The in-store, with wafty music and in amongst the presence of other shoppers who could well afford the racks of clothes on offer, kind of 'dream browsing'. I did this dangerous activity in the London department store trio of Harvey Nichols (is it me or has the ambiance improved greatly?), Selfridges (is it me or has the ambiance gotten more dreadful?) and Liberty (is it me or does this store never fail to instill a sense of calmness in you?).
It involved a lot of walking around, touching things, picking things up and putting them down again and basically tricking the mind into thinking one can afford a £400 dress. It's the sort of shallow meandering in shops that will probably make people guffaw a little. Anyhow, the one label that repeatedly made me deluded to the point of nearly taking a dress to a cash till was 6267. I've been meaning to give some sort of a shout out to the labels coming out of Milan Fashion Week that aren't boring me to tears and are in fact really impressive.
Derercuny and Francesco Scognamiglio are part of this brigade too. But in my dream browsing sessions, 6267 dresses were wow-ing me with their choice of fabrics, detailing and shapes. Tommaso Aqualiano and Roberto Rimondi, two ex-Maxmara designers haven't veered too far away from one's idea of Italian fashion but it's the extra edge that they have brought to the table that makes their clothes appealing.
Sarah Mower called them on on their blatant "homage" to Nicholas Ghesquiere in their latest AW08-9 collection but a very detailed description of what they were trying to achieve and how they did that with fabrics, colours and inspirations on their website convinces me that they weren't merely doing lazy nods towards Ghesquiere. "Curvilinear Lines" follow the body and sudden verticals give the figure a slim but feminine line, seen in the short skirts to the knee, like the tiny women in old music boxes; Degas! Not tulle, but Mikado, faille and simple black and white overchecks, emphasised by touches of pale pink light, faintly echoing an infantile femininity."
Oh well...at the end of the day, 6267 proposed to me something that I very nearly parted 500 quid for yesterday which sounds a little robotic and transactional but I guess it does come down to that business minded building of a clientale and I look forward to what 6267 come up with in the future so I can engage in more dream browsing through their clothes, touching the fine fabrics and imagining ridiculous situations like being able to afford a 500 quid dress.
