I had an email via Facebook today from a friend I was at university with doing Fashion Design to let me know she had just launched her new website.  After checking out her new site I just had to give her a plug on Latemag as "the lass done good"!

The last I heard Jenny had just been made redundant from her job in Sri Lanka. Fast forward about a year and Jenny Hardcastle has launched herself on the international fashion stage as a designer in her own right. Her first collection comprising of beautifully draped and sculpted ladies eveningwear was launched in February 2008. Not long after the collection earned her the accolade of “New Designer” in the Midlands PIN fashion competition netting her £10,000 towards her business. Her success steam rolled on from there and in April she won the Talent De Mode international fashion competition in France. Part of the prize was a year’s free rental of her own boutique in Lyon, France, due to open it’s doors 1st September 2008.

The picture directly below shows Jenny’s new boutique and the bottom picture shows Jenny herself (in the middle with the pink tights) surrounded by models wearing her first and uber-successful collection.

To check out the rest of Jenny’s collection and for more information on UK stockists visit her new website www.jennyhardcastle.com

I’ve recently discovered upcoming New York based designer Ardistia Dwiasri and have a lot of love for pieces from her Fall/Winter 2007 and Spring/Summer 2007 collections.

Ardistia is “all about self indulgence and treats, summarising the essence of a women’s inner strength, beauty and desire, drawing on confidence from the whimisical secret detail in every piece of clothing”.

I don’t know about all that but I am definitely a fan of her sharp, unique silhouettes, particularly the garbadine jackets with the extensive metal button detailing.

Having a day job (unfortunately) that requires me to dress like I mean business, I would love to have some of her tailored jackets to add a unique yet still professional element to my ‘workwear’ wardrobe.

Pyuupiru is a 3-D costume maker from Tokyo. His works are derived from delusions and obsessions, created without the use of patterns. Sound strange already? It gets stranger. Once complete, Pyuupiru dons his hand-knitted creations and executes a performance based on the character.
The photographs shown below are Pyuupiru dressed in his ‘Planetaria’ collection. Me, I’m interested to see exactly how one ‘performs’ the character of ‘Mars’ or ‘Jupiter’!
Oddness aside, they really are quite clever aren’t they?!

I first discovered YesStyle.com through sister site YesAsia.com. Having been a frequent customer of YesAsia.com, an online shopping emporium dedicated to all things in Asian entertainment, I was very excited to see them launch YesStyle.com, an equally impressive emporium to all things in Asian fashion. However my excitement was short lived as I soon discovered that my fat arse (by Asian standards anyway) wouldn’t be catered for in their sizing offering, for when YesStyle launched a couple of years back, the biggest size I could find on offer was a Korean 44/UK 6-8. Now considering the site was all in English and prices in American $, I thought this maximum size of theirs a little bit optimistic considering their target market.
Strangely, they had a link (still there) on the site saying “contact our CEO”. So I thought what the hell, I need to let these people know that my UK 10/12 requirements are not actually that unusual over here and if they wanted to sell to us more generously proportioned westerners then a slightly wider size range might help. Anyhoo roll on to the present day and lo and behold they took some notice (and I am entirely certain it was my email that made all the difference, wink). I happened to be passing the other day, saw about 100 different items I wanted and with a glum face clicked onto the product details only to see that most items now come in sizes 55 and 66 (UK 8-10 and 12-14)! Woohoo!!!
So not only do they have some really funky fashion, they now actually offer it in sizes that I can wear! If that wasn’t enough, there’s also the FREE international shipping to get excited about.

So my only complaint now is they are tempting me into spending far too much money on all the goodies!