Typing Pool - QUIET PLEASE

Neatly tucked away in the Elms Lester Gallery during London Fashion Week, Orla Kiely welcomed us to her demure and coquettish fantasy, filled to the brim with peach desk lamps, nonchalantly thrown together beehives & roll-necks for your new A/W uniform.

Pre-show, a silly amount of set images being posted on social networks started the gasps rolling before anyone had set retinas on a item of clothing. Our eyes were treat to heart-pounding nostalgia with typewriters, filing cabinets in shades of grey & terracotta, vintage crockery, bins and files. It was like something straight out the set of The Rise And Fall Of Reginald Perrin or the perfect climate for the cartoon darling, Rosemary the telephone operator from the charming Hong Kong Phooey series.

Being a stereotypical office working girl myself, I enjoy the playing around with the imagery of the typical 60's/70's office girl, bustling around in her court shoes and treating the colour mauve as a religion. My gran and my nana had such a heavy influence on my being and from forever fawning over photos of them during such periods and being an annoying brat of a child by unwelcomingly appearing from boudoirs head to toe in gran & nana hairnets, costume jewellery and tweed jackets, this era & setting encapsulates everything I want to be & respect. For a set to provoke such a steely intake of breath was a real key moment and made the collection even more giddily gripping.

So as the scuttling tones of typewriter keys frantically clicking and atmospheric waves of office sounds serenely blanketed the room, the first doe-eyed beauty sauntered through the "office".

Casually coiffed English roses flaunted milk bottle hoisery, roll necks in shades of olive and fawn tucked into egg yolk early seventies styled high waist skirts with dashes of refined peter pan collars as they answered telephones, skittishly gossiped and sipped tea (this all seems a little familiar).

The attention to detail and craftmanship came across so effortlessly and spun me into the dizzying heights of Margot Tenenbaum-ville. As much as I felt waves of contentment for the gushing appreciation swirling around the fashion world like raspberry ripple over the idiosyncratic charm of the collection, if I hear one more comparison to the cliche "Mad-Men inspired" view, so help me god. It has been documented that the collection was inspired by the heartbreakingly composed Wes Anderson creation, Margot Tenenbaum.

It's not often a collection makes me want to jump up and down like a bossy madam and shriek "I Want, I Want, I Want" - I Want A Golden Goose!, etc...

QUESTION AND ANSWER ROUND:
When does being adorably hung up on a certain designers work tipple the scales on becoming a sickening mess of a fangirl?
God time has withered me into such an annoying Orla Kiely fangirl

Folks around my office for long periods of time have had to put up with me grappling with hair grips on a morning at my desk after I nearly topple over with the weight off the beehive on my head, wearing white tights, tottering in t-bar court shoes and taupe swing coats and being the girl with the bat wing eye make-up sulking at the lack of tea-bags left. I've always wanted to be a secretary, use a typewriter, drink illegal amounts of tea, loiter around in white pointed shoes and get asked on average 6 times a day whether I knicked my handbag off my nana and now Orla Kiely HQ have panpiped and declared this a necessity, and therefore my duty to adhere to my love affair with working girl dress ups.

It's enough to make you whistle Dolly Parton's 9 till 5 and divine for the girls never wants to grow up.

If you have set your eyeballs on my pinterest of late you will have seen my current penchant for similar vibes. Vintage fairs, Beyond Retro, ebay, local charity shops and local vintage shops have left my bank account bruised and sad but left my wardrobe feeling like it's on prozac after filling it's hungry tummy with teal feather hats, cat eye spectacles, fur coats, pretty print dresses and white a-line tennis skirts after the aspirational Orla Kiely buffet.

Whether it was the contrast in textures, the romantised innocence, playful contrasting textures, the felted linear simplicity, brick red berrets or all of the above that you doth your cap to, it was personal and intimate victory feeling that Orla Kiely and her team had been able to analyse your mind as you slept and create a capsule wardrobe to make you remember how great contemporary fashion weeks can be. It was like the fashion equivalent of lime and soda, a real refreshment from the sometime overwhelming instagram images of models pulling purposefully unattractive faces and the edgy, unwearable in my case, street wear on show during fashion weeks (Rihanna for River Island, I'm awkwardly glancing at you.)


'ave a banana!