K-Day

Fashion Desk takes on the crowds in Queen Street to battle it out for a piece of the most over-hyped collection of the year

By LC

Despite its capital-city status, Cardiff has yet to experience a good, hard fashion-scrum. The Anya Hindmarch ‘I’m not a plastic bag’ wasn’t even delivered to any Cardiff- based Sainsbury’s stores and, let’s face it, no one really gave a toss about the Madonna line for H&M. But with the high level of anticipation surrounding the Kate Moss for Topshop line, surely even the sleepy Cardiff fashion scene would get a little excited about one of the year’s biggest fashion events.

One thing is for sure; the amount of press coverage of the collection has been immense, and clearly cleverly orchestrated to attract a certain level of hype. Since the mini- preview in April’s Vogue, pieces of the collection slowly trickled onto the pages of various fashion mags, designed to get the fashion- savvy moss fans salivating.

After last Monday’s flagship frenzy at London’s Oxford Circus, the Cardiff Topshop prepped its biggest security team and hoped for the best, but yet again, to no avail. The crowds began queuing a measly hour before the shop’s doors were due to open; not a patch on some of Britain’s other die hard shoppers, who were waiting a painstaking eight hours to get their hands on a piece from the collection. The student turnout was particularly disappointing, considering that we’re really the only Cardiff citizens with enough time on our hands to bother dragging our sorry-selves out of bed to catch a piece of the action.

The Cardiff store was treated to some of Moss’s key pieces; the white silk ruffle detail jacket, coin-chain waistcoat, gladiator sandals and the iconic poppy dress. Some Moss fans waiting outside the store had hoped to snap- up the one-shoulder white dress and gold sequin accessories, but once inside, these garments were no where to be seen. Even with the absence of some of the most sought-after pieces, the sheer volume of the collection that Cardiff received still seemed to be carelessly crammed into one tiny corner of the store.

Perhaps the Cardiff citizens wisely decided to shop from home and took their chances on Topshop’s online boutique, which began selling at 4.15am on Tuesday morning. All the collections ‘must- haves’ sold out online by 6.30 and then mysteriously appeared on eBay a few hours later selling for at least twice the price. Those Cardiff city Moss fans who missed out on the madness can take comfort in the knowledge that this wasn’t a one-off ‘frenzy’; the press office for the Arcadia are working hard to maintain the hype, as items from the 60-strong piece collection are due to be added regularly. There are also plans for another three seasons worth of collections from Moss – not bad for a cool 3 million. Maybe when Cardiff’s new improved Topshop store (rumoured to be second only to London’s flagship) opens its doors next month, disillusioned shoppers might be able to whip up more enthusiasm.

A word from behind the front lines in the Cardiff store…

We’ve been anticipating it for months, been briefed for weeks and finally the rota was out. I was working the Kate Moss launch, every girl’s dream.

The early shift began with a bubbling sense of anticipation. Would we have huge queues? Would eager fans battle over the last pair of hot pants or final waistcoat? Would there even be people camping out the night before as one dedicated student assured me?

Well, not quite. It was more of an orderly operation in which fans scuttled in eyeing up their carefully planned out buys with hawk-like precision.

The apparent calm and collectivity soon faded when customers were informed that they could only buy five different items. The fitting room became a scene of frenzied-but-focused trying on and analysis of which buys would be best. Lucky for Miss Moss, the most expensive items were deemed most appropriate by most.

The till point saw relieved faces that were by no means reluctant to give up large sums of cash for Kate or bombard us with questions. With their dignity restored by the fact they had been among the first the get their mitts on this collection, the shoppers trotted out triumphantly and I went back to sorting out the sale rail.