Well you know what they say? All is fair in love and war, but what about fashion?

With fresh news, it appears that the House of Valentino may not be as luscious and darling as we all first thought. It was reported today, chief designer at Valentino, Alessandra Facchinetti, who took the helm after Valentino retired in sept. 2007,  was sacked after the latest collection (S/S 09) was displayed in Paris. Fair enough you think, people are allowed to hire and fire whom they like, but to do it via the press? That IS pretty shameful.

This news is so fresh that even wikipedia hasn’t been updated yet and apparently the gloves are more than off at Valentino. Facchinetti was scorned by long time Valentino business associate and ex boyfriend, Giancarlo Giammetti after the show stating, “to pretend to transform and revolutionise the Valentino style is a utopia which is a loss from the start.” It appeared that Facchinetti hadn’t done enough to evoke the Valentino feel upon the catwalk with the man himself even stating, with formidable disdain that “there is an existing archive with thousands of dresses where [a designer] can draw and take inspiration from to create a Valentino product that is relevant today. It is a shame that [Facchinetti] didn’t feel this need.”

And with that she was promptly and publicly sacked.

It’s one thing to be annoyed at someones work, but to openly declare that they haven’t supported your legacy maybe a bit much. But then it’s your legacy so I suppose you wanna get that stuff right? Also this isn’t the first time Alessandra has been fired from a major deisgner brand, the young designer left Gucci after just two seasons.

This unconventional and down right rude sacking of this young female designer has led to rumblings of sexism and  discontent within the fashion world, instigating that it’s near on impossible for young females to succeed in this male dominated industry.

Hopefully this is just an ugly isolated incident that will be a warning to others before they jump aboard the Valentino ship, however if the sexist rumours and whispers are true, it is actually a very sad day for fashion design the world over.

Exciting news people.

As koodos gears up for London Fashion week, it was with great success that Vauxhall Fashion Scout held a salon evening last night, with the organisers John Walford and Martyn Roberts working closely with koodos, for up and coming fashion designers, a number of whom are going to be showing their collections at VFS during London Fashion week next month.

As part of our presence at London Fashion Week in September as a sponsor of the off schedule catwalk event Vauxhall Fashion Scout, koodos  has established a mentoring program, again working closely with VFS, for young designers and last night was the first furor into the the new initiative.

Our hugely experienced CEO, Miriam Lahage, was the guest speaker at the evening, held in the beautiful Craft Central building in Clerkenwell, speaking to the assembled designers about her experience within the buying arena.

Miriam gave some invaluable tips and hints on how a young designer can prosper in a very challenging market. Not only did she offer advice on how to deal with buyers, but also how to deal with the current economic downturn, insight into how designers get stuff out there and more importantly get seen.

A cosy event, with Vauxhall Fashion Scout designers (and a few designers just after some advice) in attendance, all said how helpful and insightful the evening was.

We are all super excited about our mentoring scheme and as a result we will be announcing which designers we will be featuring in a special Boutique on the koodos website.

The Boutique will be open during London Fashion Week and in Miriam’s own words “It isn’t easy for young designers to break into new outlets and also money is tight for them. We have created the Boutique to help the designers as well as enable the fashion loving public to access some breathtaking collections that wouldn’t otherwise be available to them.”

More exciting news about Vauxhall Fashion Scout, the Boutique and London Fashion Week coming soon - watch this space.

Photography by Nick Stovey