Lily Allen's new 'vintage inspired' line of clothing.

Lily Allen looking wonderful.

 

Lily Allen has launched her collection of vintage inspired fashion on the back of opening her boutique Lucy in Disguise. I’m always torn on the subject of Lily Allen.  She is a genuinely pretty woman and I liked some of her music, she is also a bit useless on the PR front, I’m inclined to blame it on this more than fame whoredom.  Additionally she has my sympathies after recent tragic events and I think there are worse crimes than being a public school mockney.  

I was actually hoping to like her new collection, I’m keen on vintage styles being reproduced or even reworked and hoping for a knock on effect.  Prada’s collection is rumoured to be fortiesish this Autumn and if it has anything like the daft effect of producing all that fruit on clothes in the high street like their last collection did this summer I’ll be happy.  The problem is that my first reaction to Lily’s collect was a big ‘ugh’. To be honest it did not help that the inspiration for many dresses was 70’s so not actually vintage but I’m getting used to the fashion world's loose lipped application of the word. Just because they keep on calling it vintage won’t make it so,  although it may do wonders for marketing!  It was probably the fact that the first thing I saw was a play suit that sat somewhere between tacky burlesque kit and Ann Summers.

Arrrghhhh....go to Tara Starlet!

 

Then I reminded myself that these clothes were not produced with anyone like me in mind, and not at all for the vintage enthusiast. Rather they are for the kind of girl who shops at Topshop and wants to flash a bit more cash. The stuff is far more contemporary than vintage.  I think that Lily should have simply marketed the stuff as inspired by her taste as I can see this more in the clothing and that is completely appropriate. The ones intended to hark back to fashion eras miss the mark, a long black dress with elegant trimmings really needs sleeves of some kind, a mint coloured dress is almost there but goes a bit modern high street with the trimmings. My favourite is a seventies inspired blue dress, nice colour and looks lovely on Miss Allen.  But in short there is nothing there that I would wear, or I suspect many readers of this blog would wear. You can find more vintage redolent clothing in Monsoon and my favourite reproduction/vintage inspired dress companies produce better stuff. After all you could get a Whirling Turban dress for the same price as Lily’s.

Nice silhouette, needs sleeves.

 

Having said this I like the idea of smaller clothes lines and if this is a success maybe she will be braver in her clothing choices, she has someone on board who was at Oasis and who has form in producing good occasion clothing so this could happen. 

What do you people think, would you wear it? Have a look at Katy Chutzpahs blog for a more, ahem, reasoned take on the collection.