One to watch: Kelly Bergin

It's miserably grey in London today, but the temperatures have been pretty impressive for the last few days. I am not do good at dressing for hot weather in the city. Especially at the moment as I am having a bit of an 'i-have-put-on-weight-and-now-hate-everything-in-my-wardrobe-that-is-strappy-and-isn't-black' crisis.
In LA they know how to dress for hot sticky weather (although they don't have to contend with even hotter and stickier London underground and therefore the floatiness of their attire seems a bit more practical). However, generally I remain faintly underwhelmed by LA fashion off the red carpet - it's too safe but scruffy, too 'trying hard not to look like I'm making an effort'. After all, this is a place where Juicy Couture and Crocs, the byword for everything awful in footwear, are acceptable clothes for off-duty millionaires.
And it's rare that I like an LA based designers work. But Kelly Bergin is an exception.
Bergin only graduated from LA's FIDM (like the London College of Fashion but less experimental) in 2007 and launched her sportswear* line in 2009.
On her website, Bergin says her clothes offer a "modern, paired-down sensibility" featuring "classic shapes imbued with modern details". But whatever. To me her spring/summer collection says "I'm an easy summer in the city wardrobe, gaze upon me longingly while silently preying for the man with the sweaty armpits pressed next to you on the tube to get off at the next stop".
There are a few things in her spring/summer collection that look either a little aging, too young for anyone who doesn't want to look like an extra from The Hills, or just not suitable for me - but an awful lot of it is rather good...

Visit her website to see the full spring/summer collection as well as her autumn/winter 2010 collection which featured a pleasing palette of black, black and more black. A designer after my own black heart.
 http://www.kellybergincollection.com/


*Sportswear is a ridiculous name for every day clothing that the fashion world adopted a long time ago for opaque reasons we are not going to go into here. Suffice to say these clothes are supposed to be of a more hanging out with your friends in the park and not worrying too much about the grass stains nature than most designer clothes, however they are still often dry clean only which kind of defeats the point.