Monday, 30 July 2007

Chloe vs Topshop

The catwalk takes on the high street

If money were no object, I’d be dressed in Chloe from my head-to-my Grecian style wooden-heeled sandalled feet. Kylie chose a 60s Chloe shift to make her welcome return to the style scene, and the label’s whole high-class hippy vibe has pioneered and epitomised the return to bohemia that’s taken Planet Fashion by storm for the past few summers.

What Chloe does on the catwalk, the high street follows, but not content with setting the style agenda and planning our wardrobes for next season, who’d have thought the French fashion house has also found time to rifle through the rails at Topshop?

Chloe has demanded Topshop destroy hundreds of £35 dresses for being too similar to one of their own which costs five times as much, and is threatening other high street stores with the same treatment.

Great news if you’re fiancé’s a footballer. Not so great for the fashion foot soldiers like the rest of us.

With Chloe handbags being worth the equivalent of a mortgage repayment, and dresses costing a month’s salary, it won’t come as much of a shock that the most money I’ve ever spent in one hit was at the Chloe flagship store on London's swishy Sloane Street.

It was three summers ago, I’d become obsessed with a green Grecian gown that I thought would make a perfect summer date look, and as I was flicking through the rails I saw a girl in the store I recognised.

I was just about to ask her where I knew her from, when luckily I clocked Noel Gallagher standing next to her, and realised just in time it was Sara McDonald, before I humiliated myself.

Ended up chatting to Sara in the changing room while Noel waited outside, giving his seal of approval when prompted. ‘That’s a gorgeous dress,’ she remarked as I twirled about in it, contemplating whether I could live with myself if I spent well into four figures on one item of clothing, with the added pressure of trying to not freak out about Noel Gallagher being a few feet away from me. ‘It’s a bit low though…’

Little did she know, that’s PRECISELY the look I was going for!

Unsurprisingly, the hot date I’d bought the dress for didn’t turn exactly go according to plan, but my love affair with Chloe still continues.

When I think of the money I spent on it, it still makes me feel physically sick (yet not enough to put me off buying a Chloe Betty handbag for the best part of a grand a few years later), but I’ve rocked it at Now celebrity parties, horse-racing at Goodwood, and glittering award ceremonies since, and there’s nothing like owning the real deal and walking into a party knowing you’re in the hottest dress in the room.

And that rarely happens when you're wearing Topshop.