BAFTA Beauties: What Goes Around Comes Around

Not only did Carey Mulligan pick up the Best Actress gong at yesterday's BAFTA's, she also picked up best dressed in my eyes, wowing me with her old school Hollywood glam. The dress is Vionnet and the long over skirt and train in arresting black and white recalls Audrey's iconic Givenchy ballgown from Sabrina. There is something perennially chic about black and white (done right), something Audrey demonstrated again when clothed in Cecil Beaton for My Fair Lady. Fashion fans probably sound like broken records when they gush about Audrey's influence on style, but when you see Carey looking so drop dead gorgeous - sporting a chic blonde pixie cut no less - then you can see why commentators harp on so.

I gushed over this pink Lanvin frock at Christmas time, so imagine my excitement to see the ever elegant Audrey Tatou working it to perfection on the BAFTA's red-carpet. I love how she has accessorised with red shoes and bag.

Erbaz's IT girl excellence since he's been at the helm of Lanvin got me thinking about the overall fabulousness of Lanvin present and past. From the 1920s to the 1950s and into the new millennium, this beloved French brand always has me in thrall. The brown and yellow dress is currently up for sale at Kerry Taylor's auction house. Now if only I had a spare $1200 lying around ...

And from old-school glamour to British cutting edge, I just had to post Romola Garai's eye-popping Erdem bouffant because it is just so darn pretty. Perhaps not quite formal enough for an event like the BAFTA's, but snaps to her for plugging a new designer, and all with a beautiful smile on her face.

Thanks to Getty Images and Red Carpet Fashion Awards for the pics.

A Flurry of Fashion Books

There are a raft of fabulous fashion books which have made it onto the bookshelves just in time for Christmas.

My Favourite Dress, for one, is such a wonderful concept; 120 designers and fashion types select their favourite dress and talk about why they love it. Everyone knows that a truly beautiful dress is beautiful forever, and many dresses in my own closet have the power to evoke feelings and memories. I would imagine that the selections here might be entirely different were the designers to be asked for their picks again in another twelve months, but as of now they have a special emotional attachment to the frock they selected. I look forward to finding out what that is.

I've also got to say that Jessica Stam in Dior Haute Couture on the cover is to die for. You can read more about the book here.

I have a collection of Vogue photographic books, published from the British archives, and they make for endlessly entertaining browing. Now American Vogue have released a lavish book - People Parties Places - featuring 300 photographs of celebrities including actors, artists, models, politicians and more. I'm not entirely sure about the use of Gisele Bundchen and her husband on the cover, but by the looks of the internals that are available online, there will be plenty of images, both retro and recent, to inspire

I also stumbled upon this book recently, which is part of a That Changed the World series, that includes the fifty top shoes too. This title looks at fifty dresses that have made a lasting impact on the fashion landscape, and includes the Vionnet goddess gown, Liz Hurley's fame making Versace safety-pin dress (which I've seen up close and personal in a Versace exhibition some years ago), Marilyn's sexy white halter-neck from The Seven Year Itch, YSL's 1965 Mondrian shift dress, Cher in see through Bob Mackie when she accepted her Academy Award and 45 more legendary frocks. You can read more about the book, and the London Design Museum who published it, here.

My Christmas wish-list is almost entirely made up of books already. Now I think it just got a wee bit longer.

(Two) Frocks of the Week

When I saw that both Hilary Swank and Carey Mulligan wore Vionnet on the red-carpet this week, my ears pricked up because I thought the house of Vionnet - run by the revered couturier Madeleine Vionnet, who is credited with inventing the bias cut - closed down decades ago. Little did I know that the House was bought and reignited back in the late eighties, only to go through many different owners and designers since, with nothing seeming to stick.

This year it was bought by Matteo Marzotto, who used to own Valentino (and who features heavily in the doco The Last Emperor). He has appointed Rodolfo Paglialunga, formerly of Prada, as head designer, and these two luscious dresses - significant nods to their namesake - are from his first collection.

And now how about the real thing ...