A large poster hangs above the desk of Made in Heaven's founder Chloe Lonsdale. Stamped in faded letters are the words: "In 1969, while the world was busy putting man on the moon, here at Made in Heaven we were busy making the best jeans on Earth." It is a bold, tongue-in-cheek motto for the denim company but, under the direction of Lonsdale, it is one that is becoming a reality for the brand today. The daughter of a jeans entrepreneur and '70s model, Lonsdale reincarnated her godfather's denim company in 2005, forging it into one of the UK's most successful denim brands.

Lonsdale's godfather, Tony O'Gorman, the man responsible for the poster, founded the original company in the late '60s. O'Gorman inherited an old paint factory on London's Fulham Road but, with little understanding of the paint industry, he began using the machines to experiment with different washes for denim and launched his own line. Soon his clientele included Jane Birkin and Farrah Fawcett. At the same time, Lonsdale's father (dubbed by the British press as the "Blue Jean King") started his chain of Jean Machine stores, after he discovered that California had 582 jeans outlets yet there was not one in the UK.

"When I was born in the late '70s, I was raised in an environment where everyone around me was wearing jeans," explains Lonsdale. "My parents had created this legacy that lasted through my childhood, so denim was pretty embedded in my ID." Though the brands quietly slipped from favour as '80s power dressing arrived, denim had become part of the family.

In 2005, the Californians still dominated the jeans industry, and Lonsdale felt that the English spirit of what her family had begun was missing. So she decided to make her move and leave her position in PR at Nicole Farhi. Lonsdale's MiH revival drew inspiration from their rich archive and modernised classic denim with original cuts that have impressed today's influential style makers, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Bosworth and Claudia Schiffer. She has expanded her line to include basic T-shirts, blouses, knitwear and jackets that are stocked in more than 35 countries around the world. And, alongside this, Lonsdale has brought Jean Machine back to life as a premium denim brand for men.

Though her father may have held the title of "Blue Jean King", Lonsdale has proven to be a worthy successor to the throne.

The fourth in a series of commissions by Miu Miu and opener at this year's Venice Film Festival, It's Getting Late by Iranian-American screenwriter/director Massy Tadjedin is a short film based around the process of getting ready for an evening out. The all-female cast, including Aubrey Plaza, Gemma Arterton, Patricia Clarkson and Rinko Kikuchi, are shown winding down from their disparate Los Angeles lifestyles and transforming into sirens of the night as dusk descends upon the city of angels. "It's a moment of the day that I find very romantic," Tadjedin explains to us during our Skype chat.

To a dreamy soundtrack by songstress of the moment Zola Jesus, each of the four women metamorphose from their daytime personas (a mother, an executive, a writer), into their after-dark incarnations through intimately captured personal moments, before heading separately to an underground nightclub, where the film culminates with Zola on stage singing one of her moodily sexy tracks.

The brand has enlisted a stellar roll call of female directors, including Zoe Cassavetes and Lucrecia Martel, asking each to create a short film that celebrates the Italian fashion house's femininity through their own cinematic sensibilities. Tadjedin joined their ranks and was invited to take part in the Women's Tales film series after Eva Mendes - who was cast in the filmmaker's 2010 directorial debut, Last Night - introduced her to the Miu Miu team.

It's Getting Late is a far cry from Tadjedin's usual psychological thriller repertoire and is her first script-less non-feature film. "The great thing about short films is how they are a little more open-ended -
they capture a fleeting moment. It was a great challenge," she explained. "It's about becoming ready for self-possessiveness. We all get ready very differently depending on whether it's for friends or for a lover."

Vivienne Westwood has tapped into her playful side for a new collaboration with traditional German toy company Schuco. Dame Viv has applied her famous wit to two different models of the silver arrow - the iconic '30s automobiles made famous by Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union. Westwood's regal orb appears on one little car with a skull and crossbones and a golden satyr, while the other says "keep Gaia cool" and "+5 degrees" - the designer's environmental slogans - a wry comment on the motoring industry's effect on climate change, perhaps? Made from tin plate, each one of the limited edition run of 1,000 cars will come packaged in Schuco's retro boxes and will be available in Vivienne Westwood stores and online at viviennewestwood.com from mid-September. The cars are priced £110 (white car) and £115 (red car).