Stylist Tina Chai Believes in ‘Skinny’ Shoes
Sep 23rd
New York Magazine’s “The Cut” sits down with Stylist Tina Chai and the result was simply marvelous!
Tina Chai originally intended to be a lawyer. But after slogging through an uninspiring stint as a paralegal, she traded contract filing for photo shoots, landing a job at Glamour, which paved the way to Vogue‘s hallowed halls, where she worked for nearly five years. After a decade as a freelance stylist, Chai has cultivated an array of clients, working for glossies like i-D, styling shows ranging from Band of Outsiders to Lela Rose, and consulting for such retail brands as Theory and LOFT.
But it’s the industry’s wide scope that she loves most. “One of the really amazing things about fashion is that it allows you to act out your fantasies,” she says. “I can be all the things I’m not: I can dress like a sailor, even though I get horribly sick at sea; I can wear something really sporty, even though I’m the most uncoordinated person on the planet.” In other words, she may not be a lawyer as she had once planned, but she can still dress the part (albeit in green Prada Mary Janes). We talked to Chai about her tomboy style, Fashion More >
Milan fashion shines in wearable luxury
Sep 20th
As written by Rueters correspodent Antonella Ciancio, Italian fashion designers created shimmering, fluid looks for their 2011 spring/summer collections, mixing fringes and lengths to seduce women as conscious of their bodies as of their money.
Crystal embroideries, golden belts and mirror heels shone at the Milan shows ended on Tuesday. A longer calendar and a new central location attracted more buyers than last year, confirming signs of recovery for luxury good brands.
“Buyers increased to over 15,000 this year, with more coming from Asia and the United States,” Mario Boselli, president of Italy’s National Chamber of Fashion, said on Tuesday.
“There was more vigor, also because of the improved economic situation after the crisis,” he said.
Fashion houses Cavalli and Ferragamo said sales continued to rise in the third quarter, but kept a cautious outlook for the rest of 2010, as many see 2011 as a test year for recovery.
A relaxed, sensual elegance inspired Dolce&Gabbana, whose bride-to-be models wore white clothes made from bed linens and tablecloths in a tribute to Italy’s best sartorial tradition.
Crystals were sewn on long-slung robes, like those seen at Armani, whose blue collection was inspired by desert nomads.
“I wanted very sexy clothes, but wearable,” Armani told reporters after his glittering, linear More >
First-Ever Plus-Size Show Hits N.Y.C. Fashion Week!
Sep 16th
People Magazine’s Thailan Pham reports: ‘It wasn’t all stick-thin models ruling the runways during New York Fashion Week, as curvy stars like Nikki Blonsky, Gabourey Sidibe and model Emme sat front row yesterday to take in the first-ever plus-size show during fashion’s most high-drama week. “This is a milestone in the plus-size community. We’ve never had anything like this,” Blonsky said at the OneStopPlus.com presentation on Wednesday. “To be in New York City Fashion Week, which I think is the biggest fashion week in the world, to be here is just a huge thing for us.” And plus-size model Emme, couldn’t have agreed more: “You have to join forces to make a statement and to be part of a revolution. It’s monumental in its reach,” Emme told PEOPLE, adding, “I think the big statement that’s going to be made with this fashion show is not only going to be made within the full-figured community but I think it’s going to talk to the bottom line of design houses, designers, and business people involved in fashion,” she said. “Why don’t we make clothes above a size 12? Why don’t we load heavier in sizes 14, 16, and 18 in stores? Just change More >
New York Fashion Week’s garden variety: Carolina Herrera, Donna Karan & Barbara Tfank
Sep 14th
LA Time’s correspondent Booth Moore reports on the NYC Fashion Week experience:
Maybe it’s the grow-your-own food movement, the popularity of farmers markets, or simply the fact that these are spring collections, but botany is sprouting up as a theme all over the runways.
Carolina Herrera took colors, prints and floral appliques from 18th century botanical plates for her collection, which included a gown hand-painted with the image of a flower, along with its name and species.
For her Garden of Eden-themed collection, Monique Lhuillier worked with cherry blossom print taffeta, draping it into a pleated A-line cocktail dress and a ball gown. (Also spotted: “sage green,” “mint floral” and “poppy” organza.)
At Donna Karan, shoes were decorated with leather leaves and gauzy long slip dresses were “saffron-stained” and “tamarind-distressed.” A rough-textured, jute-colored nubuck jacket was reminiscent of a seed sack.
Jenny Packham, who is fast becoming a favorite of the red carpet set for her lovely gowns — many of which have sleeves, for those who care about that sort of thing — tapped wallpaper specialists de Gournay to design the moody, hand painted florals for her finale gowns, one in a silk crepe de chine with a beaded tulle shoulder.
More >
New York Fashion Week: Marc Jacobs’ ’70s show
Sep 14th
The LA Times’ Boothe Moore breaks down the Marc Jacobs show @ NY Fashion Week:
At Marc Jacobs’ spring/summer show, the look was unmistakably Jodi Foster from the 1976 film “Taxi Driver.”
Which is not to say that the models looked like preteen prostitutes exactly — but that they looked like bright lights in the dark city.
Hearkening back to the 1970s, these are clothes for strutting your stuff and looking like you’re living large even if you’re not — long, floaty halter dresses in geometric prints; slinky, one-shoulder striped jersey gowns; puffy sleeve blouses worn with even puffier long skirts cinched with leather sashes and finished off with overgrown corsages; zigzag patterned metallic knits and enormous straw hats with the rims turned back.
Suiting was a focus, but it was glam suiting, such as a cropped butterscotch satin jacket and matching short-shorts, a sorbet pink satin pants suit with flared trousers, or an over-sized blazer embroidered with bands of silver and gold sequins, worn atop fluid cream silk crepe trousers.
It might not have been the most thought-provoking Marc Jacobs collection, but it was exuberant, from the pink, purple, black and gold color palette to the glitter-dusted platform sandals. Top it off with great-looking structured, flap-front handbags, More >
The Good, The Bad and The Edible of the MTV VMA’s…
Sep 13th
MTV comments on the good, the bad and the edible from the VMA’s: Between fits of laughter and streams of tears, shiny Moonmen and meat dresses aplenty, the 2010 MTV Music Video Awards were not to be missed. Sunday’s award ceremony was jam-packed with memorable moments that caught even the most casual viewer off guard, and while summarizing the entire show in 60 seconds might seem like an impossible feat, the MTV News team is always up for a challenge!
Although the purpose of the evening was to celebrate and honor the greatest musical achievements of the year, some of the show’s performers couldn’t stop themselves from embracing their sadder sides, with melancholy tunes coming from the likes of Linkin Park, Taylor Swift and even Eminem. In fact, it was Slim Shady himself that kicked off the VMAs with his opening performance of “Not Afraid,” which he followed up with a brief rendition of domestic violence-themed “Love the Way You Lie” alongside surprise special guest Rihanna. (Well, gossip sites pretty much ruined that surprise for everyone but Jane Lynch, actually.)
NY Fashion Week Has Arrived!
Sep 10th
That wonderful week is here! NY Fashion Week has arrived! Telegraph’s Hillary Alexander prepares us for whats in store this week…
New York Fashion Week has kicked-off the global round of designer catwalk shows for spring/summer 2011 at its swish new HQ at the Lincoln Centre. New York Fashion Week has moved to the Lincoln Centre after 17 years at the tents in midtown Bryant Park.
Opening day included a fittingly global-inspired collection by Christiano Siriano, with leopard-print and African references, and softly-softly military looks from the boys at Ruffian – Claude Morais and Brian Wolk.
A highlight of today’s schedule will be when the Couture Council of the Museum at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) bestows its prized Fashion Visionary award on Karl Lagerfeld. The award will be presented by the actress, Diane Kruger, at a blue-chip luncheon. The whole city parties tonight with Vogue’s star-and celebrity-studded Fashion Night Out, at top-end stores and boutiques all over town, and the Dolce & Gabbana celebrations in honour of British supermodel, Naomi Campbell, at the brand’s Madison Avenue boutique.
Interestingly, Women’s Wear Daily today pays tribute to London as being a forerunner to the Vogue Fashion Nights Out events, nearly 80 years ago. staging a More >
Movie Review: Jack Goes Boating
Sep 1st
According to Elle Magazine’s Karen Durbin, Jack Goes Boating, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s film directing debut, began life as a play at the actor’s LAByrinth Theater Company in Manhattan. Movies based on plays are notoriously tricky, too often turning what was bold and crisp onstage into talky and constricted on-screen. And just to make things trickier, Hoffman cast himself in the title role. But like 2008’s Doubt (which brought him his third Oscar nomination after his 2006 win for Capote), Jack Goes Boating looks completely at home on film, and Hoffman is its perfect atypical leading man. An earthy, intimate drama about several varieties of love, the movie revolves around two New York couples, one tentatively coming together as the other keeps falling apart. Delivering stinging bursts of anguish only to bounce back again and again with offbeat humor, Jack Goes Boating is the most satisfying love story to come along since Richard Linklater’s 2004 Before Sunset.
Freddy Krueger Slashes His Way Back to Halloween Horror Nights as Universal Studios Hollywood Presents ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street: Never Sleep Again!’ an All-New Horror Experience for 2010
Aug 20th
Freddy Krueger, the iconic undead dream stalker whose burned, disfigured face, tattered green and red sweater and four-bladed glove has been the searing central figure of nine movies, a television series, video games and comics, will provide a cutting edge for Universal Studios Hollywood’s(SM) “A Nightmare On Elm Street: Never Sleep Again,” an all-new horror maze experience for the 2010 Halloween Horror Nights®” event, where the legends of Hollywood horror will come to life, beginning September 24.
“A Nightmare on Elm Street: Never Sleep Again,” will bring guests back on a nightmare journey to the town of Springwood, the scene of Freddy Krueger’s unspeakable crimes. They’ll wind through the ominously twisting corridors of the Badham Day Care Center, glimpse ghastly scenes of carnage among the young people of Springwood and face the ultimate showdown with Freddy in his infamous boiler room lair.
The new maze is based upon the 2010 motion picture, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” which opened to number one at the box office earlier this year. The Blu-Ray and DVD is set to release on October 5.
The 2010 “Halloween Horror Nights” event at Universal Studios Hollywood will offer spine-chilling new mazes based upon the horror genre’s most compelling characters. Rob Zombie More >
Vogue’s September Issue Unites “People Of The Globe”
Aug 20th
In the September 2010 issue of Vogue magazine, the “We Are The World” photo shoot aims to unite “people of the globe,” using models Joan Smalls, Jourdan Dunn, and Lais Ribeiro, among others. It was photographed by Steven Meisel for and styled by Edward Enninful. This is the same issue that Halle Berry is featured on the cover of. She is the first woman of color in over 20 years to do so for the magazine.
