THE NEW NIGHTLIFE

Honestly, I’m still baffled by the ubiquity of street style blogs. I understand the fascination with the bloggers and their personalities and I understand that these blogs provide key tips on how to translate pieces and trends from the runway and incorporate them into your daily wardrobe. I get all that, really, I do - I’ve watched enough Gok Wan to realise that there’s a market for them. Personally, I prefer my fashion with an extra dash of fantasy - think frothy, grandiose couture gowns, extreme over-the-top embellishment and runway show pieces that would probably fall apart the minute you put them on. As much as I enjoy seeing that new-season Céline coat teamed with cigarette trousers and loafers on the corner of Oxford Street, I will always be a sucker for fashion that would attract the filthiest of stares on the 9.14 to London Euston. Fashion is at its best, its most creative when it’s not bound by the codes of conventional daywear. Which brings me back to street style blogs - the majority of them feature women who are probably on their way to a 'sensible' job which forces them to rely on statement coats and killer accessories to remain office-appropriate.

Club kid icon Amanda Lepore - "challenge homogeneity"

NOW & THEN

There are fewer issues discussed more frequently in the menswear industry than that of androgyny. Ever since Jean Paul Gaultier chose male model Tanel Bedrossiantz as the face of his A/W 1987 womenswear collection, the fashion industry has been bending gender roles and rewriting the rules of masculinity. It’s widely-known that, in fashion, the concept of androgyny is nothing new - Women have been wearing traditionally ‘male’ clothes for decades, ever since Coco made it OK to wear trousers and Yves introduced ‘Le Smoking’. No headlines are made when designers include masculine tailoring or boyfriend shirts in womenswear collections, and a simple Google search of ‘androgyny’ brings up countless images of stylish women dressed in their boyfriends’ clothes. Women such as Grace Jones and Tilda Swinton made it fashionable to take the lines of gender and blur them to the extreme; arguably the only well-known male equivalent to these two women is David Bowie, who famously indulged his androgynous side through a series of personas such as The Thin White Duke and Ziggy Stardust. In summary, it seems that women now have complete freedom when exploring the realms of androgyny and, now, the new school of innovative London designers are working their hardest to secure this same sartorial freedom for men worldwide.

Grace Jones - a pioneer of andr