Tamara Cincik

Sir Ben Kingsley Shoot for Corduroy Magazine, with Peter Ash Lee.

http://www.corduroymag.com/

Lily Cole for Corduroy Magazine with Photographer Peter Ash Lee.

http://www.corduroymag.com/

Too Much is Just Enough Ladies!

Sophie striking a pose in the first look from this afternoon’s shoot.

Such a lovely day: great team, Sophie was a total pleasure.

Top: : Beyond Retro

Body: American Apparel

Skirt: House of Holland

Shoes: Bordello

Eye shadow and shoe harmony: the all new matchy-matchy...

Jacket: Mishka Vintage

Blouse: Atelier Mayer

Trousers: Topshop

Shoes: Topshop

Fade to Grey: Sophie Sways and Swirls to Donna Disco in Halson Heritage.

Dress: Halston Heritage

Shoes: Terry de Havilland

Dukey Dreamboat: my gorgeous baby boy on set.

So great to be able to combine the madness of styling with the earthiness of mothering, thanks to everyone for being so open-minded, I love days like these…

Mishka Vintage

swathes of lame

Treasures resplendent.

One balmy evening two years ago, driving a back-route from Jeremy’s parents through North London, I had one of those rare stop the car please (!!!) moments, as we chanced on Mishka Vintage’s closed potential.  My only other equally memorable stop the car moment, being somewhere in the Transylvanian mountains of Rumania in 1995, when I saw the multi-coloured fantasia-incarnate of a hand embroidered 100 year old traditional folkloric waistcoat.  I live in a world of clothes: literally surrounded with treasures sourced over the past 20 (eek!) + years, plus the weekly supply of designer options prepped in, edited, shot and returned for editorials.  Ergo, I am not easily impressed: I knew this had that rare alchemic frisson where magic realism meets vintage treasure trove.  The window was filled to brimming with stories: Victorian lace,  deco lingerie, 50′s dresses, 70′s clutches; layer upon layer of beautiful things.

History was my route into fashion: a childhood geeky addiction to history reference books fed into my frequent flyer time traveller daydreams, leading me to start my own vintage collection aged 7, as I felt entranced (and still do) by the stories and skills used to create such pieces.  I would imagine people’s lives when these clothes were made; how their world felt and looked.  Never for me just tired old rags: a Flemish lace collar, a beaded deco bag, or a velvet Victorian jacket, has always felt just as fantastic as the this season’s must-haves I work with on a weekly basis for the fashion styling day-job and with the added bonus of running their own  storyline: one filled with gilt-edged glamour, music hall melodrama, or Hollywood dialogue.

While organising my wedding 2 summers ago, I took the drive out past Crouch End one Saturday, between bouts of buying most of North London’s charity shops stock of vintage china for the wedding, to see what lay inside the promise of this newly found delight.  In my head the owner would be old, eccentric and prone to hoarding.  Imagine my surprise therefore, when I met the smiling glamour that is Lizzie Greene: a woman who manages to combine motherhood, high heels, a predilection for bold lipsticks and an encyclopedic knowledge of British 20th Century fashion design.  ie my kind of woman: someone for whom too much is just enough, while geeking out on quirky sartorial trivia; albeit yes indeed known to hoard, or as I like to term it to my husband: archiving.

Say cheese Jet: Lizzie with her youngest son Jet.

Jet is quite the mini rock star and taken to lying on furs, while making Darth Vadar noises.

Towards the light: Mishka's red mood section.

Sorbetastic treasures.

True blue, baby I love you....

Lounge lizard jackets for Studio 54 moments...

Lizzie has become a dear friend: someone who has lent me the most precious pieces for my editorial shoots, as well as a first port of call for music or advertising jobs, as her clothes often add a necessarily unique flourish.  The skirt I used for Charlotte Church’s recent single cover, was a Mishka purchase.

Charlotte Church: Back to Scratch.

Worn with Rochas, to me the Mishka Vintage Victorian Cape makes the outfit. Taken From my Shoot for Grey AW10; Photographer: Stefano Galuzzi.

The Bat's Brits 2010 bag: a Mishka find.

This afternoon I was there returning pieces lent for 2 of my 3 shoots this week: one for Six Magazine, one with Lily Cole for Corduroy.  However, if you were my styling client and looking for that one-off party dress, wow factor wedding gown, or retro-referenced Annie Hall meets Celine this season piece, Mishka Vintage would be on our list of must-dos.  When you do get there, take the time: this is not a 5 minute Primark collision course.  Chat to Lizzie, allow yourself to relax into remembering/experiencing what boutique-style one on one smiling service feels like; then see what magic you walk away with.

Mishka Vintage Clothing

Address:

212a, Middle Lane

Postcode:

N8 7LA

City/Town:

London (London)

Main phone:

020 8341 3853

John Galliano: Aka the Deposed King of the Catwalk

The fashion world and tabloids alike have been alive with the sorry tale of John Galliano’s drunken anti-semitic rants.  It seems that repeatedly over recent months, Galliano has been sitting alone in the corner of a Marais bar, where after a few drinks he’s taken to pouring venom and anger at anyone who would listen.  Being a bitchy queen on a I hate ugly people tip is one thing; displaying anti-semitic beliefs is quite another.  The off with his head reaction of Sidney Toledano, Head of the House of Christian Dior, has been swift in it’s verdict: Galliano has been dismissed from the House this week, along with a terse statement regarding ‘his odious behaviour’.  A man given to overcoming his demons with ritualised routines of gym, gym, gym, at a guess, I would suggest he had been slacking for a while at the office: such behaviour is never isolated and indicates instead a total breakdown.

This whole story makes me feel extremely sad: only a year after Alexander Mcqueen’s suicide, somehow fashion has shown it’s ugly sister side.  Both designers were fashion’s Cinderellas: boys from London council estates made good, whose talent and hard work, won them great deserved accolades.  Both clearly alone, isolated, removed from reality and driven to the most tragic of conclusions.

Given that Mrs Burstein from Browns has always been cited and celebrated by Galliano for launching his career, that Sidney Toledano worked with him at Dior and even that the brand recently chose Natalie Portman to be the face of its latest perfume campaign, I find it hard to believe that in his heart he is truly anti-semitic; he always seemed so courteously aware of how far his career had been served and helped by people of the Jewish faith.  Anyone who has been to his shows, will remember that each season, he always takes a catwalk bow in Mrs. Burstein’s direction, in homage to her support.  An individual’s personal/inner racism is always hard to comprehend and certainly these catcalling rants are ugly, unnecessary and horrid; made all the more ridiculous by the fact that none of the people shouted at, were in fact Jewish.  As the Marais is the traditional Jewish quarter, from where so many people were marched to the camps by the Nazis in the war, of course only adds to our revulsion.

Mrs. Burstein from Browns, who famously launched John Galliano's career, when she bought his whole graduation collection for the store.

However, it seems to me a pathetic cry for help: a man consistently regarded as one of the most courteous and talented in the industry, so lonely and removed from reality that he is striking out at strangers, while drunk alone in a bar.

Where were his friends?  Where were his colleagues?  Why was no one stopping him?  Why did noone feel that they could talk straight to him and stop all this?  Why does it seem that fashion’s few true geniuses are so lonely and disturbed that they act out: Mcqueen with his awful, lonely suicide; Galliano with these repeated career suicide racist rants.  Repeated behaviour to strangers: this would suggest that on a level he knew he would be caught out eventually.

Entering the Paris police station, mobbed by photographers, clearly not looking well...

Sidney Toledano is right to be disgusted, act quickly and dismiss John Galliano; it is not acceptable to behave like that.  No one is such a star that this is ok. But what worries me nearly as much is that the fashion industry inculcates such removed from reality madness in those at the top of the pile.  The very people we look up to: those who show true creative genius, seem to be those who most need the simple, nurturing support which us lesser mortals call a happy family life.  From the first shoot I assisted on where we shot one of his beautiful bias cut dresses for The Face, to a recent nomads story I styled for Please!, inspired by his brilliant AW10 show, Galliano’s work has consistently inspired my own, his shows always a Paris highlight.

Images from my recent Please! shoot, inspired by the John Galliano AW10 collection. Photographer: Thomas Lohr.

Sadly  it is these tacky, tragic lonely rants by someone clearly over the edge of a nervous breakdown and displaying all the tacky symptoms of a cliched racist, are how he will now be remembered.  I hope he gets the help he clearly needs to overcome these issues and his family and friends help him back to sanity.

John Galliano show AW10

While I work out the looks, poses and how to look intriguing, rather than just bulging at the seams, for my soon to be revealed ode to how to looking like the stylist I am while growing week on week, as I am now 5 months pregnant, in the true spirit of diversion, here is a sonnet of love to all those Winter Wonderland inspirations, primarily gleaned from my quintessential top five favourite film list: David Lean’s epic and gloriously beautiful ‘Dr. Zhivago’.

This film has seen me through so many epochs: from childhood Christmas holidays, to litmus tests with boys, to snowed in in New York, through to New Year’s Day two years ago, when I needed some TLC, unaware that life was about to change forever…  I have been building up for another sitting: that’s the glory of the modern age – dvds which you can switch on, off, pause, choose; rather than trying to sit through a film en famille on Boxing Day, when your mother and grandmother would rather discuss whom in the film used to be married to whom and what to do with the garden next Spring…

So here is my litany of timeless Winter inspirations, to show why capes, cossack collars and (fake!) fur trimmed cloaks are year on year a jaw-gasping choice to entertain the glamour of our snow-sieged hearts, eyes and escapist imaginations.  Having just been bought the most delicious vintage red cape (thank you so much my darling Juicy aka Sarah Reygate, for Christmas – perfect for bulge explosion pregnancy stark glamour, mixed with Red Riding Hood playfulness methinks!), from Mary Portas’ beautifully decorated spanking brand new Living and Giving Shop (109 Regent’s Park Road, Primrose Hill, NW1), which was designed by my old friend Kate Monckton (once the best and most helpful pr in London, now a one to watch interior designer: http://www.katemonckton.com/) , it seems fitting to hark back to true style and show a gallery of glamspirations, perfectly (like red capes) suited to bright white snowy days and misty, dark nights.

Geraldine Chaplin arrives back from Paris to Moscow; at the train station in all her glorious Parisienne couture.

This utterly gorgeous colour combination of pale pink with soft grey, marking her time spent learning the art of glamour in Paris – perfection.

Too much is just enough.

The scenes with Lara (Julie Christie), when Yuri (Omar Sharif) falls in love with her, coincide with front-line on the Eastern Front during WW1, then the revolution and thus the colour palette shifts to utilitarian taupes, khaki and earthy tones.  Echoing images from Soviet stark propaganda, these are then wholly practical: woollens, tweeds and furs, yet utterly romantic.

Julie Christie showing how blonde on blonde is always beauty.

Lara an Yuri arriving at the Summer House.

Genius art direction, or how to make sunny Spain and wax look like freezing Russia on ice.

Elizabeth Taylor showing how to rock a mono cape and hat look at Heathrow Airport in The VIPs

The VIPs, directed by another great of British cinema, Antony Asquith and based loosely on the true story of Vivien Leigh’s attempt to leave Laurence Olivier, is another film where each outfit is jawdropping in its chicly cut simplicity: stuck at an airport as fog stops all flights, somehow fabulosity never leaves the room, while scene on scene Elizabeth Taylor shows the value of cut and shape, aligned with perfect taste.

Hooded perfection in The VIPs.

Charlotte Church has been my client since working on her new album artwork over some rainy days on the Welsh coastline and some sunny days in a West London studio.
Truly one of the most sweet, genuine and down-to-earth people you are going to meet, quickly her huge smile and gorgeous green eyes envelop you into a cosy intimacy that she is, really is, one of the girls…
Last night I was laughing with the rest of ‘Team Church’ in the green room, backstage while she filmed and ran circles with her ready wit, around Chris and his guests on The Chris Moyles Quiz Night Show for Channel 4. We’ve been in retro 70′s Streatham houses, tastefully antiquated Stamford Hill terraces, the wilds of Wales, West End mansions (where noone wanted to know what they were filming in the basement!), plus many more… Each time, I look forward to spending time with Charlotte, for her friendliness, sense of fun and honest intelligence. But when I heard her sing last month at a secret gig in Balham, then at The Pigalle, then I was blown away, the voice is a gift from God and for once in my life it left me speechless!.. I feel proud to be working with someone who is the real deal. Charlotte is so much more than a pretty face (which she has of course!); and while we love the dress up part of our work together and I love styling Charlotte and seeing her rock a new look: which we’re calling ‘Celtic Grunge’ (a style where she looks 24 and which we feel suits both the tone of her album and her); it’s that precious voice which underpins all this.
Here are some of her recent looks for different events and artwork.
About the M4, Dave, Charlotte’s sweet as they come driver, reckons he can get to London from Cardiff during rush hour in 3 hours max. Given it took me over 4 when starting out at midnight, you know you’re on the right team!!!

The Cover and yes it was raining!

SInging At The Pigalle - rocking Charlotte's 'Celtic Grunge' aesthetic.

With the band.

Charlotte likes to sing barefoot.

Lacy in Balham.

It's performing which Charlotte holds most dear.

Dolly daydream for Heat!

With the fabulously funny Graham Norton

Loved this Nanette Lepore dress

I do love a ruffle!

Still from the video shoot for 'Back To Scratch': so many Charlottes!

The new album is due out very soon. For more info, go to www.charlottechurch.com
You can also see the video we worked on for Back To Scratch (directed by the legend that is Kevin Godley) here on my website.
Whoever wrote this, clearly deserves an accolade;- http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/music/features/Look+Its+Charlotte+Churchs+New+Album-13204.html