Fashion Monday with JJ Lee

Regardless of today's high temperature, it 'tis the season to be wearing sweaters and I spoke with a twin set of designers - Anthony Castro and Scott Walhovd of the local label and boutique, 212 - about the warm and fuzzy. Bold...fetish...architectural are the trends governing womenswear this season but how do they apply to this season's sweaters? They do and they don't. The idea of bold silhouettes can't manifest in knitwear the way they can in leather goods or structured tailored clothes. That said, Sweaters are chunky with bold collars and details. Another trend s a low-slung aesthetic. It's like gravity has taken hold of dramatically cut soft materials and dragged it down to create the slouchy look. Think swooshes, downward hem lines and neck lines. It's a relief after years of high-cropped clothes like belly shirts and layered looks that have segmented women's bodies between the bust and waist. Now, it's time to look at layering action around ...

This season is about taking all the trends you've been hearing about and wearing these last few months and mashing them together so the separate trends for ankle boots, gladiator sandals and metallics converge in one brassy, black-heeled Gucci. The trend towards SHAPE, TAILORING and ARCHITECTURE melds in to a houndstooth tweed, leather and wood block heeled platform by Marni. And there's still room for subtlety in a Christian Louboutin limited-edition peep-toe pump, the platform is covered and peeps at the toe. Cheeky. All can be found at Holt Renfrew , right now. Thanks, Carla for bringing it to CBC.

Amy Lapsley asked via Facebook: Amy Lapsley at 9:51pm September 17 what do you think of obama v. mccain in the fashion department? My response: JJ Lee at 11:31am September 18 Obama looks great. McCain seems feeble but that's an age thing. I find their attire more invisible than the attire of our candidates. One of the great goals of sophisticated masculine style is to make the clothes invisible. The focus should be on the person. Both McCain and Obama have done that. Because, our leaders are less skilled in dress, they often wear things that draw attention to their clothes - mistakes are noticeable, dressing well is all about "je ne sais quoi"! And you, Amy Lapsley always achieve the quoi!

The Conservative party's strategic deployment of the blue sweater vest to soften Canadians' impression of Stephen Harper has turned the sartorial sensibility of all the candidates into a campaign side issue. Taking the initiative, Harper now owns the sweater. While in previous campaigns politicians have pulled out sweaters to show solidarity with the regular folks, something is different this time around because it worked. It would seem no other candidate can now wear a cardigan, vest or pullover without cuing close clothes watchers to reference Harper's first strike (as seen in the above still from the first volley of Conservative election ads - this one titled, " Family is Everything "). It reminds me of Nike's attempts in the 1980s to initiate branding by electronic colonisation. The athletic shoe maker faded their famous swoosh logo into a field of TV static with the hopes of making electronic snow a visual cue for viewers to see the Nike logo where it wa...

Nine West's ankle boot with pleated vamp and in-step zippers at Town Shoes stays on trend without an early style expiry date. It's ten hours by plane to the latest fashion trends of Paris and Milan, but today we bring it home on Vancouver by Design. We hit the mall and find out what looks have made the jump over the pond and into local shops. Q. How were you able identify fall trends for this season? My usual answer would be that I research on the usual garment trade websites, blogs and view the European runway shows on line and I do do that...but today a took a more shopper/consumer-centred approach. I bought the latest copy of Vogue Magazine - the September 2008 Fall bible - and hauled that mammoth magazine into Metrotown's Metropolis Shopping Centre. Q. Why did you do that? The main reason is I wanted to correlate the trends and hot styles put forward in Vogue and find out how it translated into the boutiques most women would shop at in Vancouver. So, essentially, I went...