Caroline Issa >> English Eclectic: London.(England)

Byline: SARAH MOWER editor: Sally Singer

What's a girl to wear when getting hyperdressed is a daily task? A little bit of everything.

From London to Los Angeles, Milan to Mumbai, VOGUE toured eight cities around the globe to find the freshest takes on evening glamour.

There are just so many more excuses now," says Caroline Issa as she tallies up the day-versus-party clothes in her London wardrobe. "So many parties, events, launches every night. Recently I've bought more evening than anything else. It's mad." She laughs. "But great for designers!" On the lawn at the Serpentine Gallery, at dinner at David Tang's, and causing neck cricks in the ranks at runway shows, Issa, with her pale skin, ebony mane, red lips, short dresses, and colorful clutches, has been attracting more than her fair share of who's-that-girl? attention. "I think women here have got much more confident about dressing up," says the publisher and co-owner of the independent style magazine Tank. "It's never a question of 'jeans and a nice top' to go out anymore."

Issa is just one of London's net contributors (in her case, a mixture of young British designers like Christopher Kane, Jasmine Di Milo, and Felder Felder, along with Lanvin, Chloe, and YSL) to the frenzy of up-dressing. An unmissable pack of provocateurs are its leaders: Daphne Guinness, with her towering skunk hairdo; the rough-diamond, retro-styled working-class heroines Amy Wine-house and Lily Allen; and the painted, self-created personages who devote their weekends to one-upping one another.

"It's very tribal here. Still," observes Guinness, in a Chanel couture suit and an armful of diamonds. "There's the Notting Hill lot, the East Enders, the fashion people, the art crowd, the professionals, the hunt-ball set. And now all these different cultures--the Russians, the Indians." The twist is the unserious, sybaritic atmosphere that bathes every scene in the cheerful British spirit of laissez-faire. "We're more ready to take risks with what we wear," Guinness muses. "I like the idea that you don't have to be perfect. I don't think one has to get it right all the time."

"I like the idea that you don't have to be perfect," says Daphne Guinness