi Clarke and Bill Gibb enhanced their romantic floral’s with a sneaky shoulder pad.

1980’s saw shoulders grow in width, ’they were so wonderful, I bow down to the monstrous women in the 80’s that wore big shoulders’ says style guru Peter York on the influence of shoulders. Bianca Jagger married Mick Jagger in a white tuxedo jacket with nothing underneath it, the only accessory needed: statement shoulders. New Romantic Adam Ant stole the shoulder pad for his 18th-century ‘highwayman meets tribal space hunk’ look and recalls a 4am phone call from the King of Pop Michael Jackson demanding to know where they were from.
Every female of the 80’s jumped with joy at their weekly dose of cult soap opera Dynasty and tried to emulate the shoulder definition of Joan Collins and Linda Evans. By the end of the era some shoulder pads were big enough to eat our dinner from.

The revival is on; exaggerated shoulders are the dare-to-wear statement of the season. Dolce & Gabbana's spring/summer 2009 collection took new heights, intent on adding volumes of fabric to our shoulders in cartoon like forms. Balmain embellished their slender shoulder pads with crystals that might have been called upon Michael Jackson, circa 1982.
Shoulder pads have been tried and tested throughout the twentieth century, paying attention to a physical asset that tends to be ignored. With John Lewis having to restock its £1.35 shoulder pads it seems there not only making a comeback they are actually selling out.

Obama's Girl's

A new trend is emerging. Showing support for your favourite candidate by making sure you mark your voting slip is no longer enough. Barrack Obama has occurred support in a very different way.
‘I got a crush on Obama’ is an internet viral video posted on Youtube by model Amber Lee Ettinager, images of her dancing seductively around Obama in a bikini has become one of the biggest internet hits to date.
Singing ‘I’ve never wanted anyone more than you...baby you’re the best candidate’. Has caused huge publicity and she’s even been interviewed on shows like ‘Saturday Night Live’

Last week another ‘Obama girl’ was born. Chinese student Wang Zifei attended a speech by Barack Obama in her hometown in Shangai. Zifei simply caught on camera taking her red coat off behind Obama has had more than 6.9 million internet results showing and forums started about the young student.
The Shanghai Jiaotong University graduate was forced to quell the online heat building up over her attractive appearance on her own personal blog saying "I kept a professional posture because I knew that the meeting would be broadcast worldwide, and we students' images represented our school and our country."

When asked on the female attention Obama says ‘"It's just one more example of the fertile imagination of the Internet. More stuff like this will be popping up all the time." However he did mention that the Youtube videos had upset his daughter’s ‘You do wish people would think

about what impact their actions have on kids and families."

Royal Collage of Art 'Newgen' exhibition.

Royal College of art is celebrating its 60th anniversary by displaying highlights from the 2008 Fashion MA graduates' final collections. Since the degree began its launched fashion talent such as Ossie Clark, Boudicca, Julien Macdonald and more recently, Erdem Moralioglu.

The display will feature fifty five outfits as well as accessories and sketchbooks from twenty seven young designers. Throughout the exhibition the running themes are bold graphic prints, abstract shapes in contrasting colours, big knitwear and manipulation of the female form.

Highlights of the exhibition include Lisa Hjelm, who says ‘exhibiting at the V&A is a huge honor and just sums up my amazing time spent at Royal college of art’. Her designs are influenced by crystals made up of vicose panels in contrasting colours on a bodycon silhouette. Abbie Shaw ‘s collaboration with RCA jewellery students offers oversized jewellery in cut perspex and tweed dresses with exaggerated zips alongside accentuated hips. Heikki Salonen experiments with digital prints, pixilated images, atmospheric colour palette and images lifted directly from album art of 80’s rock band, ’The Cure’.

Every year approximately 3000 new designers try to make it on the London fashion scene, competing against the odds to try and make their innovative designs stand proud against the established. Overall it’s a cohesive and exciting collection; it’s open until January 31st and defiantly worth a look.

(Abbie Shaw)

Karlascloset.com

Karlascloset.com is the style blog ran by Karla Deras. She has taken the fashion world by storm, catching the eye of fashion editors and elites naming her the 'next big thing'

She’s a nineteen year old girl, studying at The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in California. She defiantly knows her Louboutin’s from her Balmain Gladiator sandals and not only post’s about her own personal style and new thrift finds but often includes ‘scanning’s’ from beautiful coffee shop table books we can all indulge in.

She is the complete epitome of personal style. From her cropped hair, Edie Sedgwick sized earrings, those amazing platform heels and beautiful feminine curves.
Her signature pieces are sky high heels and one of her many structured blazers. She likes to play around like evening clutches in the day, high waisted lace trousers (yes, actually amazing) to floor length dresses paired with a big knitted scarf.

Karla is so intriguing to watch and never fails to offer huge amounts of inspirations. Maybe it’s because she seems not to be afraid of what anyone thinks, making directional dressing work in the ‘real world’. Isn’t there a part of all of us that has that certain dress we adore hanging in our wardrobe’s but never quite have the courage to wear? Let’s join Karla in her game of dress up.

Knightcat.com

‘Knight Cat’ is a nineteen year old girl, still studying at school who can speak four different languages, (English, Spanish, Hinko and Arabic, just in case you were wondering) but her readers couldn’t tell you her favourite designers, her favourite places to shop or the ins and outs of her wardrobe, how she wears her hair or how she likes her coffee.

Knight Cat is a different kind of blogger. Instead of sharing photos of herself to the world, she posts ‘inspiration’ photo’s of anything and everything that catches her fashion spotting eye. She started blogging ‘because I used to save so many inspiration pictures that I didn't know what to do with them, thus, I created the blog to share them with everyone’.

Not that this has restricted Knight Cat in any way, blogging three times a day at the very minimum and having over 70,000 blog views in just a year, Knight Cat has become a true ‘fashionista’s’ favourite ‘go to’ place to find a vast range of images. Everything from editorials scanned from last month’s Korean Vogue, what Alexa Chung wore at the New Moon premiere or Kate Moss walking for Chanel ten years ago and that’s all just in the last twenty-four hours.

We can't help but want to see what’s inspiring the mysterious Knight Cat each day or should we say hour? A fashion blog inspiring us in a completely different way.

(All images sourced from Knightcat.com)

Fashiontoast.com

Rumi Neely launched fashiontoast.com in late 2007. After visitors to her eBay store ‘treasure chest vintage’ wouldn't stop asking what shoes she was wearing in all her pictures. Nearly two years has gone by and she gets 35,000 hits a day and each posts gets over three hundred comments.

Her perfectly put together outfits consist of American apparel basics, incredible shoes, a piece of vintage and a timeless designer handbag, she describes her personal style as ‘one part grunge, one part Parisian influence all dipped in a giant jewellery box’.

As the Internet started taking huge notice of her blog, designers and industry heavyweights started to latch on too. She was personally invited for a private tour of the American Apparel factory, to New York Fashion Week in fall 2008 and model Erin Wasson's line for surf brand RVCA. Playing muse to Alexandra Wang and she has been given the huge opportunity to design her very own collection for RVCA.

With her photographer boyfriend always in tow documenting her daily outfits, nights out and days, each photograph features a new picturesque setting. It really does feel like we're following a fairytale.

It’s a pleasure to read and leaves you asking. ‘Why aren’t my leg’s that long and why isn’t this my life?