Royal Wedding Sick Bags, Lydia Leith, Ilustrator

Images Courtesy and Copyright Lydia Leith

Now that we finally have Valentines Day firmly out of the way, next stop the Royal Wedding?  While we have seen nothing visual yet happening on the high street (unless you know otherwise) we came across the amazing work of Lydia Leith.  Lydia produces illustrations, screen prints and gorgeous drawings.  You would be bonkers not to check her out.  Our favourite bits, of course, are these screen printed Royal Wedding Sick bags.  How fun are these?  If your budgets are tight or if you have tiny spaces, you could do no worse than include these essential little gems in your commercial space for a bit of topicality and maybe in a variety of sizes or in a repetition format. Go on be brave.  Truly a collectors item too - preferably unused of course.  In the meantime, do have a look at Lydia's wide ranging work which has all sorts of applications in your commercial environment.  Lydia can be found at http://www.lydialeith.com/drawing/drawing.html

Tiffany, London

We love this Valentine's scheme from Tiffany right now.  With their repetition of these circular embroidery frames and embroidered letters spelling of course Love and some with little narratives, complete with tiny spools of embroidery thread.  It is refreshing to see no dreadful Heart motifs in sight for which we are truly thankful, while still communicating this seasons event.  Always a pleasure to see creativity happening here but maybe its time to sort out the interior of this store too?

Whistles, London

Images courtesy and copyright Whistles

We love these new installations at Whistles right now.  Who would have thought that this brand would be so bold and quite honestly - fun.  There's an ever so slight whiff of Urban Outfitters meets Topshop, but who cares, this brand is starting to look cool again and that's what counts.  We're not sure who this brand target (well, actually don't like to say who we think their aiming at), but that really doesn't matter at least to us viewing this on the visual elements here.  We think this would raise a smile in any shopper, and lets be honest a bit of  "shoppertainment" never killed anyone - did it?  In fact, if anything this would draw in any savvy shopper even just to take a look and rediscover this brand without alienating them.  So get out there and take a look for yourself and just enjoy.

Whistles, London

Images Courtesy and Copyright Whistles

This brand is rather a blast from the past - although never actually really went away, just very quiet.  We think you may agree that it did seem to just sink and hide somewhere on the high street near you.  Recently we have seen quite a significant renaissance from these guys and this brand is clearly is on the way up to somewhere, particularly visually.  We'd like to say this brand once again will be quite a visual force on the high street and it is clearly making some incredible statements which we can only love and enjoy.  It is such a pleasure to see this incredible injection of creativity coming from these guys, we just love it - although we don't underestimate how hard it was to get it here.  Do go and look at how they are turning this brand back into the place you want to shop.  We have more images of this brand to share with you......so, just watch this space.

Myla, London

Oh Myla, Myla, Myla..........what a disaster of epic proportions.  Come on guys sort your brand out...!

Miu Miu, London

It really must be that time of year again and it is strangely interesting to see quite a few Valentines schemes around town at the moment.  OK, well most schemes consist of heart motifs (not our favourite thing) but it is interesting at least to see so many brands making an effort this year when only a handful of brands did any thing at all this time last year.  Anyway, with Miu Miu's out sized ear rings complete with stand these presentation vehicles with their bust form heads and torsos have oddly drawn us to this scheme even if it is teetering on the incredibly vulgar.

Mathew Williamson, London

We really do want to LOVE this scheme at Mathew Williamson, but viewing it from a wider perspective, we can only just like it - and even then just sort of.  Of course the theatrically lit Love word does look fun and the merchandise,  particularly for men is amazing.  Finally, for males someone has moved beyond Grey, Brown, Black for boys which is incredible.  However, the presentation of this stuff is pretty weak for the calibre of this incredible brand.  Doesn't anyone know how to group mannequins these days?

Harvey Nichols, London

We just LOVE this scheme from Harvey Nichols, that we just have to show more of it in today's entry.  If you stand across the road from here you really can take in this spectacle. Its great fun, the impact is substantial, its avant-garde, we've talked about it twice, why is this in the side windows guys?

Harvey Nichols, London

Welcome to the 21st Century.  We finally have a Valentines scheme from the ever talented team at Harvey Nichols (without a heart motif in sight - thankfully) that really celebrates the various sections of society that we are made up of.  We saw the incredible scheme at Maison LV with their Diwali installation which as far as I am aware is the first we have seen from a significantly powerful brand and here good old Harvey Nichols is at least nodding to the diverse community that we are.  The rest of the scheme is incredible too of course, but it really was worth showing this as these guys are now leading the way forward in 2011.  Amazing guys..! 

The Kooples, London / Paris

The launch of this brand has been quite incredible, almost appearing from no where to storming the retail scene and gracing every glossy magazine and just about every main high street and even the the side of a London bus.  It seems so new that their isn't even a wiki entry on this company yet.  Their website declares that  "The couples are The Kooples! Masculine/ Feminine". "The Kooples gathers its inspiration from the codes of rock, from music, but with its own signature traits that only truly belong in 2010" (I think someone forgot to update their website here). "It doesn’t matter if it’s night or day, if you’re wearing The Kooples it’s just plain chic".  We've had a quick scan over their merchandise and so far so good.  In fact we're going to swing by one of the stores this week to take a closer look.

Concept Boards, London

We couldn't resist showing you some of the new concept development that our M.A. Fashion buying students produced recently.  While of course Harvey Nichols by no means needs our help, the students were tasked to produce a new concept for 2011 simply as a means of idea generation.  This can of course be produced for just about any retailer, in here, out there or at least somewhere, but anyway,  here are the results.  While one of favourite stores in the world is Bergdorf Goodman, New York, the students were free to decide what they wanted to do and the direction in which they wished to take their schemes with only guidance from the brief we issued.  Our grateful thanks to Lycia, Tatjana and Amaya for allowing us to show you off.

Seen / Shown, London

Images Courtesy and Copyright Danny Letton

We came across this site on face book recently published by the ever talented Danny Letton.  Besides being probably the most talented stylist known to the commercial industries in the UK, he also produces these incredible images.  What makes these so special is that they were captured as seen on his travels with a mobile telephone - testament that one doesn't need highly specialised equipment to be creative.  We love the quality and honesty of these images and while they are still at the embryonic stage of development we cant wait to see what he does next. He has a whole range of stuff you can view at his face book site too, which can be found at:
http://en-gb.facebook.com/pages/SeenShown/178047442233255 

Koldo Esparza, Madrid

Images Courtesy and Copyright Koldo Esparza

We love the work of Koldo Esparza right now.  Koldo, a floral designer from Spain produces these incredible architectural installations for global brands such as Cartier, Stua, Loewe and here at Gunni and Trentino in Madrid.  There is something quite uplifting about flowers within interiors and we definately want to see more and more of this stuff.  If you want to have a look at some more of Koldo's work check out their website at http://koldoesparza.com/