CAFTAN 2012

One of the highlights of my recent trip to Marrakech was the Caftan festival. This annual fashion event, now in its sixteenth year, is the Moroccan haute-couture show, and showcases not only the country's exquisite craftsmanship but also its hottest designers. Attended by the great, the good and the wealthy, it's very much a selling show - and whilst there are definite trends in play, caftan is much more about the sumptuous fabrics and skilled embellishment than it is about this season's latest look.

Unlike most of the fashion shows I've seen, designers show together in a very lavish themed staging, making one concentrate much more on the individual detail than on the couturier's brand. The Moroccan caftan is traditionally in two pieces - a simpler under-dress with a more elaborate coat over the top, often belted, and I loved the way that the designers who showed at Caftan 2012 played with this trope, layering sumptuous  fabrics on top of each other  and playing with volume so that skirts billowed sensuously from a tiny cinched-in waist.


Whilst most kept the look floor length or longer, some played with a long coat worn over a cropped trouser, and others teamed a filmy coat which opened, Angelina-style to reveal a lot of leg.
Not long before I went I was at an ELLE magazine trends-presentation and learned that A/W'12 puts the emphasis firmly on the waist - with this in mind, I was particularly struck by the incredible wide bronze belts in one show which looked marvellous if not absolutely comfortable.

All in all, it was opulent and elegant in equal measure: I've never seen anything like it.

Rose-garden colours were more typical than jewel-brights at this year's show - soft shades of palest pink, ashes of roses, apricot and old-gold were quiet attention-grabbers. There was also a lot of beautiful eau de nil and aquamarine - such a visual feast and a sharp contrast from London's  default setting of fashion-black.

Voile or chiffon over-dresses  worn over a heavier silk in a contrasting shade featured strongly - this had some incredibly sumptuous metallic embroidery in the front panels of the coat.

These pictures don't do this designer's show justice - it had a faintly Venetian masked ball theme and the caftans had jaw-droppingly lavish embroidery in gold and silver metallic threads - the waistline was higher too, creating a rather quattrocento effect, with sweeping skirts in jewel-coloured satin and brocade. The white caftan you can just see to the right of this picture was breathtakingly beautiful with a kind of peacock design in embroidered paillettes. Having checked my notes, it also involved peacock feathers - but helpfully, all I've written subsequently is 'WOW'.

This was my favourite dress of the show - again, hard to do it justice in a photograph, but the lush cream satin under dress, embroidered with silver thread, just peeped out from an absolutely gorgeous coat of rose silk covered in a very pale pink gauze which was intricately embroidered with pink silk flowers and silver paillettes -  humblingly beautiful craftsmanship. 

I'd not long come back from Marrakech when I saw these pictures of Princess Lalla Meryem of Morocco at the lunch for the Queen's diamond jubilee -I loved this understated silk-satin caftan in an embroidered soft-pink. It's not as 'out-there' as some of those I saw at the Caftan show, but very, very beautiful all the same. 

Princess Lalla Meryem in a dove grey and silver caftan at the sovereign's dinner to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee

BEAUTIFUL THINGS TO BUY IN MARRAKECH (2)

Fenyadi is a cooperative of four contemporary Moroccan designers producing beautiful pieces for the home, inspired by traditional Morrocan design but with a luxe modern twist.

Ceramics include vast pots for beautiful gardens and holders for outside candles (pictures), as well as smaller items such as the beautiful glazed tea pots and tea-glasses in an elegant range of natural colours. Lack of suitcase room prevented me from buying the fine bed linen - John Malkovich's favourite, apparently - plus unique and carefully designed tableware, textiles, leather notebooks not to mention the adorable Berber inspired pyjamas for kids.

I couldn't resist scented candles from Amira bougies - each one is created to evoke authentically Morrocan scents - from amber to thé à la menthe, jasmin to spices, neroli to cedarwood. I bought six cedarwood in plain glass tea-glasses. I shall light them at home and let them transport me back to my time in Marrakech.

www.amirabougies.com
www.akkal.ma
www.vianotti.com
www.fenyadi.com

The store itself is at 219 Z.I Sidi Ghanem, Marrakech.
Tel: +212 5 24 35 60 24

BEAUTIFUL THING TO BUY IN MARRAKECH (1)

These modern alternatives to the iconic Moroccan lamps are available at El Jouli in the Souk Charatine Talâa, No. 48 in the Marrakech Medina. I love the designs but I also really love the mellow golden glow they throw, particularly now I'm at an age when I always sit with my back to the window in restaurants.

All the lamps are hand-made by local craftsman and if you're unlikely to make it to Marrakech anytime soon , they're available at Harrods. However, owner Milioud El Jouli will also ship anywhere in the world - email him on meljouli@hotmail.com

TO MARRAKECH

In a few hours, Jo Glynn-Smith of Harper's Bazaar and I will be on a plane to Marrakech - we're only there for a long weekend but it's induced in me the most monumental wardrobe panic. I think it's partly because it's hard to get out of one's head this extraordinary Litchfield image of Talitha Getty, which is at once sensual and exotic and so utterly, achingly stylish that anything I could possibly fling in my suitcase is destined to disappoint. It's partly the pose and partly the styling, but Talitha Getty is in this picture as 'full of Eastern promise' - as Fry's Turkish Delight adverts of the 1970's professed to be.

Oh, the fashion pressure of Marrakech - if it were only this single iconic photograph it would be bad enough, but of course, Marrakech was also the home of fashion god Yves St Laurent - Jo and I plan to pay homage to his genius and visit Les Jardins Majorelle, the garden YSL loved so much he requested his ashes be scattered there after his death (stupid sentence, that - they could hardly be scattered before his death, could they). What's more, Jo and I are in Marrakech partly to cover the Caftan Festival - a huge fashion event in Morocco - and we can't let Harper's Bazaar down by being anything other than well-put together.

However, herein lies a fashion conundrum - we don't dress well for hot weather in Britain, at least, we don't during the week. On the very rare days when the temperature rises in London one has only to look around one in the streets to discover what a struggle it seems to be to navigate the sartorial codes dictated by the appearance of strong sun and cloudless skies. Half the population appears to be dressed for Ascot and the other half for a heavy night in a seedy nightclub. We don't invest in summer clothes - there's no point, the season's too short-lived - even shorter-lived this year when it's well into May and  arctic winds and icy rain are being consistently served up. I haven't even bothered to get my summer clothes out of the loft - I'm still in a wool coat and thick tights, not to mention the thermal vest. In short, as of five o'clock this evening, I had nothing to wear.

Reader, what could I do? I did what any right thinking individual would do and shook off the winter pallor with a St Tropez spray tan (£20 at Debenhams - result) and then went for a trolley dash around Zara.

Liberty London Girl recommended a maxi dress, and I could see the logic of this but Zara is made for etiolated model types so I'd have had to hack two feet off the bottom of anything I tried on. Anyway, I have gone for a kind of YSL/Jardins Majorelle inspired palette of navy and cobalt blue with a smart - if rather short - kind of silk trapeze dress with cut out sleeves for dinner at La Sultana, a silk paisley shift dress (again, slightly shorter than I'd realised, but if I wear flat sandals, perhaps no one will mind too much), and a pair of well-cut navy chinos with a coral belt. I'm hoping the trousers particularly will take me through a variety of eventualities.

My perfect plan will be not to channel Talitha Getty - that's completely beyond my capabilities - but to look moderately cool even when the temperature is stonkingly hot. As long as the hotel has wifi, I aim blog the trip every day and I'll even try to make the posts rather less self-obsessed than this has turned out to be.

Right, only three hours til I need to leave - do I bother going to bed?