most favorite day: Mary Portas and Melanie Rickey

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SHOW AND TELL: MARY SS12

Posted by Melanie Rickey, Fashion Editor at Large

I’ve been pretty involved with the Mary Portas brand at House of Fraser since its inception in February 2011. After all, I am married to the woman and when it comes to all things fashion, I admit, I like to be the one in charge. I’ve cooked up fashion cocktails, imagined fantasy advertising campaigns with Steven Meisel, Susie Bick and Christy Turlington, sat through dozens of meetings with the grown-up women the collection is aimed at, and its designer and buyers, listening to their needs and desires, and experienced a fast-track learning curve on how to get products from idea to reality to shop-floor in a matter of months.

Neon tee £80 and metallic skirt £199

There have been times when the sheer logistics of getting Product A shipped to destination B and on the shop floor by Time X at Price Y has boggled my mind, and blank faced confusion when the retail lingo used has gone over my head. Now though, I get it, and in gaining this understanding I’ve realised I don’t actually need to get it – not intimately. I’m not doing an A-Level in logistics and options. My thing is the ideas, the fashion, the very important fashion pieces, the style essentials and the seasonal trends they are representing. Basically, the fun stuff.

PJ trousers £99 and dress coat £150

Every week, Bethan and I sit down with the super stylish and knowledgable House of Fraser team- Jakki, the designer and Alex and Jennifer, the buyers. We all discuss what we're thinking and look at colours, sketches and samples. There's always plenty of debate and I love that we all come at it from a different angle but eventually we get to what you see in these lookbook images- all with Mary's golden seal of approval of course!

Pink skinnies £80 and Tatty Devine Melon necklace

What I’ve learned is that seasonal fashion trends can be spun to any age group; the same trend a 20 something will love, will also be adored by the 40 something woman, she’ll just wear it in another way, and don’t fricking well tell her otherwise.

Mary’s collection is shamelessly about clothes most women can wear for her daily and social life. It combines boldness, drama, sexiness, fun, and no-nonsense chic, but more than anything the range is figure flattering. We want a woman to be able to go to the shop and be dressed by a stylist and walk out dressed head to toe in a new outfit feeling a million bucks for less that £300 quid. We don’t want her to feel crappy – then we would have failed. That’s all really.

Hyperfloral print dress £160

Animal blouse £95,

For Spring, which you are seeing unfurl in some of our lush lookbook images and which is really happening outside both weather-wise and in the shops, we built on the success of the last collection, taking the things that really worked and improving them by offering more ways to play with it. OK, so Steven Meisel and Christy were busy that day, but still.

Floral jersey top £65

I’ve made sure most of the key trends are incorporated, but not in an in-your-face way. We have neon, florals, digital prints, rich colour, pastels, tapered leg jeans, high waist jeans, silky pyjama style trousers, amazing print dresses and trousers and nipped and cropped jackets. Not forgetting the perfect leather jacket and cool sporty tanks. You know the stuff most of us wear day in and day out.

Leather biker £300

What do you think of it? I’ll sign off now as I’ve written this on the train to Manchester where Mary’s largest store to date is opening at House of Fraser tonight with a fancy schmancy party. I’m looking forward to meeting people I’ve been communing with on Twitter for ages.

We've linked to most of the products currently available- look out for the rest in the coming weeks and months at the Mary/ House of Fraser website

The floral borders are from a print by Peter Bailey, available in scarf form here
Photography by Jonny Storey
Model- Anna Marie Cseh

WHAT I WORE TO THE BAFTAS

Posted by Fashion Editor at Large

Here are a couple of outfits you will NOT be seeing in the BAFTA fashion round-ups in the red-tops this week. Not enough fake tan and flesh for the tabloids. Which is exactly as it should be. For my first stumble up a red carpet with Mary the objective was to work a high fashion look while remaining very firmly within my style comfort zone. There was always going to be a trouser-y skew to my look.

I was thinking of a cool skinny Balenciaga trouser suit, but my friend Sarah Mower suggested thinking about a coloured trouser with a white jacket, "to break up the suity-ness of it". I seized on her thought and visited net-a-porter for ideas. White jackets were not a problem. In central London I tried on a brilliant Maison Martin Margiela white tuxedo jacket, and ooh-ed and aaahed over the cut of Balmain's white tuxedo jacket, but at £1650 it was a fantasy too far. In Selfridges I found the perfect white jacket by Dries Van Noten.

Coloured trousers were less easy to source. Jeans were not an option for a black tie event, but when I saw that Maje the classy French label making a splash in London, had red crepe high-waist cigarette leg trousers, I went hunting. It seemed every Maje I called had just sold the last pair in my size. In the South Molten Street store I saw a girl buying them as I walked in. Grrrr. Eventually I tracked down what seemed to be the last size 10 pair in London. Success!

To pull the jacket and trousers together I wore a body with a double deep-v and long sleeves. To garnish, my pieces de resistance - totally fabulous and amazing wooden platform sandals with gold peep-toe tips - were put into play. The shoes are the result of a collaboration between Roland Mouret and Christian Louboutin and created for Roland's SS11 show in Paris where they were used to accessorise every single catwalk look. My reasoning for buying the shoes from Matches was that if they could work for every single outfit in a fashion show - from day time trouser looks through to red carpet gowns - they could work for me. I was right. I'm proper delighted with my outfit, and unlike a one-wear dress all of the elements have an afterlife. And of course I love Mary's outfit too. Her jumpsuit (from by Malene Birger at my-wardrobe.com) is as fashionable as it gets right now. Trust me when I say jumpsuits are set to be the biggest fashion sensation of the latter half of 2011.