Technically it should still be winter, not yet spring, but things have warmed up to the extent that even at Nordic altitudes experts have declared that winter is no more – it is from nominal autumn to nominal spring and nothing in between these days. So sad.

• Ongoing fashion weeks
  The too-early Oscars properly messed up the New York fashion week because all eyes were on Brad Pitt and not the dresses. London is ongoing, and Paris next week. The fashion editors still need to get excited about the catwalk kerfuffle, but many others are discreetly wondering whether we might just have reached a certain consumption pinnacle.
  As if to help bring home the point, Harpers Bazaar generously offered tips for a laid-back spring look, complete with a €1300 straw hat. The attempt to make fashion more inclusive is clearly about taking wee baby steps, if that.
  
  And fair enough, maybe, because high fashion was never really about inclusiveness of any kind. Haute couture has been about showcasing craftsmanship and imagination, not garments for the masses.
  Times and attitudes have changed so much that the industry is forced to rethink. One massive contradiction it faces is the fact that everybody knows we should be consuming less. My instagram feed alone is full of women declaring how they are stopping clothes-shopping for a year or so.
  
  How does this bode with the industry that lives from selling people things they essentially do not need? So far it’s been a lot of smoke and mirrors: “Buy less but better – but buy“.
  
  
• Victoria Beckham has a new website
  World of Victoria Beckham encourages us to purchase her gorgeous designs consciously (I must spend a moment to think about all the things we did unconsciously before Gwyneth Paltrow and many others introduced consciousness to relationships, skincare and purchasing clothing).
  There are also some delicious-looking recipes and beauty tips tried and tested by VB herself.
  Given that all recommended products are from her fashion- or beauty lines, it is basically a posh (pun) webshop, but a goldmine for people who like to know how VB gets it done.
  
  
• Phoebe Philo is making a comeback
  This was the only other thing everybody was talking about during New York fashion week. The Queen of Everything Cool, who brutally left Céline and as if to rub it in, took the accent aigu with her. But fear not, Phoebe Philo is back with her own, wait, conscious fashion line, which for the time being consists of T-shirts (not Céline-extortionate at €25-€45) with texts such as “Joan D.” for Joan Didion, “É” to commemorate the missing accent aigu in post-Philo Celine and “The chicest thing is when you don’t exist on the Internet“.
  
  
• Madeline Albright has a new book out
  Mark your calendars for 14 April when Albright’s book Hell and Other Destinations will become available. Massively looking forward to – her Fascism – A Warning was also brilliant.
  
  
• Hermès Lipsticks will hit the shops very soon
  Because we are conscious and also sustainable, we should all run for the Hermès-Pierre Hardy –collaboration lipsticks that come in refillable tubes that are much divine. Out in March, following a subtle social media hype.
  So far the luxury-refillable lipstick has been La Bouche Rouge, which comes in terribly chic, custom-embossed leather and steel case. The lipstick itself is very good and the company donates money for all kinds of things that will save the world (and justifies buying yet another lipstick).
  I am reading that the Hermès –lipsticks will be considerably cheaper than the niche La Bouche Rouge –deals, so maybe worth consciously considering.
  Related: For anyone who lives in Sweden, Gucci are launching their beauty line in Stockholm.
  
  
• I got some new reading
  Mary Gaitskill: This Is Pleasure
  Eimear McBride: Strange Hotel
  Luke Brown: Theft
  
  Will report back.