La Fashion Style: Pearl Lowe

Wheels & Dollbaby is one of my favorite brands, having discovered it age 15 by reading Australian teen mag, Dolly. The brand was unlike anything I'd ever seen, clothes drenched in rock & roll fused with feminine style and a touch of sleek 50's tailoring. I grew up with Wheels & Dollbaby, who just celebrated their 25th anniversary. Melanie Greensmith (below) was born in London, and her Mum was a Bluebell showgirl at the Lido in Paris. "I grew up with that naughty but feminine thing". Melanie spent her childhood playing dress ups in her Mum's wardrobe and making dresses out of nighties. In her teens in London, she was taken by punk edged, subversive designers like by Vivienne Westwood, Boy of London and rising star John Galliano. She hung out with musos, making them clothes.

"I love glamour, but I also love hanging out with sexy guys in bands. Dressing them seemed like a really clever way to get to know them." Melanie took off overseas at 19 ending up in Australia where she launched the first Wheels & Dollbaby store in Sydney in 1997, basing the name of her & boyfriend's nick names. The day before she opened it's doors, Michael Jackson popped by and ordered a customized leather jacket for his Bad tour. Inspired by vintage, art deco and rock & roll and rock chicks such as Debbie Harry (who is a friend), Anita Pallenberg & Marianne Faithfull.

''I've spent years making the hot girls look the hottest they can be. I only want to do what I like.'' Sydney Morning Herald.

Nicole Trunfio in W&D

Pics from campaigns and Perth Fashion Festival

"While other people disappeared along the way from heroin or spent it all on cocaine, I just kept making clothes and saving." Over the years the rock & roll glam style of W&D has become a firm fave with cool girls - check out the roll-call below.

Nicole

Dita

Katy

Courtney

Debbie

Kate

Britney

Lily

Daisy

Amy

Ruby

Pammy

Courtney opens New York Fashion Week 2011 in Wheels & Dollbaby

Living in Sydney in the noughties I was always in their Darlinghurst store just off Oxford St, with the black & white striped canopy. It was my one-stop shop for fitted Tees & Tanks with original prints, cool party dresses and coquettish tops. I'd marvel at the gorgeous punk Dollbaby shopgirls, leopard print carpet and French Louis XV style furniture. Melanie's house is decked out similarly in crystal luster lamps, chandeliers, chaise lounges, gilt mirrors, vintage trinkets & velvet, accumulated from various trips to Europe. "It's a bit '70s rock'n'roll, a bit mock-tudor mansion."

Melanie is now with long-term partner Mark McEntee from The Divinyls, and he played at their 25th Anniversary show yesterday at Perth fashion week, with long term buddy Katy Steele from Perth band Little Birdy (below, in punk W&D shirt) stepping in for lead singer Chrissie Amphlett. Here are some pics from the 25th Anniversary show @ Perth Fashion Festival 2011.

Perth stunner Nicole Trunfio

Ever since I tied lace bows in my hair Madonna-style as a kid in the 80's, I've loved lace. Love these pics of Anna Della Russo, Editor at large and creative consultant for Vogue Japan, in her Dolce & Gabbana beautiful lace sheath dress.

Anna Dello Russo in Dolce & Gabbana

Lace seems to come around every few years and has been hot in 2010 and 2011. I love that lace can go from ladylike, preppy or Royal Wedding-prim to dark, gothic and cool. I summise that the trend may have been given a nudge along by the fabulous show Downton Abbey set in England in 1912 - all Edwardian lace, tightly bound corsets and rows of pearl buttons.

Lady Mary in lace and jet choker

Lady Mary's choker also seen on Monica Bellucci in a 2001 horror

Miss Havisham in Great Expectations has long been a favourite character and fashion inspiration of mine. She is a tragic, wealthy woman who was left at the alter. She rattles around her dilapidated mansion Statis House still wearing her faded Victorian style lace wedding dress, in mourning of her predicament. She is surrounded by the crumbling decays of the long forgotten wedding cake & banquet, cobwebs sweeping from decrepit, dust-riddled chandeliers and candelabras. It's all fabulously tormented and gothic!

I recently watched the fantastic 1998 version with Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow - beautiful. Gwyneth is the perfect icy cool Estella, Francisco Clements artwork features but Anne Bancroft's crazy-as-a-cut-snake Miss Havisham character Ms Dinsmoor is gold! For her Fall 2011 line, Georgina Chapman from Marchesa channels Miss Havisham with distressed wedding dresses and frothy lace affairs: “I love the decaying opulence,” Chapman said. “We just thought, its so Marchesa."

"Yes, Miss Havisham regrets to inform you she has inspired another designer. It was evident from the raw hems of their gowns, the corsetry and the numerous deflated veils, that Ms. Chapman and Ms. Craig had that character in mind. Some of the fabrics were shown with zigzag edges shorn by a pair of fabric scissors. Ignoring the theme, these were actually quite imaginative designs, intriguing because they are so unlike the examples of stiff, origami-like constructions that are Marchesa signatures". From the New York Times:

Marchesa Fall 2011

I am obsessed with this gorgeous lace dress from Aussie label Lover. Lara Bingle models it for Aussie Grazia magazine, and Harper's Bazaar Christine Centenera also wears it below.

Black dress by Lover

Marc Jacobs and Dolce & Gabbana lace dresses in US Vogue

Katie Holmes for Vogue Spain

Madonna had long been a devotee of Dolce & Gabbana and she looks fabulous in lace in this shoot for Fall 2010. Photographed by Steven Klein, the shoot was inspired by Italian Neorealist cinema and featured Madonna as a sultry Fellini style Italian housewife in the tradition of Anita Eckberg's platinum femme fatale.

Madonna in Dolce & Gabbana with Lourdes, 2011

Pearl Lowe's label designs some beautiful lace dresses. Pearl uses antique lace, sourced from vintage outlets and custom dyed. She is inspired by "Things like antique markets and shops, vintage fairs, old fashioned movies, things from the past. Daisy is my muse, because she is what I would love to look like in my clothes. Sadly, I can't always wear the things I create."