Review of the Year 2011: Fashion

We would never pretend to be fashionistas here at It’s Nice That (and bear in mind we are based in a part of east London where people appear to be achingly styled for the lunchtime sandwich run) but there’s still been a lot to enjoy over the past 12 months, particularly at the more unusual end of the spectrum.

A couple of designers have had eye-catchingly good years – it’s been exciting to see David David push the boundaries with some of his collaborations and we were thrilled for Sir Paul Smith when he picked up his latest award. Lernert and Sander (stars of It’s Nice That Issue #7) created a beautiful set of videos to promote Hermes during London Fashion Week, and were mighty close to making our final cut, while we were excited to continue our joint projects with ASOS, commissioning some of our favourite designers to make some tremendous limited edition vests and T-shirts.

Iris van Herpen

This year saw a great deal of attention paid to 3D printing and its many possibilities. Dutch designer Iris van Herpen captured this zeitgeist most memorably in the fashion world with her mind-bogglingly intricate creations. Bold and beautiful she manages to make the process far more than a gimmick and one of her dresses was the star of Murray Moss’ London Design Festival 3D printing show at The V&A.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/iris-van-herpen

Hannah Taylor

In purely statistical terms, no fashion post on our website can hold a candle to Hannah Taylor’s joyous knitted creations. But it’s not just the rampant popularity that secures her place in our list, it’s simpy that the work itself is so relentlessly wonderful, with unashamed use of colour and a glorious celebration of patterns. She also may have reclaimed the balaclava from the bad guys, which merely makes us love her more.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/hannah-taylor

Lanvin: Autumn/Winter video

One of the things that we love to see is a brand repositioning themselves with wit and style – the bigger the transformation the better in our eyes. We weren’t the only ones to sit up and take notice when this new Lanvin promo did the rounds, and the incongruous mix of Pitbull’s annoyingly-catchy track and the usual array of po-faced models (and even Lanvin’s creative director Alber Elbaz’) abandoning themselves to the ridiculous dance was as fun as it was unexpected, from a brand long synonymous with stiff tradition. Uno dos, tres, cuatro…