That rumor we spread about Mark Fast doing a line for Topshop?

It’s true. And it’s in last week’s Sunday Telegraph magazine which means it was true before we even said anything and we’ve had it in our lap since Friday and we should really work harder at finishing every article we start.

The article about the Canadian “prairie boy” fills the reader in on his rise to design fame, pre-plus-size models, and how he left Canada for a coveted spot at Central Saint Martins under Louise Wilson’s tutelage. He’s since worked with Alber Elbaz and landed repeated NewGen sponsorship from Topshop.

Apparently the high street brand approached him before his SS10 show regarding a design collaboration. So those still wondering if the plus-size girls were just a press ploy can stop, because he obviously doesn’t need it.

We’re basically over the size zero debate - models will always be skinny. But absolutely no one’s over Mark Fast’s runway statement from last Friday.

Why? Because it wasn’t just the audience made uncomfortable by the big girls, but also the team behind the show. One staff member quit over Fast’s use of plus size models and another, the show’s stylist, was so rude to the girls that they were forced to fire her.

So instead, stylist Daniela Agnelli, who usually works for The Telegraph, stepped in to save the day, and though there’ve been complaints about the nude thongs cutting into the girls’ skin and ruining the lines of the clothes, overall, it was a success.

We love fashion, and thus it follows we love a scandal, but we can’t help but be disgusted over this whole thing. For two people from a small team to be too embarrassed to have their name attached to a few gorgeous plus sized models is awful.

If there’s anything to bitch about it’s that Fast only used three plus size girls and not more.

—A LONDON FASHIONISTA

Last season, Mary Katranzou’s collection was inspired by old perfume bottles; their images were screen printed onto silk in a range of jewel tones.

For spring, she was inspired by blown glass and presented a series of brightly printed dresses with more creative shapes. She added a pinch of glitter to some and serious jewelry to others, all with towering Louboutins. So many shots of color swirling together made me realize how neutral New York’s spring collections were. London’s always more colorful (and not just color wise), but I don’t think New York’s usually so boring.

Since she and Mark Fast showed back to back without a break in between, most everyone was talking about Mark’s “fat girls” (their words, not mine) on the way out, but I tripped up the stairs behind Christian Louboutin. And though he spoke French and I’m so far past exhausted, I’m pretty sure he thought Mary’s collection was fantastic.

The thing about Mark Fast’s dresses is they’re so tight, body-con doesn’t even cut it.

His brilliant knits cling to the body, which make you think, “I absolutely love it, but there’s no way I could appropriately wear that.” Except of course until you see them on a handful of plus-size models and they look even better than they did on the sticks that wore them last season.

For SS10 they come both long and short, they come layered with bejeweled body jewelry and and leather petal skirts in nude and black and cotton candy pink and blue; they come in fisherman knit and with perfectly executed slashes or round silver studs and no matter what size you are, they’ll look amazing, which is probably why the crowd cheered louder than I’ve heard in a very long time

Mark Fast, Central Saint Martins grad and knit-wear genius, showed his Fall 09 collection at The Natural History Museum yesterday morning - though you’d be hard pressed to wear his clothes in the fall.

After a fake thunder storm via strobe lights and rain music, the young designer sent out a string of super-duper short dresses. They were so short in fact that the models couldn’t help but repeatedly tug them down along the runway. There were a couple of chunkier knit pieces - one in dusty pink and another one, banded, in shiny purple. A few came ripped and shredded but the best were such fine knit, varying from sheer to opaque so subtly, that they just looked perfectly worn in.

Some of the knits resembled velvet and the last dress was so fringed, so heavy, that you could see the poor model’s muscles tensing just to make it move.

Luckily the audience responded with very enthusiastic applause - especially considering it was 9am on basically the last day of London Fashion Week.