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It would seem that Birmingham could be the Vintage Fashion capital of the Midlands with the arrival of the new (but old) ‘Vintage fair‘ which is already successfully running in Sheffield and Manchester, making my count of vintage enterprises in the city to more than 8. The vintage movement is a way for us fashion forward folks to put a middle finger up to the relentless high street brands that keep rearing their ugly heads in Birmingham City Centre -  more commonly known to outsiders as ’shoppingham’. Vintage lets you embrace a unique and individual style, not to mention a more ethical approach to apparel too, as you are giving new life to the threads of yesteryear.

With Spring/Summer 2010 catwalk shows revealing 80’s silhouettes and 1940’s floral numbers, vintage fashion has wedged itself firmly within popular culture and does not seem to be showing any signs of retiring. Your body shape can determine which eras and styles suit you best. Slender boyish types look amazing in 20’s and 30’s styles, and voluptuous hourglass ladies are incredible in 50’s outfits. 40’s looks tend to emphasise the shoulders and waist, as does the 80’s but look fabulous on a range of body shapes.

At this point I would like to point my male readers over to my boy Kevin at Proppergander – a Birmingham based style blog that features many an article on men’s fashion.

So here is a round up of all the places in Birmingham that you can get yourself fully hooked up on a purely vintage tip.

Vintage Fair // The Library Theatre at Custard Factory – Starting 21st November – ‘The Vintage Fair now in our 2nd year hold exciting vintage fashion fairs in Sheffield, Manchester & soon to be Birmingham! Our vintage fairs are crammed with stalls of affordable vintage fashion from the 1920s – 1980s, reworked, handmade and eco clothing, cool jewellery , yummy cupcakes and much more from local to national designers and traders! So come and join us for some affordable shopping, a vintage tea party, offers on the bar and some vintage tunes whilst you shop’.

General Stores // Custard Factory - General Stores houses a collective shopping experience including spaces hosted by Diamond Togs, G & B Creative, Nattys Vintage, Coco Black Vintage and veteran-vintage-vendor Urban Village.

Cow // Digbeth High Street - The big yellow place – good for accessories.

Top Banana // York Road, Kings Heath- Good for man gear.

Vintage Fair // Hare & Hounds (Monthly) – ‘XMAS VINTAGE FAIR Ladies & Men’s clothes, accessories & jewellery FAB INDIVIDUAL PARTY DRESSES AT LOW PRICES UNUSUAL XMAS GIFTS FROM ONLY £1 AT THE HARE & HOUNDS PUB HIGH STREET, KINGS HEATH B’HAM. B14 7JZ 11am – 4.30pm FREE ADMISSION ON SATURDAY 7th NOVEMBER 09 SATURDAY 5th DECEMBER 09′.

Flea Market // Custard Factory Flea Market (Saturdays) – ‘The Custard Factory Flea Market is offering a free stall for 6 months to entrepreneurial university students in Birmingham. Birmingham based students are being asked to submit a business plan explaining their creative talents what they want to sell at the market. If successful The Custard Factory Flea Market will provide the five candidates with 6 months free stall rent worth over £500′. For more details read here.

Rag Market // Birmingham City Centre – ‘A place with all genres of taste and fancy, from women’s clothes, fabric stalls and even those lusted after magazines you can’t justify purchasing, just for a pound. A market that has been through Birmingham’s best and worst since the start. Pay it a visit and keep the Bullring’s true roots alive!’.

This looks brilliant….

Following the worldwide economic downturn there has been a reported resurgence in an interest in home crafts such as embroidery, dressmaking, knitting and crocheting, skills which have long been regarded as the domain of the domestic and the hobbyist.
However these home crafts have now entered the artistic mainstream, reflecting the intertwining of our modern complicated lives, but are being subverted from their conventional conservative stereotype, and taking on a more sinister and unpredictable nature.

Among the artists exhibiting will be Elizabeth Lee, Jasvinder Mehta, Laura Westwood, Michelle Munn, Helen Grundy, Anne Guest, and Rebecca Timbrell.

On until Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 7:00pm
Margaret Street Exhibition Space, Birmingham B3 3BX
Opening times : Mon – Thurs 08:00 – 19:00 / Friday 08:00 – 20:00

Eeeek you only have a few hours left to check out the ‘Pop-Up in the City’ shop previously blogged about here featuring independent designers including Steel & Jelly and Marvins Magical Mini Mart (poster designer for the Capsule peeps). All temporarily housed in the old Jade shoe shop on Corporation Street in the city centre. Best Believe will be interviewing Amy Lappin the designer from Steel & Jelly next week to see how it went and to hear more about her work. The ‘Pop-Up in the City’ shop closes at 6pm today so go pop in.

London Fashion Week is celebrating like any other 25 year old tonight, having drunk too much on an empty stomach. Today was the penultimate day with proceedings closing tomorrow with Menswear, so less than a week actually much more like London Fashion four days. To get the low down from LFW we have recruited a down to earth midlands gal Roxanne Tierney to tell all. Rox studied Fashion at UCE and now works for a fashion PR agency in London. Here in her own words she tells you how it is..

As I mentioned in my last post London fashion week is 25yrs old this year and as part of the celebrations they have moved the main venue to the gorgeous Somerset House. It’s basically a square building with a huge courtyard in the centre, where they erect the catwalk.

It’s our job as the PR agency to make sure people know about the show, send out invitations, construct a seating plan and basically get amazing press to come.
At 9am we arrive at our office on Regent Street to collect the 4 boxes of 600 press releases that have been written by John Rocha. Our car arrives at 9.05 and we whiz off to Somerset House, full of espresso.

There are two sides of the catwalk – and three blocks, with 5 rows each. One is for press, the other for buyers. We also allocated standing tickets, which were at the back of both of these. Firstly, we have to label the seats that have been allocated to the long black lacquered benches where everyone will sit. There are supposedly 5 seats to one bench – but as we have to invite more people that will realistically attend – we always add more, hence why the seating plan is so complicated. So the labels are stuck to the seats and spaced out as best we can. Then we go around the seats, putting one press release folder on each. I then have to run around like a fool looking for the British Fashion Council press office, to give them the extra copies. Fun fun fun!
We flit between the catwalk and backstage, where it smells of hairspray and is full of amazonian teenagers with bored, but beautiful expressions being made up. I must admit, they look amazing. John has chosen a theme, that to me looks a lot like A Midsomers Night Dream, with frizzy crimped hair, piled up with felt petals to decorate. Sounds weird – looked great.

Then at about 10.50 – we have a quick team meeting to allocate jobs. My bosses A & C, are outside on the door vetting people before they come in – we have two more people on the inside door and then five people
(including me) seating the press. I was slightly terrified of this, as I have to allocate important people their front row seats that may or may not have been doubled up. It’s fine in the end, but there was one hairy moment when I had to ask everyone to squash up and still couldn’t fit any more people on. The press turn out was amazing. Alexandra Shulman, the editor of Vogue, Hilary Alexander- Daily Telegraph and loads of other really really great people. We also had a few celebs, Henry Conway, Immodesty Blaize, Jimmy Choo and MTV presenter Laura Whitmore – all who are huge fans of John.

The show itself was amazing – very flowery and floaty, with lots of white, and hints of brown, orange, pale blue and black. Really different for John to use so much colour – but worked to his advantage!
After the show, we tidy up all the crap people have let outside on the benches (who said fashion was glamorous???) and the senior staff sort out Johns interviews. There’s a lot of style press including Dazed, i-D and Fashion 156.com who all want to interview John about the collection and his 25yrs of at London Fashion Week.

The champagne and Redbull are flowing with a vengeance and everyone seems to have loved the show!

So this is where we leave Roxanne to her post fashion week wind down – Thank you Rox – you have been truly fabulous!

With London Fashion Week celebrating it’s 25th year    Best Believe has enrolled a super stylish London Fashion Week correspondent Roxanne Tierney.  Originally from Birmingham and now residing in the capital, here in her own words Rox tells you a bit about her fabulous self and what she has been up to during LFW…

So firstly, I was born and brought up in the fabulous Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield, in the glorious West Midlands. I studied Fashion and Clothing at UCE Birmingham, straight after school then went on to a degree in Footwear design at London College of Fashion, in 2004. After a year out to gain relevant work experience I fell in love with the wonderful world of PR and started a 6-month placement at Escada. I then went on to intern at YSL, Stella McCartney and Burberry before going back to uni to get my degree.
I am proud of the fact I remained ‘unemployed’ for approximately 26 hours after leaving university – and was offered my job as a Junior Account Executive at Bryan Morel PR. It’s mostly a Fashion PR agency, run by the women who Absolutely Fabulous was based on (no, really…!) but we also look after two artists and an art gallery.
(My clients include; Debenhams Menswear, John Rocha Menswear, John Smedley menswear, Mango menswear, Thomas Sabo, Oliver Peoples, Mosley Tribes, Ede and Ravenscroft and Energie – others we represent but I don’t work on specifically are John Rocha, Osman Yousefzada, Miss Sixty, Killah, Jeannie McQueenie, John Smedley women’s and kids, Designer shoes from Spain and Mango).

*JOHN ROCHA AND OSMAN YOUSEFZADA ARE SHOWING AT FASHION WEEK AT SOMERSET HOUSE TOMORROW*

It’s basically my job to get the press (everyone from the nationals, Sunday Times Style, Telegraph, Guardian etc and consumer, Vogue, Harpers, GQ, i-D, Dazed, to Regional, Birmingham Style etc) to write about and shoot my clients products. There’s a lot of phone calls, stress about our samples and deadlines – but it’s fun overall.

I’ve actually just got back from my first fashion week party of this season – the Beyond the Catwalk Exhibition at Somerset House (everything is going on here this year – its the new venue to celebrate 25yrs of fashion week). Friend and colleague Kimbo organised the event and sent us tickets yesterday – and although we’re all knackered after working late stuffing press releases into John Rocha folders -we’re all up for some champagne. My colleague Shel, and intern Jenn and I make our way to Somerset House on the tube, ready for a chill out before our mammoth day tomorrow.
It’s all pretty cool – Caryn Franklin was hosting, and apparently Sarah Brown (but I didn’t manage to spot her in the crowd), loads of really beautiful models and stylist press types. Oh and us…

Leave at 10pm and wander to the tube for home time.

Up at an unreasonable hour tomorrow for the 11am John Rocha show. I’m at the office at 9am with colleagues Shel and Seren to collect the press releases. All 4 boxes of them. Thankfully I’ve booked us a car, as we’d die otherwise.
Then at about 1pm when it is all over and John has done his backstage interviews, we’re off for a team lunch and a quick rest before the Osman Yousefzada show at 3.15pm.
Osman is a central St Martins graduate who was born and raised in MOSELEY – (YES REALLY).

I’ll mostly be wearing a black jersey dress with Balmain style exaggerated shoulders from good ol’ Topshop. Its always safer to wear black and as the shows are relatively close together this year – means I probably can get away with changing a necklace or shoes to look different for each.
Shoes at this moment are undecided. Maybe some purple Marc by Marc Jacobs heeled brogues from a few seasons ago – not sure yet!

At 8pm we’ve got Osman’s after show party at Disco 24 in Soho. My director Andre (who I’m assistant to) has done the guest list, so Ill be there at 8pm so he (and Osman) don’t have heart attacks.
Should be fun as there’s some DJ’s from Boombox (Mmmelanie) and a drinks sponsor (hurraaahh!)

Rox will be filling us in with LFW news and reviews with stylish precision all week….Can’t wait!

With London Fashion Week starting this weekend, Birmingham is also celebrating fashion with ‘Style in the City’.  Which looks like a right pile of crap, heavily endorsed by TV stylist Gok Wan, and his desperate attempts to get everyone in girdles and whack jersey wrap dresses.

However there are two ways to give a sultry respectful nod to London Fashion Week here in Brum. Firstly you can go and see ‘ The September Issue ‘ the new docu-drama about Anna Wintour at The Electric Cinema (see the Events page) and secondly is to go check out the Pop Up Style & Fashion shop which is an opportunity for independent fashion designers, independent retailers and boutiques from Birmingham to preview their work.

Pop-Up In The City will be on Corporation Street from Thursday 24th to Saturday 26th September (the old Jade shoe store next to New Era).

The shop is open from 10am-6pm each day and will be hosting designs from the following designers & independent retailers;

Chatterbox Boutique, People, Top Banana, The Wedding Club, Steel & Jelly, Rachel Simpson Shoes, Benjamin’s, Honey’s Lingerie & Terry Terry Accessories

Moseley and Kings Heath town centre manager Nikki Carr has developed the project along with the city council’s leisure, sport and culture chief, Martin Mullaney.

This is a good opportunity for independent fashion retailers to take pride of place in Birmingham’s city centre (where they should be) and to make pretty just one of the many empty shops in the city.

Apparently..

Council regeneration bosses are already working with art students to turn empty shop windows into temporary galleries during the recession and although unable to offer free selling space to businesses they are looking to help with the refit…

Coun Neville Summerfield, a Kings Heath businessman and the Cabinet member for Regeneration, said: “We are discussing what we can do with our empty shops and this is just one of a number of initiatives.”.

The Birmingham Mail

So for an alternative shopping experience check out this temporary shop and support the individual.

“Birmingham isn’t just one big Primark”

Best Believe September 09