Royal Wedding fashion slipstream

I've got little interest in the Royal Wedding itself - this is because unless I've been invited and am supping free champagne and beer then wedding's generally don't hold much interest.

But from a fashion perspective this one is going to be interesting. While few eyes will be on William's suit (the finest Saville Row I'm sure it will be) his wife-to-be Kate Middleton is going to start a fashion sensation - her engagement announcement was the moment when designers were inspired to make Kate-a-like products, so expect everything from wedding dresses to fascinators to shoes in the Kate mould from here on in.

Street v Catwalk fashion

I've always wondered about the relation between street fashion and catwalk fashion.

If you're a hardcore clothes type (ie too cool even for the word fashionista) you'll have been to some fashion shows and seen first hand that the catwalk is part fine art, part dance, part theatre, part rock'n'roll and 100% fascinating. It's a much underrated art form, in fact - there should be write ups of fashion shows in the reviews section of the broadsheets.

But while the catwalk is an incredible thing for a someone like me to observe - (a neighbourhood kid, doing minimum wage jobs and never seeing the inside of an aeroplane until I was 19) - it's not all there is to clothes. As kids we enjoyed getting tracksuits from market stalls and t-shirts from supermarkets, and later as teenagers getting the latest pair of Adidas or Nike. Now, makes like that (and then all the skate labels too) don't do catwalk (that I know of...) so there then becomes a disjunction between street gear and designer gear. Or does there? In the 21st century I see the catwalk as becoming more than a place to show off collections - it could become a place to show off postmodernism itself.

Do you prefer catwalk sidewalk duds? Let us know in the comments kids!

Five Very Cool Fashion Websites In Our Opinion

Initially, when we had the idea for this post we thought that it would be relatively easy to find a whole bunch of shoes websites that were really cool - sadly, we couldn't have been more wrong - the whole thing has proved rather difficult.

What we have discovered is that many of the top names in shoes actually have very poor websites. We are no experts on web design ourselves but many of them (including Prada and Gucci) have sites that are very hard to decipher. There doesnt actually appear to be any purpose to these sites except to publish pictures of models - you can get stockist information (this can be rather irrelevant sometimes for those of us in the UK), browse the current collection (but not buy) and the like - however, much of the time you actually have to guess what to click!

Anyway, moaning aside there are some shoe websites which are excellent. Here are five of our favourites:

Dr Martens

Good old Doc Martens - this is how you do it. Simple, easy to follow navigation - and the entire collection available to buy online - very cool.


Birkenstock

Perhaps not the most aesthetially pleasing website, but practical and comprehensive nonetheless. Birkenstock sandals and shoes are a great quality option - we would have no hesitation buying from the website.



Office

Office Shoes have a wide range of shoes from many different brands. A nice, easy to use website.



Camper

We like the use of imagery on the Camper website.



Swear London

If you're looking for some cutting edge styles then check out Swear London - the website is pretty sharp too!



If you have any fave shoe websites then please let us know - cheers!