If Christmas has had a glamorous makeover in the last decade, Hoodless sees this as part-and-parcel of Britain taking a lead from America and revelling in winter rituals, pointing to the revival of Martha Stewart-esque wreath-making, the fetish for cashmere blankets, the Ugg boot obsession,new nhl Jerseys, even the continuing ascendance of Halloween. Others see the notion of the chic tree – particularly the all-white, Narnia-esque tree that dominated department stores for most of this decade – as symptomatic of how fashion has spread feelers into all aspects of our lives. However, Susan Crewe, editor of House & Garden, points out that our image of unchanging bygone Christmases is misguided, since interior designers such as Elsie de Wolfe and Syrie Maugham led a vogue for monochrome decor back in the 1930s.
Pablo Flack, founder of east London's hip Bistrotheque restaurant, is joining Galliano in banishing pine this year – instead, this year's look at Bistrotheque and its Christmas pop-up, Patron Silver Reindeer, will be "monochrome and urban. We've got cardboard robots and skyscrapers painted black and white, with fairy lights inside – a kind of recycled, twinkly cityscape. A bit Wall-E." For the Topshop windows, which will be unveiled tomorrow, Vogue set designer Shona Heath has commissioned tangled fairy lights and broken baubles.