Kristin Scott Thomas: 'I cannot cope with another film'

Kristin Scott Thomas has had enough. She has been working flat out for 30 years, and made 65 films: having lived in Paris since the age of 19, she effectively has two careers, one in English and one in French. Even her cleaner thinks her workload is insane. Last September, for the first time in her life, she reached a point where she could no longer go on. "I just suddenly thought, I cannot cope with another film," she says. "I realised I've done the things I know how to do so many times in different languages, and I just suddenly thought, I can't do it any more. I'm bored by it. So I'm stopping." Having always been a workaholic, she now likes to think of herself, she jokes, as a "recovering actress".

For the past 15 years, the actor has fashioned a highly respected career out of small parts in biggish English-language films, such as the John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, and big parts in smaller French films, such as the prisoner returning home in I've Loved You So Long. But she is tired of working on films whose scripts keep being rewritten at the last minute. "The kinds of films that I do are usually quite rapidly put together, and it always seems to be a little bit of a shambles. I like filming, but what I don't like is having to rearrange things and rewrite scenes. I just can't be bothered."

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She is tired, too, of being cast in films that need her more than she needs them. "I'm often asked to do something because I'm going to be a sort of weight to their otherwise flimsy production. They need me for production purposes, basically. So they give me a little role in something where they know I'm going to be able to turn up, know what to do, cry in the right place. I shouldn't bite the hand that feeds, but I keep doing these things for other people, and last year I just decided life's too short. I don't want to do it any more."

This is the second time Scott Thomas has decided to walk away from work that many actors would kill for. The first was in the late 1990s, when the success of Four Weddings And A Funeral had catapulted her into Hollywood A-list roles in The Horse Whisperer, Mission: Impossible andThe English Patient. "But it was geographically unfriendly, because I just didn't want to go to America." She was married to a Frenchman, had two young children, and the family wanted to live in France or, at the very least, Europe.

But it wasn't just about that. "No, it's also that I can't bear all the kind of rubbish that goes on on those big films. I just can't stand sitting around for hours in a great big luxury trailer, waiting, bored out of my head. I used to do," she offers drily, "a lot of tapestry. Yes, I had a lot of cushions around."

She did have one minor relapse five years ago when she appeared in the airhead comedy Confessions Of A Shopaholic, but at its mention her face freezes in a pantomime of horror. "I thought it would be quite good fun. But I spent my entire time waiting. I hated it, hated it, hated it, and I said that I wouldn't do another one." Grinning, she adds, "Funnily enough, I haven't been asked to."

Actors are seldom this candid. It is an unwritten rule of the profession to speak highly of every film you've ever been involved in – but then, Scott Thomas has always been a singular sort of film star. Very few British actors work in a foreign language, for a start, and when she arrives at the studio in Paris where we meet, she's so out of the habit of speaking English that she keeps beginning sentences in French. She is makeup-free and wearing glasses which, she says, are very useful for deflecting attention: "Because people don't think, oh, who's that old woman with the round glasses?"

There is no publicist in attendance, and she submits to the attentions of the hairstylist and makeup artist without fuss. She has the sort of informality that comes from having done this many times before, and talks freely without appearing to wonder or worry about how she might sound in print. At 53, she is more preoccupied by how she looks.

Scott Thomas is mesmerisingly beautiful, but she refers to herself as an "ageing actress" and keeps saying, "I'm terribly old" or, "I'm positively ancient." In fact, being ancient might make things slightly easier, for she adds, "I'm sort of, as the French would say, 'stuck between two chairs', because I'm no longer 40 and sort of a seductress, and I'm not yet a granny." She got a terrible shock a few years ago when a close-up portrait taken for this newspaper was reprinted in a glossy magazine, without being digitally retouched. "It was a really great picture, and looked fine on a grainy piece of paper in black-and-white," she says now. "But on the gloss of a magazine cover, without being retouched, it was the most terrifying thing. It really brought home to me how the images of women we see are so manipulated." Accustomed these days to seeing faces digitally perfected, anyone who saw the magazine would, she groans, have thought: "My God, Kristin Scott Thomas, she's so ancient!"

As a middle-aged woman, she finds herself increasingly overlooked in everyday life, and has talked a lot in recent years about the unnerving experience of becoming invisible. So it's ironic that her latest film is calledThe Invisible Woman (the title actually refers to its young heroine, Charles Dickens' secret mistress, Nelly Ternan). It is a screen adaptation of Claire Tomalin's biography of the 18-year-old actress, who captured Dickens' heart when he was a married father of nine and more than twice her age. Felicity Jones plays Ternan and Scott Thomas plays her widowed mother Catherine, who oversees the affair with worldly maternal anxiety, part Victorian chaperone and part pragmatic pimp.

It is a slow-paced but beautifully shot and absorbing film. For Scott Thomas, its principal appeal was the chance to work again with Ralph Fiennes, who plays Dickens and also directed the film. Like her, he puts in an electrifying performance – which is all the more remarkable given that he appears on screen in almost every scene and has previously directed just one film. "It's a brilliant performance," she says, "and it was so lovely to work with him again. But it wasn't just that. There was something about playing a woman who has to make decisions about her child and evaluate her child's chances, and I found that very moving, the responsibility of the mother of this daughter. I just wanted to do it."

The only downsides were the corsets and petticoats and bustles. Her waist had to be drawn so tightly that she was physically sick, while the petticoats were so heavy that her arms would ache just to lift them. "I didn't want to wear the wigs and I didn't want to wear the costumes. I don't know how those women did it," she marvels coolly.

Wardrobe discomfort notwithstanding, however, period dramas often seem to provide the most substantial roles for older actresses, raising the disquieting thought that perhaps older women were accorded greater status in Victorian times than they are today. "I don't know," she ponders. "It's an interesting thought. Is it to do with our mania for youth, our kind of addiction to youth?" Then again, she points out, The Invisible Woman is a tale of a 45-year-old man leaving his wife of 22 years in 1858 for a woman not even half his age, so perhaps then and now are not so different after all. If anything, the parallels between the two eras are "more or less literally dramatised by the film – by the fact that Ray is getting to jump into bed with the lovely Felicity Jones". In The English Patient, Fiennes and Scott Thomas played lovers; 18 years later, the 51-year-old actor's love interest is an actress 21 years his junior, while Scott Thomas must play her mother.

I tell her that, for me, the film's most compelling characters are all middle-aged. Alongside Fiennes she co-stars with the magnificent Joanna Scanlan and Tom Hollander, and it's they who bring the screen alive. "Well," she nods, "I don't want to go and see a film about young people. I'm just not remotely interested. When I go to the movies, I'd rather watch people who've lived, who have gone through the mill, who've had their heart broken a million times and are still looking for love. That's what's interesting to me."

She thinks the film industry might just be starting to realise there is a market for films about older people. The population is ageing, for a start – "So they've got to make something to entertain us" – and films now have a commercial lifespan far beyond box-office receipts, making teenagers' dominance of cinema seats less important. "I just think there really need to be stories about people who have been through life and are still hopeful."

She is encouraged by the success of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and by the rumours of a sequel. Even the recent return to TV of Birds Of A Feather is good news, she thinks, its female stars now being in their 50s and 60s. What about Downton Abbey, I ask. Scott Thomas's great heroine, Maggie Smith, is flourishing in the drama at 79, and so is Shirley MacLaine. Scott Thomas starred in Downton creator Julian Fellowes' first feature film, Gosford Park – another country-house period drama – so I ask if she could see herself joining the cast. She shakes her head.

"I can't do miniseries. Once you've got the characters, once you know who they are, they're going to repeat themselves, aren't they, for the next five years? It just goes on and on and on. I get terribly bored. Series bore me."

She is also rather weary of being typecast, playing quiet despair and heartbreak with the particular strain of dignity first showcased in Four Weddings. Scott Thomas hasn't had to audition for a part in years, but as a consequence gets "asked to do the same things over and over, because people know you can do that, so they want you to do that. But I just don't want to pretend to be unhappy any more – and it is mostly unhappy."

I suspect she is cast in unhappy roles because she has a gift for looking so compellingly beautiful when miserable. "Thank you very much, I'll try and make the most of that," she jokes. She has another theory: "Although I don't really think of myself as a sad person, there has been a lot of sadness. I've known a lot of sadness; I know what it's like to be sad. So I guess I have access to that, and can tap into it."

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Scott Thomas was born in Cornwall in 1960, the eldest of five, to a former drama student mother and Royal Navy pilot father who died in a flying accident when she was five. Her mother married another pilot, who died in an almost identical accident when Scott Thomas was just 11. She was sent to a girls' boarding school, before enrolling at drama school in London, where she was told she would never make the grade and so decamped to Paris to be an au pair. There she studied drama again and was spotted by, of all people, Prince, who promptly cast her as his love interest in his vanity project Under The Cherry Moon. She was, critics agreed, the only decent thing in it, and has been working more or less nonstop ever since.

But, by her own account, she was not a happy young woman, and spent several years in analysis. She has been free of depression for years now, and comes across as conspicuously at ease with herself: grounded, good-natured and unflappable. Her comments about all the things she no longer likes about her film career may make her come across in print as rather grumpy, but her critique seems to derive from a newfound sense of liberation and self-belief. She is no longer the guarded, rather remote character who – as she herself says – invariably used to attract freezing water-based metaphors. In recent years, interviewers have remarked on how much she has thawed, and it would be easy to assume this has something to do with her 2006 divorce. In fact, she says, it was her rediscovery of theatre just over a decade ago that transformed how she felt about herself and her work.

In 2001, she played the title role in Bérénice on stage in France, having not been on stage for more than 15 years. It was a revelation. "I suddenly felt independent. You could walk on stage and you could stand on your head if you really wanted to. No one's going to say stop, don't do that, that's a ridiculous idea. There's this feeling of independence and trust – I could give myself permission to play things in a certain way and see if they worked or they didn't. I could trust myself."

The trouble with acting in films, she goes on, is that "you're constantly being told what to do. 'Move your head that way. Can you cry a bit more? Can you do this, can you do that? Oh, that was lovely, that was amazing, that was beautiful.' And sometimes you think, that wasn't amazing and wonderful and beautiful, it was just a look. But you've got this person saying it was. And then it's taken away from you, and it's all mixed up and made into something else. Basically, when you are acting in a film, you're giving the director the raw material to make the film. But when you're acting on stage, that's it. And that's when you discover that you can really do it. It's this word 'trust' that keeps coming to me. It's not a question of whether one person is conning you into thinking you can do it, saying, 'Oh, it was beautiful.' On stage, if it works, it works."

If Scott Thomas used to come across as somewhat aloof, she thinks this had a lot to do with her own ambivalence about her acting, and self-disdain for the narcissism of a career spent chiefly sitting around in trailers, waiting to be told what to do by a director. Since Bérénice she has starred in five West End plays, including two Chekhovs and twoPinters, won an Olivier award for best actress, and every time she talks about being on stage, her face lights up with excitement.

She says she will still make some films, but only those she absolutely can't resist. For the first time since her 20s, she is getting accustomed to the novelty of choice, for her daughter and eldest son are now in their 20s themselves, and her youngest son is 13, so the financial pressure of supporting her family is beginning to ease. She met her former husband, a gynaecologist, when she was at drama school, but since their marriage ended she has been facing a new freedom she's still not entirely sure what to do with. "I'm starting to think, hang on a minute, soon my youngest is going to go off and do whatever he's going to do. But this is what's quite fun about being me at the moment – making one's own choices, for reasons of one's own, and not trying to please a career person, or make money. I guess that's a sign of maturity, I think."

She and her ex-husband share joint custody of their youngest son, and although that makes life "much more complicated – you have to make appointments to talk to the father of your child, which is a bore", relations are amicable. "I know for so many people it hasn't turned out right, and they can't get the other partner to engage, and that sounds like hell. But I've been very, very lucky. Married the right man, had babies with the right man." She grins cheerfully. She does feel lonely sometimes: "But I think everybody does sometimes. I used to feel lonely when I was married and had three children, you know." The worst times are August, when Paris decamps en masse for the summer holiday. "Everyone's gone, you're on your own, and it's agony. You're trying to book a hotel, but you can't because the hotels are all full of these fucking families!" She laughs.

But the biggest challenge is deciding where she should even be. She has often said she feels more French than English, so I'm surprised to hear her say she is seriously thinking of returning to the UK in the not too distant future. Her adopted country appears to be, she says sadly, in terminal decline. "I think so. Everyone says it is, and it's quite believable. Five years ago, I would have said great schools, great education, great transport, trains are wonderful, roads are great, all that kind of thing – great, great, great. You can't really say that any more. And at the moment I'm really worried about the rise of antisemitism in France, which is just really unbelievable." Someone, she says, has got to stop National Front leader Marine le Pen.

Then again, she confesses, she doesn't actually vote, because she has never got round to getting a French passport. "It's about split personalities – it's about my life already being complicated enough. I'm splitting into a million pieces with this job I do, and I feel like I live in two countries, so having two nationalities as well feels too much. But I feel flaky not voting, I'm sort of ashamed of it."

What does she make of the revelations about François Hollande's private life? "Oh, I would really prefer not to know. In France, we are all shocked that the press has been so invasive, because there is a very strong – and I think quite right – belief that a private life should be private. But where I come a cropper is with this 'first girlfriend' business. I'm rather old-fashioned. This idea of being first girlfriend," she says, beginning to laugh, "is just bollocks to me."

Façonnable Relaunches for Fall ’14

Over the past sixty-plus years, Façonnable has established itself as a brand that captures the essence of the Côte d’Azur lifestyle (think: a round of tennis followed by an afternoon spent sailing off the coast of Monaco). Best known for its classic men’s suits and signature sporty staples, such as polo shirts and chinos, the label is repositioning itself and reviving its womenswear program for Fall ’14 with the help of its new artistic director, Daniel Kearns. Before taking the helm at Façonnable, Kearns served as the design director of menswear for Yves Saint Laurent under Stefano Pilati, and also worked at Louis Vuitton, Alexander McQueen, and John Galliano. With this proven prowess in masculine tailoring, he rose to the challenge of creating his first women’s collection. “This is the first time I have mixed both tailoring and flow. Womenswear needs a more sensitive approach and is another mind-set,” he told.

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For his debut ladies’ lineup, Kearns kept the look elegant and understated (for the most part), whipping up sharp tuxedos, slim sheaths, and plush outerwear. His looks feature subtle accents that recall Façonnable’s heritage, such as braided trims and belts (a nod to the brand’s nautical roots). With an eye on the modern customer, he added several pieces that felt a bit more fashion-forward, including novelty bomber jackets and a metallic rose-gold pencil skirt. Another major development here was the reintroduction of eveningwear, which plays an important role in Façonnable’s history. When Jean Goldberg founded the label, in 1950, many actresses sought him out for gowns to wear to the Cannes Film Festival. With that in mind, Kearns showed a handful of beautiful, body-skimming column dresses with capelet details in back—the style in crimson-hued silk was a particular standout. “When you think of the French Riviera, you think of Cannes and women like Romy Schneider and Grace Kelly in Monte Carlo, as well as the photography of Helmut Newton and all the artists who retreated here for inspiration,” he explained. Altogether, Kearns’ impressive first foray into womenswear (in addition to new advertising campaigns, updated branding, and refurbished stores) suggests a bright new future for Façonnable.

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On your marks

Marks & Spencer is the quintessential British retailer; a one-stop shop loved by all ages, outfitting everyone from baby to grandad and furnishing the entire house, even the contents of the fridge (albeit at a price). It’s safe to say the retailer holds a very special place at the heart of the great British high street. It feels especially appropriate that it should launch a collection in which every element from design board to sewing machine has been made in Britain.

The new range is composed of offerings for both men and women, timelessness and heritage design being the focus. “The idea for the Best of British menswear collection was born from the M&S archive, based in Leeds,” Tony O’Connor, head of design for the menswear collection, says. “The archive contains hundreds of pieces from throughout the decades; naturally it was the perfect starting point for a collection synonymous with British heritage and design.”

The once-booming British textile industry has seen a decline thanks to the economic efficiency of out-sourcing to manufacturers abroad, but these collections have allowed the brand to turn back to home-grown talents. The knitwear company Hawick, based in the Scottish borders, tailoring experts Cheshire Bespoke and outerwear specialist Cooper and Stollbrand are just some of the long-established manufacturers who were involved in creating these pieces.

It’s not just British manufacturing that makes the collections stand apart from the other offerings on the store’s rails; the real selling point is its positioning at the premium end of the high-street spectrum. The considered design, superior fabrics and techniques used all hike up the quality to a level we traditionally associate with the label “Made in Britain”. Of course, this means the range comes with a higher-than-high-street price tag. Some thrifty customers may balk at an £800 suit; equivalent English tailoring at a designer store, however, would come with an extra zero.

The womenswear range sticks close to the heritage theme, but adds an edge. “There’s also a distinct androgynous feel, with several pieces very much influenced by masculine styling,” Neil Hendy, head of design for womenswear, says. Tweed suits in grey and coats in camel shades make up a classic offering, alongside a pop of autumn/winter 2013’s favourite Pepto-Bismol pink.

In menswear, watch out for cashmere jumpers, double-breasted coats, and Prince of Wales check blazers that, suitably, seem fit for royalty. Can’t get more British than that.

He Wears Short Shorts. . . Introducing the Mofty Boys

Now I have a treat for you. I can’t claim I actually crashed earlier in the year when I stuck my neck out and wrote to you about British men and beards—but let’s put it this way: Surprise, surprise, bearded boys proved to be rather popular with girls. So here’s a sequel. Ever in pursuit of pleasing news from this side of the pond, I bring you an in-depth report on the latest runaway British male trend of summer 2013. Allow me to introduce the Mofty: pretty young London boys who are taking to the streets, clubs and festivals wearing a startling array of pretty shorts (which are getting shorter by the week) with pretty shirts, in all sorts of colorful prints.

Mofty? I don’t know what it means, either (any ideas, please let us know). I have to thank my daughter Maisie for alerting me to the terminology. I’d just come home from a long tube journey one sunny evening and noticed—eyes on stalks —that crowds of boys kept getting on and off wearing slim, knee-length shorts in many colors and patterns: pink, baby blue, yellow, red, striped, polka-dotted. All of them were wearing them nonchalantly rolled up at the hem—a uniform turn-up of about three-quarters of an inch. When a teenager lolloped on wearing a blue denim pair covered in pink chintzy roses and proceeded to canoodle with his girlfriend, well, I had to call my 20-year-old spy in the field the minute I got home.

“Oh yes, Mummy!” she sighed patiently. “We call them Mofties. They’ve all got those haircuts short at the side and long on top? And shirts and T-shirts with, like, little flowers or birds on them? And old-school Air Max Nike trainers in all these bright colors. Some have leopard-spot bits on them too.” And then she texted me a picture of the shorts the boy she shares her flat with had just bought. There he was, resplendent in beige chino-shorts trimmed with pink-and-blue Liberty print turn-ups. “Gosh,” I replied. “And what does Mofty stand for?” “Dunno,” came the response. “It’s just what everyone started calling them after Hideout in Croatia [a festival earlier this summer]. And now they’re starting to wear them shorter and shorter.”

The closest to an explanation I’ve received comes from Jeremy Langmead, editor at Mr Porter, Net-a-Porter’s brother site. “Could it be Man of the Year?” he hazarded. “But I don’t know, either.” These teenagers! A study of Mr Porter’s inventory shows, sure enough, however, that there are quite a few Mofty-looking shorts going on there. Micro-polka dotted ones. A pair prettily decorated with minute embroidered flowers.

Checking around, I hit on the men’s department of the British high street store River Island. Peruse that website and you will see the very definition of Mofty style as it’s been worn by young, skinny boys everywhere here.

I called Andy Grant, River Island’s head of menswear buying. He hadn’t heard the Mofty-word either, but he was sounding like a very happy man, because, sure enough, sales in boy-fashion are soaring over here. “I can’t remember a time when British menswear has been as exciting as this. They love color and prints.” But who started it, Andy, who’s leading it? “I can’t really say it’s coming from any one thing. I think it’s partly Harry Styles and that whole boy-band thing.”

“It started out smart and preppy,” he continued. “But then we noticed boys at festivals this summer starting to wear printed swim-shorts as shorts with all kinds of tight colorful tops. And it’s gone really fast from there.” I clicked over to J.Crew menswear for a Stateside comparison. Sure enough, the home of American young-preppy style is moving along the same vector. Brightly hued, color-blocked, slim-fit shorts are there aplenty, and I notice another key refinement going on: hemline choice—from a knee-grazing eleven inches all the way up to a minishort five.

Well, I’ve learned a lot this week. One thing I should point out is that Mofties in no way intersect with Men with Beards. Mofty boys don’t grow beards because . . . they’re too young and far too pretty. But that doesn’t stop English girls going absolutely wild over them. Can’t you see why?

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The V&A’s Gone Clubbing

“The eighties were about being yourself,” said Kate Bethune when asked about the looks in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s latest show, Club to Catwalk. Open from today, the exhibition explores the explosion of ostentatious creativity that rose out of London’s eighties club scene, and how these underground fashions manifested themselves on the catwalk. Throughout the decade, designers and characters such as John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Boy George, and the king of the club era—performance artist Leigh Bowery

would create DIY ensembles, dress to the nines, and take on larger-than-life personas in iconic haunts such as Blitz, Kinky Gerlinky, and Taboo. One such character was milliner Stephen Jones, who has two hats featured in the show. “People didn’t really use the word style before 1982,” Jones told Style.com. “But suddenly, your style made it seem as if you were actively concerned about your appearance. It was more personal than fashion,” explained Jones, who described his own nightlife look as “a big dollop of Fellini, hats, French Left Bank, and a little bit of fifties thrown in for good measure.” Naturally, if you weren’t dressed your best, clubs would turn you away at the door. “The Blitz was the most difficult one to get into,” offered Jones. “The guy on the door was Trojan, and he had a little mirror in his pocket, and he’d famously hold it up and say, ‘Would you let you in?’” Jones didn’t have that problem, but sadly none of his own top-to-toe costumes survived. “Our outfits were only made to last one night. They’d sort of dissolve,” he said, adding, “If you wore something from a department store, or designer fashion, it would have been the kiss of death. Terminally uncool.”

High fashion, however, was unquestionably inspired by what was seen on the dance floor. Designers—both those who clubbed and those who didn’t—looked to style tribes of the time like Fetish, Goth, Rave, High Camp, and New Romantics. Vivienne Westwood was a champion and a pioneer of the latter (she has an entire case dedicated to her eighties wares in the show), and John Galliano (who’s Fallen Angel suit is above), Katharine Hamnett, and more wove club styles and sentiments into their collections. “Back in the eighties, John Galliano said that the clubs inspired so many designers, Central Saint Martins’ classrooms would be dead on Thursdays and Fridays because everyone was at home making their outfits for the weekend,” said Bethune.

The exhibition documents the club years via more than eighty-five looks displayed on two floors—one of which is dedicated to the catwalk, the other a re-creation of an actual eighties hot spot. “I hope people get the sense of how fun and liberating and eclectic it was,” said Bethune. “Literally anything went. And you could be a different person every night. You just had to change your dress.

Club to Catwalk is on view at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum through February 16, 2014.

Which Spring 2013 Trend Should You Try?

    Spring has officially sprung! And you know what that means for us at College Fashion? That’s right, Spring 2013 trends are in full bloom and in our closet rotation starting now. You’ve already figured out which Spring 2013 color trend to wear. But do you know which of the fashion trends is best for your style? We’ve created this newest personality quiz to help you sift through the crazy and pinpoint exactly what trend works for you.

    Just take this quiz below to find out which Spring 2013 trend you should try! If you take the quiz here on the site, the widget will automatically total up your answers for you. If you print the quiz, total up the letters you got and find which one you selected the most. Once you get your answer, find your letter and corresponding result below for a sample outfit based on your personality type

Mostly A’s: Black & White Stripes
    This look is edgy and bold, but the classic colors keep it from being too crazy. For this look, start with a horizontal-striped tank dress. Next, add accessories like a jeweled collar and striped sunnies. Finish the look with simple black sandals, a drop bucket bag, and a shark tooth ring.

Mostly B’s: Monochromatic Look
    Bright hues are all the rage this season. You can choose a bright red, yellow, green, pink, or any of your other favorites. For this look, I decided on a bright cobalt blue with some shorts (that look like a skirt from the front) and a matching jacket. Layer a simple white tee underneath the jacket, then accessorize with a geometric necklace, white sandals, and black circle-shaped sunnies.

Mostly C’s: Peek-a-boo Cutouts
    Cutouts were wildly popular on the runway for spring. They can be found in the most unexpected places and in unexpected shapes, and since this trend is so popular, it’s easy to find a piece with flattering cutouts that work for you. This floral print dress with triangular chest cutout is a good option since it’s conservative, but still a little bit flirty. Complete the ensemble with flat sandals, a leather band watch, a bright yellow purse, and cat stud earrings.

Mostly D’s: Sports Luxe

    This look is all about combining the tomboy and casual look of sportswear with updated feminine details. For this look, pair a plain white tee with some racer-striped jogging pants. Next, add on a floral baseball cap and some strappy wedge shoes. Finish the look with a coral lip for an added pop of color and feminine detail.

Reed Krakoff Leaves Coach

REED KRAKOFF will step down from his role asCoach's president and executive creative director in June 2014, having served in the position for 16 years. The US fashion label is currently searching for a new design head.

"[Krakoff's] contribution in evolving Coach from a house of American leather goods to a leading international accessories brand is immeasurable and we have great admiration and respect for Reed's significant accomplishments," said Coach chairman and chief executive officer Lew Frankfort.

The move comes amid news that Coach is exploring "strategic options" for Krakoff's eponymous label, that it launched in 2010. The plans "may involve a sale to a group, in which Krakoff would participate", WWDreports.

"I am grateful to Lew Frankfort and to the members of the board for the support and the amazing opportunities I have been given," Krakoff said. "I have every confidence in the Coach creative team and thank them for their dedication."

In January this year, Coach announced that it was rebranding itself as a lifestyle brand - with a renewed focus on its women's ready-to-wear. Former Paul Smith creative design director Sandra Hill was hired to head up the category.