May is Beauty Month at Harrods, where there will be a range of special events and offers. As the world’s best cosmetics brands launch their SS13 colour collections, we invite their top make-up artists to hold in-store masterclasses. There will also be tutorials from leading skincare experts on the latest scientific breakthroughs. Call 020 7730 1234 for more information and ask for your preferred brand. The Beauty Apothecary and The Colour, Cosmetics and Perfumery Halls, Ground Floor
 

Since Guillaume Henry joined Carven, the fashion house has enjoyed a spectacular renaissance, and this spring sees the launch of its debut scent, Carven Le Parfum. The feminine fragrance captures Carven’s new spirit of “timeless elegance” through a central note of sweet pea preceded by mandarin blossom and white hyacinth, and grounded by jasmine, ylang ylang and patchouli. 100ml, £72; exclusive to Harrods. The Perfumery Hall, Ground Floor; and harrods.com
 

Just when you thought you couldn’t get more excited about Hedi Slimane’s debut at Saint Laurent, along come the bags. From chain-strapped styles to smart clutches, they’re what those in the know will be carrying. The structured Duffle bag with gold hardware has already been spotted on Kate Moss, the ultimate Saint Laurent girl. Duffle bag £1,545. Luxury Accessories, Ground Floor
 

The busiest man in fashion, Karl Lagerfeld has added another string to his bow with a range of watches for Fossil. The sleek collection, which features black steel, pyramid studs and chain detailing, is a tough, rock-star-tinged take on traditional timepieces. £259. Designer Accessories, Lower Ground Floor; and harrods.com
 

Renowned for its polished basics, Robert Rodriguez’s 10-year-old eponymous label combines innovative fabrics and clever cuts. This summer, he brings a sophisticated futuristic spin to sporty separates; note the metallicised denim, perforated zip-through dress and architectural cobalt peplum top. From left Top £330; dress £490; and trousers £340. Studio, First Floor
 

You can always rely on Maison Martin Margiela to come up with a fashion concept that you don’t want to miss. The Spring/Summer 2013 catwalk presentation started with top-to-toes white and moved gently through top-to-toe silver, via a short flirtation with grey check and beige. Suit £1,450; exclusive to Harrods. Men’s Designerwear, Lower Ground Floor
 

The new IWC Ingenieur Dual Time Titanium is the perfect travelling partner for Formula 1 drivers – or, indeed, any man on the road. As well as displaying the local time, the white triangle on the outer 24-hour ring shows the time back home. All the classic Ingenieur signatures remain, including the five-screw bezel and extreme precision technology. £6,250. The Fine Watch Room, Ground Floor
 

Apart from ticking all the style boxes, Parisian stylist Tamara Taichman’s bags have space for all your vital belongings, as well as secure zippered sections. A perfect balance of form and function in lightweight canvas with gold fixtures, Tila March’s Jane canvas and leather tote looks set to be one of this season’s classics. Jane Tote £580. Designer Accessories, Ground Floor
 

Prince – well, the artist formally known as – is back. The singer will headline this year’s Montreux Jazz Festival. Customers who use their Harrods Rewards cards in the Montreux Jazz Café and boutique in-store until 31st May will be entered into a prize draw to win a trip for two to the festival this July, including flights and accommodation. For more information, call 020 7730 1234. Montreux Jazz Café, Third Floor
 

Available for just one day in May, Guerlain’s Muguet eau de parfum combines the freshness of lily-of-the-valley with lilac, rose and jasmine. Presented in the classic quadrilobe Guerlain bottle design, adorned with a delicate Gripoix necklace, the perfume is a limited, numbered edition. 125ml, £355; exclusive to Harrods. 1st May, The Perfumery Hall, Ground Floor

The gold medal that Jaeger-LeCoultre is most proud of was awarded “for the use of cutting-edge equipment and the impeccable production of its complicated calibres, chronographs and repeaters”. Nothing surprising there, perhaps, considering the esteem in which the Swiss company is held among the horology fraternity. However, this particular recognition was gained in 1889 by the exacting judges at the Universal Exhibition in Paris. Consistency and innovation have obviously been very Jaeger-LeCoultre for a long time.

It’s been 180 years since Antoine LeCoultre lost his heart to the world of haute horology. Following the tradition set by generations of Vallée de Joux farmers, who spent the harsh winters tinkering away at miniature mechanics, LeCoultre learned the art of precision engineering and set up a manufacture, bringing together for the first time all the skilled craftsmen from the region. By 1844 he had perfected the first watchmaking instrument to guarantee accuracy to the nearest thousandth of a millimetre. This set a guiding principle for the company that exists to this day; technological innovation in precision engineering determines every aspect of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s creativity.

In homage to the founder, this year the brand has produced the Tribute to Antoine LeCoultre Jubilee Collection, three watches that demonstrate Jaeger-LeCoultre’s considerable haute horological prowess.

One of the watches, the Master Grande Tradition Gyrotourbillon 3 Jubilee, features a spherical balance-spring that guarantees exceptional performance. Watch geeks will tell you that producing an accurate cylindrical balance spring is hard enough; getting the coils to form the concentric curves of a sphere is a truly ambitious piece of engineering. Design geeks, on the other hand, will be similarly gobsmacked by the flying gyrotourbillon movement apparently rotating in mid-air.

Another of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s additions is the Master Grande Tradition Tourbillon Cylindrique à Quantième Perpétuel Jubilee. A reproduction of the 1889 medal appears on the oscillating weight of the new piece, which was inspired by watches created by the manufacture in the 19th century. At odds with the design is an innovative automatic Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 985 and a flying tourbillon with a cylindrical hairspring. This highly intricate complication delivers extreme precision and a single pushpiece perpetual calendar without compromising the classic 42mm-diameter case, which is made of extra-white 950 platinum.

The Master Ultra Thin Jubilee comes in a long line of ultra-thin mechanisms that Jaeger-LeCoultre has been pioneering since 1907. The case of the new Ultra Thin is 4.05mm thick and 39mm in diameter; it houses a manually wound Calibre 849 that is only 1.85mm thick. It is the world’s slimmest manual watch and, more importantly, one of the most accurate, passing the company’s stringent 1,000-hour test.

Dedicated to age-old techniques and cutting-edge engineering, the brand demonstrates the simple act of telling the time with quiet elegance and surprising innovation.

Available from The Fine Watch Room, Ground Floor

When an accessory is prefixed with the word “statement”, that means it has been transformed from an add-on into the main event. Statement shoes and bags have had a good run in the limelight, and now jewellery is in on the act. When it comes to neck decoration, this summer, big is going to be huge. Enter the statement necklace.

Arguably the most arresting of this season’s statement necklaces were seen
at Gucci, whose ’70s-jet-set fantasy included supersized and hyper-coloured floral jewellery. Frida Giannini’s girls epitomised poolside glamour wearing elaborate concoctions of flowers in coral, azalea, apple and turquoise. Technicolour tropical blooms were also found on necklaces at Shourouk.

At Chanel, meanwhile, Karl Lagerfeld turned the house’s signature pearls into gobstoppers. Outsized, the pearl becomes idiosyncratic – perfect fodder for girls who like their fashion a little bit tongue in cheek. A similar principle applies at both Erickson Beamon and Mawi: oversized crystals makes their necklaces unashamedly, knowingly “costumey”.

Statement necklaces aren’t just for eveningwear. Part of their appeal is that they can convey a current style message when paired with simple classics. Imagine Miu Miu’s cord, crystal and metal necklace, or Scott Stephen’s agate pendant, elevating jeans and a fine knit into a “look”.

New York-based jewellery designer Eddie Borgo – known for his tough, spiked pieces – says, “The rules surrounding jewellery are no longer relevant. You can wear a great necklace with a T-shirt, for example.” Borgo’s own collection includes the Paradox pendant, which started life as a belt charm. The sheer size of these pieces gives them the quality of urban armour. Note also Lanvin’s graphic-meets-tribal plate-gold collar.

Probably this season’s most rock-and-roll necklaces come from Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent. The woven tasselled pieces encapsulate the Moroccan-influenced mood of the collection. Just throw on one of these necklaces and it hints at a hedonism below the surface. When it comes to necklaces this season, bigger is officially better.
 

Model JOSIPA KUSIC at Select

Hair ROBIN PAWLOSKI at DWM

Make-up ROZELLE PARRY at DWM

Available from Designer Accessories, Lower Ground Floor; Luxury Accessories and Luxury Jewellery, Ground Floor; and harrods.com

Grooming NINA BECKETT
Model FRANCIS LANE at Premier
Photographer’s Assistant SIMON McGUIGAN 
 

Available from Men’s Designerwear & Men’s Casuals, Lower Ground Floor; and Men’s International Collections, Ground Floor

For a Parisian house, there’s an unmistakable Englishness at the heart of Chloé. Its recent history has been defined by a succession of young Englishwomen taking the driving seat; back in 1997, Stella McCartney came storming out of Central Saint Martin’s on a tide of anticipation and publicity, and pitched up at the label. She was succeeded by her right-hand woman, Phoebe Philo, in 2001; then, following a two-year stint by Paulo Melim Andersson, in 2008 Hannah MacGibbon staked her claim.

The latest Englishwoman to make this patch of the 8th Arrondissement her own is Clare Waight Keller, who joined Chloé nearly two years ago. Sitting in her office in the house’s headquarters, Waight Keller is considering the success of this Anglo-French partnership, crediting not a synergy but a tension between these two sartorial sensibilities in shaping the Chloé aesthetic.

“There’s a weird dynamic between that rebellious attitude to fashion in London – historically, you think back to Vivienne Westwood, punk and street culture – but here it’s more about tradition, a more formal way of doing things; it feels very French,” Waight Keller says. “So the mix of the two is quite fantastic.”

The SS13 collection (which marked the house’s 60th anniversary) is a fitting illustration of Waight Keller’s clever play on opposites: English whimsy and French discipline; masculine and feminine. While it is a faultlessly pretty offering, a cool, tomboyish swagger underpins the collection so it never veers into the saccharine. Cascading ruffles on A-line dresses come in a crisp Japanese polyester, which makes them more architectural than girly; a white plissé organza ruffled top, one of the collection’s highlights, is paired with loose, pleat-front trousers. You get the picture.

If Waight Keller started strong at Chloé, this collection saw her come into her own. The challenge for a designer taking the helm at an established house is this: how do you create collections that are at once “yours” and “theirs”? The triumph was that Waight Keller nailed the thing that is so very Chloé while putting her own spin on it. “I feel like there’s more of my handwriting that people recognise,” she says.

To describe a Chloé collection, it all sounds so dreamily romantic. Yet Chloé has always been anchored in reality. “There needs to be something easy and immediate for clothes to be desirable,” Waight Keller says.“You personalise it somewhat because you actually wear the clothes. You know what’s going to feel wrong on you: too short or too high in the wrong places. What’s interesting about Chloé is it’s always rooted in what real women want to wear and in an understanding of how they want to put things together.”

Waight Keller is a working mum (to 10-year-old twin girls and a toddler son), so she doesn’t have time to think about which shoe should go with this, or having to wear a jacket over that – and neither does her Chloé girl.

Chloé is an archly feminine house; most of its employees are women, and it was founded by a woman, Gaby Aghion. She is credited with inventing the concept of luxury prêt-à-porter. Born in Egypt in 1921, Aghion was raised in a wealthy family. She received a French education, and in 1945, relocated to Paris with her husband, settling on the Left Bank among artists and intellectuals. Aghion was frustrated by the formality and rigidity of fashion at the time. There was a gap for fluid, carefree clothes with a youthful, modern spirit. So in 1952, she founded Chloé (the name of a friend, the moniker picked for its feminine qualities).

“If you look back to what Aghion first created, it was things like the perfect blouse; she saw that there could be an ease and simplicity to how you dress,” says Waight Keller.

Aghion’s message resonates today. She designed beautifully made clothes, which allowed the body to move, and were available off the rack. It sounds simple, but at the time it was revolutionary.

Over the past 60 years, Chloé has been helmed by an impressive roll call of designers, among them Karl Lagerfeld, who took over the house in 1966, attracting fans such as Brigitte Bardot and Jackie Kennedy. Martine Sitbon tried her hand in the ’80s. And in the late ’90s, the English girls arrived. Naturally, with different designers come different versions of the Chloé aesthetic.

“Every designer who has been at Chloé finds their own girl,” Waight Keller says, “whether it’s the playful, surrealist or the boyish one.” And yet despite the number of interpretations over the decades, and so no single signature design tropes to speak of – no bouclé jacket or Le Smoking tuxedo – there’s a distinct design dialect at this label, namely an exuberant femininity. Chloé is a seductive fashion fantasy, but one that evades simplistic labels like “tailoring” or “gowns”. It’s about a mood more than anything.

It’s this mood Waight Keller has homed in on. “Everyone asks, ‘Who’s the Chloé girl?’ But it’s more about attitude,” she says. “There is this fabulous kind of ‘eclecticness’ to Chloé, a spirit of lightness – elegant but effortless at the same time.”

Denim shorts paired with a silk shirt is very Chloé. A cocktail dress with tousled bed hair? So Chloé. According to Waight Keller, it’s a distinctly Parisian
 

approach. “You often look at women here, and you can’t actually say what it is they’re wearing that’s so fab. It’s much more to do with the way they wear something.” Waight Keller certainly looks the part. In her tailored jacket, slightly slouchy trousers and heeled ankle boots she emanates an insouciant cool.

She was raised in Birmingham. Her mother was a keen seamstress who made clothes for the young Clare and her siblings. She describes a childhood surrounded by “fabric and patterns” but didn’t think about fashion as a career at first, going on to do an art foundation course at Bournville College. She studied different disciplines, from sculpture to fine art, before settling on fashion.

A BA at Ravensbourne College followed, before an MA in knitwear at the Royal College of Art. Just weeks after graduating, Waight Keller landed a job in New York at Calvin Klein. That was followed by a period at Ralph Lauren, and then by four years at Gucci under Tom Ford. A background in menswear has given her Chloé collections a tailored quality. In 2005, she became the creative director of Pringle.

When the chance to work for Chloé arose, Waight Keller knew it was too good to miss, not only because she felt an affinity to the house’s spirit, but also because it gave her a once-in-a-lifetime chance to helm a Parisian house. And, with Paris comes pressure. “Everybody compares themselves to each other in Paris,” she says. She likens it to an old French court: “It’s a small society, but a dynamic one. It’s alive and spirited.”

Now, in the final run-up to the AW13 show, you could forgive her for seeming stressed. But she radiates calm, and puts it down to having a remarkably unfashiony home life, playing tennis and cycling with her family. She also travels – not for inspiration – but to clear her mind. “When I come back, I feel invigorated.”

Perhaps another secret to Waight Keller’s unflappable demeanour is that, like Aghion, she knows clothes should be a joy, and make life that little bit easier, a touch more fun, more beautiful.

“The thing I love about fashion is the desire for something new, something you haven’t seen, that’s going to make you feel excited about wearing it,” she says. “And that’s the ultimate goal: to make great clothes people really want to wear.”

Hair ROBIN PAWLOSKI at DWM
Make-up ROZELLE PARRY at DWM
Model JOSIPA KUSIC at Select
Senior Fashion Assistant BECKY BRANCH
Photographer’s Assistants ELIZABETH FRANKS
and MICHAEL FURLONGER

Available from Luxury Accessories, Ground Floor;
International Designer and The Shoe Salon, First Floor; and harrods.com

Hair PAUL MERRITT
Make-up ANITA KEELING
Nails JENNI DRAPER at Premier Hair and Makeup
Model MILLIE SIMMONDS at Elite
Photographer’s Assistants SCOTT ARCHIBALD and ROBERT SELF

Available from The Fine Jewellery Room, Ground Floor;
Designer Collections, Eveningwear and International Designer,
First Floor; and harrods.com

More than £100,000 was raised by guests who attended The Prince’s Trust Handbags & Gladrags event hosted by fashion stylist and Prince’s Trust Ambassador Gok Wan.

Organised by The Trust’s Women’s Leadership Group and supported by The White Company, the event brought together 280 of the UK’s most successful women and their guests to raise vital funds for disadvantaged young people.

Speaking at the event, Gok Wan said, “The dinner and auction is a killer combination of fabulousness and fundraising. In my TV shows I see time and time again what a lack of confidence can do to people. The Prince’s Trust works with young people to build their confidence and skills, and help them into training, education or employment. I’m honoured to do my bit to help.”

The event, held in the new ME London Hotel, included an auction of money-can’t-buy experiences, holidays, and fabulous handbags donated by their famous previous owners such as Geri Halliwell, Joanna Lumley and Annie Lennox.

Celebrities Jenni Falconer, James Midgley, Toby Anstis and Sophie Anderton, among others, joined the influential crowd who enjoyed entertainment from singing waiters, Encore, and heard the inspiring story of Prince’s Trust Young Ambassador Afsana Benozir who has been helped by The Trust. To round the evening off, Gok auctioned off both himself and the male models who had been showing off designer handbags to the guests.

The Women’s Leadership Group combines the power of philanthropy with the experience and expertise of 50 leading women to support and inspire disadvantaged young women. Since it was formed in 2006, the group has raised £3.7 million in support of The Trust.
 
To find out more about The Prince’s Trust, visit:
http://www.princes-trust.org.uk.

All products exclusive to Harrods. Available from The Cosmetics and Perfumery Halls, Ground Floor; and harrods.com