Banana Republic, in collaboration with Mad Men costume designer, Janie Bryant will be launching a collection inspired by the TV show and will be carried in Banana Republic’s North American stores and online beginning August 11, 2011.
Details will follow shortly.
Thanks to Banana Republic

At Zara, in the current collection, you will discover some dresses and pants, which the design reminds furiously the one created in the sixties.
A summer wardrobe at very nice prices: from 26 to 40 euro/p.

What more can you ask?
Check Here

Crombie remains an iconic British brand, trusted worldwide for the quality of its products and the timeless elegance of its designs.
Crombie continues to source only the finest raw materials to make its luxury products. To this day, the majority of fabrics used in our coats are milled in England and Scotland (otherwise in Italy). Likewise, 80% of our accessories are « Made in England », from five-fold silk ties hand rolled by English craftsmen, all the way up to handmade classic fur felt hats.
The Crombie story begins over 200 years ago, in the year of the epic Battle of Trafalgar. It was at this time that John Crombie – son to a family of Scottish weavers – established his first woollen mill at Cothal Mills in Aberdeen.

Using only the finest natural fibres, John Crombie quickly established a reputation throughout Britain for the quality of his luxury cloth. Each year, he would set out on horseback to sell his prized fabrics – not only to cloth merchants, but also direct to London tailors eager for the richest offerings to present to their noble clients.

• 1810 – The company receives an award from the « Board of Trustees for Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland », for the exceptional standard of its Forest cloth – the woollen cloth of the timeWool was scoured and milled, spun and woven and subsequently tailored to produce Elysian overcoatings worn by the best-dressed men.
• 1828 – James Crombie, the eldest son, joins the expanding company, which continues to prosper through the post Napoleonic War period.
• The main production was tweele and wincey, woven mainly in blues and greys, having already been dyed in the west of England. Folk etymology suggests that the word « tweed » was born at around this time as a result of a London merchant misinterpreting a Crombie employee’s badly handwritten letter referring to an order of tweele.
• 1849 – By the mid-nineteenth century, the Crombie business has established its reputation amongst the fashionable drapers of London and Paris.
• Crombie’s fine wools, tweeds, cashmeres and merinos became the fabric of choice for Savile Row tailors and gentlemen of taste.
• 1851 – As the Victorian era progresses, the Crombie name becomes renowned for excellence and fine craftsmanship.
• In 1851, Crombie’s cloth was presented at the Great Exhibition, and was awarded a prize medal by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert « For Superior Manufacture and Beauty of Design ». At the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Crombie is similarly commended by Napoleon III.

• 1861 – The outbreak of the American Civil War establishes a new export market. Business increased five-fold as Crombie received large orders for « Rebel Grey » cloth from the Confederate army – who had no mills of their own in the blockaded South.
• 1862 – Queen Victoria’s commissioner commends Crombie cloth at the International Exhibition held in London in 1862.
• 1870 – John Crombie’s grandson Theodore journeys extensively across the globe, with trunks filled with Crombie’s trademark cloth, to secure new markets in Europe. Such was his success that in 1871, during the Prussian siege of Paris, an order was famously sent by hot air balloon to secure delivery of the legendary cloth. Theodore’s agents went on to establish the Crombie brand name as far afield as Canada and even Japan – where Crombie’s agent was Thomas Glover, who went on to help establish the Mitsubishi Corporation, and supposedly inspired Pucccini’s opera Madam Butterfly.

• 1880 – Links with Russia are established which persist to the present day. Crombie entered the Russian market in 1880 with the « Russian Coat » – a heavy pile coat specially designed to shield wearers from the harsh Russian winter. Crombie soon established a favourable reputation in Russia, and became the fabric of choice for Tsars, the Russian Imperial court, and later even the Politburo. When the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev stepped onto British soil for the first time at Heathrow in December 1984, television commentators observed that he was wearing his British Crombie coat. Crombie turns its expertise to lighter weight coats, suits and morning coats for markets opening up in France, Germany and Belgium. The Crombie « Beaver-Raised » woollen overcoating proved an international success, particularly for gentlemen’s wedding attire. The cloth, made from merino wool, was given a secret finish that imparted a mirror-like gloss.
• 1914-18 – During the First World War, Crombie temporarily switched its production to military officers’ uniforms. Such was the extent of Crombie’s production that one tenth of all greatcoats worn by British officers were made from Crombie cloth. The term « British Warm » was coined at this time to describe the coat made from Crombie cloth. The name remains synonymous with Crombie to this day.
• 1928 – Another textile family, the famous Salts of Saltaire, West Yorkshire, bring Crombie into the Illingworth Morris group – creating what becomes Britain’s largest textile group for much of the twentieth century.
• 1939-1945 – In the Second World War, Crombie once again makes its contribution for Britain.
• During 1941 alone, Crombie’s output included overcoats for 90,450 soldiers, 23,364 RAF officers, and 12,042 US army officers.
• In 1942, Crombie supplied the Norwegian resistance movement with a dark grey cloth to match that of the occupying German troops. Despite the vast quantities involved, the cloth produced by Crombie during this period maintained its legendary status, on account of the exceptional quality of every garment.
• 1946-Today – With its war work over, Crombie reassumes its position as a purveyor of fine British fashion to celebrities royalty, and statesmen worldwide.

(Many Thanks to Crombie Archives)

www.crombie.co.uk

London Shopping:
Flagship UK store for this classic American Ivy League outfitters, famous for pioneering the button-down collar and for dressing the likes of Cary Grant, John F. Kennedy, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn and countless modern jazzers. A nice range of their famous button-down shirts are offered (as well as the occasional tab collar) and there is also a made-to-measure service offering a multitude of other options.

If buying men’s shirts off-the-peg, make sure you go for the « slim-fit » range, which despite the name I would actually describe as semi-fitted rather than slim fitting. (thanx to JEAN-PAUL SÉCULAIRE).

brooksbrothers.co.uk

Slice of life: Lesley Hornby also called Twiggy. (Share 1)

Lesley Hornby, girl of carpenter, was born in 1949 in Neasden in England, in suburbs line of London. At fifteen years, it met – Nigel John Davies, with the hairdressing salon where it made useful saturdays in return for a pocket money little to buy clothing. According to the moments, Nigel bet in the living rooms and the night clubs, or then boxed as an amateur, then it was found salesman, representative of skin flicks, decorator of interior, antique dealer and to finish hairdresser at Vidal Sassoon where it was made call Mr. Christian.

He threw full the sight of it, was made call Justin of Villeneuve, and led a red Triumph Spitfire, that one even whichput-putted in front of the shop of hairdresser where he came to seek his brother who worked with Lesley. Lesley, it called it “Stick”,brushwood, which were metamorphosed in Twig,brushwood, then in Twiggy which wants to say the same thing appreciably. In spite of his chattering which pointed out “a put out of order parrot to him”, Justin found it “to cut the breath”.

When they started to leave together, his wife left it and left at the wheel red Triumph, her good.But Twiggy quickly made him forget this loss. 

“It arrived like that, she declared later. Justin had in the idea that I should be mannequin.” But when one snubbed it at the time of a visit to theQueen review, the couple decided to open a shop which Twiggy supplied with pants that it bent starting from old fabrics. And although it is too small, it measured L, 55 m and weighed 45kilos, with measurements 75-55-80, a friend ofJustin proposed to him to pose for a magazine and the writer sent it to be made cut the hair inLeonard, a very smart hairdressing salon on the side of Upper Grosvenor Street.

Intrigued by the appearance of this girl, Leonard asked him to pose for the hairstyle that it was going to carry out, exchanges some it would give him photographs. “When Leonard had finished,Villeneuve pays, one would have said Bambi,and there I knew that it was going to arrive there.” At this point in time Deirdre McSharry, a journalist of mode of Daily Express, saw its photographs with the living room of Leonard.“Very excited, she telephoned to me to wonder where she could find it”, the photographer Barry Lategan remembers. A Few days later, Mc Sharry published a full page in Daily Evening where he baptized Twiggy “the face of year 66… small a Cockney lends to make fire of four irons”. 

Pressed touch of the money, of Villeneuve decided that Twiggy was to enter to Lucie Clayton who still held the top of the paving stone in London, but in its autobiography, Twiggy tells that his/her father refused and required thatJustin deals personally with his career oral though it gives up it. That did not have large importance because it was in the directory:his/her mother took the calls and organized to them appointment, and there was much of it. But they did not precipitate all.

The trio of the « infant terrible » was sulky it. “The new look of theSixties it is the woman, and Twig is not a woman”, Brian Duffy announced. However its career started in waterspout and even if Twiggy functioned apart from the system, one could not miss it. Diana Vreeland saw it in It and retained it for Vogue, a British company of clothing signed a contract to him to create a collection to him, its body was used to manufacture mannequins with its image in the windows, and Ford MotorCompany offered to him even one of its firstMustang. In all England, the teenagers copied her hairstyle and her make-up with its famous forgery lashes from the eyelids and those drawn under the eyes. As for the adults, they launched out in ruinous slimming courses for their health.“What a horror! Gillian Bobroff, an English top model of this time remembers. It had launched a “look” and we all were obliged to follow. I was made cut the hair and I took hundreds of pills, I did not eat more, I had crises of bulimia… a true nightmare.”