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IT WAS the fashion faux pas of the year. Worse even than Liam Gallagher's overgrown sideburns was the inclusion of two little words at the bottom of the invite to Tony and Cherie Blair's absolutely fabulous London Fashion Week bash. "Dress fashionably," asked Tony of the celebs and designers whose company he had requested to mark the start of the bi-annual catwalk event where ready-to-wear women's collections for spring/summer 2000 will be unveiled next week.
You could almost feel the earth move as stiffly-plucked eyebrows were raised across Bond Street. "How else did he expect the likes of Vivienne Westwood to dress?" complained one fashion insider. Of course, while the nipped and tucked types of the fashion world will oft take any excuse for a huff, the PM's clumsy idea of a joke has backfired. It was intended to cause a giggle over cocktails and canapes, but instead has served to highlight what many of us already suspected. Cool Britannia is rapidly losing its cool.
Maybe Tony Blair just got too drunk on the chilled Chablis of the oh-so-European, loft-living, fashionably-dressed New UK. But if recent events surrounding London Fashion Week are anything to go by, Britannia is no longer surfing the creative, original, forward- thinking wave that spurred Vanity Fair to put Liam and Patsy on its cover and Newsweek to declare London as "the coolest city on the planet".
Just as London was snuggling up under its Union Jack duvet, smug in the knowledge British street style was the best in the world, the crown princes of Cool Britannia appear to be packing their suitcases and heading for places where they understand the merits of sensibly- cut trousers and Gucci loafers.
Antonio Berardi was one of the first to defect from the bi-annual trade event on whose success the entire British fashion industry depends. The Sicilian-born, UK-trained designer is the kind of rising star who attracts the all-important senior buyers and international fashion editors to spend their money and plan their press around the notoriously adventurous London scene.