Columns on fashion, culture and ideas

All posts in In the Cut

In the Cut is a column written by Harriet Walker and illustrated by Zoë Taylor, uncovering the key trends of the season

  • Chloé and Maison Martin Margiela

    In the Cut | Pre-fall Collections: Sleeves

    When designers launched their pre-fall collections this season, they presented plenty of mixed media but no mixed messages. Pre-collections are the way to frame one’s brand USP within the context of commercially viable, and often slightly...

  • Prada A/W11

    In the Cut | Trompe L'oeil

    When is a cardigan not a cardigan? When it’s a safari jacket, of course! We’ll come back to that later, but suffice it to say designers have got tricksy for autumn/winter 2011 and nothing is quite what it seems.

  • Marc Jacobs SS11

    In the Cut | Palazzo pants

    Casting one’s eye over the sea of skinny jeans, jodhpurs, leggings, jeggings and treggings, you could be forgiven for thinking that trousers were being rationed to only one very small, child-sized pair per person. But designers are...

  • Look from the Maison Martin Margiela S/S11 collection

    In the Cut | White Shirt

    The crisp white shirt is what the word sartorial was invented for – the apogee of clean and functional tailoring, practicality and ease but with all the essential starchiness usually reserved for business-like wardrobe staples. Having...

  • Dolce & Gabbana A/W11

    In the Cut | Gold

    In fashion at least, all that glitters is not necessarily gold. With last season’s bedazzling catwalks strewn with vivid neon and pantone brights, Seventies disco stylings, pink in every shade from bubblegum to fuschia and tactile...

  • Jil Sander A/W11

    In the Cut | Flowers

    In winter, fashion tends to hibernate. Colours curl up for the duration, brights go to sleep in the airing cupboard, and florals curl up their tendrils and sleep out the freeze.

  • Versace, S/S11

    In the Cut | Cut-outs

    There’s only one thing more alluring than the unknown, and that’s the almost known. That delicious temptation afforded by the sight or touch of something half covered up or immediately whisked away again. It appeals to our innate voyeurism...

  • Prada, S/S11

    In the Cut | Colour

    'Colour' is a trend to strike fear into anyone's heart. It's so nebulous, for a start, so wide-ranging and unending. Where are our preferred directives toward never-before-heard-of 'blush' tones and 'ice-cream' shades? Where's the advice...

  • John Galliano

    In the Cut | Fringing

    There’s little in fashion that can’t be accessorised with a blunt and heavy fringe – faces, foreheads, feet and flapper dresses all stand to benefit from spring/summer’s profusion of texturising tassles and swishy, stringy bits...

  • Look from the S/S11 Christopher Kane collection

    In the Cut | Prints

    Despite their chintzy reputation, prints are far from an outdated choice. For spring/summer 2011, designers displayed visual wit and wickedness through graphic etchings, manipulated digitalism and animal renderings across all types of...

  • Look from the Balenciaga S/S11 collection

    In the Cut | Sports Couture

    Fashion may not be known for its inclusivity, but it’s a broad church and more than willing to giving almost any theme a whirl. And there was an eclectic mix of sportswear and near-couture pieces on the catwalks for spring/summer 2011 that...

  • Look from the Comme des Garçons S/S11 collection

    In the Cut | White

    When fashion turns to white, you know it has purity on its mind. But that doesn't always mean the romanticised and demure virginal implications of the shade – a sartorial white-out is a nice metaphor for fashion's localised absolutism...