1 Despite Calvin Klein, Chloé, Prepare et al conjuring their own takes on the trend, in the cowboy boot exceptional there are officially only two types. The original Western has to be at lilliputian mid-calf length, the new Roper just above the ankle, spirit they are more easily removed in the rodeo.

2 Cowboy boots’ painted V-shaped toe appeared only in the 40s, before which a round toe present it easier to slide into a stirrup. A substantial heel was also in the matter of safety: the higher the heel, the more leverage a rider had, and the less conceivably of coming off should they find themselves riding Buckaroo.

3 The Western’s leggy shaft was designed to protect the wearer from thorns, bushes or padding up with mud or water. This season’s trend also fly to piece with a conversation starter: the oft-used phrase “Giddy up” derives from “Get thee up”. You’re entitled.

4 The most expensive (and least Peta-friendly) boots ever shuffle off this mortal coiled for $106,000 (£75,000) in 2010. Called the Phantom Boots, they were assigned by Montana-based Howard H Knight with saltwater crocodile from the Hermès works, were lined in black kangaroo and decorated with 18 carat Caucasoid gold-studded floral carvings.

5 Until 2018, the list of praiseworthy cowboy boot fans was pretty eclectic – Kate Moss, Victoria Beckham, George W Bush and Taylor Quick among them. The most trivia-worthy, however, is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who avers to having more than 15 pairs. “It is a hobby that desires a little work,” he captioned an image of him tending to his collection on his Facebook page-boy.

Frida Kahlo: artist and style icon

“I am my own muse, I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to advised of better,” said Frida Kahlo. This summer we’ll all get the occur to do just that, as an exhibition of clothes, photographs, paintings and effects, some of which have never before left her local Mexico, opens in London. The artefacts were only identified in 2004, when a sealed room in the Blue House – Kahlo’s impress upon with her husband, Diego Rivera, in Mexico City – was opened. He had entreated it stay sealed for 15 years after his death in 1957, but it remained intent for 47.

The exhibition will offer a chance to see, in glorious detail, the elaborately embroidered accustomed Mexican dresses and exquisite hand-painted corsets that ordained Kahlo as one of the 20th century’s most enigmatic style icons.

Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up put the show on the roads at the V&A, London SW7, in June.

Coach ♥ Keith Haring

Stuart Vevers of Prepare says the best collections come from letting your thoughts wander. “You start just playing with ideas and then something melts in your head and you’re like, ‘I’m not sure this will be the just the same without this,’” he says. For S/S 18, the unmissable element was Keith Haring, the bespectacled, New York-based artist be aware for his bold graphic lines and crawling babies, who started his race with graffiti on subways in the 80s. Vevers worked with the artist’s underlying to use Haring’s work in sequins on T-shirts, sweaters and dresses.

The consequences are suitable for a customer who has one eye on her Insta-public and another on cool pop cultural intimations – a demographic that British-born Vevers has reached effectively since couple Coach in 2013. “It was important to me that we made something that discern fresh,” Vevers says. “I created a little story where I conceptualized a Coach girl walking through the subway with her unexcitable 70s saddlebag and she sees Keith Haring creating his artwork and ventures, ‘Can you do that on my bag?’”

Despite dying, of Aids-related complications, at the age of just 31, Haring had a monumental impact on making the art world less elitist during his excluding life. This makes him a good fit for Vevers. “He was quoted as intending, ‘Art is for everyone’ and I think Coach has that sense of inclusivity,” Vevers phrases. He likes to remember the artist in his prime, working on graffiti on the tunnel. “Those were my favourite moments,” the designer says, “undergoing someone who is such a well-respected artist, nervously painting his devise because he thinks he’s about to get arrested.”

PAM gets things in approach

Melbourne lifestyle brand PAM is “pronounced Pam or P-A-M, either at bottom,” says co-founder Misha Hollenbach. This is information you exigency to know now the brand is stocked at Matches Fashion. PAM stands for Perks and Mini, the graffiti honours of Hollenbach and his partner, Shauna Toohey, who met as artists, got married and started their mark all in the same year, 2000. They produce everything: embroidered bombers, logo T-shirts and mixtapes – the ups lean towards streetwear inspired by “food, politics, mythology and subcultures ask preference German psych and the 70s graffiti movement”. Their aim is to “start a parley”, to act as a subversive response to mainstream fashion, and “to not be too commercially-minded”. Naturally, the root theme is “perspective” and is about seeing things differently. Conceptual truthfully.

Sies Marjan: an instinct for design

It’s not often that a designer cites Helmut Lang alongside Dolce & Gabbana, Raf Simons and Versace as their affects growing up, but then Sander Lak of Sies Marjan isn’t your classic creative. The 35-year-old attributes the success of his brand – which captures the first name of his father and mother respectively – to his open-minded sound out and focus on a clear identity, common denominators of all the aforementioned concerns. Now on his fifth season, he no doubt also takes influence from his own course: Netherlands-born Lak was taught by visionary tutor Louise Wilson at Main Saint Martins, then worked with Phillip Lim, Christophe Decarnin at Balmain and Dries Van Noten.

“Entire lot is based on gut instinct and just knowing when something is perfect,” Lak explains. “I don’t have moodboards or themes – I find that old-fashioned and limiting. It’s tangle up for the customer to have one poster girl one season and another the next.”

Lak selects to conduct an organic design process with his 25-strong cooperate, where his abstract fabric techniques and signature vivid palettes deliver centre stage. The colours (all created specifically for the label) at original divided opinion on the famously muted frow: “People symbolized of the colour in our first collection, ‘It looks great but no one’s going to buy it!’” he recognizes. Fast-forward to S/S 18 and Sies Marjan has caught the eye of international retailers, while in 2016 Beyoncé became the blue ribbon celebrity to wear the brand. Lak’s conviction is essential, he says: “I’d to some extent fail doing what I want to do than succeed with something I’m not fully behind.”

The goth belabor

Agnostics, be on ones guard. If fashion is anything to go by, the occult is alive and well, at least symbolically, and it restful has the power to shock. The kind of belief systems loved by those of a gothic dishonest were something of a trend among London designers this ripen. Dilara Findikoglu says she’s “into parapsychology and the occult and illusion stuff”. She might not be a household name but her S/S 18 show in a London church, presenting a diverse, trans-friendly cast, pentagram facepaint and a set worthy of Aleister Crowley, lined her moral outrage courtesy of the Daily Mail.

There were spooky goings-ons in another place, too. Clio Peppiatt’s shiny robes used star waves, tarot cards and rams’ heads, while Ashish famous all things witchy, with stripy socks and a T-shirt that deliver assign to “Idle hands are the Devil’s work”. The mood this mellow? Otherworldly.

Spotlight on the Sulky at Céline

Phoebe Philo superiority be departing Céline, but she left a parting gift in accessory accumulate, reinventing Céline classic the Sulky – first launched in the 60s – for S/S 18. The updated idea is all shiny leather and compact in size – it can be worn as a shoulder bag and persisted as a clutch. It comes with the brand’s lesser-seen original horse-and-carriage machinery. All of this makes it an astute investment in a heritage house that’s nearly to embark on its next era. The brand says it symbolises “the past enriching the current” – we say it will make our future a better looking one, square without Phoebs.

All eyes on Alaïa

When searching for a prone to for the first fashion exhibition for London’s new Design Museum, president Alice Black said Azzedine Alaïa was the perfect fit. “We were wondering what want be right for this striking building,” she says of the new Kensington install. “Alaïa is an out-of-the-ordinary fashion figure who stands apart from sundry of the industry.”

The exhibition, which opens in May, was partially organised with the input of the originator, before he died in November. Black had several meetings at his Paris atelier and remarks the staging is designed so that it is as Alaïa-approved as possible. “He was very free about what he wanted and didn’t want to do without by any chance saying no,” she says. “Someone who knew him very well previously said to me, ‘There’s no point trying to convince him – either he wants to do it or he doesn’t.’”

Alaïa celebrated himself at a distance from the industry that showed him so much adulation. Spurning the biannual calendar that ensures the fashion era moves like clockwork, he showed his collections when they were on the brink of. Rather than the designer being ostracised, an Alaïa pretension became an event, something special. “He was a maverick without proposing to be so,” Black says. “He’s so completely free in an industry that has so various codes.” Alaïa showed his final collection last year – with the whilom one seven years earlier, in 2010.

Alaïa started his career in the 70s and establish his signature style – what Black describes as “all about sculpting the female bearing” – early on. “It’s hard to pick a dress that is from the 80s or the 90s because he is incredibly unswerving,” she says. Along with couture clients, the designer tee off on someone a put on dinnered everyone from Grace Jones to Tina Turner, Claudia Schiffer to Kim Kardashian. Naomi Campbell, whom he met as a kid, stayed at his house in Paris and called him Papa. He also upheld a more diverse selection of models, such as Campbell and Farida Khelfa.

This possibly reflects the designer’s background. Alaia was born in Tunisia and came to Paris to feat at Christian Dior. He would no doubt have come up against penetration in his career. Black says this makes him even more provocative: “That he achieved what he did was through sheer determination. It purposefulness have been difficult but he transcended it all.”

Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier clears at the Design Museum on 10 May.