Beautiful soul singer Joss Stone, who released her last album Colour Me Free in October 2009, is collaborating with Nine West creative director Fred Allard on a fall collection for the brand. At the Nine West showroom last night, Stone drank a Dark and Stormy and awesome mini-Cokes with bloggers, who were all told the appropriate hashtag (#Joss4NW) upon entering. “I just told Fred what I like and what I don’t like. I picked out bits of his design — like on that hat I liked that thing going around it, so I said we should put that on the boot or something similar,” Stone explained to us of her design process. “I picked a lot of pieces that were already existing and then some pieces that were already existing in my head, and he put it together, and he drew it out. Then we changed a couple of things. He e-mailed me some more sketches and I said, ‘Let’s change this and this.’ It was a done deal.”
Stone called the pieces “very country,” adding, “I’m from the country in England.” Yet the collection is called American Vintage. “If you go to America, if you go to England, you’re going to find pretty similar styles. It was different before — you’d find massively different things, but now it’s kind of merging. Well, that’s kind of how I see it. But I don’t know shit! I just kind of give my opinion on what I know and what’s in my own head and what I like, but” — she changed to a whisper — “I don’t really know anything.”
Stone, who said she personally prefers to wear either no shoes, slippers, or flip-flops, told another reporter who asked what she was working on, “This is it. I mean, I’m working on things all the time, so I could go on about it, and some of them end up happening. I was designing shoes years ago in my bedroom and I never thought it would really happen, and here I am.” She continued, “I’m not releasing any more albums at the moment. I’m going to climb the highest mountain and sing in October, this I’m excited about. That’s my plan, anyway. I hope I do it. I gave up smoking in January, so I think it’s going to be fine. I won’t die halfway up. But that’s the only thing I really have on my plate — shoes and mountains. Brilliant, you know? And taking my dogs for a walk, baking some cupcakes.”
