Kate Moss 'back home' at Topshop

The boho maxi dresses, flowing blouses and feminine tailoring have little to do with the androgynous shapes or minimalist cuts that have been strutting down the catwalks of late.

But the first Kate Moss collection for Topshop in four years, which is more reminiscent of the model drinking wine on a yacht, or smoking a fag on a night out in Soho, seems only likely to cement her role as national institution. As the supermodel described it to the Guardian recently, the latest range is a "wardrobe autobiography". As Topshop's website puts it, "the icon is back".

Moss launched the range at Topshop's flagship Oxford Circus branch in central London on Tuesday night, where small shoppers' queues began to form at around 1pm to get their hands on her 15th collection - the first since 2010 - for the brand.

Shoppers lined the pavement outside Topshop on Oxford Street, spilling into the road, much to the bemusement of tourists and the chagrin of stewards dispatched to keep them from getting run over. Shortly before 6.30pm, Moss herself was unveiled in the shop window, presented by Radio1 DJ Nick Grimshaw, and soon doors opened to shoppers, some of whom had been waiting for over five hours.

Emma, 26, was first in the queue at 1pm and first at the tills. She spent £240, the prized item being a leather jacket costing £190. "She's got such a great variety, different themes running through the collection. I didn't try anything on, I just went for it," she said.

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Tina, 45, from Buckinghamshire queued for two hours. "I wanted the leather jacket for me, then my daughter wanted something, then my niece said 'get something for me." She spent £1,000 and bought eight items. "I think it's worth it because Moss is unique and the clothes are instantly recognisable as her's. Also I've bought her Topshop stuff in the past and it lasts a long time. You'll be wearing it for years because it's a classic piece."

Not everyone was there to grab a Moss item. Jenny, from London, found herself at the back of a three and a half hour queue to return a pair of shoes. 'I'm not really a fan of Kate Moss,' she explained, much to her daughter's exasperation

At a side entrance surrounded by red carpet a group of Italian tourists were content to watch the show.

Amy Moosah, a 27-year-old stylist, was among those in the queue. She liked the "elegant and bohemian" range, adding that Moss was the model of her generation.

Designed with Katy England, the collection features 40 pieces and centres heavily on a summer beach ethos - fringed kaftans and beaded shirts. There are also Kate classics - an asymmetrical yellow dress she wore in 2003 is repeated here, also in black and green. Great Gatsby-esque shapes pop up in high-waisted silk trousers and a black jumpsuit. And befitting a woman who, despite cultivating a flourishing business built solely on her personal brand and is best known for her love of partying, the latest collection suggests hedonism, not workwear. It is notable that most of the collection will also be stocked by Net-A-Porter, the online luxury retailer who don't usually do high street.

"I have really missed being involved in the design process, and working with the team at Topshop," said Moss, a regular holiday companion of Topshop boss Sir Philip Green. "I am very excited to create a new collection that bears my name. Now more than ever, with London being at the forefront of fashion, as it feels like I'm back home working with Topshop."

This latest collection marks the end of a four-year hiatus for Moss on designing duty. First launched in 2007, the debut Topshop collection was initially deemed a risk, coming as it did a year after Metropolitan police dropped charges against the model in the wake of footage of her allegedly snorting lines of cocaine.

But the success of her first collection - which she unveiled by posing in the window of Topshop, laughing and smiling as punters elbowed each other out of the way to get in - was a significant part of the great Moss comeback of 2007. From dropped modelling gigs and cancelled contracts to a current net worth of over £8m, according to Forbes, Moss is more successful than most models half her age. Though at 40 she shows no sign of leaving the catwalk, her return to designing coincides with a role as contributing fashion editor at British Vogue, for whom she styled her first photoshoot earlier this year.

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South Sudan: supermodel draws world's attention to crisis at home

“I’m Nuer, but I’m not a tribe, I’m South Sudanese. I know the resilience of the tribes, but I believe that when the South Sudanese come together, our resilience and determination will be greater than what divides us. I’m stepping out with fellow models from South Sudan, representing various tribes, to show that on the world scale, the tribe you come from doesn’t matter. Hopefully this shows the unity and pride that we should have in ourselves; the peace that can be formed if we put down our weapons and ancient hostilities, we can move up and progress. We are not Nuer or Dinka, we are South Sudan, we are Nilotic (of the Nile).”

This defiant statement comes from supermodel Nykhor Paul who has recently launched a campaign to turn the world’s attention to the crisis in South Sudan.

Working with world class photographer Mike Mellia, she has given voice, along with a few of her fellow high profile South Sudanese, to the plight of their beloved country.

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For an exhibition in April in New York, Mellia produced a portrait of the anguish that haunts the lives of those South Sudanese who have managed to escape, and through them, of the lives of those they left behind… born of a desire to tell the story of South Sudan by moving beyond the limitations of the media through the raw and emotive power of art.

Paul’s heart is to inform a global audience and raise awareness of the war currently happening in Sudan. The United Nations this week condemned "the targeted killings of civilians based on their ethnic origins and nationality" in a disputed town that is under the control of anti-government forces.

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“I want to inform the youth and the world about the situation, because it is so important — it has parallels with the genocide that took place in Rwanda," says Paul. "The fighting is between tribes, the two biggest being the Dinka and Nuer. South Sudan was fighting for their independence from the North, for generation. To fall back into this type of conflict against itself, is disheartening and tragic.”

“I’m trying to help them see past their tribalism and the fighting, to become more aware of the current issues that are effecting the entire planet, not just a small minority. They need to understand that the world is larger than their tribes. When I travel around the world, to Paris, Germany, wherever, people just notice that I’m a tall, dark skinned girl and wonder 'Are you from Sudan?' I don’t have to mention my tribe, they really don’t care about that.”

“My message to the tribe is that we are one, we are Nilotic. We are people that came from an old civilisation, we are smart, and we are resourceful.”

Can You Go From Vogue Editor to Skater Girl in 24 Hours?

“Never, never, never hold it like that!” Professional skateboarder Brian Anderson is leaping across a gravel-strewn lot at Coleman Playground to correct my grip on a borrowed skateboard: Wheels are to face in, not out, hold by the board, not the “truck.” And if you want to be cool, not the bottom of the deck facing out, even though that’s where the stickers are: “That’s the mall grip.” Now, I may not know much about skateboarding, but I know enough to know that being described as a “mall” anything is seriously less than ideal. I switch the board, scrunch a sleeve to show a flash of Crayola-color Swatch, lean back like my legs are sore from ollieing all day and try to blend in. I catch a flash of side-eye from a twelve-year-old boy. We’re wearing the same hat. It’s very “Who Wore It Better: LES Youth Edition,” and I’m pretty sure I’m losing. This, suffice it to say, is not my normal Wednesday.

It all began a week ago in the Vogue offices, when my editor asked whether I might consider getting a skater makeover in honor of Odd Future’s insanely cool and largely underground skate premiere for Illegal Civilization. “Ice skater?” I asked hopefully, picturing layers of abbreviated tulle, waist-cinching leotards, illusion-net necklines, a “Good Swan On Ice” thing. Yeah, I could do that. “Nooo,” she said, “skater-skater. Baggy pants and skateboards. Styled by a pro!” Being in possession of both eyes and working synapses, I am very aware of fashion’s current vogue for skate culture—look no further than the recent collections and advertising campaigns of Hedi Slimane, Marc Jacobs, and Phoebe Philo, those venerable tastemakers—which is not even to mention Supreme, with its SoHo-disrupting all-night queues and perpetually wait-listed graphic tees, or the bevy of sylphs (Daria Werbowy, Cara Delevingne, Hanneli Mustaparta) who glide on their boards to and from the shows. Like so many things, I enjoy the look! On other people.

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For one thing, I think it’s important to know one’s limitations, and I don’t think I’m selling myself short to say I am not great on wheels. (I’ve got the battle scars to prove it; stitches from various early expeditions on bicycles, road rash from a Vespa, etc.) Sartorially, too, I am not really of the skatepark school: I traditionally favor slim-cut pants, for one thing. I have already aired my feelings about flattering footwear, and just the other day I used “skater punk” in a negative sense. But I am nothing if not up for a challenge.

The skater dress sense is not so easily explained, it turns out. At our first meeting, Anderson, a one-time Thrasher magazine Skater of the Year with his own company, 3D Skateboard Co., and over a decade-long relationship with Nike (for whom he designed the Nike Project BA skate shoe, among others), is wearing a Marc Jacobs waxed jacket he painted the back of “a few years ago” that’s easily the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

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“I’ve been dyeing my hair and cutting up all my clothes like crazy since forever,” he says, so this shoot doesn’t feel like much of a stretch. We begin a list of what I’ll need to blend in with him at the skate park, and when the talk turns to sneakers, he casually points out two men in a Lower East Side coffee shop who are wearing Nikes designed by his compatriot, Stefan Janoski. I nod in what I hope looks like knowledgeable fashion and tuck my Tod’s driving moccasins further under my chair. “Layers are good,” he says, producing a brown paper bag on which he’s scrawled several looping Sharpie designs, making a note to bring some of his more popular shirts. His cuff betrays an underlying flash of a loved-up cream-colored thermal shirt, the kind you throw on and scuff around downtown in to-do errands, the kind that probably cost nothing and somehow always looks amazing. I want a cream-colored thermal shirt! “Do you have a flannel, maybe? Those work: girls will wear one and tie it around their waist when they get hot.” I decide that I have access to a flannel. It may not technically be “mine,” as much as my boyfriend’s, and it may in fact be older than I am, but it will do. “Old is good,” he grins, “I’m going to wash everything you’re wearing tomorrow a few times so it gets that good, lived-in softness.” Jeans? Thank god for that wide-legged story. “These are pretty tight, for me,” he says, gripping a loose fold of his black denim. Sure, I nod, pretending that “tight” in my world doesn’t mean “painted on.” Skate style appears to be about comfort, with an eye-catching bend. You need to stand out from other skaters, and from the tricks themselves. “I’ll bring some flair to make it pop,” Anderson says decisively. “We’ll make it work.” I am not so certain, but I admire his confidence. We part: he is off to source some goods from surrounding skate shops—Labor carries some of his decks as well as his line of flamingo-and-cyan-colored socks—and walk his Yorkie, Lloyd. I go home to stare at my seriously uncool clothes.

The day of the shoot: I arrive at the skate park. I did not know this place existed, and neither did my cab driver, who joins me in watching the urbane youths making gravity-defying tucks and twists and sometimes just skating back and forth, sometimes just watching each other from the sidelines. I find Anderson, and we duck into an adjacent lot, where he holds his coat over me (“I have eleven sisters,” he says sweetly) while I change into the look he’s styled. A group of teenagers has gathered to ask Anderson to take photos with them, one holds an early deck he designed for Girl skateboards out like an offering. Soon I am dressed: a 3D Skateboard Co. long-sleeved tee, replete with Marc Jacobs–esque Hawaiian flowers cascading down the arms, my trusty borrowed flannel tied around my hips (why don’t I tie more things around my waist like this? What did the nineties impress upon me that I don’t allow myself that?), the slouchiest jeans I own, bright red Nikes, a red watch, and a dog tag that reads “Brian Doe.” I feel surprisingly less like a fraud than I’d imagined. I am also insanely comfortable. “Cool,” Anderson says, heading toward a ramp to do some light spins and grinds and things I don’t know the names of, and I feel awash in his affirmation. “You look totally legit, like we just went skating.” I survey the park: nobody’s staring, nobody’s pointing. My transformation took about five minutes, if you don’t include the fretting, and I look rather cool, if I say so myself. I don’t dare get on the board, but as far as they know, I skated here.

Gobal bridalwear industry players showcase at New York

Once again the best of global bridalwear industry came forward to showcase their latest lines of dramatic wedding gowns at the just held edition of New York International Bridal Week.

Instead of a regular runway show, the New York-based wedding fashion designer Vera Wang chose a digital platform this time to feature her new Spring-2015 line. Shot in an old mansion on Long Island, the short film showcases models wearing extremely lightweight tulle and lace made dresses.

Using varied silhouettes ranging from minimal, Grecian columns and princess to mermaid styles, the range included delicate shirtdresses, and strapless bustiers and frothy skirts combo.

Inspired by the famous English photographer Yevonde Middleton’s well-known portrait series The Goddesses, the British fashion designer Jenny Packham created her new line, based on shades of buttermilk, champagne, blush and caramel. Made using luxe yards of French lace, silk, chiffon and tulle, the featured gowns, capes and exquisite veils were adorned with beadwork, crystals, alabasters, and antique metallic silver and gold embellishments.

London-based designer Alice Temperley opted to showcase a line of classic everlasting bridalwear pieces. Titled as Iris, the collection was made from sumptuous French lace and double satin fabrics. Decorated with glittering pearls, intricate embroidery and fine Swarovski crystal appliqués, the line featured dramatic gowns with flowing trains, bridal coats and embellished corsets.

In addition to the above mentioned names, designers like Carolina Herrera, Angel Sanchez, Marchesa and Monique Lhuillier also showcased their sumptuous wedding designs at the three-day-long event.

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Alexander Wang's collaboration with H&M: affordable style for the social media generation

H&M has been doing designer collaborations for 10 years. Its latest – with Alexander Wang – is set to be another sellout when it launches in November. The designer, the first American to work with the high-street brand, is already a massive influence on H&M customers' wardrobes, even if they don't know it.

Still only 30, Wang is a bright young thing of fashion. His label, which launched in 2007 when Wang was only in his early 20s, is about a tough, downtown aesthetic with a sportswear edge, and just enough of the 90s aesthetic that those too young to live it first time are reassessing. His Rocco bag, with a studded base, became an instant sellout, and his T spin-off brand of basics made the grey marl T-shirt, with just the right amount of drape, a designer item. A coterie of friends including Erin Wasson and Vanessa Traina only helped his cause as the photogenic pied piper of Manhattan cool. His new gig as creative director of Balenciaga since last year – following none other than industry favourite Nicolas Ghesquière – clinched his move from one-to-watch to major player.

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The H&M collaboration feels right. Wang follows a rollcall that includes household names – Karl Lagerfeld, Versace – as well as more cult, insider designers such as Isabel Marant and Marni. He's probably somewhere between the two. Not quite the banner name yet, the implication is that he is on the way there, a star in the making. To the next generation of fashion consumers – those now in the teens and early 20s – he's a designer that consistently comes up with the goods.

So what can we expect from Wang x H&M? As someone with a successful sister line – most pieces from T are under £400 – he already knows how to make desirable clothes without four-figure price tags. All about effortless style verging on minimalism, Wang is an expect in perfecting the basics that dominate urban wardrobes – sweatshirts, draped T-shirts, stretch mini skirts, backpacks – so expect some of those. Colours will no doubt be muted – Wang's world is dominated by shades that look good when next to concrete: grey, black and a smattering of pastels. Prints will probably be off the menu, though logos are a possibility. Wang's spring/summer 2014 collection turned the 90s classic "Parental Advisory" label – for ever associated with gangster rap of the era – into sweatshirts, swiftly sported by Rihanna.

That the collaboration was announced via Wang's Instagram account and at Coachella festival speaks volumes. This is a collaboration pitched at the demographic poring over social media pictures of this fashion plate of a festival. Wang is no doubt on their radar but they're probably aspiring to – rather than buying – the designer's main line. Wang has said that he's planning a lifestyle collection that will be a “completely new take on how [H&M does] collaborations”. What that means is unclear, but Wang's instinct has rarely been wrong. Queues outside stores come November are a sure thing.

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What is your wardrobe 'wrap dress'?

If I said to you "wrap dress", what would be the first thing that sprang to mind? Would you think "sleek and versatile", or would you think "sack of spuds"? Whichever it is, the name Diane von Furstenberg probably also popped up, or DVF if you prefer the shorter, catchier version. This year is the 40th anniversary of the DVF wrap dress – the dress that suits any woman of any shape and size, allegedly. I say allegedly because I have never really found it suited me except very fleetingly when I was toned and muscular from dance training and I was body-confident enough to wear a dress that felt as though modesty was only third on its priority list (which was probably the point in 1974).

Personally, I find that the fluid jersey construction – "it made every woman look like a feline" – is the very thing that turns me into Grizabella the Glamour Cat. I clutch, I fidget, I pin and I tape; I substitute a substantial leather belt for the skinny tie; and on one occasion I have actually sewn myself into one. You can't say I haven't tried. A tailored wrap dress in a fabric with structure is an entirely different proposition, neatening my outline and feeling secure. Why doesn't the undoubtedly successful jersey wrap dress work for me?

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Well, it's shape, isn't it? My shape has changed up and down, outward and inward, as I have gone through motherhood, changes in lifestyle and, perhaps most significantly now, ageing. I tried on a jersey dress, not a wrap, in LK Bennett last week and it looked dreadful on me, just as I knew it would. There have, however, been three constants in a lifetime of changing shape and they are the ones I always go back to.

A-Line

I've worn the A-line since I was about five. Coincidentally, Christian Dior invented the term in the year I was born, which must be significant of something or other. This, to my mind, really is a shape that can be worn by any woman, although I think it suffers a bit from being thought of as slightly dull. That said, there are several A-line dresses and skirts in my cupboards and my (presently) fuller outline looks very well in them. As long as the fabric has some structure to it, an A-line dress fits neatly over the bust but then skims everything else, because it's A-shaped, and it's very flattering.

Empire line

Empire line is another one that has been a good do-er. Even at my slimmest, I have always had childbearing hips. The difference between empire and A-line is that the empire line is seamed under the bust and then falls to a flared, gathered but always a fuller skirt. I'm not keen on much gathering, which only adds bulk, but I love the way it hides the wobblier bits. My mother-of-the-bride outfit for my oldest daughter's wedding was an empire line 30s tea dress with a longish bias cut skirt and flutter sleeves – pale lemon and scattered with a lilac blossom print, it was the prettiest thing and I didn't look matronly at all, even though I undoubtedly was at the time.

Full skirts

Vintage or retro styling of the 50s sort has always been a thing for me, and given that one of my earliest memories is of my mum's swishy skirts, I suppose that's hardly surprising. Of course, this means full skirts and full skirts make the waist look smaller (tiny even) and cover hippier hips – you might be noticing a theme here. My top half has always been my neater half, so that's the bit I like my clothing to fit to. Over the last few years I've acquired a bust (something I last remember having when I was breast-feeding), over which a fitted bodice and full skirt feel comfortable and neat.

A couple of summers ago I took to wearing a black linen, full-skirted shirt waister with my own layers of petticoats underneath and, as is often the case with favourites, I wore it until it finally disintegrated, but I always felt good in that dress. I need a (wider) belt to help define my waist now, but it's still broadly there and this still broadly works and it's feminine. Femininity is something I'm keen to hang on to but I would rather do it without frilliness (which isn't the same thing at all), although I do permit the "right" sort of frills in my wardrobe in moderate quantities.

The "right sort of frills" sounds like a topic for another conversation, which might be a good place to leave this one and ask what dress shapes have always worked for you?

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Royal fan puts her best foot forward

The Duchess of Cambridge can't put a stylish foot wrong with thousands of fans snapping up items from the royal wardrobe.

Dunedin pharmacist Lee Tan is one devotee whose fandom comes with a hefty pricetag.

She has forked out more than $1000 on two pairs of shoes favoured by the royal.

"I'm not trying to be like her, I just appreciate her style," said Tan.

"I think I share a similar taste in clothes with her, that's why I find her so inspiring, elegant and she's just beautiful."

The 43-year-old's husband was enlisted to pick up a pair of $550 black Russell & Bromley boots when he visited London last year.

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Catherine frequently wears the same style boots, including memorably when she was discharged from London's King Edward VII where she was being treated for acute morning sickness in December 2012.

Tan has also shipped over a pair of Catherine's favoured $600 LK Bennett patent black pumps from the United States.

To keep up with the latest royal garb, Tan follows the popular What Kate Wore page on Facebook and clicks through to the website daily.

The website has as many as 43,000 unique views on a day when Catherine steps out at an official engagement.

"I've tried to get stuff that she wore from eBay, but in the end I just didn't have the time and couldn't be bothered," said Tan.

"I do look through all the websites when she buys from Zara and places like that but they're always sold out. It's expensive to be like her, I tell you."

Tan will miss out on seeing her style icon in Dunedin on April 13, but has instead spent $1000 on changing flights for a school trip to China with her children two days earlier.

"I've changed my flights so I'll get to Auckland a bit earlier so I'll be able to go to the Auckland tour and go to China later that night," she said.

"My husband says you're not guaranteed to see her and I said that's the fun of it, isn't it. My reasoning is when are you going to see the next [future] Queen of England again."

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From bomb sites to Bulgari: V&A falls under the spell of Italian glamour

The word glamour originally meant magic or enchantment: to "cast a glamour" was to cast a spell to make something appear different from reality. And it is glamour in this sense – what the author Virginia Postrel calls nonverbal rhetoric – that is at the heart of the V&A's new exhibition, The Glamour of Italian Fashion 1945-2014.

Not that glamour in its modern, mainstream sense is in short supply: there is, naturally, a leopard-print gown by Roberto Cavalli, and a devastating cutaway cocktail dress by Donatella Versace.

There is a stunning 1950s silk cocktail dress in millefeuille layers of scalloped violet silk by the largely forgotten Roberto Capucci, and a floor-length gown of beaded silver by Mila Schön that was worn by Princess Lee Radziwill to Truman Capote's Black and White Ball in 1966. (Both of these dresses are displayed with their matching evening coats: violet velvet and silver bead-edged white silk, respectively. That's glamour, right there.)

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There is a slinky black silk dress worn by Ava Gardner, a pristine white gown made for Audrey Hepburn, and a sumptuous silver evening coat made for Maria Callas.

But the central message of this show is a serious one, about how fashion was used to transform the image and fortune of Italy in the second half of the 20th century.

The first image is of a bombed street in Florence in 1946, giving a stark picture of the physical and economic reality of a country with a 50% literacy rate and a badly tarnished international reputation.

The next room introduces as protagonist the figure of Giovanni Battista Giorgini, with letters and photographs chronicling how this exporter of Italian homeware persuaded his contacts in US department stores to travel by boat and train to Florence for fashion shows that brought together designs from all over Italy. Against all odds, the shows were an instant hit: after the first, in February 1951, a Womenswear Daily headline ran: "Italian styles gain approval of US buyers."

In the next room, the story has moved on a decade, to the golden era of Hollywood-on-the-Tiber: Rome has become an alfresco film set, and between takes the world's most beautiful people buy clothes and jewellery on the Via Condotti and enjoy romantic trysts on the Amalfi coast.

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On to the walls of this room are projected images of Taylor and Burton descending arm in arm from a plane and Audrey Hepburn in sunglasses, ribbon-tied purchases swinging from her arm. (Publicity-savvy Ferragamo would book a photographer whenever he heard an actress was in the mood for shoe shopping. Indeed, this was the era which gave birth to the term paparazzo.) In stark contrast to the bombed street, Italy has become a playground, a byword for a chic and modern lifestyle.

This bold storytelling, casting the invention of "Italian style" into a simple narrative, is the exhibition's big strength.

Italy has no national museum of design, and fashion history as a discipline is still in its infancy there, according to the V&A curator Sonnet Stanfill. This, she says, has given the V&A the freedom to tell the story of Italian fashion almost for the first time.

In the second half of the exhibition, where the modern Italian ready-to-wear industry emerges, the clothes are familiar and compelling but the story loses some momentum.

This is in part because the cast list changes so dramatically: of all the designers who showed in the 1951 show, only the house of Pucci remains in business today. But apart from a few Benetton adverts, there is an absence of cultural context around the more modern clothes – a lack that is keenly felt after the gripping drama of the Hollywood years.

The exhibition's sponsor, Bulgari – whose diamonds are worn by Elizabeth Taylor in a 1967 photograph that has been one of the most reproduced images of the show so far – must be thrilled.

The show is beautifully and intelligently staged. A display of Italian textiles, which uses a digital map to show areas of wool, silk and leather production, has a subtle soundtrack of machines and looms.

The last and biggest room, devoted to the cult of the designer, has a vaulted, church-like, curved ceiling – but in silk. And classic pieces, including a Prada dip-dyed dress from 2004, an Armani man's suit from 1994, and a 1995 Fendi Baguette handbag are spotlit from below so that they throw soft, ecclesiastical shadows across the white silk above.

It is a smart trick, to depict these modern pieces as classic Italian artefacts. But while this makes for a soaring finale, the heart of this show is in the Roman Holiday glory years.