A first whiff of Fornasetti's room fragrance

'It isn't really a step down to develop a room fragrance rather than a regular perfume,' said world class 'nose' Olivier Polge at the launch of the opulent Fornasetti shop space in Selfridges today. He was talking about the brand's first room aroma, also known as, '8'.

Polge, the man who created Dior Homme fragrances and perfumes for Balenciaga, you might imagine could have been sniffy about this new project as he's a legend in the sometimes snooty world of haute perfumerie. 'It was an interesting challenge,' he said, after talking to a crowd of beauty editors while surrounded by a glistening array of Fornasetti fragranced products, 'the aroma has to fill a room rather than stay close to a body.'

For a brand that is a by-word for a particular kind of witty decorative chic for the past 50 years, Fornasetti's scented candles, sprays and burning sticks have been made, unsurprisingly, with the world's finest collaborators. Each candle's wax comes from CIR, France's oldest candle makers, for example, and are placed in ceramic pots by Ceramiche Dal Pra, the classic Vincenzan china company.

'My brief was to channel the smell of fine old furniture', said Polge of the distinctive cedarwod, tolu balsam and thyme aroma. Entry level Fornasetti, maybe, but in a world of it's own compared to anything in the world of Glade.

Eye's right - the trend for vintage face furniture

I blame Steve McQueen. When it comes to the sunglasses we want to wear now, it's the undimmed power of McQueen's style we’re striving to channel. Let’s face it, who in his right mind would say no to his favoured face furniture, the super-chic, all-black square-framed, Persol 649S?

Just imagining the square-jawed, crop-haired actor who made women swoon, behind the wheel of his Porsche 911 and wearing his signature shades is enough to getting men Google-ing Persol's web address (to save you time, here it is: www.persol.com). But Persol isn’t the only eyewear who smartly look back to the future.

‘Ever since we launched back in 1987 we’ve always been ahead of the pack when it comes to referencing the past,’ says Larry Leight, founder and creative director of Oliver Peoples. This is the LA-based eyewear brand that has helped more than any other to inspire our obsession with styles gone by.

When the company first showed their eponymous line of eyewear at a NYC expo in the same year, their vintage-inspired collection was about as far as you could get from the wrap-round, geometric styles popular at that time in the late 80s.

Check out the Riley or Sheldrake clip styles from the current Oliver People’s collection. These are modern flip-up clips combining ophthalmic lenses with witty ‘up/down’ sunglasses. With the lenses pushed up you look both surprised and stylish, an unlikely but good combination. These styles are as much about the 1950s as they are about today. And with this winter’s trend for quiff hairstyles, longer length jackets and beetle-crusher shoes, the 50s are on our style radar again.

Leight, originally an optician, kicked started his business by selling original, box fresh Baume and Mercier and American Optical frames from the 1970s. But it is his recent use of original frames tha has set this brand alight. "This Original Vintage Collection is part of my family heritage,” says Leight, recalling the humble beginnings of Oliver Peoples.

Responding to a recent feature in the New York Times bemoaning the tweaking and upgrading that goes on with classic products, Leight dug around in his company’s headquarters in LA and stumbled across perfect condition MP-2 and O’Malley styles from his initial 1987 collection. These have been repackaged and launched on a retro-hungry public. All these styles require is a striped business shirt, braces and a brick-sized mobile device. I think an i-Pad will suffice.

And their collaboration in 2008 with legendary Hollywood producer and sunglass wearer, Robert Evans again produced a raft of retro styles the brand has become synonymous with. It has also made collections high end fashion brands like Prada, Paul Smith and most recently, Balmain - ‘Those who want the best in runway turn to Balmain,’ says Leight, ‘and those who want the best in eyewear turn to Oliver Peoples.’ And those who want the best of the past turn to Oliver Peoples as well.

Shooting from the hip

'We’ve just launched our very own Tweed,’ says Niels van Rooyen, the jocular and ruddy creative director of Holland and Holland. ‘It was in the archive from 1830 and we’ve dusted it off and had it woven again by factories right here in the UK,’ he says beaming like a prowling Cheshire cat. He’s pointing at a subdued beige and brown fine tweed, a little like a puppy tooth check with a subtle line of purple thread of window pane check running across it.

Van Rooyen is talking me through the men’s winter collection, the core Holland and Holland kit (70% of its customers are men). This is essentially tough, practical and classic all weather gear for the shooting set. These sports are the brand’s DNA but for a while a few years ago H&H re-pitched itself as a luxury lifestyle brand, a kind of English Hermes but with hunting rifles instead of saddlery at it’s core. It was always an uneasy fit.

This move alienated the regular country set who had always bought their shooting gear from H&H, and it didn’t drive the sales to justify the changes. Van Rooyen left the brand during this difficult time, returning in glory three years later once this flirtation with fashion and luxury had faded from the house like an expensive exotic odor.

Yet, Van Rooyen isn’t one to miss the opportunity of pushing his product towards the young or newly rich who are making their first strides towards country pursuits. ‘I’m amazed by the popularity of trousers, ‘ he says with just the faintest twang of his South African roots and sounding ever-so slightly bonkers. ‘I think it’s the younger Royals, they’re less inclined to wear the cropped trousers and shooting socks that the Prince of Wales prefers.’ In Holland and Holland’s world, this is obviously a seismic shift of taste, decorum and etiquette.

In this collection there’s a navy blazer with silvered gun cartridge buttons in a crease-resistant super 150 wool that would perfectly suit a formal dinner after a shoot. This is about as ‘fashion’ as the collection gets. And the necessary direction the brand has moved, explains Van Rooyen, seeing Holland and Holland as exclusively a shooting lifestyle company which produces ties, cashmere shirts, knitwear and their famous shooting socks (‘knitted with four needles by about 75 women in the north of England’) in an assortment of candy bright colours.

Loden, twill, corduroy, recoil pads (in leather to protect your shoulders from the gun’s kick back), shooting vests and tweed make up the lexicon of Holland and Holland’s unique offering. It’s a world of stiff upper lips, stout boots and making no fuss over driving rain, freezing fog or not getting a full brace of grouse on your first day’s shoot. It’s the world of the English upper classes at their most thrusting, sturdy and vaguely absurd. The hide bound world of Jeeves and Wooster, nanny and croquet feels only a paneled morning room away.

Which is all, of course, reassuring. The world may be going to the dogs, but the good folk at Holland and Holland are still making their ingenious ‘Fitwell’ shooting jackets – the distinctive double pleat over each shoulder which enables just enough give to raise your double bore shotgun to your shoulder. Which does make one feely a teensy bit sorry for the poor little grouse.

Louis Vuitton’s boite of tricks

Did Health and Safety officers really sign off the vertiginous marble, brass, mirror and light-boxed staircase that links the three floors of Louis Vuitton’s newest, most lavish and high tech shop? For it’s a precarious assault course for any biped without a head for heights. With 23 square meters of banded light-box, steel and stone panels I wasn’t sure if I was on a flat surface or needing to take a step up or down. A Perspex escalator would have felt like solid ground.

A deliberate disorientation by the store’s leather-capped, architect Peter Marino? Shoppers will feel so relieved on reaching their destination they’ll be more than happy to lay down £999 on a monogrammed ‘Keepall’ weekend bag if they arrive in one piece. This kind of purchase needs to fly off these shelves many times an hour to make this lavishly bedecked store pay. No doubt they will. Then the customer will then have something soft, squidgy and expensive to land on if they take a tumble back on the vertiginous stairs.

This is a titan of a store, the Vuitton’s most luxurious. ‘Maison’, excuse me. It is made from Aniegre wood, Corian, French embossed leather, Afromosia wood, French Lacquer, Portland stone, glass and engineered high-gloss wood veneer. Custom-made is the starting point for rugs, shot silk and leather chairs and sofas and drunken hand beaten metal tables stand tipsily on the menswear floor. There are also ceiling-suspended rotating planets made from glass and plastic, and in the sunglass area has a ‘central oculous’ like a big brother all-seeing eye, but way more chic. It is in fact a light feature resembling the human iris a useful reminder of what sunglasses are meant to protect.

I know Louis Vuitton’s schtick is travel, but with this store they manage to take you off the planet entirely to a universe far, far away. It’s a mighty achievement for the luxury French leather good manufacturer who first opened a shop in London 125 years ago. And in keeping with the 11%, global economy-defying profits LVMH posted over the past year.

Of course all this conspicuous, open-to-anyone access of these first three floors might feel a little too democratic, or even dangerous to some of the ‘maison’s’ most discreet, famous or fearful customers. These special customers will be whisked to the ‘Apartment’ – an open plan space on the 2^nd floor that is sectioned off into private shopping suites, each decked with fireplaces, antique and vintage furniture. Access is via a private lift.

The LV ‘Maison’ is a sort of art gallery too. ‘Kiki’ a sculpture by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami who has worked closely with the brand producing a candy-bright monogram, greets shoppers on the ground floor. Works by Richard Prince are also featured throughout the store. Downstairs look out for ‘Paws’, a work by Gilbert and George in the menswear department.

Unfortunately, the most fun piece of art on display, Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine, will moved to a new home shortly. It was placed at the bottom of the stairs for the opening launch party. This brilliantly-named art work – a Heath Robinson-esque machine of stuck on grotesquerie - fright masks, doll faces and severed limbs, bells and whistles also scribbles abstractions onto pieces of A4 paper. Of course, it has to be moved. As all the credit card destroying – or, indeed, melting - will now be managed in-house by Louis Vuitton itself.

Louis Vuitton’s boite of tricks

Did Health and Safety officers really sign off the vertiginous marble, brass, mirror and light-boxed staircase that links the three floors of Louis Vuitton’s newest, most lavish and high tech shop? For it’s a precarious assault course for any biped without a head for heights. With 23 square meters of banded light-box, steel and stone panels I wasn’t sure if I was on a flat surface or needing to take a step up or down. A Perspex escalator would have felt like solid ground.

A deliberate disorientation by the store’s leather-capped, architect Peter Marino? Shoppers will feel so relieved on reaching their destination they’ll be more than happy to lay down £999 on a monogrammed ‘Keepall’ weekend bag if they arrive in one piece. This kind of purchase needs to fly off these shelves many times an hour to make this lavishly bedecked store pay. No doubt they will. Then the customer will then have something soft, squidgy and expensive to land on if they take a tumble back on the vertiginous stairs.

This is a titan of a store, the Vuitton’s most luxurious. ‘Maison’, excuse me. It is made from Aniegre wood, Corian, French embossed leather, Afromosia wood, French Lacquer, Portland stone, glass and engineered high-gloss wood veneer. Custom-made is the starting point for rugs, shot silk and leather chairs and sofas and drunken hand beaten metal tables stand tipsily on the menswear floor. There are also ceiling-suspended rotating planets made from glass and plastic, and in the sunglass area has a ‘central oculous’ like a big brother all-seeing eye, but way more chic. It is in fact a light feature resembling the human iris a useful reminder of what sunglasses are meant to protect.

I know Louis Vuitton’s schtick is travel, but with this store they manage to take you off the planet entirely to a universe far, far away. It’s a mighty achievement for the luxury French leather good manufacturer who first opened a shop in London 125 years ago. And in keeping with the 11%, global economy-defying profits LVMH posted over the past year.

Of course all this conspicuous, open-to-anyone access of these first three floors might feel a little too democratic, or even dangerous to some of the ‘maison’s’ most discreet, famous or fearful customers. These special customers will be whisked to the ‘Apartment’ – an open plan space on the 2^nd floor that is sectioned off into private shopping suites, each decked with fireplaces, antique and vintage furniture. Access is via a private lift.

The LV ‘Maison’ is a sort of art gallery too. ‘Kiki’ a sculpture by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami who has worked closely with the brand producing a candy-bright monogram, greets shoppers on the ground floor. Works by Richard Prince are also featured throughout the store. Downstairs look out for ‘Paws’, a work by Gilbert and George in the menswear department.

Unfortunately, the most fun piece of art on display, Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine, will moved to a new home shortly. It was placed at the bottom of the stairs for the opening launch party. This brilliantly-named art work – a Heath Robinson-esque machine of stuck on grotesquerie - fright masks, doll faces and severed limbs, bells and whistles also scribbles abstractions onto pieces of A4 paper. Of course, it has to be moved. As all the credit card destroying – or, indeed, melting - will now be managed in-house by Louis Vuitton itself.

Step in Line

Tommy Hilfiger and the Keith Haring Foundation's trainer collaboration would certainly have been worn by the pop artist himself.

Not for Keith Haring the snobbery and obsession with money found in the art market in 1980s New York. An obsession, indeed, that is even more rampant today. Haring’s art – linear graphics celebrating leaping, dancing human figures, dogs, babies, snakes and any other objects that could be rendered by his hand in a sinuous black line – turned up on subway station walls, street corners, badges and extremely large pieces of paper. Haring took art to people even when those people were on the street busily trying to head elsewhere.

Which makes the collaboration between Tommy Hilfiger and the Keith Haring Foundation a neat marriage. The artist’s figures and buzzing hieroglyphs are emblazoned onto trainers and boots – so you pull the art onto your feet and then hit the street in them, making them far away from the refined world of the gallery where most art would like to see itself comfortably leaning on a pristine white wall.

Both Tommy Hilfiger and the Keith Haring Foundation help youngsters through education and support for those affected by AIDS. Both these foundations are linked by developing these trainers.

Haring’s tragically short life – he died at 32 in 1990 of AIDS – was full of a prodigious creativity and an intense work schedule making his art some of the most recognized and loved of the past thirty years. The exuberance and child-like charm of his work is life affirming like a vertical plunge on a roller coaster with you hands thrust in the air. And, of course, trainers are just the right footwear to be leaping through life in.

As the Haring himself said, "I am interested in making art to be experienced and explored by as many individuals as possible with as many different individual ideas about the given piece with no final meaning attached.” He wrote these words in 1978 when he first arrived in New York. Which if you change the word art to fashion, this works as a manifesto for how we dress today.

The higher top ankle boot styles are the style cognoscenti’s choice this summer and I’ll be wearing the ones in bright blue. If you’re going to wear a cult-artists designs on your feet then why be shy by hiding them in black or grey?

Men’s trainers from £89.99 exclusively at Dover Street Market from 7^th May

All wrapped up, Milan menswear, Winter '10

4 days of men’s fashion shows in Milan is both an obstacle course and a race.

Show tickets turn up late, or not at all. I lost my driver on the corner of Via San’Andrea and Via Montenapoleone among 80 identi-kit chauffeurs and navy sedans – twice. And some stylish Milanese is, ratcheting up an off-the-scale bella figura, probably wearing my Persol 714 limited edition sunglasses that I left on my seat after the Roberto Cavalli show. Dammit!

And let’s not forget the barrel of Chianti on my last night due to the relief of getting through it all, ensuring I could scarcely focus on any moving object the following day.

Reassuringly though, many designers returned to the core values of their brands, which in Gucci’s case led to a show of such understated elegance – vintage silk scarf-lined beige jackets, narrow pants and classic snaffle loafers – that the bling of the last few seasons was as quickly forgotten as last month’s Xmas decorations. Creative director Frida Giannini said that by looking in the archives she’d found a way of pushing the brand forward – which could be a motto for this season.

Salvatore Ferragamo under the design reins of Massimiliano Giornetti (a name that can only be said after a slug of Barolo), took above-the-knee great coats and oversized scarves as his vaguely Argentinian theme played out to a soundtrack of beating horses’ hooves. Autumnal browns and deep reds stood out in a season that was more often than not monochrome. In fact, outer wear, especially coats, played out on catwalks far more than suiting, accessories or hats. It was as if Milan was saying: buy yourself just one over-sized coat and you can brace against whatever the world throws at you.

Of course not all followed this simple idea. Alexander McQueen took a post-apocalyptic theme with a show dominated by sand-blasted, skull-printed suits and skin-tight head stockings as if the future may well resemble the world of Cormac McCarthy’s bleak novel, The Road.

I think I’d rather sweep through life in a Ferragamo great coat, or if I was feeling futuristic, donning one of Versace’s skintight leather biker jackets. Alexander Plokhov, the house’s new design director said he was – just like Giannini at Gucci – going back to Versace’s brand values. The Versace man suddenly looked purposeful again in his Matrix-esque sunglasses and ultra-slicked hair.

For those excited that fashion is going to end up eating itself, proof was found on the Prada runway. A third of the show’s exits were women wearing the brand’s pre-Fall collection, which looked oddly like what the men were wearing, and strangely hardly any press commented on. Perhaps they’d all been on the Chianti too and hadn’t noticed the 15 girls filing past them. Both genders wore golfing shoes that had certainly hit the bottle labelled, ‘Drink Me’, sprouting impossibly long tassled tongues. They were hardly desirable, but I could see Tiger Woods sporting them – anything to distract from his imploding personal life.

Milan Mukmirovic, creative director at Trussardi, didn’t show a catwalk collection at all, preferring to present his ideas on the top floor of the Trussardi store opposite the famous La Scala opera house. Which was a surprising venue for his dressed down chunky knitwear, Alpine boots and puffa jackets. “We’ve brought our prices down by about 20%,” said fashion’s very own renaissance man. “Men aren’t interested in the catwalk any more, they just want to find clothes they can wear.” Which was probably the sanest but also the dullest thing I heard all week.

So a pat on the back then for Vivienne Westwood who took a very special curtain call after her A/W collection, which was kick-started by a model stumbling out of a cardboard box onto the catwalk (how long had he been in there? Poor man). Dame Viv was wheeled out to take her applause on a hospital trolley. It was a Derelict moment straight out of the film Zoolander. Catwalks. How could we possibly live without them?