I'm always happy when I see a collection that makes the corners of my mouth rise.  I'm less happy, however, when I have to sit down and write about it.  The reason is thus: I know far more negative adjectives to describe clothing than I know their positive counterparts.  And so rather than racking my brain or using my thesaurus to compile a list of the latter, I have selected to use that entirely under-rated word "good" whilst describing the Eric Kim Autumn/Winter 2008 Monarchy line.

The word "good" - being defined as "of high quality; excellent" - is lovely because it's so easy to modify with adverbs such as "very," as in "The AW 2008 Monarchy Collection is very good"; or "amazingly," as in "The women's line is amazingly good."

As prêt-a-porter goes, the women's line is amazingly good: very stylish, very sexy, with a sprinkling of eccentricity (the key ingredient to the best of design).  The short dresses with high armed fingerless-gloves gave me an aroused pause; so too did the high-waist-ed braced trousers with a 70s scarf-ed blouse.  Both are proverbially cold grey tones and give credence to the title of the show, Streets of Scandinavia; both are amazingly good designs.

I shan't, however, use the adverb "amazingly" for the men's line; I shall instead use "conservatively."  The men's line was conservatively good.  The line wasn't as exciting as its sister line, but all very fashionable and wearable on the street or at a cocktail party.  I do have one complaint for Mr. Kim, that being he's a little too label happy with the men.  In my personal taste, I don't much like wearing jackets with embroidered logos on them, though I take no offense when I see others donning them; and there are still plenty of conservatively good coats without "Monarchy" emblazoned over them, and these I quite fancy.

Yes, come next autumn, I too shall be wearing this jolly (fantastic adverb, innit?) good line, and I welcome - nay, encourage - Mr. Kim to post me the clothes so that I may do so free of charge.  (While "good" is in my vocabulary, "modesty" is not.)  Until then, I shall wait by my post-box, breath expertly baited; I'm terribly excited...

Monarchy Collection: www.monarchycollection.com

Should you find this review too favourable and would prefer to read a hate-filled diatribe, then kindly read my review of Farah Angsana: Thank You Fatty-Fat-Fat-Fat.