Martine Rose Collaboration: the blog

On Tuesday last week I was invited by Lulu Kennedy (founder of Fashion East and one of the industry's top talent spotters) to be in a shoot with Richard Nicoll, Jonathan Saunders, Louise Gray, Henry Holland and the guys from Bistrotheque, to celebrate 10 years of Fashion East. To be listed among the designers whose careers started with Lulu's faith in their vision was a real honour and I was thrilled to have been invited. The only downside was my diary that day -- the shoot clashed with a meeting and I ended up running hours late. It was a very hot day and I had to sprint across town in massive heels, just in time to run straight into shot, looking sweaty and flustered, with no makeup and no hair, whilst everyone else looked wonderfully cool and relaxed. Not a good look on my part. So whilst I'm incredibly happy to be in the photographs, I'm not looking forward to their release for obvious vanity reasons.

Other than that, my days and nights have been geared towards my new collection, which I'm so excited about. It's really coming together and it's looking great -- weird but great. Max, my fantastic stylist who's been working with me for a few seasons, has been sourcing interesting curiosities - he really is a superstar! I've also been researching for my hats and Stephen Jones is of course, an incredible source of inspiration. His Fosters hat, for instance, is very 1990s but I really like the shape and the mixed media concept. I've also included some snaps of things that have caught my eye whilst out and about.

On Thursday I went for dinner with a very old friend of mine, Richard Sloan. We went to Andrew Edmund's on Lexington Street in Soho. The evening, as it often does when Richard and I get together, started very demurely, with a beautiful dinner and a lovely bottle of red, before quickly progressing to tequila espressos and very dirty, in fact filthy, martinis at Groucho's. Ouch.

I love this fabulous neon 'Exclusive' sign, taken from a black hair salon in Paris. I particularly enjoy the play on words with the ‘So white’ sign next door.