Valentino: Master of Couture @ Somerset House | London

The much-trumpeted Valentino exhibition draws to a close this weekend. Armed with the mantra "better late than never", I headed down to Somerset House yesterday morning to check out the scene with a new friend from my course also keen to see what was going down. Valentino is a living fashion legend, whose bridging of couture and ready-to-wear has set a precedent in glamour. Working over six decades, he has dressed the most glittering of A list stars right from the earliest living memories of Hollywood as we know it today.

We're going to see much more of Valentino in the near future, and this blockbuster is part of the branding to cement him as a household name. In 2012, the Qatar royal family bought the brand; appazza they want to turn the brand into the "Italian Chanel". Yeah, I know. No big ask, right? This blockbuster is just a part of that branding exercise. Valentino retured from designing in 2008, but the cult of his personality is an obvious thing to play on.

Starting out with key letters, photos, show invites and sketches, the first room covered the designer's personal life. There was notes from Jackie O, Meryl Streep, and in surprisingly large handwriting, Anna Wintour. A bizarre photo Christmas card from Princes Charles, William and Harry; snapshots of the designer with his beloved pugs, who feature in the exhibition's promo image, alongside the iconic red dresses. Valentino was a man who loves life, and his tenure at the house, which ended in 2008, was all about dressing the jet set. He himself lives the archetypal extravagant life, al yachts and art collecting. It is made profitable by his savvy business partner Giancarlo Giametti, whose foxlike work behind the scenes ensured the party always pays for itself.

In the upper gallery, couture gowns were arranged in aesthetic order not chronologically, meaning we played a kind of guessing game matching the designs to the era they came from. Some designs were great, elegant and beautifully crafted; others just seemed an exercise in opulence, too garish to really merit the word stylish. But then, when your day job is dressing the world's richest people, there's going to be a bit of bling overload along the way. 

It's pretty clear, too, what the meaning of "glamour" is - all these bejewelled dresses reminded me of gilded cages in a way. Traditionally, the role of women is to sit around and look pretty. The eternal femme is one who sits around oozing sensuality, usually dripping with jewels and beautiful dresses as a kind of symbol of wealth and prowess. Couture serves that purpose; clothing of breathtaking craftsmanship that have been worked on by an army of invisible workers to adorn the body of one beautiful woman. It's a passive take on femininity; the power of allure, the power of beauty. Right from the courtesans of old, this has been a defining feature of female "power" in the oldest sense.

So, what of Valentino? He is clearly "drawn to" or "inspired by" this traditional kind of womanly grace, and what of it? Fair play to him. He has made a lot of women happy along the way. As the exhibition suggests, he is a master of his craft. In the final part of the exhibition, Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece’s pearl-encrusted ivory silk wedding gown which the New York socialite wore to marry Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece in 1995 made Sarah Burton's effort for The Duchess of Cambridge look minimalist. A room displaying some couture techniques used in his atelier was fascinating. Such workmanship is an art form we should treasure. That I'm sure of.

The past half-century has seen the development of female identity in lots of different ways, and the role of the gay male designer is an interesting one. There is an accepted link between overtly camp male fashion designer and women's clothes. From Unkle Karl to your gay best friend, these people are supposed to know these things, right? What does this say? I wonder if women trust a gay man more than they do a woman as to what works on a female body. There is this idea that this is a man who understands women better then they do themselves. 

This is where I think a gap opens between real women and idealised womanhood. With all due respect, some of the Valentino gowns looked trannyish. Is the idea of womanhood in a gay man's mind really all that relevant to women? Is it what "true" womanhood looks like, or an exaggerated costume for a role that we put on? Judith Butler said something along the lines of, "gender is a script which the actors have come to believe". Do we care? It all looks frankly fabulous.

First Thursdays @ East London

One thing that is oft said beyond Zone 6 is that London is an expensive place to live.

Now let's get one thing straight here - London is anything you want it to be.

Fun, boring, hard work, a walk in the park, expensive, cheap, busy, calm, a touristy experience, a niche place to hang out, the options in the capital run wide and far. Don't get me wrong, it's mostly at a relentless pace which not everyone loves, but the point is you can find the London you want to live in if you put your mind to it, it's all a question of how and where. You can even find leafy streets and a cycle ride to work if you wish.

And as to those who think its big bucks, rents aside (and with a bit of patience and know-how, these to can be bartered) London can easily be done on a budget. Yeah, the blockbuster exhibitions and gimmicky tourist traps (Madame Tussaud's, I'm talking to you) are mega and advertised ubiquitously, but what Londoners really get up to is another story. One regular happening they don't advertise on the Tube is first Thursdays of the month, galleries of East London throw open their doors and offer free beverages for them's that want to peruse the wares. Art and a tipple? Can't wish for a better mid-week wander. Here are some snaps from one such evening.

Of course, this is one of the many things to do and see FO' FREE in the bustling hub of culture. And if you can side-step the big price tags everyone thinks are part and parcel of life here, what other cliches can you escape? You want what you get, you get what you want, people.

Red or Dead @ Old Truman Brewery, London

Red or Dead held a retrospective exhibition on Brick Lane, showing the evolution of the brand from kooky Camden hipsters to corporate deals with Schuh, Specsavers and the likes. 

From their thick soled flatforms in the late eighties, as seen on one of Kylie's record covers, they did a deal with Doc Martens that saw the skinhead-associated boots hit the high fashion crowd as never before, reinvented in plastic with the Space Baby motif. Then there were the ready-to-wear collections that became highlights of the LFW schedule - Russian dolls, oriental prints and packaging all featured. In the early 200s, the brand did deals that saw their shoes adopted my the masses in Schuh outlets and an eyewear line for the faint of sight. 

More recent projects include a bike collab with Raleigh and the Pearly Queen collection to celebrate 30 years in the industry, flying the flag for Britishness and all that jazz - as well as this London exhibition. It was great to learn a bit more about the brand, who seem to have sold out a bit in recent years aesthetically. Personally I've always found something dull in their design but I was interested to see it grew at least from a more original and inspiring place. Those early catwalk shows looked like a right riot.

Shop the 30th anniversary collection at Bank.

Lingerie Francaise @ Film Museum, London

One of the obvious downsides of my laptop breaking about 6 weeks ago was I got way behind on blogging, so this is just a little overdue. Still, here we are. This was at the Lingerie Francaise exhibition I went to at the Film Museum that's now over, but the pics are still a bit fun! A bunch of French lingerie  companies bandied together to display a history of the knicker drawer from the corset to date.

It got me thinking though, much as we go on about how women no longer must wear corsets, the basic principle of underwear hasn't changed sine the nineteenth century. Namely, to shape women's bodies to the ideals of current trends. Whether it's the straight up and down garconne figure of the Twenties through to today Spanx and the like, "shape wear" to smooth off unwanted rolls of fat, the idea is the same. The desired figure might have shifted over time, but if anything, it's simply been a question of technology meeting the new demands with lighter, finer, easier-to-wear fabrics and techniques. 

Showing examples of the garments themselves and associated advertising, it was a nice curation of fashion history, shown in the vaults of the Film Museum, a suitably dingy den to match the slightly smutty subject matter, including a video with coquettish model prancing about in the examples through the decades. Though we've ditched the whale bone, there's still a plethora of products out there, now selling such perks as comfort or playful promise, depending on the form and function of said pieces.

Want to know some London-related underwear trivia? In 1830, city authorities renamed the East End's famous Petticoat Lane to Middlesex Street to avoid the mention of ladies' undergarments in a typically Victorian moment of prudish moralising. The street was so-called because of the tradition of  French immigrant Huguenots of selling their lacy wares on the street since the seventeenth century. And in typical London fashion, people flunked the petty rules and the old name stuck.

Tim Walker @ Somerset House

Despite words bandied about, there are very few who truly embody fantasy in fashion. The late Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow before him were such visionaries. Time Walker falls into that category too, and his retrospective at Somerset House is well worth a peek. I sneakily snapped some of the photos but to be honest, if you are in the capital, get yo'self down. It's free n aw.

The fairytale fantasy theme in Walker's work is immediately obvious, and favourite shots of mine included the pink ball gowns in a mythical garden (Northumberland, actually) or the giant owl, giantly cute with it. However, the innocence had a thread of sado-masochism behind it, such as the interplay between crawling tin soldier, booted china doll and aiming solider shadow. Punctuated by quotes from the master himself and props from the photographs themselves, it is an adventure in fashion's wonderland.