WHAT LICKING COCK AND FASHION HAVE IN COMMON, BY LOUISE WILSON.

Posted by Melanie Rickey, Fashion Editor at Large

Oh, yesterday morning was fabulous. Woke up to find the newspapers pushed through the letterbox, made coffee, spotted a a few daffodils from my window, smiled, then settled down to read The Observer. The first story I turned to was the one promoting Alexa Chung as the face of the British Designer Collective at Bicester Village, which launches this Wednesday morning.

In it, the journalist and brilliant columnist Eva Wiseman attempts to discover what makes fashion work by visiting St Martins School of Art with Alexa Chung. I approve of this detective like approach to finding out the great mystery of fashion. However, Eva hasn't been around long enough to know that the mystery of fashion changes with the shifting sands season after season. But in her attempt to find out, she did stop by and visit The Great Oracle of Fashion. The Truth Teller herself, Professor Louise Wilson, and what Louise told her, which she printed verbatim, thrilled me and made me howl.  Below is the exchange.

Louise in a still from a Showstudio.com film 

"How can Wilson, the person behind the clothes we wear, explain the process to me? She locks me in a look. I lean forward to hear her secret. "There aren't 10 easy fucking rules, OK?" OK. "You wouldn't ask Freud: 'Can you show me how to make a painting?', would you? You wouldn't dream of asking an F1 driver to show you quickly how to build a car. How does it work? How do you lick a cock! Listen, it's a life experience. It's about skills, education. Sorry, mate, not everyone can be in the club." Again, a sigh. "The problem with British fashion," she says, "is that it's got too fashionable."

Read Eva Wiseman's article here