Battle Of The Brands

As you know, Isabel Marant has collaborated with H&M and Kate Bosworth was relived by Topshop. But it hasn't seemed to stop there. Topshop have now endorsed their 4th designer collaboration with Meadham Kirchhoff! The high street brands are really going at this Christmas to get shoppers out of other brands and into theirs - and rightly so, it is the season for good will and all that, but nothing wrong with a healthy bit of competition is there...

The collection is just 'cooky' to say the least, with goofy monster faces on knits to flaming headbands. If you would describe your style as minimalist you better stay well clear. Topshop has had many a success with its designer collabs in the past and I'm sure this one will follow suit. Whether you'd pick your office Christmas party outfit from the range? I'm not sure, but there's certainly a market out there for it. On the Topshop website, it describes the collection as 'kitsch' and kitsch it is.

So who did it best? Isabel for H&M of Kirchhoff for Topshop? Personally, I feel Kirchhoff will do better, sales-wise, but Isabel is more my style. What do you guys think? 

Kate Bosworth For Topshop

Kate Bosworth is back with her new A/W13 collection for Topshop. I remember her Spring festival capsule collection she did which wasn't too my taste so much but however this collection has pulled at my fashion heart strings. The use of silver and black, two of my favourite colours, is so minimal and effortless I just love it. However, what I do not love so much, is this wet-look hair. It just looks greasy and un-sleak. However I can just cover her face and admire the clothes haha. Nothing against her face, just purely the hair.

What do you make of the new collection?

Major Players

I briefly mentioned The Times Fashion Rich List in a post last week and I decided to do some more research into some of the big big earners that have graced the list this year.

Heading up the list at number 1 is Galen and George West and family who own Selfridges and Primark. Before reading, I was only aware of them owning Primark and thought cor-blimey I'm surprised Primark is top, but the fact they own Selfridges as well kind of explains it seeing as Selfridges graces 3 cities in the UK alone and other stores worldwide include Russia, The United Arab Emirates and Japan.

 

Not far behind this is Sir Philip Green, who of course owns the Arcadia Group which includes Topshop/Topman, Dorothy Perkins, BHS, Miss Selfridge, Evans, Burton, Outfit & Wallis. Thats a lot of shops. Philip recently added Etam UK to the Arcadia family and paid £850 million for it. He repaid the £805 million he borrowed to finance the deal in a mere 2 years of buying it, so he's certainly still making a hell of a lot of money and clearly deserves his place in the top 3.

Number 3 surprised me slightly. Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay who own Littlewoods have that position. They originally bought the company off of the Moores family for £750 million and then sold off what was left of the Liverpudlian stores to make it a remotely online service. Along side this they also own Yodel, the couriers, which is notorious for its poor server which consequently cost them £130 million in 2011. Poor them, I'm sure they'll live with the other 2.25 billion that they're worth.

Mike Ashley of Sportsworld and Sportsdirect is next which again I question because it seems to me lately a lot of sports stores have been going under. This might be because Sportsworld is thriving so much it's putting everyone else out of business! Every sports shop I've walked past in the past year seems to either be having 75% off sales or closing down sales but I guess they're not lying to me.

One thing I have noticed by researching more into these people is a lot of them seem to be tax dodgers. If you're a high earner (and thats putting it lightly), you need to pay your tax naughty people!!