Fashion is in the middle of a tyre-squeakingly radical change of direction, and we’re not talking about hemlines. With the release of Zoolander 2 just two months away and an Absolutely Fabulous movie in the pipeline, 2016 is all set to be the year fashion gets funny. An industry that has always taken itself, I think it’s fair to say, just a teeny weeny bit too seriously, is finally in on the joke.
Stella McCartney was way ahead of the curve on this one. She made a cameo appearance in Ab Fab back in 2012, and has made the comic turns at her Bruton Street store’s Christmas lighting-up do a festive tradition for almost a decade. Peter Kay, Catherine Tate and Barry Humphries have all done the honours in the past. For 2015, she enlisted Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, the very on-trend best friends with whom she shared the British Fashion Awards stage earlier in the week, to flick the switch that lights up the shopfront with neon Santas. Cue a fashwan-style backhanded compliment about how McCartney’s win at the British Fashion Awards on Monday, for brand of the year, “came out of nowhere”.
You can’t beat a Stella McCartney event for an eclectic A-list crowd. Present and correct were a Stone (Ronnie Wood); an Olympian (a very chic Victoria Pendleton); an insanely well-dressed small child (Wood’s granddaughter Maggie, in this gorgeous Stella Kids jacket); a comedy legend (Paul Whitehouse); and some good- looking posh people (Ben Goldsmith). Everyone from Wood to Pendleton got into the comedy spirit by posing gamely in the light-up novelty sunglasses; waiters in reindeer ears served trays of Moscow Mules (geddit!). Nonetheless, our favourite guest was Salma Hayek, who was in no mood for lolz. Offered a mini mince pie and a candy cane, she shook her head, made a beeline for the rails of frocks, and got straight down to business: “Can I shop?”
