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Photos: Courtesy of Stella McCartney

The designer has plenty to celebrate. The day before, she’d scooped up the Red Carpet Award at the BFAs (”I am still walking on a cloud over here!”), and in the past year, debuted designs at the New York City Ballet. Next year sees a new store opening in Kensington and a commission to outfit Great Britain’s Olympic Team in her Adidas garb. What could possibly be next—menswear? On that she is sanguine: “The idea of menswear has always brewed in my head. But it has to be done properly and deserves a lot of time and attention. We’ll see.”

In the meantime, guests like Kate Moss with daughter Lila, dad Paul with new wife Nancy, Alexa Chung, Pam Hogg, and i-D’s Charlotte Stockdale all joined in the fray. Talk was all about Stella’s 2012 debut at London fashion week: a presentation of a one-off capsule collection tied to the Olympic Games. “It’s about coming home, about celebrating London, the Olympics, and the city’s vibe,” McCartney says. “I can’t wait.”

Christmas in London wouldn’t be the same without Stella McCartney’s annual lighting of the Christmas lights at her Mayfair store. Apart from the comfort food and drinks always on offer—mince tarts, Santa biscuits, marshmallow lollies, mulled wine, and Guinness—equally comforting is the company: A musical Santa, a hawker of roasted chestnuts, and, every year, a switch-flicker of honor. In the past, these have included comic Catherine Tate and the men of Little Britain; this year’s was a double-header doozy: Ab Fab’s Edina Monsoon (a.k.a. comedienne Jennifer Saunders, in character) and her “client,” Spice Girl Emma “Baby Spice” Bunton. (A video of their lighting goes up today at StellaMcCartney.com, and McCartney herself will return the visit with a cameo when Absolutely Fabulous returns to TV for three episodes this summer.)

—Afsun Qureshi

Photo: AFP / Getty Images

Guo Pei is China’s answer to haute couture. The last time she showed her collection, she sent Carmen Dell’Orefice out in an embroidered, fur-trimmed cape so heavy it took four men to help the legendary model make it down the runway. So expectations were high earlier this week when Guo, whose sculptural, over-the-top creations have drawn admirers including Lady Gaga, mounted her first fashion presentation in more than two years, in Beijing.

In the second of two showings in a soaring industrial space, visitors on Monday entered via a blacked-out exhibition displaying Guo’s 30 startlingly handcrafted takes on traditional Chinese wedding dresses: sunburst collars, acres of silk, and more hand embroidery than you could shake a needle at. According to the punctilious wall texts, one dress took 7,412 hours to make; another incorporated 465,756 pearls. And the show hadn’t even started yet.

Once it did, it was an immaculately constructed dark fairy tale of dragon manes, impossibly high wedges, vertiginous headpieces, and ballet dancers, all under the rubric “Legend of the Dragon,” and all slowly paced, shown one at a time. With arguably her country’s most high-wattage client list, Guo in many ways represents China’s new Gilded Age. But her true message was rather more understated: “My goal was to let more people see beautiful things, especially beautiful handicrafts,” she said. “We want to inspire a greater appreciation for traditional crafts, so that they can continue.”
—Aric Chen

Photos: Dorothea Gundtoft

—Kiki Georgiou

For Fall, Thomas Tait is feeling the need for stability. “I think it’s just a reaction, when you’re starting up a company, in fashion or not,” the designer said at a preview before his show tomorrow. “There’re a lot of insecurities financially so I just felt a need for stability in my life, and I could see that happening in the clothes. Everything needs to feel ready: put it on, no fuss no muss, reliable.” Even the color palette reflects the mood. “I wanted realistic colors, almost common. I needed to see everything clearly. I was thinking about moss a lot—not as in Kate, but actual moss.” There’s a deep mustard yellow—in the mid-calf leather boots Tait has designed for the first time—as well as olive green, navy, black, pops of white, and a rich chocolate brown.

“It’s important to me to feel that every piece in the collection has reason to exist,” he says. “It’s really interesting, now that I’m selling the clothes, to hear what buyers have to say—things like, ‘She doesn’t show her arms above the elbow.’ I realize there’s a really deep psychological justification for buying! and I can understand that. So when I’m pattern-cutting and draping the initial shape, I’m constantly trying to remind myself what it feels like to be inside: Where’s the fabric weighing down on the body, where is it holding onto, what is it covering up, what is it not covering up. And it opens up so many opportunities to play with volume and proportion.”