Blazers of Glory: My Fashion Lovestory

I started getting serious about fashion when I was about fifteen. I didn't tell anybody, and still dressed like a total mouche, but a spark was lit. I'd stay up late writing e-mails to any prêt-à-porter brand I could think of, asking the PR's if they'd send me a catalogue. I would come home from school excited to find yet another package for me. At first my mum chuckled and said:"If these brands ever find out that you're just a teenage kid, they're gonna regret spending a penny on postage!". After a while she didn't think much of all the correspondence from Italy, Germany and France for me. One time U.P.S. came by to deliver a heavy Pal Zileri lookbook from Italy, and I had to sign off on it! It needs no saying that I was beyond stoked. I'd sit in my chaise and drive my sisters mental watching 'Fashion TV' all day long and commenting on the poor style of montage. I'd drive friends insane telling them exactly what high fashion brand Zara or H&M emulated with every particular piece, or please them by saying they looked 'so Chloé'. 

My sister bought me a VMAN in 2007, with Orlando Bloom on the cover, and I was lost forever. Shamefaced, I'd quickly skip through the pages with scantily clad adonises in the magazine but stopped in my tracks when I saw this picture:

It was a seersucker SS07 Balenciaga blazer with an embroidered crest. I was smitten. I'd have many other love affairs with various blazers over the years to come, but that blazer was my very first love.
Months later, a SS09 Jil Sander catalogue came through the mail slot. It was a tiny little booklet, and I was so thrilled because, well: it was Jil Sander.

Cue blazer crush number two!

The colour blocking + French tricolore = me panting on the floor. 

The very same season I had a flirt with Calvin Klein Collection and wanted nothing more than stop traffic in this neon deep carmine blazer:

Then one of my all-time favourites, a SS10 blue ikat Dries Van Noten blazer jumped at me from a page in my Vogue Hommes International. I saw myself lounging on a vintage Chesterfield on an Indian beach, a pipe in one hand and vintage folding Persol reading glasses in the other. 

Such a rich print, and excellent for combining with other patterns to attain an incredibly sophisticated look.

Finally, and I've posted this one on the blog before, I gave my heart to this one of a kind Yigal Azrouël colour-block specimen I found on The Coveteur:

 Simple, classic yet modern.

I'm twenty now, and I'm sure there will be many more to add to my neverending list of fashion paramours. I can't wait for the moment I stumble across one of these blazers in a stocksale or second-hand store. Then they'll finally be mine! Until that day, consider this to be my love letter to fashion and the power of a good blazer.