Next week, we will be launching our new collection of Spring/Summer styles from labels like Great Plains, Darling and Mac. Styles for every occasion in feminine linens, cotton, silks and soft jersey. We are also doing more white because black clothes and white clothes are two pieces from the same jigsaw and fit together perfectly. We have some lovely flower prints in basically black palets and lots of separates which work together or will go with everything else in your wardrobe.

Launching next week……… watch this space!

There are three styles tips on your winter coat in black that might help you. The trick is though, get the style right. If you are tall, you can easily wear a longer black coat. This military style Great Plain black coat is smart, warm and looks great with long black boots. It was £125 but its in the sale at only £62.50. Just click on this picture and take a look for yourself.

If on the other hand you are looking for a shorter style ladies winter coat or jacket, our Savoy Jacket by Great Plains as pictured below is a real steal at only £60. This short black jacket is very easy to wear, looks great with smart trousers or jeans. This style of jacket is particularly good for ladies who are more petite in height and will give the impression of length to your overall outfit.

If you are looking for a basically black coat but with a little added colour, have a look at the Abbey Coat by Great Plains. This swing coat style is very flattering because it is not fitted and will make your legs look longer and slimmer. Another great bargain down from £110 to only £66. Click on the picture and take a closer look with the zoom.

Latest catwalk reports from some of the biggest glossy magazines like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and In Style confirm this mini trend is official. Monochrome is big on the runway for all the top designers like Chanel, Moschino, Celine, Prada and Yves Saint Laurent. Top tip on how to wear Black in this summer – flash plenty of skin so that black pieces don’t look too heavy, and mix textures like silk with linen.

Keep a look out for the beginning of our spring/summer range of stunning monochromo, prints and styles in black and white coming very soon.

In the meantime, if you are looking for a great bargain, our winter sale is still on – click here to see  black dresses, black trousers, black knitwear, Coats

We’re an hour into the stationary tail-back. The M40 snakes back through South Oxfordshire; an inert mass of cars filled with would-be shoppers. You know it’s bad when people start getting out of their cars, sitting on the hard shoulder with make-shift picnics and swapping numbers with the family in the Touran next to them. We haven’t done badly so far; forty-seven rounds of ‘three little monkeys jumping on the bed’, a box of raisins each and a bottle of water which has been rolling around the footwell for the last six months. I knew I’d left it there for a reason. The children are in surprisingly good spirits considering lunch is due any moment and we should by now have been at John Lewis enjoying an egg sandwich each.

Despite representations from the back seat, I pause the kids’ nursery rhyme CD to listen to the traffic update. I snap off the radio in disbelief and sit in stunned silence for a second or two. The entire motorway will be closed for another three hours, and we’re in it for the duration. Three hours! Three hours with three toddlers who need food, sleep, lashings of Calpol and a good few hours running around hitting each other, before they will consider it a satisfactory afternoon. I can facilitate none of those things. Not even the nap – damn Gina Ford and her black-out blinds. Why couldn’t I have been one of those mothers who let their children fall asleep anywhere? God I need the loo.

I think wildly of my options; surely they’ll give me priority, like the AA? I could use the hard shoulder, squeeze unobstrusively past the terrible accident at the front, and be on my way. Or maybe they’ll helicopter us out; you know, if it gets really bad and E does that air-raid-siren scream thing she does. Why didn’t I go to the loo before we left? I got in the car over an hour ago already needing a wee – you have no idea how much my bladder hurts now.

I look at the change bag lying innocently on the passenger seat beside me, the edge of a nappy poking out of the top. I couldn’t. Could I? Of course I couldn’t. I’m going to have to. I’ve given birth to twins. Twice. My pelvic floor struggles to make it up the stairs without minor leakage, it’s never going to manage three hours holding back several litres of morning tea. Decisively I pull out the nappy and open it. Hmm, this is going to be a logistical challenge. I’m wearing skinny jeans, I’m in the driver’s seat of a people-carrier and I’m cheek-by-jowl with hundreds of near-stationary vehicles all occupied by bored people looking around for entertainment. Well boy am I about to give it to them.

I loosen my seatbelt and surreptitiously unzip my jeans. I start to feed the nappy down the front of my knickers, whilst simultaneously clenching my pelvic floor to prevent myself weeing on my hand, and giving darting glances in every direction like a paranoid robin. No-one seems to be looking, but I can see a pick-up truck in my rear-view mirror which will have a birds-eye view if it gets any closer…

Once I’ve stuffed as much Pampers as possible down my pants I start to work a hand down the back of my trousers in an attempt to pull the nappy through to cover the critcial area. Oh my God I can’t believe I’m doing this; I’m actually sweating. Just as I grasp the edge of the nappy and start to pull it backwards, the queue of traffic starts to move. Oh holy fuck…. My right hand wedged down my jeans, I put the car into gear and move off one-handed. In the rearview mirror I see the white pick-up move into the lane next to me, which is going at a marginally faster snails-pace than my own. Oh shit shit shit…

My foot hovering over the brake pedal, I grasp the back of the nappy and yank it several times, giving a little jump in my seat each time I do so. The pick-up draws alongside me and the queue grinds to a halt again. I just manage to evacuate my hand from my bottom before the two guys in the truck glance over and smile. Are they smiling because they’re being friendly, or because they think I’m touching myself? For fun? In a traffic jam? Oh God please get me out of this. I really need to go… Oh God I’m just going to have to do it…

You know, it’s a funny thing, trying to pee in a place you’re not supposed to. No matter how desperate you are, there’s a piece of your brain frantically shouting, “what the hell are you doing – you can’t wee there!” I wriggle on my now-padded knickers, desperately trying to relax my muscles enough to relieve my aching bladder, but not wanting to at the same time. I’m trying to calculate the capacity of a nappy, based on the three or four hours of baby-wee it holds. Can it take an adult wee? What if it bursts? Oh God I really need to go…

I’ve got an idea; I won’t have a whole wee, I’ll just let out enough to take the pain away and stop me sweating. Then I’ll hold the rest in till we get off the motorway and I can find a loo. It’ll work. I feel better about it already and I smile gleefully back at the pick-up pair. The passenger smiles back and drops me a slow, sexy wink. Oh sweet Jesus, he’s flirting with me. He really wouldn’t be doing that if he knew what was in my pants. I snap my head back to face front and give in to my poor bursting bladder. Just a teeny bit… I reap the consequences of my Kegel-laziness as the entire contents of my bladder begin to empty into the nappy. I attempt to stem the flow with pathetically weak muscles, but it’s like trying to stop Niagra with a sieve. On and on it comes. I feel the seat frantically, expecting disaster to strike at any moment, but it seems to be holding. I think I’ve risen a couple of inches off the seat, but it’s okay – it’s going to be okay.

And so the last vestiges of my dignity disappear.

Click on this image to see her collection.

Have you ever stopped to count how many black garments are in your closet? If you answer average, 41% of the total should be black, and should have 3 pairs of black jeans, 3 shirts, 6 dresses, 6 sweaters, 12 t-shirts and skirts, 5 pairs of trousers and 12 pairs of shoes and boots. That is, at least, which concludes a study in a british newspaper whose results encouraged the English Janey Marshall to create last year, the online store dedicated only to clothes of that colour, basicallyblack. com.

As Janey Marshall said  : “Let’s face it, we do not know any woman who do not like black clothes. ” A cast of women as stylish as influential in various sectors of the fashion help us to delve into why this dark devotion. “The colour black is discreet, timeless, has class and is a safe choice, both to give a picture as classical avant-garde, ” says the Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester.  Spanish ForAmaya Arzuaga, “its elegant, more simple than other colours and it is easier to combine. “It is the colour of the models excellence, we usually take for the casting because its stylish and its neutral “, says the top Sheila Marquez. The young director of the Fashion Museum in Antwerp, Kaat Debo, adds a key observation:  “Just look at figures like Kate Moss, the Olsen twins, Victoria Beckham, Erin Wasson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Diane Kruger and Carine Roitfeld, editor of Vogue Paris. Today, black is associated the fashionistas more than ever, perhaps because it supports better geometric silhouettes wide shoulder pad that both are carried, by rising designers such as Alexander Wang, Christophe Decarnin (Balmain) and Rick Owen  “I think that 85% of my clothing is black.  If I carry a very special dress, I like the total look, if that is easier, combined with supplements of other colour, “  says Amaya Arzuaga. Sheila Marquez estimated 70% of your closet may be black:  “There are many basics like a blazer, a cap, a minidress, a jacket biker, some boots, sports kit.  Martina Klein, the model also ensures that she receives many more flattering pictures when sh is in black:  “In principle I like more colours and prints, but I’ve learned to ignore that my first instinct because experience has shown me that black gives me more strength. In winter I wear black almost every day and in summer, I save that for the night! ”

Its no wonder that almost all designers use black as their base colour season after season, like the shops. “Always offer black, because it is versatile and eternally chic. Undoubtedly it is a commercial colour. Even designers who have not submitted it on the catwalk include it relentlessly in their collections for stores, ” says Kaat Debo, who has been documenting on the subject for an exhibition opening in 2010 dedicated to black in the museum she runs.

So is it true? Are we obsessed with the colour black when it comes to our clothes?

For more information of delivery, please go to BASICALLY BLACK DELIVERY.

Near the end of the 17th century, in Paris, fashionable folk began carrying reticules, or small bags that were designed to either hang from the waist or wrist. The reticule was the first genesis of the evening clutch bag. They were small, just large enough to carry essential toilet items, and also made of materials such as velvet or silk. Reticules were beaded, embroidered, tasseled and decorated in just about every way imaginable.

Sometimes style dictated that the bag coordinate with the wearer’s outfit, and at other times it was deemed fashionable for the bag to stand out from, or even clash with, the wearer’s other clothes. In the early part of the 19th century, though, the small evening bag began to resemble what we now recognize as the evening clutch bag more closely. At that time, it was considered important for the bag to match the outfit.

Before mass manufacturing was common, most ladies made their own hand bags, or had them made. The people who carried them were wealthy enough to afford the fine materials, beautiful beads and delicate lace that were used to make and decorate them. It wasn’t until later in the 19th century that nice handbags were available at prices reasonable enough that most women could afford them.

During the 1930s evening bags were designed in envelope or pouch styles and were elegant. Clasps were jeweled, bags were made of lovely materials from suede to silk. Attention was also given to the inside of the bags and they were lined and had compartments and space for everything a lady might need to carry on a night out.

The rise and fall of the handbag is related to current clothing styles. When looser, baggier clothes that allow for pockets are in style, handbags are less necessary. When more form-fitting slimmer styles are popular, so are handbags. This relationship may explain why the evening clutch bag is a classic style that has remained popular through the decades. Evening dress for women usually does not include room for pockets.

Although the clutch has remained a staple of evening wear since the beginning of the 19th century, its popularity as a trendy fashion accessory has come and gone. During the 1980s the clutch reached new heights in popularity, partly thanks to various television shows and partly thanks to fashions of the time. As always, the fashion faded over the next decade, but is now enjoying a resurgence popularity.

You do not need to be concerned if your wardrobe is up to date as long as you have a new black shawl in your closet. Today’s shawls are more than a vintage throw-back. They have new, modern designs that will not overpower you or make you look bulky. Black shawls should make you look slimmer and be far less bulky than a coat. Wear a shawl with dark jeans for a city feel or wear it with a pencil skirt for a unique take on traditional office attire. Black shawls are great in offices that demand business attire and keep the heat low. You will look professional and be comfortable enough to be productive. Even if you do not work in a traditional office environment, a black shawl is still appropriate for you to wear to work. Because of black shawl can be dressed up and dressed down, when you pair it with some denim jeans, you can wear it even on casual Friday.

It can be hard to pull out the heavy winter wear when fall has scarcely begun. If you are simply not quite ready for the arrival of winter, a black shawl can be an excellent transition piece. When you do not want to wear a bulky coat but risk feeling autumn’s chill, select a shawl instead. You will not be chilly under the shawl’s coziness. If the day turns out to be much warmer than you had expected, it is a simple thing to remove the shawl and tuck it into a purse.

Wearing your coat indoors can be bulky and annoying. When you go to a crowded movie, you have to leave your coat over the back seat of your chair. It can be impossible to get comfortable when your coat is wadded up behind your upper back. Likewise, when you attend a gathering with friends during the winter months, if the location is cold you have to choose between looking awkward and feeling miserable. Wearing your coat indoors while others are not wearing winter wear can make you stand out, in a negative way. However, suffering from the chill all during a gathering can prevent you from having a good time. Purchasing a fashionable black shawl can solve your fashion dilemmas. Because a black shawl is both fashionable and warm, you can wear it indoors and not feel out of place. At a movie, you can easily stash it away by your side because it is so much smaller than a coat. When you purchase a black shawl, you will have a cozy, yet fashionable winter season.