Category: Editorial

Dear next season, I will be brief, because I am tired. Please be kinder to the seamstresses. Please arrive with a plan and a good clasp. Please do not make me care about corduroy again.

I would like fewer meetings, more ribbon, and a ferret who knows his limits. I would like to see the sun patch in the atelier twice before Christmas. And I would like, above all, for the cat who steals my pins to confess, so that I may forgive him and begin again. Until then, I remain devoted, bleary and in need of a nap in a velvet hat. Yours always, the Editor.

As the leaves fall and the first frost taps the windowpane, we close the season at Velvet Collar with a lot of gratitude and a modest amount of exhaustion. Our year has seen 7 shows, 3 fountains and 1 famous faint.

We have sold 3,918 collars, 1,106 bow ties and one velvet cape that no one has yet worked out how to wear. We thank our patrons, our models, our seamstresses and most of all the neck, that noble pillar that holds up the head and, by extension, everything we love. Raise a saucer, darlings. The winter collection is in the post, and it is magnificent.

The curtain has fallen, the feathers have been swept, and the champagne tower has been quietly retired. Here are the lessons of Fashion Week: never trust a fountain, never seat Marguerite Nightshade near a draft and never, ever show a collar in beige.

We sold 612 pieces in the first weekend. The Crown Collar was admired by 5,000 visitors and touched by 3 of them, all now banned. Our Pippa Angora received a standing ovation, in which she did not stand. Next season, we promise more feathers, fewer fountains and at least one colour that has not been named after an emotion.

Darlings, I write to you from the eye of the storm. In 36 hours, our Spring show opens at the Grand Whisker Hotel, and the atelier is in a state of tasteful chaos. Needles are flying, velvet is being steamed and someone has hidden the good scissors.

Our theme this year is ‘Softly, Softly,’ a meditation on the beauty of understatement, which we have expressed through a runway lined with 4,000 feathers. I have not slept. I have not eaten. I have, however, rehearsed my backstage walk seventeen times. Wish us luck, wish us stamina, and for the love of everything holy, wish us no more fountains.