Fashion is fond of a familiar face. Season after season you can rely on the likes of Brigitte Bardot, Edie Sedgwick, Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe to be channelled on the catwalk as some sort of collection muse. And whilst this season has thrown into the spotlight some of the usual suspects, the pared down chic of Lauren Bacall, the refined lady-like style of Catherine Deneuve, Autumn/Winter 2010 has also lobbed us a few curve balls in the  style icon role. So we’ve rounded up the weirdest and most wonderful sartorial inspirations of the moment….

CHEWBACCA
Audiences were first introduced to the lovable wookie in 1977’s Star Wars, where the lanky, furry creature was the sidekick to space cowboy Han Solo, but it’s taken more than thirty years for the fashion world to cotton on to the desirability of his glossy, shaggy fur coat. Karl Lagerfeld made the strongest bid for the look, with a Chanel collection that featured oversized fluffy cream and brown fur coats, jumpsuits, and matching booties worthy of a Chewbacca lady-love. But these pieces were far from looking like fancy dress costumes, in fact, they look so tactile and cosy looking, we almost wish it was Winter right now!


A model at Chanel and Chewbacca himself


JACKIE COLLINS
The younger Collins sister might be more associated with bonkbusters and scandal  than fashion, but this season the spotlight is firmly on her own brand of gorgeously tacky glamour, with an explosion of leopard print on the catwalk. Subtle and understated went out of the window at the likes of Dolce and Gabbana where the print was used with lavish abandon for a look as striking and unashamedly attention-grabbing as it was wild.


A model at Dolce and Gabbana and queen of the trashy novel, Jackie Collins

DEL BOY TROTTER
The wheeling and deeling Cockney wide-boy of British sitcom Only Fools and Horses may not have known much about get-rich-quick business deals, but it turns out that for Autumn/Winter 10 at least, he was on the money when it came to picking out a great coat. His beloved wool, camel overcoat, with it’s neat lapels and discreet buttons has all the features of this season’s ‘It’ pieces, all clean lines, soft fabrics and caramel and taupe colour palettes, as seen at the likes of Chloé and Max Mara.


An 'It' coat at Max Mara, and lovable rogue Del Boy


ELAINE FROM SEINFELD
The neurotic female lead from the popular Nineties sitcom has been enjoying something of a renaissance of late, heralded by everyone from the New York Times to Chloë Sevigny (her advice for channelling the look was to mix ‘a little femininity and delicacy. Pair it with a heavy boot. It works.’) as the fashion star du jour. Hipsters everywhere have begun adopting her uniform of little floral cotton dresses teamed with flat, clumpy shoes and ankle socks. Cacharel took things one step further, by fusing these pieces with the jaunty, boxy suits of the decade for one great amalgamation of the TV character’s whole wardrobe.


A model at Cacharel works the look, but Elaine wore it first, almost twenty years ago.


LIBERACE
Not one for the faint hearted. The flamboyant American showman and pianist was at one time the highest paid entertainer in the world, with a stage wardrobe that makes Lady Ga-ga look positively tame by comparison. Yards of dazzlingly coloured brocade, lame, fur and jewel-encrusted fabric were the order of the day, in a rainbow spectrum of bright colours and glitter, a style that earned him wonder and ridicule in equal measure. Whilst not quite as wearable as some of this season’s other trends, the eccentric excess of his sartorial choices works well within the theatrical confines of the fashion world, and the luxurious, yet mismatched outfits sent down the runway by the likes of John Galliano, would have been worthy of the star himself.


An outfit from the new John Galliano collection, and Liberace in full regalia.

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You can say a t-shirt is just a t-shirt, but this version by Balmain echoes the wild and beautiful floral landscape of John Millais' famous painting of Hamlet's Ophelia floating to her death down the river, and immediately evokes a sense of doomed romance, beauty and longing. No wonder it's shot up right to the top of our wishlist since arriving at farfetch.com this week. It's rare that something so closely resembling a piece of pre-Raphaelite art looks so good with jeans!

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The names Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin might not trip off the tongue quite so easily as say, Mario Testino, but when it comes to fashion photography, they’re up there with the elite.
With a portfolio that reads like a role call of the official style mafia, they can count shoots with Vogues Britain, Paris, Italy and America, W, V, Purple Fashion and Fantastic Man alongside campaigns for Chloé, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Balenciaga, Jean Paul Gaultier and Viktor and Rolf in their back catalogue.
About time then, that someone celebrated the work of the Dutch duo, and where better than their native country? Named ‘Pretty Much Everything’, an exhibition of the pair’s pictures is currently residing at the Museum Fotography – Foam in Amsterdam, showing  three hundred of their photographs, including some personal shots from their private collection.
Van Lamsweerde and Matadin met in 1986, becoming partners both professionally and in life, but it was van Lamsweerde who broke through to the industry first, with a series of photos shot between 1991 and 1993 entitled ‘Final Fantasy’, which showcased a mixture of adult faces and adolescent bodies , a provocative theme in a society then obsessed with the young Kate Moss and the ‘waif’ debate.




But before long their collective passion for exploring gender, sexuality and identity, and producing beautiful, yet thought-provoking pictures, would see them succeed as a team. That came firstly in 1994, with a ten page spread in now defunct magazine The Face, back then a cultural bible, and then on  a greater scale in 1997, when they got together with French design/art double act M/M, for a Yohji Yamamoto campaign that would go on to become a fashion classic.
Their photographic collaborations with M/M, as well as those with sculptor Eugene van Lamsweerde and theatre group Mug Met De Gouden are also on display at the Amsterdam event, along with examples of the jarringly gorgeous pictures that has lifted them to a level of true artistry.



The exhibit ‘ Pretty Much Everything’ is on display at Museum Fotography-Foam, Keizersgracht 609, Amsterdam 1017 until September 15th 2010.





Shots from the exhibit

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Painful but true, cult teen film Clueless is 15 years old this Summer. Since its release in 1995,  the Amy Heckerling directed rom-com has become a reference gold mine for mid-nineties  pop culture, and launched the movie careers of Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, and the late Brittany Murphy.
(Very) loosely based on Jane Austen’s Emma, Clueless tells the story of Cher Horowitz, a sweet if shallow wealthy teenager living in the hugely affluent California district of Beverley Hills, and her search for love and meaning  in an environment of vacuous materialism.
  But more than proving to be a benchmark for Generation Y, for many of us girls (and boys) of a certain age, it provided an entrée into the world of fashion, for whilst the film didn’t take itself seriously, its approach to clothes was a different matter all together.
In one particularly well-known scene, Cher (Silverstone) is held up at gun-point by a mugger but refuses to lay down on the floor, explaining to her captor that her dress is an Alaia. Like most of the young audience, he doesn’t understand what she is talking about, so she explains, ‘it’s like a totally important designer’. The red dress isn’t perhaps the most representational of the Tunisian designer’s signature body-con pieces, but for myself at least, it does at least serve as a memorable introduction to the ‘King of Cling’.


The Alaia dress

Perhaps it’s the wittiness of t he script in relation to the clothes the characters wear that make Clueless so compelling as a fashion film, would anyone really remember Cher’s tiny white dress if it hadn’t been accompanied by such a unforgettable interchange between the ditzy heroine and her father, which goes along the lines of ;
Dad: What are you wearing?
Cher: A dress.
Dad: Says who?
Cher: Calvin Klein.
In any case, the film’s enduring popularity has prompted the American designer to re-issue the offending garment as a limited edition piece this year.


The Calvin Klein dress

In fact, Cher and her airhead friends are making quite the impression on the catwalk this season. Looking back, their meticulously co-ordinated outfits might seem cartoonish and dated, stuck in nostalgia, but look a little closer and you’ll see that given a slick, 21st century make-over, they’re out in force on the catwalk for Autumn/Winter 2010 and looking better than you’ll ever believe…

Plaid
In the past few years plaid has established itself as a style staple, open any wardrobe, male or female and you’re likely you to find some kind of tartan or checked shirt. But usually it’s more in the vein of loose-fitting and casual, like Cher’s grungy male classmates rather than the cute, tailored two pieces sported by the girls. This season, however, Chris Benz, decided to take a more structured approach to plaid, showing a neat yellow tartan blazer last seen on everyone’s favourite Beverley Hills blonde.




Sheer
Last season we had underwear as outwear, this season we have sheer fabrics, still sexy but slightly more subtle. The oh-so-Nineties  see-through blouses that featured heavily in the film’s costumes appeared in next season collections from the likes of Giambasti Valli (as seen below) and Balmain. But since neither of these designers are well known for their mall-rat aesthetic, it’s not surprising that their sheer tops have been given a chic update, losing the undone buttons and over-sized collars in favour of close fits, subtle polka dots and elegant pussy bows.





Knee Socks
Knee socks were a Nineties staple, and whilst it’s unlikely Cher’s dubious glossy white pop socks are about to rocket back into the style charts, her darker, more preppy  take on the look is undoubtably a hot one. Knee socks teamed with layers of shirts and knits in classic colours like navy, grey and blue works well for Autumn and certainly made a splash on the catwalk at Rag and Bone, peeping out from the top of black leather boots.




Buttoned Up
Mannish tailoring is set to be one of the biggest fashion stories next season, seen here at Alexander Wang, with buttoned-up shirts and structured pieces forming the basis of the look. Cher’s take, with a crisp white shirt paired with a simple black blazer still looks fresh today, but then, as sartorial classics, they’re the kind of investments that will never date.

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