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<br>week&quot; title=&quot; - New York fashion week&quot;/&gt;</p><p></p><p>At , the look was prim and proper. There was many a skirt suit on show and polka-dotted officewear. However, there was a harder edge to the collection with a lot of masculine tailoring on shirts, trousers and jackets. An angora tuxedo jacket particularly stood out for us. There was also a touch of sportswear in Wu&#039;s collection: in a green tartan jacket and a grey woollen one whose hood was trimmed with fur. For evening Wu played about with structures creating a couple of bell jar-skirted dresses. We liked the gold spatter print which adorned shift dresses.</p></p><p>X Factor songstress braved soaring temperatures on the streets of LA yesterday, to film the video for her new single, Start Without You. <p></p><p>Stepping out in some teeny tiny hot pants, a striped Alexander Wang crop top and a pair of seriously towering heels, the star completed her look with a super-cute straw trilby as she strutted her stuff in the sunshine.</p><p>The British beauty was even spotted stepping behind the wheel of a multicoloured ice cream van during the day long shoot. </p><p>Laughing and joking with backing dancers as soon as the cameras were turned, Alex looked like she was having a whale of a time, as the temperature soared.</p><p> was even spotted filming all the happenings on-set, with her very own video camera. </p><p></p><p>And at the end of the day, it seems the star decided she would leave in style, stepping on board a shiny Harley Davidson motorbike for her dramatic exit. </p><p></p><p>Are you looking forward to brand new track? Let us know your thoughts in the comments box below. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p></p><p> has started her promotional tour for new film Battleship at the top of a London hotel - and boy does she look good!<br><br>The singer looked sensational in a slinky metallic dress by Alexander Wang as she kicked off her Battleship promo tour with co-stars Taylor Kitsch and Brooklyn Decker.<br><br><br><br>Enjoying the good weather, posed with Brooklyn - who also looked stylish in a Stella McCartney S/S&#039;12 number - on the rooftop of the Corinthia Hotel in the capital.<br><br>Her figure-flattering dress was a world away from the l she wore as she took the Tube to Drake&#039;s O2 arena concert last night.<br><br>Welcome back to London, RiRi!<br><br><br><br><br><br></p>Alexander Wang S/S 2008 <p>THE NEW WANG on the block - sorry, Vera, you&#039;ve got competition - Alexander already has a firm grip on effortless urban sophistication. The 24-year-old er showed his first collection less than three years ago, and has since taken the fashion world by storm with his modern take on classic materials such as cashmere, and his underlying simple-yet-luxurious theme. <br>Photographs by Mitchell Sams.</p><p>After paying a midnight visit at his swanky LA bachelor pad last week, it looked like had bagged herself a new man.<br><br>But the fiery singer has shot down rumours of a romance with the Two And A Half Men star and insists she is &#039;single and happy.&#039;<br><br>During a press conference to promote her new film Battleship in London yesterday, one brave British journalist asked her: &#039;You&#039;re so good at connecting with people that I think that we actually feel we know you. Things are clearly going brilliantly in your career. <br><br><br><br>&#039;I just wondered if you are as happy in your private life, and will we see a certain perhaps making a trip over here?&#039;<br><br><br><br>The 24-year-old singer then became defensive, firing back: &#039;Wow, how disappointing was that question?&#039;<br><br>Before adding: &#039;I&#039;m happy and I&#039;m single, if that&#039;s what you&#039;re really asking.&#039;<br><br>Dressed in an exquisite silky Alexander Wang gown, a demure looking posed at the top of a London hotel with her co-star Brooklyn Decker who also looked bang on trend in a Stella McCartney dress. <br><br><br><br><br></p><p><p>It was a fashion love-in over at the show on Saturday, with NY&#039;s favourite style star, taking her place beside the city&#039;s most notorious sartorial judge, Anna Wintour. <br><br>Quite a coup, although Wintour is a known champion of the designer, (as is fellow attendee Diane Von Furstenberg), SJP was a much harder catch, rarely stopping by her home-town fashion week, having expressed weariness for its manic media circus in the past. <br><br>More intriguing, was a certain British fashion mogul in the audience: Arcadia boss, Sir Philip Green. Could Wang be headed for Topshop? We&#039;ll have to wait and see.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p></p><p>Here come the girls! Leicester Square was overrun with fearless females last night, when the cast of St Trinians 2 hit town for the film&#039;s UK premiere.<p>Lock up your sons, because the St Trinians girls were out in force... </p><p>The time-honoured red carpet was stripped up and replaced with a punky pink version, ready for the stiletto-heeled army of starlets to charge down it.</p><p>And the naughty schoolgirls were looking decidely more glam than their on-screen counterparts...</p><p>Stealing the show was Sarah Harding, who made her silver screen debut in the 2007 fore-runner of the family-friendly flick. The songstress went for high-octane glamour in this sparkling fishtail Georges Chakra couture gown, which had sheer cut-away panels.</p><p></p><p>We&#039;re sure Ms Harding must have been nervous on the night - because not only does she feature as one of the girls in the film, she also recorded the theme tune. </p><p>Keeping Sarah company were fellow bandmates Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh. </p><p>Nicola simply shone in her white structured frock, which was covered in ruffles and crystal embellishments, while Kimberley cut a super-svelte figure in her strapless LBD.</p><p></p><p>There was a definite monochrome theme apparent on the pink carpet, and Nicole and Kimberley weren&#039;t the only yin-and-yang couple to attend.</p><p>The impossibly pretty pairing of Talulah Riley and Tamsin Egerton stepped out in their contrasting Alberta Ferretti gowns, with Talulah opting for a glam black column dress, and Tamsin in a draping white Grecian creation.</p><p></p><p>Adding some brighter-than-bright bursts of colour to the evening&#039;s proceedings were a couple of fiesty females, Paloma Faith and Shingai Shoniwa - who also seemed to be competing in the tallest hair stakes. </p><p>Paloma was her typical off-the-wall self in a bold orange jumpsuit, paired with vertiginous platforms and a red embellished trophy jacket.</p><p>Shinghai arrived flanked by her bandmates from The Noisettes, and co-ordinated with the carpet in her vivid pink Jean Pierre Braganza minidress - previously seen on . </p><p></p><p>The night didn&#039;t end after the film screening, with the stars all moving on to a lavish afterparty. </p><p>Sarah Harding switched from her full-length frock and into something slightly more party-appropriate, in the form of this pleated pink Atelier Versace dress. </p><p>But our style flop of the night came courtesy of Gemma Arterton. The former Bond girl turns Head Girl in the comedy romp, and was sporting a black Alexander Wang maxi for the evening. While perfectly nice, it hardly had the wow factor on Gemma - but it was her bed-head hair and messy make-up that we found particularly surprising...</p><p></p><p>Who was best dressed at the St Trinians 2 premiere? Let us know in the comments box below! </p><p></p></p><p><p> indulged in a spot of retail therapy at Harvey Nichols over the weekend, and check out her impressive shopping list!</p><p>While performing the London dates of her sell-out I Am...world tour, the megastar decided to check out our capital city to see what the shops had to offer.</p><p>Having already been spotted in an assortment of outfits from the - including a - went on an extensive &pound;6,000 spree in the Knightsbridge department store.</p><p>Our Harvey Nichols insider tells us that top of Bey&#039;s list was this covetable - which is pretty Sasha Fierce if you ask us.</p><p></p><p>The world-famous diva also bought a pair of large black Ray Ban Wayfarers, a vintage jacket from denim brand 13R, and a couple of pieces by designer du jour Alexander Wang.</p><p>According to our source, she seemed particularly taken with Jade Jagger&#039;s collection, Jezebel - taking home the scoop-neck Lady Print dress, as well as this , and .</p><p></p><p>Rounding off the tiring spend-up, also selected items from brands including , , and Juicy Couture.</p><p>A girl after our own hearts!</p><p></p></p><p>Notice to our readers&hellip;</p><p>We'd like to let you know that this site uses cookies. Without them you may find this site does not work properly and many features may be unavailable. More information on what cookies are and the types of cookies we use can be found </p>Spring/Summer 2012 Trend: Sports Fan <p>Sports fan doesn&#039;t need a gym - working up a sweat is not her style. Her urban leisurewear is hinged on techie fabrics, sleek track pants and high performance footwear. She can do smart, but only with modern mesh and exposed zips. This girl has abs and attitude.</p><p><p>It was a family affair at last night&#039;s Teen Choice Awards, with the Hollywood A-list arriving with mums, partners and kids in tow, to walk the blue carpet.<br><br>For no-one was this more apparent than for , who took his family to the stage to accept his full-size surfboard award. Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz stood alongside their dad, with mum Victoria unusually taking a back seat, watching on from the audience. <br><br>Then, proving the true star of the show, youngest Cruz break-danced live on stage, recreating his scene-stealing routine from the Spice Girls concerts last year.</p><p></p><p>The star-studded affair brought out a host of Hollywood&#039;s hottest young style stars. <br><br>Gossip Girls and continued their reign as TV&#039;s chicest fashionistas. Meester wowed in a jade green draped gown, while Lively showed off her endless pins in a one-shouldered super-short purple dress.<br><br>The asymetric style continues to rule the red carpet and made a stylish choice for as well, who glowed in an aqua blue design. She looked California cool, with her caramel streaked curly locks, and yellow gold disc earrings.<br><br>Maxi dresses were another style hit of the night, with proving our favourite, glowing in a summery style with splashy pink print.<br><br>Vanessa Hudgens arrived arm-in-arm with co-star and real-life love, Zac Efron. The High School Musical actress looked sleek in a strapless Alexander Wang monochrome dress, with tiered white skirt. Her streamlined look was topped off perfectly with a pair of Christian Louboutin Mad Mary heels.<br><br><p><p>The bi-annual style-fest that is the international fashion weeks kicks off tomorrow in New York, meaning stylistas the world over are currently winging their way to the Big Apple.<br><br>The perfect place for spotting the season&#039;s hottest trends &#x2013; both on and off the catwalks &#x2013; what the editors are wearing in the front rows are guaranteed to become the must-have looks of the season.<br><br>So what&#039;s in store for accessories? When it comes to the well-heeled tootsies of the world&#039;s most influential fashionistas, expect the thigh to be the limit when it comes to boots. <br><br>Decadent designs stretched high above the knees on the catwalks at , and Pucci, to name merely a few, and have already made their mark as one the season&#039;s key trends.<br><br><br><br>And while footwear may be oversized, bag wise, it&#039;s all about downsizing. Clutches may be smaller than your average arm-candy, but they&#039;re big news on the style scene. <br><br>Spotted at , , and - colour, style or shape are irrelevant, as long as it sits in you hand.<br><br></p><p>As for those who can&#039;t bare to cut down on their essentials, there&#039;s a host of It-bags high on this season&#039;s wish list, from the Marlow Bag to Mulberry&#039;s Last East West Bayswater and Roady.<br><br>The front rows may be packed full of designer labels, but the must-have accessory for any discernable fashion-watcher has to be a . <br><br>, is ideal for on-the-go trend jotting and in seven colours, will be perfect for coordinating with one&#039;s favourite outfits. Those looking for something more compact will love , a lightweight laptop that makes logging into the net easier than ever, with built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G. It even has a built-in web cam, for those eager to check into the office from the front rows.<br><br><br><br>For an on-trend finishing touch, bold necklaces brought a pop of colour to autumnal palette at Louis Vuitton, while layered chokers and oversized pedants made a statement.</p></p><p>Notice to our readers&hellip;</p><p>We'd like to let you know that this site uses cookies. Without them you may find this site does not work properly and many features may be unavailable. More information on what cookies are and the types of cookies we use can be found </p><p>It&#039;s definitely a case of style over comfort for , who has come out and said that we will never, we repeat, never, see her in a pair of tracksuit bottoms or Ugg boots. <br><br>The singer-turned-designer has told French magazine Madame Figaro that she loves fashion too darn much to let her sartorial standards slip even once.<br><br><br><br>She said: &#039;You&rsquo;ll never see me on the street in a tracksuit. I just love fashion too much to wear a tracksuit!<p>&#039;The same goes for Ugg boots. I only wear them only at home.&#039;</p><p>The 37-year-old is pictured on one of the two front covers of this month&#039;s edition of the magazine in a coral spring 2012 bodysuit by Prada and, on the other, in a black dress by .</p><p>Speaking of her love for , she said: &#039;I&rsquo;m addicted to Prada, to cardigans and bags ...</p><p>&#039;I&rsquo;d love to see the world through the eyes of Miuccia Prada! The woman is a genius. Her vision is of ultra-intelligent fashion. Each season, she creates something new, she knows how to surprise.&#039;</p><p></p><p>VB also confided that her idea of heaven, once her four children and gorgeous husband have gone to bed, is to trawl online shopping sites.<br></p><p>&#039;I am a big fan of Net-A-Porter.com. When the kids are asleep, I can travel on this site for several hours,&#039; she said.<br></p><p>&#039;I like the idea of quietly shopping at home for clothes and returning them if it doesn&rsquo;t work. This is absolute freedom.&#039;</p><p>She sounds like a girl after our own heart - tracksuit bottoms and Uggs aside!<br></p><p></p><p></p></p><p> earned herself 57,000 new Twitter followers during New York Fashion Week making her&#039;s the most talked about collection on the social media site. <br><br>There were 17,173 mentions of - far more than any other designer. <br><br>According to social media agency Whisper Group, who analyzed Twitter during New York Fashion Week to identify the most popular designers, trends, and hashtags, found that Marc Jacobs came in second, with 8,813 mentions, and Diane Von Furstenberg, Alexander Wang and Michael Kors brought up the rear. <br><br><br><br>It&#039;s not by chance that was the most popular designer on Twitter during NYFW. The mum-of-four has previously spoken about her well-planned and executed brand strategy for social media. <br><br>Of her aims for Twitter she told WWD: &#039;It&rsquo;s to build an engaged audience through both personal and brand messaging. I used Twitter a lot during last season and particularly during New York Fashion Week. It gave me the opportunity to share the experience of the show with everyone following me. That&rsquo;s something I plan to continue.&#039;<br><br> is known for frequently posting snaps of her in her day-to-day life, with the pics of little Harper Beckham proving particularly popular. <br><br><br><br>&#039;It&rsquo;s been a really interesting experience. I would imagine some of the growth can be linked to the fact that I try to give some personal insights to my followers as well as keeping them abreast of the business,&#039; she said of her decision to share personal snippets. <br><br>&#039;I also think that my fans and customers really get to know me and my sense of humor through my tweets. I think people see the real me.&#039;<br><br>Are you impressed with how far has come since her Spice Girls days? Are you a fan of her fashion line? Let us know your thoughts in the comment box below. <br><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><br></p><br></p><p>As one of the fashion world&#039;s most coveted rising style stars, it should be no surprise that corset dresses has been spotted on not one, but two Hollywood starlets in the space of a week.<br><br>Giving the dress its A-list debut, stepped out in the two-tone number last week, and was papped leaving Kanye West&#039;s Manhattan apartment. <br><br>Jil Sander platform heels and an oversized metallic bag completed her look. <br><br>Less than a week later, and gave the dress another very public outing. Arriving for an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, the socialite rocked the style with YSL pumps.<br><br>She added a resin necklace, from the House of Harlow collection by her ex-Simple Life co-star, Nicole Richie.<br><br>Both stylistas opted for very similar make-up to compliment their statement frocks - matching pale pink lips and a slick of black liner.<br><br><br><br>Two stars, one dress - but the question is, who wore it best? Share your verdict in the comments box below.<br><br></p><p>It&#8217;s a whole new year in 15 little days and we&#8217;ve got some big news about what&#8217;s coming your way. So start the countdown and prepare to kickoff 2011 with a fresh perspective on style for your most fashionable year yet.</p><p>From the thousands of designer runway looks, we chose the 10 most prominent trends to feature in our 2011 lookbook.</p><p><br>10. The Bigger The Better<br>With the new year comes an entirely new shape and overarching trend: volume. The most common thread between not only pieces in a collection, but between designers and even blending into menswear, one thing is pretty clear: 2011 means seriously pumping up the volume. Bulky fabrics, textured embellishments and structured, architectural elements should add volume in the right places (shoulders, hips or at the bottom hem) and cinch in accent areas (waist, chest, arms) for the most flattering shape.<br></p><p><br>9. Big Legs<br>It&#8217;s not time to throw out your skinnies, but it is time to incorporate a broader pant into your wardrobe. Wide-leg pants vary in style, but the most popular choices for the catwalk were high-waist straight leg, super low-rise parachute and tapered capri pants. Pair with a fitted top to balance out the look and a skinny belt always helps to define a waist line. Voluminous pants in denim, velvet, and stretch sweater fleece are going to be the biggest hits next year.<br><br><br><br>8. See-Thru<br>Flowy sheers and see-through chiffons are always a staple for the spring. For day, you can get the look without offending anyone by wearing a lace cami slip underneath a sheer top or dress. For night, go bold with a transparent top and a sexy bra or go for a simple solid top and slightly sheer pants.<br></p><p>7. Dripping In Style<br>This super-simple trend perfects the &#8220;I&#8217;m not trying too hard&#8221; look with loose fits and a muted color palette. Limit the drapey pieces to under 3 at a time to avoid overdoing the layers. Sheers were seamlessly seen coming down the catwalk with a pair of chunky boots to add a little structure to the overall ensemble.<br></p><p>Don&#8217;t drown your drapey look just because the sun&#8217;s out&#8211;keep your layered style by the pool with drapey cover-ups like this one from :<br><br></p><p>6. Ruffles<br>Every girl loves a garment with a little bounce to it. Get flirty with pretty ruffles that instantly add life to any outfit. These feminine adornments were often paired on the runway with leather and metal details to edge up the look. Opt for ultra-feminine with pretty curls and natural pale pink lips.<br></p><p><br>5. All About Orange<br>It&#8217;s insane to think about how much orange was incorporated into spring 2011 RTW collections. A vibrant coral orange is the perfect hue to add a pop of color into your new year. Compliment the sunny shade with more subdued colors like deep purple, navy or mocha brown to achieve a bright, yet cool and sophisticated, look.<br></p><p>As for the guys, we know you&#8217;re not as inclined to&#8230;well&#8230;care&#8230;as much as the ladies do about upcoming trends. So here are some general themes and hot items happening in fashion right now that you should consider weaving into your rotation.</p><p>4.Casual Slouch<br>Keeping in line with the ladies, 2011 is all about looking effortlessly fashionable (read: e-a-s-y). So, yes, you can handle this one. Promise. The look is un-tucked but still tailored; so keep the fit somewhat close to the body, just opt for thin, &#8220;slouchy&#8221; fabrics that move and layer well. Try a new pant silhouette like a slight harem with a slim ankle or a low-rise urban pair with the bottoms rolled up or tucked into boots.<br> </p><p>3. Sport the Shorts<br>Don&#8217;t be afraid of shorts. Because stuffing your hot, sweaty legs into a pair of jeans in 80 degree whether isn&#8217;t cute for anyone involved. Grab a pair of relaxed-fit capri or just-above-the-knee-length shorts that are in keeping with the slouchy trend. Layer a loose tee, rolled button-up shirt and an over-sized cardigan for a great daytime look. Boots and shorts are one of 2011&#8242;s biggest combinations, and a distressed lace-up pair are the perfect finishing touch to this sporty look.<br></p><p>2. Punky Spunky<br>It&#8217;s really never a bad idea to dress like a badass from time to time. This look is all about a &#8220;statement&#8221; piece&#8211;one that stands out and is the main attraction of the outfit. A statement piece can be like anything below, a retro black and white shoe, a metallic shirt, or a studded leather jacket, but it has to be special and, naturally, have a little edge. Choose slim fits, pointier shoes, and more geometric shapes to get the look.<br></p><p>1. (Real Men Wear) White Pants<br>When you&#8217;re not dressing like a badass, why not dress like someone who knows what a &#8220;galley&#8221; is? White pants are all over the 2011 forecast, and when paired with a fitted cardigan or a colorful blazer, these can make you look like a million bucks.<br></p><p>Wishing you and your wardrobes all the best for 2011. Happy shopping!</p><p>All photos from NYmag.com</p><br><br><p>A new day, a new rumor about who may be taking over the reigns at luxury house Christian Dior. The newest designer up for the job no one wants to seem to take? None other than American designer Alexander Wang.</p><p>While at this point every name seems to have been bandied about for the position, Wang seems the biggest stretch yet. The designer is known for his urban streetwear, not something that would seem to translate so well when taking over a position that requires two couture collections a year.</p><p>Many in the industry thought Marc Jacobs would be accepting the position, moving to Dior from Louis Vuitton, but talks fell apart over salary and LVMH being unwilling to let Jacobs leave Vuitton according to reports.</p><p>At this rate it doesn&#8217;t seem so out there that John Galliano would return to the house, despite his recent scandal. But, if this newest rumor is true, look for ladies in delicate ball gowns with motorcycle helmets when Wang’s first couture collection for the house is presented early next year.</p><p>The Job No One Wants? []</p><br><br><p>Beyond the clothes and shoes and bags and &#8216;dos of the spring collections this past month, one thing became very, very evident &#8212; American models are having a moment.</p><p>This may not seem so novel, there has never been a shortage of American models, and ones who are household names at that. But since the birth of the modern modelling era in the 1970s, there has seldom been a large influx of American beauties snagging spots on the big runways and all the major editorials and ad campaigns.</p><p>The last time we saw this was roughly ten years ago in the early aughts when the&#8221; It girls&#8221; of the late &#8217;90s and new American faces all seemed to thrive over a four year period.</p><p>Erin Wasson, Frankie and Missy Rayder, Bridget Hall, Maggie Rizer, James (now Jaime) King, Angela Lindvall, Carolyn Murphy, Amber Valletta, Guinevere van Seenus, Amanda Moore, Jessica Miller &#8230; just a few of the American beauties who could be seen in every magazine, fronting every campaign and on every runway.</p><p>What&#8217;s more, Wasson, Lindvall and both Rayders are still thriving. 36-year-old Frankie lent her picture perfect face to both the Alexander Wang and Givenchy shows this season, blending in seamlessly with models who were literally almost half her age. Wasson, 29, also popped up at Givenchy and Michael Kors and Missy, 33, turned out to support pal Giles Deacon and his eponymous line.</p><p>This is not to discredit American supers like Christy Turlington, Stephanie Seymour and Cindy Crawford, but these girls were more a part of an international crew that included Linda, Claudia, Naomi, Tatjana, Nadja, Helena and later on Kate. It must also be noted that these ladies, most now in their early forties, are also still scoring some very major, and some season&#8217;s every major, campaigns.</p><p>Cut to now and there is an almost endless rooster of established American girls like Heidi Mount, Arizona Muse, Sessilee Lopez, Jacquelyn Jablonski, Lindsey Wixson (a vet at 17), Britt Maren, Chanel Iman, Ruby and Lily Aldridge and Hilary Rhoda being joined by some very, very strong newcomers.</p><p>Arizona native Kelly Mittendorf, 17, managed to score perhaps the most amazing debut gig ever. While the all coveted Prada exclusive has always been the ultimate in the industry, Mittendorf decided to just skip over that and book the campaign for Fall 2011. Did we mention she had yet to walk a runway at that point?</p><p>Maria Bradley meanwhile scored an exclusive for a little line called Balenciaga this past season. That in addition to stopping by Versace (another exclusive), Alexander Wang (she opened), Tommy Hilfiger and Proenza Schouler. Not bad for a 17-year-old kid from Kansas.</p><p>And there is more national pride to be had in the form of 16-year-old wonders Josilyn Williams and Court (just &#8220;Court,&#8221; like Cher), 17-year-old free spirit and pink coiffed Charlotte Free and Long Island gal Allaire Heisig, another old soul at 17, who closed the fall Marc by Marc show, scored a spot at the Valentino couture show this past July and found herself in the pages of the September issue of Italian Vogue &#8211; without the aid of being the victor on a CW program. Not bad work if you can get it.  And balance it with your high school schedule as well of course.</p><p>But we saved the best for last. Britain has Kate and Naomi, Canada Linda and Daria and Brazil Gisele and Raquel. At this point the two American names that come to mind for most are Christy and Cindy, stunning beauties both but 20 years removed from the height of their fame. Enter Karlie.</p><p>19-year-old Karlie Kloss has everything going for her. Debuting as a Calvin Klein exclusive at the very tender, and now outlawed, age of 15, Kloss has managed to somehow become more and more gorgeous with age. So gorgeous that it sometimes seems when flipping through the pages of industry bible Vogue that the the almighty Anna Wintour has forgotten there are in fact other models with editorial availability.</p><p>The problem is, no other model can do what Kloss can do. She can be the All-American girl at one second, a seductive sultress the next and even, despite her just having graduated from high school, the urban working woman to close things out. It would be easier to list a mood or persona this teen can&#8217;t nail down rather than run through how pitch perfect she is in absolutely everything she does.</p><p>Editorial not enough? Let&#8217;s take a look at her walk. Kloss has one of, if not the, best runway walks ever. A testament perhaps to her years of ballet, when Kloss catwalks in a designer&#8217;s wears stylists want to snag it, creative directors want to shoot it and, best of all, every woman, and no doubt some men, want to find a way to buy it in hopes they too might look like the leggy beauty. It&#8217;s no wonder Kloss tends to only hold two slots in most every runway show she does &#8211; open or close.</p><p>And there&#8217;s more! Have you ever seen an interview with Kloss? Modelling is an incredibly, incredibly difficult world, even more so for a girl of 15 to enter. Kloss however is the most pleasant, cordial and unpretentious girl in the business. A huge credit no doubt to her parents, but an even bigger credit to a girl who had booked campaigns for Christian Dior, Marc Jacobs, Chloe, Oscar de la Renta and a feature article, yes article, in Vogue before she turned 18. That is the kind of resume that allows one to play darts with a BlackBerry and their assistant&#8217;s head should they so desire.</p><p>Kloss, much like the original ppa seems to be well on her way to forming her own international posse as well, like her idol Christy, with pals Toni Garn, Frida Gustavsson and best bud Jourdan Dunn filling out the crew. What&#8217;s more, her debut on another coveted catwalk seems almost guaranteed later this year as, now no longer a minor, Kloss will surely be tossing on a pair of wings for a certain lingerie company that another pal, Iman, joined last year.</p><p>So keep an eye on all the American gals kids, and Kloss specifically. The girl managed to move beyond even fashion mags this September when Life made her one of just a handful of models to have ever graced their cover, joining the ranks of the iconic Veruschka, Suzy Parker and Naomi Sims.</p><p>So all that is missing now is her music video debut. Think George Michael is up for a &#8220;Freedom &#8217;11?&#8221;</p><br><br><p>[Hi, I'm Justin - the stylist and blogger behind . By day, I'm scouting out the latest and greatest in fashion and lifestyle. By night, I'm like a Magic 8-Ball for all of your style questions. From finding your best local thrift store to discovering the designers you need to know, I'll be doing the down-and-dirty research so you won't have to. If you have a style question, I have the answer. Send them to questions AT scoutsixteen.com.]</p>Hi Justin – I’m in college and looking for a really great bag. The backpack I got is too heavy/bulky and I want something functional but fashionable. Would you send me some suggestions? – Tyler W., Oxford, MS<p>In college, it’s important that you have a bag that can handle your busy lifestyle. From class to the art studio to happy hour with friends, you’re going to want something functional but transitional to your schedule. I’ve always been a big fan of tote bags – they do their job without weighing you down, so to speak. Here are a few of my favorite options at various price points.</p>Everywhere I look, people are talking about the ‘colors of the season’. Where do I look to find these? I need some serious help – I don’t want to get left in this dust while prepping my shopping lists! – Tish A., Grand Rapids, MI<p>The origin of color trends in fashion is a mystery. Designers seem to have an innate sense of what the upcoming prominent colors are going to be.  Whether they look to the streets for personal-style inspiration or get inspired by an overseas trip, there are some consistencies with colors each season. , the world’s authority in color, actually releases a prediction each season of the hues they theorize will be more far-reaching in the industry. Plan ahead! – for Spring 2013, I’ve made a handy guide to these 10 colors, which you can see to the left.</p><p></p>What’s your take on camouflage? I’ve seen it in some of the stores at my local mall. Is it cool to wear it? – Jared W., Hialeah, FL <p>This is actually something I address in . I grew up on camouflage and hunting gear. It’s interesting to see that there has been a swift surge of retailers carrying camo-inspired items. I am personally a big fan of prints and camo hits home in a very special way. Keeping it subtle is key here. Limit yourself to using the print only ONCE per outfit (a shirt, cargo pants or a bag). Pair camo cargo pants with  a white button-down shirt and denim jacket for a cool, Americana look. Or – for ladies – try a with a neutral outfit for a subtle pop of print.</p><br><br><p> </p><p>&#8216;s coverage of Fashion Week for NewNowNext continues!</p><p></p><p>As the world becomes increasingly eco-friendly, by unveiling her first ever full runway collection, Barbie continually reminds us of one thing. PLASTIC IS FANTASTIC!! That bitch must have some massive walk-in closets in that dream house of heecause she has a lot of fabulous clothes.</p><p>After the jump, loads of photos! And a video from the show!>/p></p><p><br> </p><p>The Barbie show on Valentine&#8217;s Day was a mob scene and definitely the show of most interest this season. 50 different designers each designed one look inspired by the polyurethane pop-tart and they were all amazing. Since it wasn’t an exhibition for buyers and editors they really put on a SHOW! I was in the second row and I did feel a bit snubbed th was seated behind a 5-year-old but I think she may have been an editor at pre-teen Vogue. These days apparently anybody can be (Lauren Conrad), so who knows.</p><p>I spied with my little eye&#8230; Lots of celebs! I wasn’t really star-searching Ed McMahon style but I did see Heidi Klum, Diane Von Furstenburg, Jeffrey Banks, Stephen Cole of the CFDA, Bob Mackie, Peter Som, The Blonds, Annie Leibovitz with her daughters, power gays Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler, Mattel Creative Director Robert Best and Robert Verdi. There were loads of screaming girls so I felt right at home.</p><p><br>Heidi loves Barbie! <br> <br>Simon lives for Barbie.<br><br>DVF taught Barbie everything she knows. </p><p>As they peeled back the plastic off the runway and the lights went black, a 5-minute video of all Barbie’s fabulousness dazzled the audience. I was in heaven. After the video the scrim parted and beneath a crystal chandelier posed the first model.</p><p>The show was divided into 3 sections. The first was hiony glamour Barbie. The second was career glamour Barbie. And the third was futuristic glamour Barbie. I like the first group the best because all the models were so made up to look like dolls that they looked like reincarnations of Amanda Lepore. (No relation to Nanette Lepore who wouldn’t give me a ticket to her show.) It was a hot pink tranny mess. I loved it.</p><p> </p><p>The audience was full of excited little girls on their mothers’ laps and many Barbie lookalikes in pink dresses, blond ponytails, even a pink wig. It was a cinematic event, opening with a visual biography of the birthday girl that took us through the ages, highlighting Barbie favorites – her stylish wardrobe, pink convertible and enviable dream house. But thel show began when the big screen split, revealing the first look: A black and white sequin swimsuit.</p><p> <br><br>Nicole Miller&#8217;s Barbie look. </p><p>There were any amazing looks it was difficult to pick a fave but I LOVED bob mackie’s creation. We all know from Cher’s get-ups that Ms. Mackie knows how to costume.</p><p><br>Bob Mackie&#8217;s Barbie gown <br> <br><br>Barbie with Ken by Kenneth Cole </p><p>The party ended wi parade of models holding the hands of little girls dressed in brightly colored tutus and white Barbie logo tops, while sparkling confetti rained down on the birthday fete.</p><p> </p><p>Color Palette: Pink of course! Black and white, silver, red, blue.</p><p>Textures &amp; Details: Fur, organza, bows, ruffles, sequins, satin, sparkles. Completely girly, completely Barbie! High ponytails, overs floppy sun hats, pink pumps, cute coats and slinky evening gowns.</p><p>Key Looks: ThreeAsFour’s half pink-half white pleated, tiered party dress; Diane von Furstenberg’s glamour girl in pink and white print wrap dress toting stylish luggage in tow; Alexander Wang’s silver glittery one-piece bathing suit with pink jacket; Koi Suwannagate’s butterfly-inspired dress with petal skirt; Kenneth Cole’s Ken and Barbie in coordinating jeans and jackets.</p><p><br>Three As Four <br> <br>House of Field <br> <br>Diane Von Furstenberg </p><p>The complete list of designers (in alphabetical order) includes:<br>Alexander Wang, Anna Sui, Baby Phat, Badgley Mischka, Betsey Johnson, Bob Mackie, Brian Reyes, Calvin Klein, Carmen Marc Valvo, Catherine Malandrino, Chris Benz, Costello Tagliapietra, Derek Lam, Diane von Furstenberg, Donna Kararin Fetherston, House of Field, Jeremy Scott, Juicy Couture, Kai Kuhne, Kenneth Cole, Koi Suwannagate, Lyn Devon, Marchesa, Michael Kors, Monique Lhuillier, Naeem Khan, Nanette Lepore, Nicole Miller, Norma Kamali, Peter Som, Rachel Roy, Rag &amp; Bone, Rebecca Taylor, Reem Acra, Rosa Cha, The Blonds, Three As Four, Tibi, Tommy Hilfiger, Tory Burch, Tracy Reese, Trina Turk, Tuleh, Twinkle, Vena Cava, Vera Wang, Vivienne Tam, Yeohlee, Yigal Azrouel.</p><p> </p><p>And the cherry on the top of the sundae: A one-of-a-kind collector’s edition Barbie to go!! Hello eBay!!</p><p></p><p>And just &#8216;cuz&#8230; Watch a video of the hot pink madness from<p>John Galliano&#8217;s departure from Christian Dior has been the focus of much talk about the house for six months now, along with what big name designer would replace him. At this point every name from Ricardo Tisci and Marc Jacobs to Alexander Wang and Sarah Burton has been tossed around, with no deal finalized. It seems however that for the devoted Dior customer the ideal designer has been found &#8212; current creative director Bill Gaytten.</p><p>In his second Ready-to-Wear collection for the label, though Galliano likely had some hand in the first, Gaytten created what could be called the quintessential Dior collection. It was not earth shattering or revolutionary, but it will likely sell, and sell quick, to fans of the label.</p><p>Gaytten will surely never take over the label, as Burton did following Alexander McQueen&#8217;s death, but this collection, with its classic silhouettes and vibrant reds, clearly showed what a remarkable asset he will be to whatever incoming designer takes the post. He knows the framework, the history of the label, and someone else can come in and add the flourishes.</p><p>For those expecting something lackluster or unremarkable, there was nothing but disappointment.</p><p>There was one shock however when, after what feels like 20 seasons, American supermodel Karlie Kloss did not open the show. She did, however, close it.</p><br><br><p>Not every man can brag they showed off both perfect abs and size 13 high heels in the same photo shoot, but Ezra Miller isn&#8217;t just anyone.</p><p>The Perks of Being A Wallflower actor, who looked amazing in a new photo shoot for the .</p><p>The lucky guy got to don Comme des Garçons, Alexander Wang, Chris Benz, Sonia Rykiel and Anna Sui for the high fashion shoot, which had a stylist running to a drag boutique for heels that would fit him.  &#8220;I&#8217;d really like to work in all artistic forms and industries,&#8221; Ezra says in the interview, &#8220;for as long as I have legs.&#8221; The actor says he doesn&#8217;t mind having a high-profile, as long as attention focuses on his art and not his personal beliefs, &#8220;Outside of art, I don&#8217;t really want to have anything to say to the mass public.&#8221;</p><p>Well if you continue scoring incredible roles in independent films, and pulling off a drag photo shoot in a popular magazine &#8212; all at age 19 &#8212; there really isn&#8217;t much you have to say, Ezra.</p><p></p><p></p><br><br><p> <br>Blake Lively serves up some sexy shoulder at the Miss Sixty show. <p>All this week and into this weekend, Fashion Week rages on! Why just this morning, this season&#8217;s Project Runway kids will be showing off their looks hoping to score the grand prize. But NYC&#8217;s Bryant Park has been a media zoo for days, with tents crammed with celebs, editors, fashionistas, paparazzi and wannabe glamazons&#8211;and every other sort&#8211;all jockeying to get a glimpse of what&#8217;s hot and be HBIC.</p><p>In the midst of all this is photographer , who&#8217;s made a name for himself by hitting Manhattan&#8217;s hotspots 24/7 armed with his trusty Polaroid. He shoots, he scores!</p><p>Here&#8217;s a fun photo album (a zillion pics after the jump) of some of the snaps Kost has nabbed over the last several days. His subjects are A-list, and the results are way fun. Say cheese, beeyotches!</p><p> <br>J-Lo is feeling shady. Just like we like her&#8230; </p><p><br> <br>Ma Bette Milder and Michael Kors, backstage at his show. <br> <br>Christina Ricci glows at Marc Jacobs.<br> <br>Interview Magazine&#8217;s new editor Christopher Bollen and MisShapes diva Leigh Lezark hit Rag &amp; Bone.<br> <br>Diane von Furstenberg and J-Lo. Hot and hot.<br> <br>Happy little Elijah Wood brings elfin joy to Marc Jacobs. <br> <br>Heidi! F*ck, yeah! <br> <br>Hot model Garrett Neff gets ready at Michael Kors. Hubba!<br> <br>Jessica Szhor slumps atop her Gossip Girl bud &#8230; Wouldn&#8217;t you? <br> <br>Kanye West and Jay-Z show up for Marc Jacobs. Strike a pose much, fellas? <br> <br>Kelly Osbourne doesn&#8217;t suck. She rules. <br> <br>Lindsay Lohan shoots a look during the show of her common-law sis-in-law Charlotte Ronson. See LiLo&#8217;s squeeze Samantha in the background (left)? She&#8217;s never far away&#8230; <br> <br>A happy Lindsay gives Charlotte a big sweet hug. <br> <br>Brother Mark Ronson spins the tunes at Charlotte&#8217;s big show. Family love! <br> <br>Martha Stewart also hit the Marc Jacobs extravaganza. Attagirl&#8230; <br> <br>Mary-Kate Olsen delivers her signature eye pout and lip curl. You would too if you made a billion before you were 17. Wurk. <br> <br>But I&#8217;m not sure what Michael Pitt&#8217;s damage is. Is he still thinking he&#8217;s Tommy Gnosis? <br> <br>Holy crap! It&#8217;s Olympic champster Nastia Liukin! She&#8217;s golden at the Peter Som show! <br> <br>Remember when Nicole Ritchie got her big classy skinny girl makeover? I like this compromise between messy, trashy early Simple-Life Nicole and the skinny version. <br> <br>Some words to live by backstage at Alexander Wang. <br> <br>The always hot Padmi Lakshmi actually looks a bit chilly at this Christie&#8217;s event, if ya know what I&#8217;m sayin&#8217;&#8230; <br> <br>Brit Stuart Townsend and his Oscar-winning babe Charlize Theron are serving up intense don&#8217;t-f*ck-with-us coolness at the Rag &amp; Bone wing-ding. We hear ya&#8230; <br> <br>But no one&#8217;s as scorchingly hot/freaky/major as this threesome. Victoria Beckham, Marc Jacobs and Jennifer Lopez cannot even pretend to be casual backstage at Marc&#8217;s big show. THIS is how it is done, children. <br> <br>Winona Ryder delivers a jutting profile jab. Eeeoooowwwww! <br> <br>And hot Rosario Dawson just puts it in the bag and takes it home. Muah!!!</p><br><br><p><br><br>Poolside at The Deck in Fire Island Pines. Swank by the sea!<br></p><p>&#8220;Fire Island, Fire Island, Fire Island!!!!&#8221;</p><p>Yes, it&#8217;s a mantra repeated for decades by many NYC gays who love to jaunt out to this beachy enclave for weekends (or longer) every summer so they can soak up the sun, sand and social sassiness that takes over this car-free sandbar off the southern coast of Long Island (Reachable only by ferry! Bon voyage!).</p><p>Fire Island is home to many summertime communities, but for LGBT travelers there are two towns that pull the biggest number of queer visitors. Cherry Grove is a folksy, low-key village frequented by daytrippers, gay men, lesbians, families – a little bit of everything, really. The houses here tend to be a fun hodge-podge of cabins and condos, and the vibe is one of a quirky and slightly kitschy small town. It&#8217;s cute, quaint and always fun for a folksy vacay.</p><p>Meanwhile, is more of a glossy, full-throttle summer playground for gay men and their friends and families. All are welcome in the Pines, but it’s no secret that for years, this coastal haven has largely been a vacation hotspot for gay men who love the beach and the social swirl. And it&#8217;s thriving now more than ever!</p><p>For summer 2011, the forces behind the big core businesses known as , which make up much of “town” in Fire Island Pines’ harbor, have spent months prepping, revamping, upgrading and revitalizing their properties, and the results are pretty damn fab.</p><p>Visitors have lots of options on places to dance, dine, shop and get pampered and be entertained. Every week and weekend is packed with talented performers, major parties, good food, smart events and a million ways to treat yourselves. AND… the harbor’s legendary Hotel Ciel has even experienced an upgrade, with even greater plans for a completely new structure for the future seasons.</p><p>But let’s just break it down for you. Here’s a quick overview of what’s new and improved out in the Fire Island Pines this summer.</p><p><br><br>The Pines harbor got a little haute hotness this summer. Welcome, Oak!<br></p><p>WHAT’S NEW</p><p>- A revamped website for all of The Pines’ core businesses has launched, and it’s major! is a gem of a resource for all you need to know about big parties, who’s performing, who’s DJing at the daily tea dances, travel info, hotel booking and beyond. Plus, all the social media hookups (, ) so you can stay clued in to everything going on all summer long.</p><p>- has opened! Yes, NYC’s fiercest and most fashionably forward boutique (with hubs in Manhattan and Williamsburg, Brooklyn) has popped up for the summer in the Pines. Oak is infusing some serious downtown chic and arty fun style into the beach scene at Fire Island. Check out beachwear from the likes of killer brands like Acne, Alexander Wang, Comme des Garcons and Oak’s own house brands.</p><p>- Wanna work it out? The Pines’ gym has majorly upgraded for 2011. This summer it’s moved indoors (into the former Pines Supply grocery store space) and is now called The Rack. Check it out!</p><p>- The fab café known as Canteen is still open daily, serving up great breakfasts and lunches. And by night it turns into a tasty taqueria called Canteen-a. </p><p>- Are you a Pines regular? There’s a new resort card called &#8220;Pink Pass&#8221; that can be used at all Fire Island Pines Ventures properties, so no cash needed! It can be refilled on the island or via the new website. </p><p>- If you must do work while you’re out on the island, fret not. A new business center is available in the Hotel Ciel (on the ground floor) for those that want to stay out an extra weekday or two, but need the use office supplies (fax, copier, etc.)</p><p>- Need a backrub? Or whole body-rub? Or a facial? Or more? A blissed-out new joint called Sugar Shack Spa is open now. They’re offereing “after-sun treatments,” as well as peels, waxing and more!</p><p>-Take the A is just started which includes the train, jitney and ferry in one price package.</p><p><br> <br></p><p>SHOWS, PARTIES &#038; MORE!!!<br><br>-Watch out for soggy popcorn! Get into new &#8220;Dive-in Movie&#8221; screenings by the pool (out back behind Canteen) with their all-new inflatable movie screen! Watch TV and film classics! Re-enacts scenes from “Splash” or that big lake-dancing scene from “Dirty Dancing.” Nobody dunks Baby in the corner!! Weeknights at 8:30pm.</p><p>- Get smart! Dig into some serious cultural discussions with weekly Saturday panel discussions dubbed &#8220;Boardwalk Talk&#8221; with writers, personalities, gay activists, etc. Pump your brain with dialogue and dish from the likes of Paul Rudnick, and other cultural icons. It’s free and every Saturday at 3pm at the Blue Whale.</p><p>- Drag-hosted all-you-can-drink brunches on Saturday/Sunday on the pool deck. It&#8217;s called Boozy Brunch and rocks from 12p-2p. Cheers!</p><p>- The classic Blue Whale café and bar (It’s a Fire Island legend, folks!) is bringing live performances, drag acts, and more all summer long. &#8220;Porsche &#038; Friends&#8221; with the famed impersonator drag queen is every Thursday, while &#8220;Blue Whale LIVE&#8221; every Monday serves up a new live act. Other drag performances are being booked for Fridays/Saturdays. And of course the popular staple Showtune Sundays will continue with VJ Tony Built. Get up dates daily at .</p><p>- The Friday-night Underwear party has being rebranded as &#8220;Fleshdance Fridays!&#8221; And it’s getting supersized with a sexy striptease/lapdance element to it, in addition to the good old underwear party folks are used to. Strip down and party up!!!</p><p>- Finally, don’t miss the daily classic Low Tea at the Blue Whale daily all summer at 5pm, High Tea at the Pavilion at 7pm, and then on the Saturdays, get serious dancing at Middle Tea at 8pm downstairs at the Pavilion. Dancing insanity!</p><p><br> <br></p><p>Anyway… Get prepped for a mad, magical summer! And seriously, get all the updates you need at . And follow for updates via Twitter () and on .</p><p> Need to know how to get to Fire Island Pines from NYC? Get the at .</p><br><br><p>Johnny Depp has long been known for his , and now it seems that he, and his wide array of hats, will be honored for their contribution to the world of fashion. The actor will receive the Fashion Icon award from the CFDA at their June 4 , becoming the first male to ever receive the award. Way to go J!</p><p>The Olsen twins also scored a CFDA nod for Womenswear Designer of the Year Award for The Row, where they will compete alongside Proenza Schouler and Marc Jacobs. The Menswear nominees are Billy Reid, Patrik Ervell, and Simon Spurr.</p><p>You can check out the rest of the nominees below. And, we are of course praying that Johnny&#8217;s award is presented by former Icon winner and ex Kate Moss. That would be a moment.</p><br><br><p>The Christian Dior designer game has been one of the most exciting in fashion for some time now, and it has taken yet another turn. After months of speculation that Marc Jacobs would take the job, it appears the American designer is out, and the new name being tossed around is Jason Wu.</p><p>To be fair, Alexander Wang and Ricardo Tisci are also still in the conversation, but Tisci just had perhaps his strongest show ever for Spring 2012 at Givenchy so it is not very likely he will be leaving any time soon. As for Wang, his streetwear sensibilities don&#8217;t seem like the best fit for a house that produces two couture collections a year.</p><p>And so Wu it may be and, to be honest, it makes a lot of sense. His ladylike designs and use of fabrics seem to mesh well with the house, and he certainly has the critical support among the fashion crowd. Now it remains to see if he is willing to take the gig, or if we will yet again be back at square one in just a few weeks time.</p><p>Michelle Obama may be wearing a whole lot of Dior in 2012.</p><p>Marc Jacobs to Dior Seen Less Likely []</p><br><br><p>Rooney Mara should probably enjoy the next two months as much as she can as the second The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo hits theaters on December 21 she will immediately leap from relative unknown to the biggest actress in the world. And it seems like she&#8217;s got an awesome attitude about the whole thing.</p><p>The 26-year-old&#8217;s marketing push for the film has just launched, and in a way most actresses can only dream of &#8212; a Vogue cover.</p><p>In the pages Mara is striking in designs from Marchesa, Alexander Wang, Calvin Klein and Vera Wang to name just a few. While the accompanying article is very light on personal revelations, it does detail just how rigorous the demands of playing heroine Lisbeth Salander for the film are. The actress had to be pierced (in unspeakable places), chop off her hair and bleach her eyebrows, and, perhaps hardest, drop some major weight from her already pin thin frame to play the near skeletal Salander.</p><p>Luckily, Mara has a wonderful friend and mentor in director David Fincher, who admits the studio refused to let him cast the actress in the role. In fact, he himself didn&#8217;t even want to see her initially, having just worked with her on The Social Network. He assumed she was incapable and saw a slew of other ladies instead, including Scarlett Johansson, who he comments had an excellent audition.</p><p>With two more movies to go in the trilogy Mara is guaranteed a fair deal of work until at least 2015, also the date she can probably remove those piercings. Unless of course she likes them &#8212; who knows?</p><p>Let us all just hope this is the first of many covers for the starlet as the cover, styled by Tonne Goodman and shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, is hands down one of the best Vogue has put out in years.</p><p>Rooney Mara: Playing with Fire []</p><br><br><p>It&#8217;s that time again kids, time to play: ? Today&#8217;s contestant is Tom Ford, and his is joined by, um, no one it seems.</p><p>That&#8217;s right everyone, it appears that pretty much every designer has now turned down the Dior job, including Marc Jacobs who was for a long time the undisputed frontrunner. And why did they turn him down? They didn&#8217;t! He turned THEM down.</p><p>Marc apparently wanted five-figure salaries for himself and Robert Duffy as well as the ability to move his team at Vuitton over and continue what he was doing at Vuitton. So, since that was not going to happen he decided to stay at Vuitton. Probably for the best.</p><p>Now the label is apparently circling Ford for the job which , though we still have our fingers crossed for here.</p><p>Wu can do it!</p><p>Report: Marc Jacobs Turns Down Dior For Good (and So Did Everyone Else) []</p><br><br><p>It may have been the weekend, but New York Fashion Week stops for no one, with more major shows seemingly happening on Saturday and Sunday and more lunatics jostling to sneak into any show they can. Thank god for the fridges filled with Diet Pepsi. The utter lack of food anywhere, not so great.</p><p>Here is a look at some of the collections from the weekend.<br><br>Alexander Wang<br>There was lots of outerwear in black, white and oxblood at the very, very dark Pier 94 for the Wang show. But forget about the clothes, the big news was Wang&#8217;s final group of models which included Gisele Bunchden, Carmen Kass, Karolina Kurkova, Frankie Rayder and Shalom Harlow. The most exciting moment to happen so far at Fashion Week, not that there haven&#8217;t been many.</p><p>Mara Hoffman<br>The designer showed a whole lot of gorgeous prints as well as some awesome jewelry (a collaboration with All For The Mountain) but the clothing didn&#8217;t look particularly warm. There were a few sweaters and coats but for the most part these dresses, while gorgeous, seemed far better suited for a warmer time of year than Fall/Winter 2012.</p><p>Monique Lhuillier<br>Lots of dresses, shocking, in black and red. In somewhat of a surprise however the designer also included some leather on her dresses and showed some very nice fiery prints, apparently inspired by lava. You can all get ready to see these looks on most every red carpet from now until September.<br><br>Rachel Antonoff<br>The clothes were hip and cool as always but all we could really concentrate on was the fact that Maeby Funke was singing. George Michael is going to be SO jealous of us.</p><p>Victoria Beckham<br>Once again proving she is a legit designer, and a pretty great one at that, Victoria showed an amazing collection of sleek looks with colored collars and a glamorous new handbag named, you guessed it, the Harper.</p><p>Diane von Furstenberg<br>There was a nice mix of prints and beautiful solids in bright red, black, turquoise, fuchsia and even lime green at Diane&#8217;s show. There was also an insane mix of celebs. We spotted: Anderson Cooper, Solange Knowles, Barry Diller, Rachel Zoe, Molly Sims, Andy Cohen, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer and Coco Rocha in the front row.</p><p></p><p></p><br><br><p>Fashion Week gets underway this week in New York City and, with this in mind, here are five faces from the good old US of A to look out for. From industry veterans to new girls and returning faces, there is a good chance everyone will be seeing a whole lot of these American girls over the next month in NYC, London, Milan and Paris.</p><br><br><p>Meet Nonie Creme &#8212; the mixologist with the mohawk. She&#8217;s the creative director of butter London and the girl about fashion town. When she isn&#8217;t doing business from her company headquarters in Seattle or romancing with her husband in London you can probably find her hanging around backstage at fashion shows mixing her own colours. Nonie&#8217;s created colors for anyone from Alexander Wang to Yigal and she just can&#8217;t be stopped, but who would want to stop her anyway? She&#8217;s keeping the ladies nails unique and probably some of the gentleman&#8217;s too. We got a chance to chat with Nonie about life, work and the fun behind butter London.</p><p>What is butter LONDON all about? And who is your target audience?<br>butter LONDON is all about exceptional colour. Colour with a difference, colour that we hope you&#8217;ve never really seen or thought of for your nails before. Our target audience isn&#8217;t really age specific, it&#8217;s more aimed at people who love fashion, and want to be able to join in on &#8220;behind the scenes&#8221; beauty moments from the shows. I designed most of our shades with specific designers for specific seasons. Those that aren&#8217;t straight off the catwalk are still designed around emergent trend coming out of those shows.</p><p>Why do you think so many celebrities are keyed in to your products and services?<br>A couple of reasons I guess. First &#8211; I&#8217;m old! I&#8217;ve been around for ages! I&#8217;ve been behind the scenes hand mixing colour for 15 years, long before butter LONDON was born. I was very fortunate in my career to have a high level of exposure to celebrities and fashion folks, and have made a fair few friends along the way. People are very keen on our non–toxic formulations as well. We always use the EU standard as our baseline for formulation, making our products the safest of their kind. Finally – the colours are irresistible!</p><p>Whose the strangest celebrity you&#8217;ve ever heard of using your products?<br>I am often backstage at the MTV Awards, where I get to work with music people I wouldn&#8217;t normally hang out with. Snoop Dogg was utterly charming and loved his manicure. Jesse J had a false nail drama that required me to scour backstage for a falsie, and Justin Beiber&#8217;s crew were so into our nail area that we ended up getting a butter LONDON serenade. One of &#8216;s minions was sent out to collect Royal Navy and British Racing Green, but the Grande Dame did not leave her dressing room.  Brilliant!</p><p>How do you decide the name and color palettes of your products?<br>I have been a life long student of fashion and colour. I have a Fine Arts degree, and did my work experience for Vivienne Westwood when I was a kid….she&#8217;s my hero. I pay close attention to everything I see and do when I work with a designer, and base our palettes on what I see happening in the fashion world. The names are kind of made up as I go along. My husband is a proper Londoner, with the most hilarious vocabulary – he&#8217;s quite the inspiration!</p><p>What&#8217;s your success story? From a manicurist to creative director of butter London, that&#8217;s pretty impressive.<br>That&#8217;s very kind, thank you. I studied Fine Arts and Art History, and a fair bit of colour theory. Colour is really it&#8217;s own language, and I&#8217;m just lucky I can speak it! I ran away from home when I left school and was suddenly living with &#8220;the band&#8221; in West London, disinherited by my posh parents. So, I did the best I could, and decided to learn how to do nails until my boyfriend could become a rich rockstar and support me…….<br>It was extremely rare at that time (1996) to use manicurists on fashion/celeb shoots, but I got talent spotted by an agent, who launched me into session work. Soon I was on set with the editors who would help me make my name as a&#8221;mixologist&#8221; of nail colour – a skill I used to create nail shades for everyone from Gucci to Jimmy Choo. A product range was always my dream, and finally I met a young British entrepreneur in 2006 who could help me realize it and run the business side of the company.<br>PS: I married the Rocker. 18 years and counting, but still no Ferraris I&#8217;m afraid!<br></p><p>Falling in love with a rock star must be fun. What&#8217;s that lifestyle like?<br>Well, he&#8217;ll be VERY pleased to hear you call him that! It was his dad who was the &#8220;proper&#8221; rockstar. (Lol Creme, 10cc) We were young and profoundly naive in many ways, so it was as messy as you&#8217;d imagine. I followed Arkarna (his band) all over the world, and there were plenty of groupies, fights, tears, and laughs  – the boys still say I split up the band – as IF. Miraculously, we&#8217;re all still friends!</p><p>Can you explain the names of some of your polishes? Saucy Jack? Dosh? Minger?<br>Saucy Jack: Nickname for Jack the Ripper, as coined in the legendary film, ‘This Is Spinal Tap’.<br>Dosh: Dosh is Brit slang for money or cash. “Can I have a bit of dosh, love? I fancy a kebab.”<br>Minger: British street slang for an ugly person. “Did you see that face? What a minger!”<br></p><p>Do you have any other environmentally friendly products in the works?<br>YES! Watch out for our first range of lipgloss coming to Ulta stores in February. It&#8217;s incredibly dense, colour driven gloss that does NOT contain parabens, petroleum, phthalates, sulphates, or bismuth, and matches your favourite lacquer shades. Epic.</p><p>What&#8217;s your nail art of choice?<br>Gotta be the &#8220;freehand ombre&#8221; from last season&#8217;s Yigal Azrouel/Cut25 show. Snoop it – it&#8217;s beautiful.</p><p>Out of all the design houses you&#8217;ve worked with, which one is the most fun?<br>With February show looming, I&#8217;d better not answer that! They&#8217;re all so different to work with, some very quiet and serious, and others just totally out there. What I love the most is being able to sit and talk to the designer first hand about their inspiration, their muse, and how to mix a nail shade that helps complete her.</p><br><br><p></p><p>Listen up, stylistas! Because whether you&#8217;re a fabulous tutu-wearing gal, fabulous tutu-wearing diva in drag or you stick to fashions within your socially accepted gender role, H&#038;M is about to amplify your street-chic cred.</p><p>The collaboration line hits U.S. stores Saturday morning-that&#8217;s tomorrow (or tonight if you&#8217;re a die-hard line monger), November 20th. And if what we&#8217;re looking forward to in the collection is anything like last night&#8217;s showcase was described, I&#8217;m getting my and my ready for the a.m.</p><p>Last night at a cozy ballroom at the Pierre Hotel in New York City, Alber Elbaz for Lanvin and H&amp;M debuted the collection at a funky runway show that was truly fit for a queen. reports the show was full of energy: adorned with gay fashion icon and hydrangea lover, Yves Saint Laurent-inspired decor and top shelf fashion mavens, , Alexander Wang, Grace Coddington and Sofia Coppola among the crowd.</p><p><br></p><p>The show and the one-of-a-kind designs were extravagant in every detail (what else did you expect from a homosexual high-fashion designer?!). According to Fashionista.com, the models &#8220;made love to the camera&#8221; as they &#8220; down the runway much like they [models] used to before the &#8217;90s.&#8221; You can learn how to do that .</p><p>From a look at the runway photos, Lanvin seems to have channeled a young, risk-taking yet ornately sophisticated H&amp;M shopper. Flirty, ultra-feminine details like bows, tulle or lace graced each look, at times, ingeniously combined with masculine trends like tuxedo jackets or pant suits. We are in love with the androgynous theme that blends &#8220;girly&#8221; and &#8220;manly&#8221; trends into one look. Particularly the lady tux.</p><p>Anyone surprised?</p><p>Pattern tights were a staple throughout the show-leopard, fishnet, metallic, crochet lace-you name it, they wore it. Our drag divas will be thrilled to expect an even bigger hosiery moment than last year, particularly from H&amp;M. <br></p><p>Alber wasn&#8217;t afraid to draw inspiration from the 80s with brightly colored fabrics, a-symmetrical cuts, pointy-toe pumps and vibrant make-up. One of his last looks was all white-a fitted tee, full poof mini skirt, paper bouquet and a long veil streaming from a feather head piece-paid homage to the 1990s tradition to show a last-look wedding dress at the close of top designer runway collections (which, by the way, sounds like the perfect Project Runway finale surprise challenge).</p><p>Forties fashion appeared in rich styles like fur coats, leather gloves, cloche and tilt hats, flapper silhouettes, multi-strand pearls and lace, lace, lace weaved into the runway show.</p><p>The models were whimsically styled with a mixture of opaque neon lips, &#8220;Miss Lanvin&#8221; pageant queen sashes, rocker-hair from afros to bright red wigs, top hats and costume jewelry galore. As inspired by Just kidding (or am I?).<br></p><p></p><p>Below the fiercely decorated catwalk, a makeshift shop was set up in the basement of the hotel and headed by the designer himself. The lucky attendees shopped the collection (7 items or less!) before it was even visible online to the public, the reports. Fashionista.com warns budget-conscious customers not to expect standard H&amp;M or high-end street line prices. The blog notes that dress prices range from $100 to $250, however, they believe the quality and construction of the pieces make them well worth the investment.</p><p>And, um. It&#8217;s LANVIN. Sold.</p><p>So ladies, leave the stilettos at home tonight in preparation for the big morning, and guys&#8230;you&#8217;ll be fine-I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ll all wait three days anyway.</p><p></p><p>Here&#8217;s a where you can find the collection tomorrow:</p><p>Arizona<br>7014 E. Camelback Road, Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall, Scottsdale</p><p>California<br>8500 Beverly Blvd. Beverly Center, Beverly Hills<br>8580 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood<br>10250 Santa Monica Boulevard, Westfield Century City, Los Angeles<br>333 Bristol Street, South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa<br>891 Americana Way-­? Americana at Glendale, Glendale<br>7070 Friars Road, Fashion Valley Mall, San Diego<br>150 Powell Street, San Francisco</p><p>Florida<br>8001 South Orange Blossom Trail, Florida Mall, Orlando<br>3010 PGB Blvd. The Gardens Mall, West Palm Beach</p><p>Georgia<br>231 18th Street, Atlantic Station, Atlanta</p><p>Illinois<br>840 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago</p><p>Massachusetts<br>100 Newbury Street, Boston</p><p>New York<br>505 Fifth Avenue @ 51st Street<br>731 Lexington Ave @59th Street<br>1328 Broadway @ 34th Street<br>515 Broadway @ Broome Street<br>150 East 86th Street @Lexington Avenue<br>435 Seventh Avenue @ 34th Street</p><p>Ohio<br>140 Easton Town Center, Easton</p><p>Oregon<br>340 SW Morrison Street Pioneer Place, Portland</p><p>Washington<br>520 Pike Street, Seattle</p><p>Washington, D.C.<br>1025 F Street, N.W. Washington, D.C.</p><br><br><p>At this point pretty much everyone wants to own something . And while his price points are remarkably low for a major designer, it is still going to cost you a couple hundred dollars to own a piece from his eponymous collection. Enter the .</p><p>There are some basics, and we&#8217;re not talking clothes, we all need, and now we can get them from Wang. Lighters, coasters, ashtrays, bike locks and playing cards are just a few of the pieces now being sold by Wang &#8212; and all for less than $100.</p><p>Personally we love the look of the ashtray, even for those who don&#8217;t smoke. So make your home, apartment or bicycle a little bit cooler and bring home some Wang.</p><p></p><p><br></p><br><br><p><br>Welcome back to another fun week here at NewNowNext. Here&#8217;s what you missed on this miserable Monday.</p><br><br>Alexander Wang: Gone fishin' <p> Sunday September 9, 2012 6:47 AM By Joseph V. Amodio </p> <p>Photo credit: AP</p> <p><p>It was a booming voice that came over the loudspeakers just before the start of the Alexander Wang show, asking the crowd to “refrain from using flash photography.” A slight pause, then: “That includes cellphones.”</p><p>Seriously??</p><p>Why not just ask this crowd to stop breathing? Or to shop at Wal-Mart. Either would be more conceivable than that unusual request,...</p></p> <p></p>Alexander Wang: Supermodels and super clothes <p> Sunday February 12, 2012 9:13 AM By Anne Bratskeir </p> <p></p> <p><p>Supermodels and super clothes abounded at Alexander Wang’s show on Saturday night as Gisele Bündchen, Shalom Harlow and Karolina Kurkova made rare runway appearances on the large, rectangular runway that was punctuated with thick-mirrored pillars.</p><p>Bündchen wore a stiff, black leather military-style coat buttoned up to her chin but slit thigh- high. It looked like protective gear to ward off...</p></p> <p></p>Alexander Wang gets 'racy' <p> Sunday September 11, 2011 1:22 PM By Joseph V. Amodio </p> <p><p>Motocross chic? NASCAR glam? If there is such a thing, Alexander Wang has found it. He did up his usual deconstruction thing, but this time with the gritty gear of those who like to take their souped-up vehicles into high gear. The result&mdash;a sexy, colorful mix of mesh bombers (revealing neon polos underneath), ripstop pants, cargo shorts and dresses with peplums and lotsa zip pockets.</p><p>There...</p></p> <p></p>Alexander Wang's haute, hybrid ponchos <p> Sunday February 13, 2011 5:36 AM By Joseph V. Amodio </p> <p>Photo credit: Getty/Stefan Gosatti</p> <p><p>These days, it's all about the hybrid, whether you're pedaling a bike or commuting in four-wheel drive. Now, Alexander Wang has reinvented the concept for fashion. It's about time somebody did it right, given how lame previous hybrids have been (think of &quot;skorts,&quot; or those shirts with built-in dickies or vests).</p><p>Pieces seemed to morph before our eyes, transforming from knit...</p></p> <p></p>Alexander Wang's montage of women getting dressed <p> Sunday February 14, 2010 7:29 PM By Joseph V. Amodio </p> <p>Photo credit: Getty Images</p> <p><p>If you've seen Marcel Duchamp's painting, &quot;Nude Descending a Staircase,&quot; you know you don't get a standard portrait -- more like glimpses of a woman in motion. Wang's line is like that, a montage of a woman getting dressed. A pinstripe dress has a lacey lingerie top, as if she's just pulling it on. Minis sport suit jacket tails. A pinstripe shrug tops a half-there vest.</p><p>There are...</p></p> <p></p>Bündchen's strut wows Alexander Wang crowd <p> Originally published: February 12, 2012 8:45 PM<br> Updated: February 12, 2012 10:30 PM<br> </p> <p><p>Supermodels and super clothes abounded at Alexander Wang's show on Saturday night, among them Gisele Bündchen. Bündchen wore a stiff, black leather military style coat buttoned up to her chin but slit thigh-high. It looked like protective gear to ward off the elements . . . or New York Giants-frenzied fans (the model is married to New England Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady and has been the subject...</p></p>Designers to honor Obama -- and those who dress her <p> Published: March 17, 2009 6:03 AM<br> By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS </p> <p> Michelle Obama keeps feeling the love from thefashion world. </p> <p>The Council of Fashion Designers of America announced Monday that Obama will be honored with a special tribute from the group's board of directors at its annual awards gala in June. </p> <p>>> See a gallery of Michelle Obama's style. </p> <p>"We wanted to acknowledge her in a serious way for her commitment to American fashion," said CFDA president Steven Kolb.A grant also will be established in her name to assist a youngfashion company. </p> <p>Meanwhile, three designers that Mrs. Obama has been known to wear _ , and Panichgul -- alsoreceived CFDA nominations. </p> <p>Rodriguez joins and sisters Laura and Kate Mulleavyof as the nominees for womenswear designer of the year, andWu, Panichgul and Alexander Wang are in the running for theSwarovski Award for emerging talent in women's fashion. </p> <p>Jacobs, already one of the industry's favorite sons, continuedto rack up his own accolades as a nominee once again in accessorydesign and as the winner of the international designer award forhis work at . (Jacobs splits his time between theVuitton label, headquartered in , and his own signaturecollection, which is shown in .) </p> <p>"He's a pioneer as an American in ," Kolb said. </p> <p> is to receive the lifetime achievement award named forthe late . </p> <p>The ceremony is moving this year from the New York PublicLibrary to Lincoln Center, which will also become the Fashion Weekhub next year. bama will receive an invitation, but Kolb was unsure if she'd attend. </p> <p>"We'll do whatever we can to get her here, but the award isn'tabout getting her to come," he said. </p> <p>>> See a gallery of Michelle Obama's style.</p> <p> </p>Despite Hurricane Irene, the shopping must go on <p> Thursday August 25, 2011 5:33 PM By Nina Ruggiero </p> <p>Photo credit: Handout</p> <p><p>Once the storm watch adrenaline wears off and you're done stocking up on essentials, bordem is likely to set, especially if Hurricane Irene does decide to stop by and keep Long Islanders locked inside our homesthis weekend. (Here's hoping she won't cause much, if any, damage or danger, and remember: safety first!)</p><p>If you've got power during the storm, cozy up to your computer and have...</p></p> <p></p>Gap gowns at the Met gala -- and how to get one <p> Tuesday May 4, 2010 3:18 PM By Barbara Schuler </p> <p><p>Did you drool over the dresses at the Met&rsquo;s Costume Institute gala Monday night? Were you thinking Gap?</p><p>Probably not, but in fact eight of the glam gowns that walked the red carpet were designed for the chain by current and past CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winners. Here&rsquo;s the rundown of designers and their celeb clients:</p><p>Alexander Wang: MIA; Zoe Kravitz.Rodarte: Kirsten Dunst...</p></p> <p></p>In honor of 'Glee,' a salute to the warm-up suit <p> Published: September 21, 2010 12:36 PM<br> By JOSEPH V. AMODIO Special to Newsday </p> <p> Photo credit: Fox won an Emmy in August for her portrayal of Sue Sylvester, "'s" saber-toothed cheerleading coach, who returns this season with more of her signature tracksuits. </p> <p><p>When cheer dictator Sue Sylvester, of TV's "Glee," says "Drop and give me 20," she may mean push-ups. Or track suits. Because if there's one thing she's made clear, you can never have too many.</p><p>The cult hit, which began its second season this week, is like a runway show for Adidas, Nike and other brands. Costume designer Lou Eyrich has about two dozen suits in stock, and Lynch wears five to...</p></p>Kanye debuts fashion line in Paris . . . and it isn’t pretty <p> Sunday October 2, 2011 7:34 PM By Anne Bratskeir </p> <p><p>Rapper and fashion lover Kanye West debuted his women&rsquo;s ready-to-wear collection &ndash; dW by Kanye West (this a tribute to his late mother Donda) -- in Paris on Saturday night during Paris Fashion Week at the ornate library Lycee Henri IV, and well, it wasn&rsquo;t pretty according to many critics and bloggers who attended the show.</p><p>&ldquo;Kanye West&rsquo;s Paris Flop,&rdquo; is the...</p></p> <p></p>Lady Gaga wins CFDA's Fashion Icon Award <p> Originally published: June 6, 2011 9:45 PM<br> Updated: June 6, 2011 10:17 PM<br> By JOSEPH V. AMODIO. Special to Newsday </p> <p>June 7, 2011 6:33 AM</p> <p><p>Temps were warm last night but the air positively sizzled as designers, models and stylish VIPs awaited the arrival of Lady Gaga at the CFDA Fashion Awards at Lincoln Center.</p><p>Gaga was receiving the Fashion Icon Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America for her, well you know, crazy outfits and the way she's captivated a nation. The big question: What would the Ga -- who's hit...</p></p>Lincoln Center hosts 'Fashion's Night Out: The Show' <p> Originally published: September 7, 2010 9:25 PM<br> Updated: September 7, 2010 11:33 PM<br> By JOSEPH V. AMODIO Special to Newsday </p> <p> Photo credit: Getty Images Model Gisele Bundchen walks the runway during "Fashion's Night Out: The Show" at on September 7, 2010 in New York City. </p> <p><p>Don't call it just another fashion show. "Fashion's Night Out: The Show," held outdoors Tuesday night at Lincoln Center, was billed as the largest public fashion show in New York City history.</p><p>The idea: promote Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (starting Thursday) and Fashion's Night Out (a shopping gala to be held in area stores on Friday).</p><p>It was big all right - with 150 models wearing outfits...</p></p>On sale now: Monday's top five picks <p> Monday January 30, 2012 11:44 AM By Nina Ruggiero </p> <p>Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images</p> <p><p>Love designer clothing but hate paying full price? Me, too.</p><p>Searching the web for sales can be a time-consuming activity, so I've gathered my five favorite discounted items online Monday.</p><p>1. What: T by Alexander Wang silk semi-sheer maxi skirt</p><p></p><p>Was: $230</p><p>Now: $91.99</p><p>You save: $138.01</p><p>Why it's a steal: For those of you who have been wanting to jump on the...</p></p> <p></p>Philadelphia beyond the Liberty Bell <p> Published: November 12, 2009 2:14 PM<br> By CHRISTINA HERNANDEZ Special to Newsday </p> <p> Photo credit: R. Kennedy for GPTMC The Italian Market in has evolved into a mix of both Italian vendors and Asian and Mexican ones, too. But traditional offerings such as cannolis, homemade sausages, imported meats and cheeses, luscious cappuccino, specialty cookware and fresh pastas make the market a favorite for visitors and residents alike. </p> <p> The City of Brotherly Love is more than cheese-steaks and the Liberty Bell. From hipster havens packed with trendy galleries and downtown shopping to distinctive communities that retain the city's classic traditions (Mummers, anyone?), Philadelphia has a neighborhood for every taste. </p> <p>While it's smaller than New York City, Philadelphia is long on the elements that make a city great: Shopping for the fashionista, eclectic restaurants for the foodie, iconic landmarks for the history buff and arts for the culture vulture.</p> <p>Even better, in every neighborhood you'll find the classic Philly flavor that makes the city so unusual, from brightly colored murals to, yes, even cheesesteaks.</p> <p>OLD CITY</p> <p>WHY GO? To explore the city's hippest galleries within walking distance of some of the nation's most important historic sites.</p> <p>DETAILS Tourists flock to Old City for its history, which includes nearby Independence Hall. But locals love the neighborhood's edgy galleries, quirky shops and tasty restaurants. While exploring this vibrant 'hood, take a break at quiet Elfreth's Alley, the country's oldest continuously occupied street (off N. Second Street between Quarry and Arch streets).</p> <p>ART Galleries line Second and Third streets in Old City. A favorite is The Clay Studio, a nonprofit gallery dedicated to ceramics that celebrated its 35th year last month (139 N. Second St., 215-925-3453, ). Shop the gallery's store stocked with quirky finds, including colorful tiles featuring nostalgic images such as Italian espresso makers and old-style school desks ($27). The nearby Artists' House gallery features monthly rotating exhibits by emerging artists from the tri-state area (57 N. Second St., 215-923-8440, ).</p> <p>EAT Locals love Fork, a New American bistro featuring seasonal cuisine in a stylish setting (306 Market St., 215-625-9425, ). Its attached cafe, Fork: etc., serves up sandwiches, salads and other light fare. The gourmet grub, including an inventive roast beef sandwich with Cheddar and horseradish mayo ($8), is best enjoyed at the cafe's communal table.</p> <p>For a tasty treat that takes you back in time, head over to The Franklin Fountain, where milkshakes and sundaes are served by old-fashioned soda jerks (116 Market St., 215-627-1899, .</p> <p>NORTHERN LIBERTIES</p> <p>WHY GO? To check out Philadelphia's hipster capital and the city's answer to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.</p> <p>DETAILS Once a gritty industrial wasteland, Northern Liberties is now considered one of Philly's trendiest sections. Old warehouses made way for artists' lofts and streets lined with chic shopping and exciting eateries.</p> <p>ENJOY Stroll the Piazza at Schmidts, an 80,000-square-foot plaza bordered by galleries, boutiques, restaurants, cafes and snazzy apartment buildings. You'll find events on the Piazza just about daily, from Wednesday night bingo to Saturday morning runs. On Sundays during football season, locals clad in Eagles jerseys gather to watch their beloved birds on the plaza's JumboTron screen. Perhaps the best part - parking at the Piazza is free (North Second Street and Germantown Avenue, ).</p> <p>EAT With dishes including vegan mac 'n' cheese made with multigrain pasta ($5) and drinks served in Mason jars, A Full Plate offers hearty fare for the healthy eater (1009 N. Bodine St., 215-627-4068, ). Standard Tap wins raves for its selection of local brews (North Second and Poplar streets, 215-238-0630, ).</p> <p>RITTENHOUSE SQUARE</p> <p>WHY GO? In a word: Shopping.</p> <p>DETAILS Anchored by one of the nation's oldest parks, Rittenhouse Square is considered a premier Philadelphia shopping destination. From high-end designers to independent boutiques, the blocks surrounding the park are the perfect locale to indulge in major retail therapy. With shopping bags in tow, take a break at one of the neighborhood's hip restaurants or stroll the streets for a peek at Philadelphia's classic town houses.</p> <p>SHOP At Knit Wit, you'll find hip women's threads by designers including and Alexander Wang (1718 Walnut St., 215-564-4760,). Lagos The Store is the flagship of this Philadelphia-based jewelry company, which specializes in sterling silver and 18-carat gold pieces (1735 Walnut St., 877-588-2401, ). If the weather forces you indoors, check out The Shops at Liberty Place (17th and Chestnut streets, 215-851-9055, ).</p> <p>EAT You'll find a dizzying selection of imported cheeses, gourmet meats, salads and scrumptious pastries at Di Bruno Bros. (1730 Chestnut St., 215-665-9220, ). The shop began as a small grocery in Philadelphia's Italian Market (more later on that South Philly staple) and led to this location's opening a few years ago.</p> <p>SOUTH PHILLY</p> <p>WHY GO? To experience classic Philly flavors at their finest.</p> <p>DETAILS Though its history is heavily Italian (crooner is a native), ongoing immigration has made South Philly more diverse. Even as the neighborhood changes - you'll find Mexican and Southeast Asian cuisine amid the Italian restaurants - it continues to exemplify classic Philadelphia.</p> <p>ENJOY At the Mummer's Museum, you'll get a look inside the knockdown, blowout Philly New Year's parade that's months in the making, from the instruments to the elaborate costumes ($3.50 adults, 1100 S. Second St., 215-336-3050, ). On any day of the week, you'll find Ninth Street clogged with vendors selling fresh produce, homemade pasta, exotic spices, Italian coffee and meats ranging from elk steaks to buffalo at Philly's Italian Market (900 S. Ninth St., ). Walk the quiet blocks around the raucous market and you'll find quaint cafes and some of the city's vibrant murals.</p> <p>EAT Cap off your journey with a firsthand look at one of the most talked-about rivalries in Philadelphia lore. Pat's King of Steaks and Geno's Steaks stare each other down 24 hours a day, seven days a week across Ninth Street. Pat's claims to be the originator of the sandwich that makes Philly famous (1237 E. Passyunk Ave., 215- 468-1546, ). Geno's touts its sandwich as the best (1219 S. Ninth St., 215-389-0659, ).</p> <p> </p>TV trend: Fashion comes to fall series <p> Originally published: September 22, 2011 5:20 PM<br> Updated: September 25, 2011 2:27 PM<br> By BOOTH MOORE. Los Angeles Times </p> <p> Photo credit: ABC/Nathan Bell features fashion from high-end designers such as Chloe, , and . </p> <p><p>It's the throwback '60s style as much as the story lines that have made "Mad Men" a success. The AMC series, which enters its fifth season in 2012, ushered in a ladylike trend in fashion that has reverberated all the way to the Paris runways and inspired a collaboration with retail chain Banana Republic. So is it any wonder that the big three networks are looking for their own fashion gold? Many...</p></p>Tyson Chandler on fashion offensive <p> Sunday September 9, 2012 11:15 AM By </p> <p>New York Knicks center Tyson Chandler may be the NBA's defensive player of the year but when it comes to fashion, he's all offense. The dude tops out at 7 feet, 1 inch, but he doesn't let that hinder his wardrobe choices.</p> <p>&quot;You have to be creative,&quot; he said, before the start of Alexander Wang's Spring 2013 fashion show at Pier 94 on Saturday.</p> <p>He's not just hanging out at those big 'n tall stores, Chandler explained.</p> <p>MORE: </p><p>PHOTOS: </p> <p>&quot;A lot of my clothes are off the rack, from designers like Rick Owens and Ann Demule...Demeel..Duelmeist...,&quot; he says, smiling, taking a personal foul on the pronunciation of Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester.</p> <p>At the Wang show, one of the hottest tickets of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Manhattan, he's wearing a tee and Wang-ish deconstructed knit piece, a sorta-sweater-kinda-thing, sleeveless, with just a neck hole. (Long shorts, what regular guys would call &quot;pants&quot; and red leather ankle boots complete the look.)</p> <p>Very fashion-forward, but with temps still in the 80s' isn't he hot?</p> <p>&quot;Actually, no,&quot; he says. &quot;There's no sleeves in this; my arms are free, so I'm cool. I'm actually cool.&quot;</p> <p>We know. Very.</p> <p>Photo: New York Knicks center Tyson Chandler and his wife, Kimberly, attend the Alexander Wang spring 2013 show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Manhattan. (Sept. 8, 2012)<br></p> <p>Tags: </p>Vogue, Polyvore team up for FNO style contest <p> Monday August 8, 2011 2:19 PM By Nina Ruggiero </p> <p>Photo credit: Getty Images</p> <p><p>Started in 2009 to encourage the fashion industry in the wake of the &quot;Great Recession,&quot; Fashion's Night Out (FNO) has become an event style-hungry New Yorkers look forward to every September.</p><p>This year the event, which includes exclusive designs, fashion shows, celebrity appearances, special sales and more, will fall on Sept. 8.</p><p>Vogue is teaming up with top fashion website...</p></p> <p></p>Wang's got the 'write' touch <p> Sunday September 12, 2010 4:04 PM By Joseph V. Amodio </p> <p><p>Alexander Wang went (almost all) white for spring, sending models out in a variety of loose, full-cut looks &mdash; a long, layered painter&rsquo;s smock dress; long, draped apron dresses with criss-cross straps in back; long, crepe pajama shorts; and long, canvas shorts with longer leggings peeking out from underneath. Did we mention? Hems are long....</p></p> <p></p><p>In the world of fashion magazines, the September issue reigns supreme.</p><p>It signals the changing of the season and the time when sandals are finally traded in for knee-high boots; When flowy beach wear is a thing of the past and one's personal style can be shown through a variety of coats and scarves.</p><p>It's a time when the best professionals in the business compete to have the most stunning fashion spreads and coveted celebrity covers, all of which was even documented in the 2009 documentary "The September Issue."</p><p>We've gathered the top 10 women's fashion magazines (ranked by highest circulation) and scanned the thousands of pages to bring you a breakdown of what's to come this fall.</p><p>And here's a hint: start stocking up on polka dots, '60s mod designs, lace and Southwestern style.</p><p></p><p>ALLURE:<br>Pages: 208<br>Weight: 1 pound<br>Price: $3.99 <br>Cover: Salma Hayek, wearing Yves Saint Laurent<br>Photographer: Mario Testino<br>Number of ads: 115<br>Pages to flip before the good stuff: 24<br>Letter from the Editor:  "'Don't Pippa Me!' The meaning of this warning, which I heard the other day, was immediately clear … Don't upstage me." - Linda Wells<br>Must see: "Look Sharp" Just when you think going to the dentist's office was scary enough, Mario Testino captures a frightening, yet fascinating pictorial of models wearing bright makeup while getting a bit too close to medical supplies.<br>Fascinating read: "Stealing Beauty" The world of upper-middle-class women who are secret shoplifters is unveiled.<br>9/11 coverage: None<br>Honorable mentions: Salma Hayek says she's , "Vampire Diaries" hottie Ian Somerhalder makes a cameo in the "Dial 'S' for Seduction" fashion spread in which he plays a sexy handyman.<br>Trend watch: Polka dots, argyle, tartan, double-handled bags, jewel-toned eye liner</p><p>LUCKY:<br>Pages: 274<br>Weight: 1.4 pounds<br>Price: $3.50 <br>Cover: Jessica Alba, wearing Marc Jacobs<br>Photographer: Thomas Schenk<br>Number of ads: 122<br>Pages to flip before the good stuff: 34<br>Letter from the Editor: "When we were planning this issue, I looked around the conference table at the sea of crisp white button-downs and shrunken black jackets and realized: I am not alone." – Brandon Holley<br>Check out: The "Denim Bars" guide is helpful for those who can never find the perfect pair of jeans and the "Fall Shoe Guide" gives a straight-forward look at styles to come.<br>Good read: Jessica Alba isn't one of those celebs who pretends she's naturally skinny. She credits watching TV, listening to her iPod or having a workout partner as ways to "not just drown in your own misery" while exercising. "Sorry, does this sound bad? I just hate working out."<br>9/11 coverage: None<br>Trend watch: Stars and polka dots, vibrant colors, tea dresses, '60s mod and '70s glam, Southwest style, lace, platform loafers <br>Extra bonus: Lucky Kids supplement features 28 additional pages of fall childrens' clothes and accessories.</p><p>After you've gawked at all the celebrities flooding 's fashion hot spots Thursday for Fashion's Night Out, there are deals to be had. Retailers are offering discounts, gift bags, free Champagne and hors d'ouevres, and providing deejays so you have a soundtrack to shop to. They're throwing block parties, hosting bike tours and giving free makeovers.       </p><p>Here are the best events of Fashion's Night Out:</p><p>1. Want to model for a big-name designer at ? Now's your chance. Alice olivia is transforming their Park Ave. store (right next to ) into a photo studio where hopefuls can stop by for a chance to model 's spring/summer fashions at her Saturday presentation. Aspiring models will be treated to hair, makeup and styling. The winner will be announced the next day on alice olivia's Web site (aliceandolivia.com). 7-11 p.m.; 80 W. 40th St.</p><p>2. Join the hipster block party at Opening Ceremony. The Howard St. store will spill out onto the sidewalks, where designers , Kate and of Rodarte, and of , and from Boy/Band of Outsiders will hawk their wares, made exclusively for Fashion's Night Out, from the back of custom cars to match their esthetic. (Wang will be selling out of a black van, natch). Local food vendors will be on hand, and deejays will provide the soundtrack. 6 p.m.; 35 Howard St., at Crosby St.</p><p>3. Vogue devotees and new fans of creative director (following her star turn in "The September Issue") should flock to , where Coddington will "tell an extraordinary visual story throughout the store." 6 p.m.; 575 Broadway, at Prince St.</p><p>4. Shop and get a workout in. The design duo have mapped out a bike tour of their major retailers after being inspired by NYC's new and improved bike lines this summer. The tour takes shoppers/bikers from Pas de Deux in the to the Barneys Co-Op in Chelsea, and finally to Bird in . 6-11 p.m., starting at Pas de Deux, 328 E. 11th St.</p><p>5. Nothing like shopping to work up an appetite. Some of the city's yummiest spots - including Bar Stuzzichini, Bond St., Craftsteak and Megu New York - have teamed up with Fashion's Night Out and to offer free appetizers or dessert with the purchase of an entrée when you use your AmEx card. Just mention Fashion's Night Out or Fashion Week. For a full list of participating restaurants, visit nycgo.com. </p><p>Here it is, the latest piece of news from the mouth of , the beleaguered manager, to Yankee fans everywhere. "Our roster could change drastically in the next few days," the manager said. And then, not more than a minute later, from the same guy, the same assurance: "Everything's gonna change drastically pretty soon."</p><p>Hear that? Change, and not just small change. His phrase was drastic change. And he wasn't talking about another reduction in the price of tickets nobody can afford. After Wednesday night's 4-3 10-inning loss to , a fourth straight disappointment, the manager knows exactly what his club needs. "We're not getting that huge hit when we need to get it," he said. "We didn't score runs." </p><p>They came awfully close, in fact, to scoring nothing at all in this one. had them shut out, four hits, through seven innings. The eighth was when the Yanks finally made some noise, punching a bases-loaded double with two out to tie the game. ended that inning with a strikeout. </p><p>Again in the ninth, with on second with one out, a grounder moved him to third and a fly ball ended the inning. One last chance in the 10th, on third, one out. But the eighth-inning hero and Matsui produced the final outs. </p><p>One big hit a night doesn't usually get it done. So now it's time to introduce the drastic change. He's 33 years old, a three-time MVP, 12 All-Star Games on his resume, and enough Page One headlines to fill a scrapbook. Yes, we're talking about you, . </p><p>A-Rod, Girardi points out, will do wonders for his lineup card. He rattles off the names - "Jeter, Damon, Teixeira, A-Rod, Matsui, Cano, Swisher, Cabrera" and sooner or later, Posada. He didn't call it the best collection of names in the league but you get his point. </p><p>The important cog in that semi-Murderers' Row is A-Rod. They've gone 13-14 without his bat or glove. The third basemen who replaced him haven't done the job. Haven't come close. It's not at all fair to compare them. </p><p>A-Rod, remember, doesn't just produce the wrong kind of headlines. He is one of the greatest players in the game. The numbers don't need repeating. </p><p>Let's face it, the didn't spend close to a half-billion in the offseason to have their fans wondering if this becomes another year without the playoff word. The first month provided the Yankees with a bunch of excuses, and pretty good ones. But how many folks will keep spending all the money there is for a ballpark seat to watch the New York Excuses. </p><p>Who's that girl? It's 13-year-old fashion blog sensation Tavi, who has seats to nearly as many Fashion Week shows this year as . </p><p>But is the stress of competing with the editrix getting to her? The tween is rocking gray tresses, which went perfectly with her grandma-inspired headpiece and mismatched stockings at the show. She looked a little more youthful - but just as wacky - in a tie-dye ensemble at , where she met up with supermodel .</p><p>The CFDA awards Monday night were so cool, had to wear shades.</p><p>The editor donned her trademark sunglasses as the doled out their annual accolades - to designers and style icons alike - at .</p><p>She's not a vampire (we don't think) but at least one creature of the night was in attendance - young , in a fab feathered minidress.</p><p>Who knew the child star and "Twilight" franchise vamp had such mad red carpet skills?</p><p>It was just one of a night of surprises that proved fashion's in store for a youthquake.</p><p>For every and , there was , who sparkled in a demure , and sometimes "" star , in . </p><p>Even , no spring chicken, walked to the podium to accept his Womenswear Designer of the Year award to the tune of 's "Baby."</p><p>, 28, had to "pinch himself" when he picked up the Swarovski Womenswear award, which honors emerging talent. Wu's best known for pulling off fashion's greatest feat - dressing for the Inaugural Ball - at just 26.</p><p>Of course, leave it to the to defy their youth and swathe themselves like monks.</p><p>As 26-year-old nominee put it, "I love fashion because you can't define it." Consider that this generation's motto: With an "anything goes" attitude, the new guard is ready to shake up the status quo.</p><p>No one knew how to rough up the establishment like the late , whose nickname was "the hooligan of English fashion." Just 40 when he committed suicide last September, called him "talented well beyond his years" when she awarded him with the organization's Special Tribute.</p><p>The award included a glimpse at his final collection that left the crowd gasping.</p><p>It was a fitting celebration of a career started young - and cut tragically short.</p><p>At 53, Powers Chang feels like the grandfather of Asian-American franchising in the city. Nineteen years ago, Chang purchased an existing Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor in Rego Park opposite the former Alexander's department store on Queens Blvd. Today, the ambitious real estate developer, who came to the United States from his native China in 1969, still owns four Baskin-Robbins parlors and three Dunkin' Donuts stores in Queens and Manhattan. He recently opened a Subway Sandwiches franchise in midtown Manhattan. "I'm the first generation to find out about franchises. I've brought a lot of Asians into franchises," Chang said. Rather than enter traditional businesses such as grocery stores, restaurants or garment factories, an increasing number of Asians are embracing franchising as a business option. Name recognition of franchise corporations such as Baskin-Robbins, McDonald's and 7-Eleven convenience stores, and knowledge of the hands-on training those companies provide, is luring new Asian immigrants to the market. They see it as a "viable means to enter mainstream American business," said Kevin Murtha, a Queens attorney and business consultant with the U.</p><p>S. Department of Commerce. In 1993, at least 5.</p><p>4% of all franchises in the U.</p><p>S. were owned by Asians, said John Wang, executive director of the Asian American Business Development Center in Manhattan. In contrast, African-Americans were 2.</p><p>6% of franchise owners; Hispanics, 2.</p><p>2%, and American Indians, 1.</p><p>5%. The past five to 10 years have seen more Asians come to the franchising table, Wang said. Most chose enterprises that sell food. "Asians are used to running food stores and mom-and-pop business in their countries. They easily transfer their talent to franchises," said Margaret Chabris, a spokeswoman for the Southland Corp., which franchises 7-Eleven stores. Last year, the Dallas-based corporation reported Asians owned 451 of the estimated 3,000 franchise operations nationwide. Chabris added, "Asians work hard and are family-oriented. We have a 24-hour business and it helps when members of the family work in the store. It cuts down on overhead.</p><p>" Depending on the type of franchise, out-of-pocket fees for startup costs with a modest operation could range from $25,000 to $75,000 excluding other financing Murtha said. Chang, who has a master's degree in business from the State University of New York at Binghamton, said, "It cost us $70,000 to start. I put down $40,000 and got a loan for the rest.</p><p>BOYS WILL BE BOYS They may not root for the Mets, or play for the Yanks, or fight fires one day. Whatever they wear, these little guys have all the potential in the world.Nicholas TrupiaBorn: Sept. 6, 1999Whitestone, QueensTyler LopezBorn: Dec. 20, 1999Jersey City, N.</p><p>J.Felix SencionBorn: Nov. 18, 1999Scotch Plains, N.</p><p>J.Alexander WangBorn: Oct. 5, 1999ManhattanDominic Amadiwochi Jr.Born: Feb. 15, 2000BronxDean SajudinBorn: Nov. 23, 1999BrooklynNicholas LioudakisBorn: Feb. 26, 2000Whitestone, QueensJoseph TortorellaBorn: March 10, 2000BrooklynDaniel Douse Born: Sept. 18, 1999BrooklynMichael DeehanBorn: Aug. 25, 1999Maspeth, Queens</p><p> is getting its highest-end store yet.</p><p>Upscale fashion mecca Barneys Co-Op will open on Atlantic Ave. and Court St. in September, officials said Wednesday.</p><p>The spot, on the border between downtown and , is next to and on the same block as - in a quickly changing area that's been getting more big-name chains in recent years.</p><p>"It's overdue," said , executive vice president at Barneys, who said the store has been scouting for a spot for years.</p><p>"We have a lot of Co-Op shoppers already who live in Brooklyn and have to come to ," he said. "We think it's going to be one of our top markets."</p><p>Co-Op is the slightly less lavish version of the Madison Ave. department store - but it's still not cheap. You can shell out $478 for a or $310 for a pair of jeans, along with collections by designers like and .</p><p>It's moving into a building owned by developer - whose company already transformed by bringing in Manhattan hotspots. Walentas said Barneys' Brooklyn debut "makes downtown Brooklyn a 'must-shop' neighborhood."</p><p>, 37, a piano teacher who moved to Cobble Hill two years ago, said she was excited.</p><p>"I don't think you'll find a single woman around here to complain about Barneys coming to town," she said. "Pretty soon, I'll be able to get all my shopping done in Brooklyn. A few more nice restaurants and I might swear off the city altogether."</p><p>, 57, a musician who lives two blocks from the future Barneys, wasn't so thrilled. "It's just more of the Manhattanization of downtown," he said.</p><p>"When I think Barneys, I think of SoHo and Chelsea and all that pretension," he added. "That's one of the things I like about living in Brooklyn, it's not pretentious."</p>Across the way, the new Yankee Stadium grows larger every day, and with it so do questions about the team that will play there come 2009. <p></p>The new Stadium will have new features such as large concourses, luxury suites and a myriad of new concessions. But it also will pay homage to the team's history with a face that harks back to the original facade and a transplanted Monument Park. <p></p>The Daily News staff reviewed the prospects in the organization, the coming free agent market and quality of the current players to give fans a glimpse of what the '09 team might look like. The Yankees will probably be a lot like the park, boasting many new additions and important remnants of the team's best days, such has Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada. <p></p>Catcher <p></p>None of the News staffers could see Posada, 35, anywhere except where he's been for all 13 of his major league seasons. <p></p>"He's having a monster season," baseball writer Anthony McCarron said. "It'll get him a two-year deal and maybe more." <p></p>"He says he wants to see what's out there on the free agent market, but there's no way the Yankees want him playing anywhere but here," baseball columnist Bill Madden said. <p></p>Posada will turn 37 during the 2009 season but the feeling here is that, unlike with other catchers, his on-field performance won't decline much. Catchers that start to slip at 35 have been playing the position - and taxing their knees - from before the day they were drafted. Posada was an infielder, so his legs have suffered less wear and tear. <p></p>The Infield <p></p>The biggest dispute came at third base with regard to Alex Rodriguez's future. <p></p>"Even if Yanks miss the playoffs, I don't believe A-Rod is looking to leave New York," baseball columnist John Harper said. "He enjoys all the buzz around him, good and bad, and (George) Steinbrenner will be desperate to keep him. With few position players in their system, the Yanks will have to overpay somebody for offense, so why not A-Rod?" <p></p>Yankees beat writer Mark Feinsand and baseball writer Peter Botte see third base as a spot where the team could pluck a big talent like Miguel Cabrera off a small market club like the Marlins. "A-Rod gets replaced when the Marlins can't afford to keep this slugger," Feinsand said. <p></p>Mike Lowell is earning $9 million in an All-Star season for the Red Sox and will merit a raise they might not be willing to give. He came up through the Yankees system and speaks reverently about it. The bet here is the Yankees bring him while dealing their archrivals a blow. <p></p><p>Is it the end of Fashion Week as New York knows it?</p><p>Major designers and announced this week that they'll be streaming their upcoming runway shows live on the Internet, making exclusive invites to the tents practically moot. </p><p>So what will the likes of , Madonna and , who have been invited to sit front-row at the presentations year after year, think of the change?</p><p>"They won't like it," says an industry insider. "It's completely transforming the aura around Fashion Week. The event serves as a sort of hierarchy of fashion, and those who get invited to shows are considered worthy of seeing the collections before they hit the stores." </p><p>It's not only the celeb followers of Klein and Jacobs who will be bummed: It was announced yesterday that both Rodarte and will be streaming their shows online as well. </p><p>So what's with the new trend?</p><p>Our source insists that it's all about the Benjamins: More viewers means more followers, which will hopefully translate into more money.</p><p>"The industry is really suffering right now, and there's a need to reach a bigger audience in order to increase sales," the insider says. </p><p>Perhaps it's about adapting to 2010, too. Our source notes that the fashion gurus are just trying to keep up with the times. </p><p>"Having Fashion Week online makes these designers universal, which is a huge benefit to their lines," the fashionista says. </p><p>Those nostalgic for paper invitations and the coveted privilege of sitting next to should quit their crying - Fashion Week has changed for good. </p><p>Says the insider: "It was inevitable that this is what would become of it."<br></p><p>Something else has gotten between Nick Gruber and his Calvin: a private investigator.</p><p>For the last month, Gruber says he and his boyfriend, John Luciano, have been tracked by a cop-turned-gumshoe. Gruber tells Confidenti@l that he believes the investigator, a well-known P.I., was hired by Calvin Klein to watch his every move.</p><p>But the investigator isn’t sleuthing around incognito. On Monday, Gruber says the private eye got in a scuffle with Gruber and his friends at Toy’s Avenue A Soundcheck party in the Meatpacking District.</p><p>He also says the investigator approached the former porn star’s table and began shouting about how Luciano is connected to the mob and being followed by Federal agents. Gruber says the gumshoe showed up to his hotel yesterday morning as well.</p><p>But it doesn’t look like the snooping around is going to bring Gruber any closer to Klein. Both Gruber, 22, and Luciano, 48, confirmed to Confidenti@l that they are happily in a relationship with each other.</p><p>“Calvin can hire goons to follow John and I all he wants. We have nothing to hide,” Gruber said. “I’ve moved on.”</p><p>Luciano said he isn’t concerned about being watched, even if the investigators are showing up at his assistant’s house and tracking the couple in L.A.</p><p>“My family’s been followed before,” Luciano, who is distantly related to gangster Lucky Luciano, told us on the phone from Los Angeles. “They were snooping around some friends and celebrities and it’s really silly. I’ve seen them and I laugh.”</p><p>As for the reason behind hiring an investigator, Luciano said Klein probably misses Gruber. “I understand what it’s like to be broken-hearted, and I’m sure Calvin’s heartbroken,” he said. “Nick’s a great guy.”</p><p>He said that neither he nor Nick will take legal action against Klein or anyone hired to follow them.</p><p>Gruber, 22, dated the world-famous fashion designer from 2010 until earlier this year. Confidenti@l first revealed his plans to release a juicy tell-all memoir about the relationship, currently titled “What Came Between Me and My Calvin.”</p><p>When reached, a representative for Klein declined to comment.</p><p>KANYE PLANS POSSE MAKEOVER</p><p>As if making over Kim Kardashian isn’t enough, Kanye West is restyling his entourage as well. “Kanye hasn’t been happy with the way his staff has been looking lately,” a source tells Confidenti@l. “He already talked to his stylist about keeping everyone in dark designer clothes.” According to our source, West wants his entourage’s duds to reflect his personal esthetic. “He’s really into his image,” adds the source. “If they are around him, they need to be stylish and presentable.” Our source says the West-influenced looks will be simple and primarily black, and he’ll looking to Martin Margiela and Louis Vuitton for inspiration. “It’s on the top of his list of priorities,” adds the source.</p><p>- Vera-fied! When walks down the aisle with investment banker beau this Saturday, she'll be wearing a custom-made wedding dress, an extremely fashionable source tells us.</p><p>- Political analysts say Senate majority leader hopeful actually has a better shot at becoming minority leader - if loses his reelection bid and the Dems lose the Senate. As Reid said last spring, Schumer "could give a woodpecker a headache," and that irrepressibility would serve his party well under rule. Then, if the stars align, Schumer, like LBJ, could graduate to the majority leader role.</p><p>- front man suffered a case of guitarist interruptus at the band's Terminal 5 concert Monday night. Two songs into the Pumpkins' set (for 's 25th anniversary concert series), Corgan's guitar malfunctioned during "Ava Adore." Corgan looked offstage for help, but only seemed to catch the attention of the cameras recording the show. When help didn't arrive, the rocker put down his ax and led the audience in a clap-along until a guitar tech ran onstage and fixed the six-string. Perhaps the mishap muted Corgan's desire to celebrate later. He was a no-show for the afterparty at the , where initially the only rocker to show up was . The guitarist held court among some look-alikes until about 2 a.m., when the rest of the Pumpkins finally arrived.</p><p>- The premiere party for 's new film, "Cairo Time," turned into an impromptu treasure hunt when the actress (above with co-star ) enlisted members of the crowd to help a distraught guest recover a family heirloom. Clarkson was in the loo at the Plaza Athénée when she overheard the woman lamenting that she'd lost her grandmother's ring during the party at the hotel's restaurant Monday. Before you could say , the actress had organized a search party to hunt for the bauble, and was urging more guests to join the search. Alas, the dinner guest went home empty-handed, but Clarkson scored enough karmic points to make her new movie a blockbuster.</p><p>- The friends of have made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Lip, who played crime boss Carmine Lupertazzi on "," will be feted at an 80th birthday party on Sunday at Portobello Restaurant in , N.J. Among those planning to attend are , former Yankees star , former heavyweight champ and legendary publicist Sy Presten, who worked with Lip at the infamous 's Copacabana in the 1960s. Lip was a captain who knew and took care of the many underworld figures who frequented the fabled establishment.</p><p>He helped clear the stage of hotel keys and undergarments that women threw at when the Welsh wonder sang there. He seated Profaci crime family member "Crazy" when the gangster came to see at the club in 1972. Neither Lip nor Presten will ever forget that night: After the show, Gallo headed to Umberto's Clam House to celebrate his birthday and was murdered.</p><p>With </p><p>Who says you have to sacrifice style to keep warm?</p><p>Not these fashionable New Yorkers.</p><p>Just follow in their footsteps and throw on a cape, poncho or printed coat.</p><p>In between running to meetings and college classes, these four women stop to show us how chic jackets can elevate a fall look.</p><p>, Bergen County, N.J.</p><p>Bryant, 25, loves vintage fashion.</p><p> I m very inspired by the 30s and 40s and the way women wore coats that really catered to their bodies. </p><p>It's one of the reasons her poncho, a purchase from Paris, is a fall staple.</p><p> I do travel overseas quite a bit and I'm really inspired by their sense of fashion, says the FIT grad. This poncho is eight years old. It's easy to throw on and it's wool, so it's warm. </p><p>Bryant, who owns Leidy Elle, a boutique public-relations firm specializing in entertainment and media, is always looking for great outfits on the street.</p><p> I just love to see women in a head-to-toe outfitted piece with hat, gloves and big shoes. It looks effortless. </p><p>Kiki He, Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn</p><p>He, 21, does most her shopping in Asia.</p><p>A Hong Kong native, He, who moved to New York for school, thinks fashion gets updated more quickly abroad.</p><p> That's why I read and follow Asian fashion magazines more, she explains.</p><p>Most importantly, the clothes she finds in Asia, like her cobalt blue cape, are usually a better fit. Instead of chasing trends and buying new items all the time, she works with what she already owns.</p><p> I do whatever looks good on me. I will look at the bigger picture, instead of just this season. </p><p>Her other piece of money-saving advice?</p><p> Get one shirt in different colors because you can match up with different things and it still looks new and fresh. </p><p>, upper East Side</p><p>Malangone, 25, mixes classic styles with new ones.</p><p> I try and stay a little bit cautious because I don't like things I'm only going to wear once. I like pieces that are versatile, that are going to stand the test of time. I don't want to look back at myself 20 years from now and go 'Oh my god, that was crazy.' </p><p>She ll balance trendy items, such as her chambray shirt and poncho, with a timeless accessory, like her grandmother s handbag.</p><p> It's an actual vintage Coach bag, she laughs.</p><p>Malangone, who works in fashion, is a big supporter of brands and follows her favorite ones, which include Zara and J. Crew, closely.</p><p> They seem to be up with the times, she says of J. Crew. I'm always excited to see their catalog. </p><p>, Bushwick, Brooklyn</p><p>Hargrave, 26, often builds her outfits from the bottom up.</p><p> I feel like if you have a good shoe, it doesn't even matter what you have on. </p><p>She then works in other accessories to make the look really pop.</p><p>Hargrave, the publicity manager at Universal Republic Records, is especially fond of bright hues and interesting designs.</p><p> Because I have a really plain dress on today, I put the printed jacket on it to balance out the monotone colors. Then, I threw in a scarf. </p><p>She admires designers , and , but usually shops at Nordstrom, Urban Outfitters and H&amp;M.</p><p> It's a mix of comfy and casual, a mix of high and low, she sums up. I feel like clothes are a way to express yourself so wear what fits you. </p><p>Ask Ciara what to expect from her new album, and she’ll tell you it’s “intense.” Sure, there are some of the same effervescent goodies — “I sprinkle in the pop,” says the 23-year-old songstress — but on “Fantasy Ride,” out Tuesday, Ciara (full name: Ciara Princess Harris) is showing off her adult side. “I’m much more aggressive, more confident — I’m definitely in my woman stage now,” she says. “It also shares a bit more of my sensual side.” <br></p><p>Your single “Never Ever,” with Young Jeezy, came out in January, and “Love Sex Magic,” with Justin Timberlake,  in March. What do you think of your collaborators?<br></p><p>Jeezy’s someone I’ve known for years and years. We started out working around each other like six years ago, right around when I was getting ready to release my first album. Working with Justin was so fun. He’s so down to earth, and honestly we laughed away the whole studio session.<br></p><p>This was your first time working with Timberlake. How did you meet?<br></p><p>We met each other years ago at a concert of his. We both were releasing our albums, and I happened to go to one of his concerts and we met backstage and said hey, talked a little bit about music, kept it moving, and now both of us happen to have the same manager. He was like, “Justin has some songs he wants you to hear.” I was like, “I think it would be dope if we worked together.”<br></p><p>Justin is hosting “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, when you’re the musical guest. If you have to take part in a sketch, what celebrity would you impersonate?<br></p><p>Mary J. Blige would be one of them. I sometimes like to play around with her and have fun. And it would be fun to do Janet Jackson.<br></p><p>What are your tour plans for the summer?<br></p><p>After the promo run, I’ll be taking off to tour with Britney in the U.K. — I’ll be doing some things with her in the U.K., Germany and some other places, then I keep on tour from there and come to the U.S. So it’s a mixture of partying — ooh, not partying [laughs] — a mixture of touring there and the U.S., all in one.<br></p><p>Her tour is circus-themed. What’s the craziest thing you’ll do onstage? Shoot out of a canon?<br></p><p>One time I had to have my guys toss me up in the air and land on the ground with a big “boom” ending. It’s the craziest feeling because you’re flying, just going for it, but it’s all about how you control yourself when you land. I said I’d never do it again, but I’ll be honest with you, I’m so down for that. The combination of Britney and I is going to be like going through an amusement park.<br></p><p>For “Fantasy Ride,” you recorded a song with Chris Brown called “Turntables.” How do you feel about it now?<br></p><p>Ricardo Wilson, a resident of Rosedale who is a senior in the Cisco Academy Program at Thomas A. Edison High School, recently participated in Vice President Gore's 21st century Skills Leadership Committee meeting in Washington. At the meeting, Wilson was able to tell Gore about his experiences at Edison. In school, Wilson is learning to build and repair computer communication networks. He also is active in St. Clair's Drum Corp in Rosedale. Terri McElroy, a senior at Stella Maris High School in Rockaway Park, was recently named Most Valuable Player of the St. Francis College Tournament. Thirty students at Francis Lewis High School have been named Advanced Placement (AP) Scholars by the College Board in recognition of their achievement on the college-level AP exams. The College Board recognizes several levels of achievement based on the number of year-long courses and exams. Lionel Chan of Flushing and Mark Khakhamov of Forest Hills qualified for the AP Scholar with Distinction Award by earning an average grade of at least 3.</p><p>5 on all AP exams taken and grades of 3 or higher on five or more exams. Nine students qualified for the AP Scholar with Honor Award by earning an average grade of 3.</p><p>25 or higher on all AP exams and grades of 3 or higher on four or more exams. Those students are: Smbat Amerbekian, Jerry Chantemsin, Helen Leung, Nachammai Selvanathan, Jing Wang and Cindy Wong all of Flushing, Alexander Gilbert of Utopia, Kamala Salmon of Jamaica, and Scott Sanford of Fresh Meadows. Nineteen students qualified for the AP Scholar Award by completing three or more AP exams with grades of 3 or higher. They include: Jonathan Bandel of Forest Hills, David Caicedo of Elmhurst, Ganesh Ramchandani of Rego Park, Xian Zhou of Fresh Meadows, Teresa Chen, Lily Fung and Bhavi Hansoty, all of Jackson Heights; Farhana Islam and Evelyn Ontaneda of Jamaica; Naomi Lim and Arumi Kim of Bayside; Hyea Young Kim, Christina Lee, Rova Lee, Jennifer Lew, Erica Parfrey, Suzanne Moshett, Sze Man Angel Wong and Cindy Chen, all of Flushing. The Daily News wants to showcase the achievements of pupils in the borough's public and private schools. Items for the Class Report Card column may be sent to: Daily News Queens Bureau, 118-35 Queens Blvd., Forest Hills, N.</p><p>Y. 11375. Or fax the notice to the Queens bureau at (718) 793-2910. Photos may be sent for consideration but cannot be returned.</p><p> just missed 's set at The Darby on Thursday night — and, boy, was he bummed.  A source tells us Criss looked "so sad" after learning that Thicke had finished performing for , and at the VEVO Music Meets Fashion party at the W. 14th St. hot spot. To make matters worse, Criss' name didn't exactly ring a bell with Thicke when the two were introduced. After someone whispered Criss' credentials in Thicke's ear, the singer replied, "My mom loves your show!" D'oh!</p><p>What's in a name?</p><p>Celebrity status did not guarantee entrance to the VIP room at ' shindig at his Bowery Boutique on Thursday night. The party, in the old space,  drew a crowd that included Amar'e Stoudemire, , , , , , and goalie along with loads of downtowners who were stoked to see a performance by  The Roots.  Alas, as revelers lined up in the back alley to enter the VIP room, which was closer to the stage, event organizers  shut down the access point, claiming the crowd was at capacity. Hip-hop royalty Mike D. of the was one of the last to gain entry while Crawford and his posse were among those left outside to decide whether they should go around to the front entrance and mingle with the less special. Inside, Overstreet was seen rocking out sans girlfriend Roberts, as The Roots covered classics from and Guns 'N' Roses.</p><p>Fashionable voices</p><p> can draw a crowd — and carry a note. The former editor was feted for her work on fall campaign with a karaoke party on Saturday night. Among the famous faces who turned up at strip-club-turned-nightspot Westway were , and supermodels and .</p><p>Not surprisingly, the night's big attention was Italian fashion maestro Valentino, who took to the runway shortly after 11 p.m. to belt out 's "Unforgettable" and 's "My Way." Roitfeld kicked off the evening with a rendition of 's "Careless Whisper," and Mary-Kate Olsen  repeatedly shook her  head "no" when asked to perform. We don't blame her. Valentino was a hard act to follow.</p><p>Remembering </p><p>Even in a tent full of Oscar-toting actors, Darryl Brantley stood out. Dreadlocked and dashing, Darryl — who worked in the publicity department — radiated the charisma of a movie star. He was warm and impish and showed remarkable strength in the face of great adversity.</p><p>Darryl, who died Aug. 4, was a true original, and on Thursday,  his friends gathered at the to celebrate his life. sang 's "I Will Always Love You," and Vanity Fair's imagined Darryl meeting St. Peter at heaven's gates impeccably dressed in a suit and sunglasses — and holding a clipboard. "I don't have to tell you all that Darryl does get into heaven," a tearful Kseniak told the crowd, "for all of the qualities for which we loved him here on earth." Well said.    </p><p> makes bold moves</p><p> has got some moves. At Alexander Wang's fraternity-themed party at Pier 40 on Saturday night, Ricci competed against the designer in a game of Everybody Dance — and won. Wang initially unnerved Ricci when, at the beginning of the match, he invaded her personal space with some touchy-feely freak dancing. But, after both strutted their stuff to 's "Rude Boy," the "" actress emerged the victor.  "He freaked me!" Ricci told us with a laugh. "[But] I won."</p><p>Contact Gatecrasher:<br>Frank DiGiacomo: <br>: <br>: </p><p>Hip designer forced a Queens man to work 84-hour weeks in a Broadway sweatshop, a $50 million lawsuit claims.</p><p>, 56, says he passed out at work after being forced to toil 25 hours without a break.</p><p></p><p>Lu’s lawyer, , said he hopes to sign up other Wang workers to join in a class-action lawsuit against the company.</p><p>A spokeswoman for Wang declined to comment.</p><p>The Devils are not yet whole, but they at least must feel a whole lot better with their most dangerous offensive weapon back in the lineup. Leading scorer Alexander Mogilny once again made a difference in his second game back following a five-game absence due to an abdominal injury. His tiebreaking goal late in the second period sparked the Devils to a 4-1 victory last night over the Islanders at half-empty Nassau Coliseum. Martin Brodeur's 21 saves included a stopped penalty shot as the Devils (31-17-12-3) posted their second win in as many nights. Turner Stevenson tallied two third-period goals and Sergei Nemchinov scored earlier for the Devils, who moved back within one point of first-place Philadelphia in the Atlantic Division. Tim Connolly notched the lone goal for the last-place Isles, who failed in their improbable quest to take the season series (1-2-2-0) from the defending Stanley Cup champions. John Vanbiesbrouck made his fifth straight start this season against the Devils, having already led the Isles to one victory and two ties earlier in the schedule. The 17-year veteran also was sporting bleached-blonde hair after his name was pulled from a hat in a silly team ritual following rare victories such as Saturday's 5-4 win over Florida. Despite Vanbiesbrouck's 18 saves, Brodeur actually overcame a more hair-raising experience in the first period. He denied Isles center Dave Scatchard - hauled down from behind by Brian Rafalski and Scott Stevens - on a penalty shot at 16:27. It marked the 18th time in 24 chances goalies have denied shooters in the NHL this season. Nemchinov finally solved Vanbiesbrouck with a high-slot wrister, which deflected off an Islander stick, for his eighth goal at 8:54 of the second. Connolly tied it nine seconds into an Isles 5-on-3 advantage with his eighth at 10:51. But Mogilny, who returned to the Devils' lineup Monday against Florida, sent a right-circle wrister off Roman Hamrlik's stick and over Vanbiesbrouck's right shoulder with 15.</p><p>7 seconds remaining for his 32nd and a 2-1 Devils lead into the third. Ties that bind: Isles GM Mike Milbury said co-owner Charles Wang has instructed him to attempt to sign "every guy we have that we think is going to be a core player" to contract extensions before June 1. Negotiations already have begun with pending restricted free agents Mariusz Czerkawski and Brad Isbister, as well as unrestricted vet Vanbiesbrouck. Zdeno Chara, Kenny Jonsson, Mark Parrish and Oleg Kvasha also will be restricted free agents July 1. Chara has dumped agent Rich Winter, who's had a contentious relationship with Milbury in the past. . . . Detroit, with at least one scout at five of Isles' last six games, is believed to be more interested in Chara than in Jonsson, whom Milbury insisted he doesn't expect to trade. "I spoke Friday with (agent) Mike Barnett and I told him I was ready to discuss a contract," Milbury said. "Kenny's playing some of his best hockey in two years. We want to keep him.</p><p>"</p><p>The season for giving is upon us, and what do many of us ask the most of? Our clothes.<br><br>Yes, with each serving of pecan pie, butter cookies and egg nog, we are making a deal with our wardrobe to stretch with our indulgences.<br><br>An easy solution could be an expandable silhouette — even, gasp, elastic waistbands. This season, you're in luck: The tastemaker crowd has embraced soft, slouchy, cozy styles as irreverant and cool, says , senior fashion editor of .<br><br>"I wanted to see how high up the designer ladder sweatpants went, and it turns out, it's quite far," she says. Cernek found jersey studded sweatpants for almost $1,100 on . There's a matching sweatshirt to boot.<br><br>A quick survey of recent runways found similar glorified sweats from , and Rag &amp; Bone, too, and then there are the cool-comfort labels such as and Splendid.<br><br>There's something more palatable about an elastic waistband when it's got a top-notch designer label inside, says celebrity stylist .<br><br>"A stretch waistband is totally taboo in the world of fashion, but people secretly love it," he says. "If elastic waistbands were a TV show, they'd be '.' People say they hate it but they have to watch it."<br><br>A designer elastic-waistband moment could go down like this, Verdi adds: "Your friend would say, 'Oh my God, are you wearing an elastic waist?' And you'd say, 'It's Stella McCartney,' and then they'd say, 'They're fabulous.'"<br><br>But there are ways to wear even a bargain-basement "comfort waist" and still pull it off.<br><br>The best versions have the elastic just on the back of the waistband, stretching from hip to hip around the rear but not on the front, Verdi says. "You never get that visual of being bunched up," he says.<br><br>And, pair any sort of loose, unstructured pant with a more fitted top, perhaps a lean tunic or a button-down shirt — but make sure it's untucked. "The big headline is to keep the elastic waist a secret," Verdi says.<br><br>Cernek also points to a drawstring-waist pant as a viable alternative to elastic. Somehow a drawstring doesn't have the same stigma.<br><br>She still suggests staying away from any pants that balloon at the ankle. Hug-the-body leggings — typically with a flattering, yet still stretchy waistband — are a widely accepted option, although there are some clear pros and cons to that look, especially after one has gobbled turkey and trimmings. "Leggings can be as polarizing as politics," she says.<br><br>Verdi says a textured fabric, maybe velvet, corduroy or perhaps a heathered finish, will keep attention away from the middle. Elastic-waist denim, according to Verdi, is a no-no.<br><br>But what about PajamaJeans?<br><br>Hampton Direct, a company that supports "useful items that address specific household products" (including many "As Seen on TV" things such as the Total Pillow and the Wonder Hanger), recently developed pants that feel like fleece pajamas inside — and come with a drawstring waist — but mimic jeans, down to the five pockets, on the outside.<br><br>"It's the perfect marriage of style and comfort," says , marketing consultant for Hampton Direct. "There always are the jeans you've had for 10 years and they're the go-to jeans no matter what because they're so comfortable because they've been washed so much. We've done that for you."<br><br>The pants will expand as needed, she says. "There are no constraining zippers, no digging buttons ... and they hold their shape, and you can roll them up into a suitcase."<br><br>Cernek, however, says comfortable pants have long been the domain of someone who doesn't go farther than the couch. But, she allows, that could change this season with the many more fashion-conscious options.<br><br>If you do go that route, instead of calling the waistbands "elastic," call them "elasticated," Cernek suggests with a laugh. "'Elastic' has this mom-jeans connotation. 'Elasticized' is a more active, high-end option."</p><p>Societe Generale is moving about 350 support staffers out of Manhattan - to the Jersey City waterfront. The financial-services giant rented nearly 100,000 square feet at Newport Office Center VII - and aims to move people there by year's end, company spokesman Jim Galvin said. Some are now housed at the investment bank's New York City headquarters, a half million-square-foot office at 1221 Sixth Ave. Others work at 560 Lexington Ave. Societe Generale - a newcomer to Jersey City - currently has about 2,700 Manhattan employees. It needs room for future growth, and wants greater geographic diversity within metro New York. "We considered options in Westchester and Connecticut, but decided the Jersey waterfront was the best choice," Galvin said. The firm will hold onto the space that staffers are vacating at 1221 Sixth Ave., to house future hires. It will get generous incentives as a reward for shifting jobs across the Hudson River. The state of New Jersey approved a $10 million grant to be paid over 10 years, a spokesman for the New Jersey Economic Development Authority said. Societe Generale's new location is a skyscraper at 480 Washington Blvd. - whose exterior design is supposed to suggest a sailboat. Larger-than-life developer Sam LeFrak constructed it for PaineWebber. "This is institutional-quality construction, built with an investment bank in mind," said Societe Generale's broker, Ken Meyerson of CB Richard Ellis. PaineWebber's successor firm, UBS, is offering the entire 1.</p><p>1 million-square-foot building for sublease through Bob Alexander's team at CB Richard Ellis. Societe Generale is the first firm to take space in the building. BRIDAL BABE The bridal babe from L.</p><p>A. who aims to be the affordable Vera Wang is making her New York debut at 214 Mulberry St. Saeyoung Vu has carved out a niche as the bridesmaid's best friend - for designing pretty dresses that look good enough to wear when the wedding's over. Her wedding gowns are made of fine silks, with clean, flattering lines - and are priced $775 to $2,800. Wang's wedding gear costs as much as $11,900. Saeyoung Vu Couture's new home is trendy Nolita - the nabe right next to SoHo whose name is short for "north of Little Italy.</p><p>" She searched all over SoHo, then chose the site on Mulberry. "It's a charming street," said Faith Hope Consolo of Prudential Douglas Elliman, the broker for both Vu and the landlord. NICE ADDRESS Two River Holdings Group, a biotech venture-capital firm, is moving to the elegant Elizabeth Arden Building at 689 Fifth Ave. It rented an 8,500-square-foot office that fills the top two floors of the 1920s-vintage property. This jewel box of a building on the corner of E. 54th St. is home to Elizabeth Arden's Red Door Salon. Corey Abdo of Winoker Realty served as Two River's broker in negotiations with the landlord, Steven Roth's Vornado Realty Trust. Two River will move out of 787 Seventh Ave. Lcroghan@nydailynews.</p><p>com</p><p>So many purses, so little time.</p><p>Top handle or tote, clutch or cross-body - bagging the hottest handbags has never seemed more overwhelming.</p><p>Before subscribing to the season’s top trends, satchels and structure ladylike bags are both hot for fall, consider your personal baggage and how much your toting around. If your load is light, a small satchel for an iPad and some papers will do the trick.</p><p>Messenger styles with top handles, large totes and doctor-style bags are roomy enough for the working woman and transition easily from the boardroom to the bar.</p><p>And while have quickly turned in to the season’s must-have color, hints of grape, inky-blue and pops of neon will also instantly brighten up any dull winter day.</p><p>CELEB STYLE SHEET</p><p>The Star: , Grammy Award winner</p><p>Spotted: , June 19, 2008 </p><p>The look: '80s pouf dress </p><p>The designer: PPQ </p><p>The style guru: , judge on TV Land's "She's Got the Look" </p><p>The verdict: I remember the first bubble skirt I ever saw, it was by Lacroix. It was brilliant. and wore them ... in the '80s. When it comes to style, beautiful girls can get away with a lot, and Rihanna is beautiful. Here's why the dress works on her: She has long legs, which adds extra drama to the short length. </p><p>The pattern is hip, young and graphic. She didn't overaccessorize with jewelry. I do like her choice of footwear. The boots add a little edginess, so she doesn't look like she's going to the prom. I think galoshes are great, because you never know when it's going to rain. Though I don't know how practical suede is. </p><p>Hey, does anybody have extra tickets to Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" tour? If so, count me in! Rihanna, you wanna go? You're already dressed for it!</p><p>TALK TO :  WAYFARERS, THE REMIX</p><p>The renaissance is kicking it up a notch with "Project Colorize." The collaboration has a few of 's hippest contemporary artists designing customized Wayfarers and fashion-inspired billboards citywide. </p><p>"It's probably the most visible project I've done," says top local graffiti artist Toofly, whose traffic-stopping Wayfarer-inspired work will be on display at the Midtown Tunnel beginning Tuesday. </p><p>"I want to let people know that graffiti isn't just the illegal stuff on the street. My billboard was inspired by the brush-stroke print dresses in the Dolce & Gabbana 2008 collection," says the burgeoning fashionista, who's gaining a cult following with her signature T's and accessories available at . </p><p>She's also busy customizing Ray-Bans with her fiercely feminine designs. </p><p>The customized shades will be displayed in the windows of Henri Bendel, where shoppers can enter a prize drawing to win a pair. </p><p>"I already got my own pair," admits Toofly of the perk of her latest gig. "I chose the turquoise ones that I included in my billboard design." </p><p>The candy-colored shades, currently sported by the likes of and , will be available for $109-$139 at Henri Bendel beginning Tuesday.  - </p><p>SECRET STEALS: THIS WEEK'S BEST SALES</p><p>BEAUTY BAR: BAG THESE BEACH MUST-HAVES</p><p>Hair S.O.S.: Celebrity hair stylist has introduced a treatment to restore sun-damaged hair. Celebrities love this protein, silk and keratin treatment because it restores texture and shine for up to three months. Aqua Proof hair protector, $34, at Ricardo Rojas salon, , 105 Rivington St. or .</p>Save: Use a homemade mayonnaise masque! It’s super-greasy, so rinse well before swimming!<p>Grab your wallet and head out to one of the many sample sales and clearances around the city. Bargain department store lowers prices even more for their Summer Clearance Sale. Also head to SoHo for slashed prices at  and Opening Ceremony. </p><p>Century 21 Summer Clearance Sale. Save up to 75% off suggested retail on most summer items.  Saturday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. 22 Cortlandt St. (212-227-9092).</p><p> Sample Sale. Up to 90% off United Bamboo's Spring/Summer 2008 collection. Saturday, 12 pm–7 pm. 217 Centre St., 6th Fl. between Grand and Howard Sts. </p><p>Ananas @ fifty-two. Ananas Collection handbags, whose celeb following includes , and , are available at a pop-up store for a limited time. Through July 15th. Monday-Wednesday, Noon-8pm, Thursday-Saturday 1pm – 9pm. 52 Canal St. between Ludlow and Orchard Sts.<br> <br>Opening Ceremony Sale. Up to 75% off Spring/Summer 2008 merchandise including designs by , , and . Saturday, 11am – 8pm and Sunday, Noon-7pm. 35 Howard St. near Broadway.</p><p>Helmut Lang Sale. 60% percent of all merchandise from men's and women's Spring/Summer 2008 lines from the iconic minimalist Austrian designer. Through July 6th. Monday-Saturday, 11am – 7pm, Sunday, Noon-6pm. 819 Washington St. at Gansevoort St.</p><br><p>Let's face it: Fashion Week isn't just about designers. It's about the celebrities, models and general shenanigans that start bringing Bryant Park to life today.</p><p>At this week's Spring 2008 shows, celebs won't be sitting front row: They'll be the brains behind the designs. In a paparazzi-thrilling turn of events, star fashionmakers are flooding the runways all at once. Nicky Hilton will debut her high-end line, Nicholai (it's her real name), on Sunday. Gwen Stefani (near r.) will present L.A.M.B. next Wednesday and Jennifer Lopez will show her new line, JustSweet, on Tuesday.</p><p>"Big Love" star Chloe Sevigny will unveil a small, personally conceived collection for Opening Ceremony, at an intimate presentation on Monday.</p><p>Designers are buzzing about the celebs confirmed to warm their front rows.</p><p>Julianne Moore is set to hit the Lacoste show, Hilary Swank will be at Miss Sixty, Ashley Olsen is expected at Jenni Kayne and Mischa Barton may check out Alexander Wang. Anne Hathaway will tour some shows with her friend Valentino (the Italian designer announced his retirement yesterday). And fashionistas are buzzing that Lindsay Lohan may show for Jill Stuart on Monday.</p><p>Stuart, who tapped Lohan for her ad campaign last year, defended the troubled actress when she went into rehab in the spring.</p><p>All of these events are closed to the public, except one. Anyone can buy tickets to Gen Art's 13th annual Fresh Faces in Fashion show, tonight at the Grand Ballroom of the Manhattan Center.</p><p>Tickets are $50 for members of Gen Art and $60 for nonmembers (at ).</p><p>Gen Art showcases emerging fashion talents who, if history's any indication, often become household names (think Zac Posen, Rebecca Taylor, Eugenia Kim and Hollywould).</p><p>Featured designers this season include the New York team from Bensoni, Benjamin Channing Clyburn and Sonia Yoon, who met while studying at Parsons, where they were nominated for the schoolwide Designer of the Year award. Also on deck will be colorful, whimsical dresses from Mooka Kinney, a label from design duo Rachel Antonoff and Alison Lewis. They met as roommates in the West Village.</p><p>So you can gawk at the tents from afar or actually go to a show. Our vote is for going.</p><p>Just a couple of days ago, Jenna Bush and her mama, Laura, were spotted popping into Seventh Ave.'s Oscar de la Renta, perhaps looking for a wedding dress for the first twin's impending nuptials to White House aide Henry Hager.</p><p>But don't rule out the Bush family's favorite designer, Lela Rose, just yet.</p><p>"We haven't talked specifically about Jenna's wedding dress, but we've definitely talked to her about different events," Rose said coyly after her show Sunday. "Jenna's really fun. She likes to have something she looks great in, something with a little bit of ease to it — so she looks turned out but not overly, so she has a casual fun way about her."</p><p>We hope Rose can design something that makes it easy to do a wedding reception keg stand.</p><p>A TIGHT SQUEEZE</p><p>Soon after Rose's show, plenty of front-row foxes like Mandy Moore and Joy Bryant showed up for the Herve Leger by Max Azria show, squeezed sausage-style into the designer's famous flesh-hugging bandage dresses. Although they fit tight as a tourniquet, the stretchy wraps are "surprisingly comfortable … like walking around in a bathing suit," socialite Maggie Betts insisted. But, she added, "I did have to call my neighbor at the last minute to zip up the last 2 or 3 inches."</p><p>Maybe she's just an amateur? "I did it by myself this morning," Padma Lakshmi declared. The model-turned-chef has an edge, having walked for Leger in the '90s. But she claimed getting the things on doesn't take special skill. "Just wiggling around, and patience," she said. </p><p>Sounds like a bad hookup!</p><p>WANG WANTS BABS</p><p>Alexander Wang, the self-declared king of edginess, would just die to get his little paws on Barbara Walters.</p><p>"I want to give her a new look, a fresh take. I love her look; I want to see her in a beanie and some sunglasses. Or we could do sheer, with a little cleavage."</p><p>Cleave on Babwa? Oh my!</p><p>While you were pounding hot wings and eating beef-covered nachos last night, Russell Simmons was snacking on tofu fritters to keep his woman, Porschla Coleman, happy.</p><p>"She's a vegan," Simmons said from the front row of the Rock &amp; Republic show. "So we will cater and everyone else will eat vegan, too. We're going to trick them, sneak in soy stuff and nobody knows. In the chicken wings."</p><p>Eating tofu chicken wings for the lady you love = priceless, or desperate?</p><p></p><p></p><p>Fashion Week’s move to the second week of February (seven days later than usual) isn’t the only change afoot. </p><p>In the wake of the world’s financial turbulence, the city’s style spectacular has taken on a somber tone. </p><p>Parties — from to — have been canceled. And high-profile names including , , and have nixed runway shows for smaller-scale presentations. </p><p>Still, the shows must go on in some form or another, which means that this season there’s as much creativity off-stage as there is on it. </p><p>And that’s good for ’s $10 billion fashion industry. </p><p>With more young designers vying for fashion fame than ever before next week, planning masterminds have come up with new ways to keep clients afloat. </p><p>Fashion show producer decided to encourage three of hers to combine forces. For the first time in the tents, Cutrone’s firm People’s Revolution will stage a three-way show: Nicholas K, and will show together on Sunday. </p><p>They’ll use their own models, hair and makeup, but the same set, with a logo at the runway’s end that peels off with each new name. </p><p>“We held a dinner to let them meet first of all, to see if it would work — they’d need to be generous and share the hair and makeup space backstage,” Cutrone says. </p><p>Hoffman is enthusiastic about the setup. “I just feel right now it’s like, any way we can show, we should show,” she says. “We can’t disappear. I see too many of my contemporaries disappearing and going under.” </p><p>Some designers, like Wang and Johnson, are skipping the catwalk altogether and instead will show their clothes in a freeze-frame “presentations,” where models stand still and pose for two or three hours. So many lines have signed up for the cheaper showing that IMG (the organization that runs Fashion Week) will add an additional Bryant Park venue for presentations in September. </p><p>In the meantime, the backstage lounge hosted by will show capsule presentations (it’s dubbed them “Fashion Moments”) to a select group of invited editors. Confirmed so far are House of Cassette and Dee and Ricky, the accessories label that’s worked with Marc Jacobs. </p><p>There are downsides to presentations — it’s much harder to get good photography without movement, and there’s less drama — but it’s often easier for editors and buyers to see the clothes in detail. “When I started doing this, the designers did presentations in their showrooms — there was no such thing as ‘the tents,’ ” says ’s Hope Greenberg (Bryant Park was the brainchild of IMG’s in 1993). </p><p>A new demand for Asian models is changing the look of fashion's runways.</p><p>It's a worldwide trend — French label flooded its couture runway with a group of all-Asian girls in last month — so expect to see more and more Eastern faces as 's shows kick off this week.</p><p>"Every season, there's this one great Asian model, but these days there's a whole group of them," says , beauty editor at . "It's less of that token Asian in a show and more of a really nice consistency of great girls."</p><p>This month, fashion bible featured five Asian models for a fashion spread. In December, the magazine spotlighted eight Asian models in two pages. Just weeks ago, Filipina beauty took the title of Ford's Supermodel of the World, three years after South Korean model won the competition.</p><p> announced last month that the next face for its men's-wear campaign would be Taiwanese-American actor . He'll be the first Asian male face of a worldwide brand. Following his lead are several other Asian male models who were just used for 's fall 2011 collection in , which paid homage to with its overall theme.<br>  <br>Chen says the shift can be attributed to an increase in Asian-American designers, from to , as well as to 's quickly growing economy.</p><p>"The industry even in the past five years has become more global," says Chen. "You see brands like and Dior having resort collections in or to reach their consumers. They're seeing that there's a huge boom in these countries, with great demand for luxury goods."</p><p> announced that its Asian sales, outside of , soared 51% in a recent nine-month period. In a new study by the , the number of middle-class to affluent consumers in China alone is expected to climb from 150 million to 400 million in 10 years.</p><p>"Any good business person is observing the changing market and how Asia's expanding," says designer . "I think it's on everyone's mind, to cast accordingly. You definitely have to be reflective in those decisions."</p><p>Reese says that she's also seen a change when it comes to actually casting diverse models for a show.</p><p>"I used to have to request agencies to make sure they send over black models, Latinas, Asians," she says. "Now there's a lot more to choose from. They're grooming more girls with different ethnicities."</p><p>Though Asian models have had relative success in the past — in the '80s and in the '90s — there has never been a supermodel who rose to actual stardom.</p><p>While black models had their champions in and , and Hispanic models dominated the field, thanks to buxom Brazilians and , an Asian model has never become a household name.</p><p>That's about to change, says , president of Marilyn modeling agency.</p><p>"One-hundred percent, we will see the first Asian supermodel in ," he says of one of his clients.<br> <br>The international face of since last year, the Chinese-born model is also the new face for ck accessories, and was the first Asian woman to walk 's runway show.</p><p>Nipping at her heels: from China, whose campaign for launched a few weeks ago; Tao Okamoto of Japan, the face for ; Sun Fei Fei from China, in shows from to Givenchy, and rising South Korean star So Young Kang, who debuted in Chanel's couture show in Paris last summer.</p><p>"There have definitely been more Asians walking the runway the past two seasons and it's just a fact that there's more of a demand for these faces these days," says Gay, whose agency represents six other Asian models.</p><p>"Just like there's a demand for a French-looking face, or an all-American face, there's now a demand for an Asian look."</p><p></p><p>Fashion Week 2012 is now more accessible than ever — from the comfort of your own home. Here’s a guide to where you can see your favorite shows streaming LIVE online.</p><p></p><p>Style.com</p><p>Style.com will be streaming shows from top designers. Log on, find your favorite designer, and watch the show like you’re an editor yourself.</p><p>style.com/video/live-fashion-shows</p><p></p><p>YouTube</p><p>YouTube will have channels devoted to Fashion Week coverage. Follow LiveRunway, which has included designers like , Luca Luca and Cynthia Rowley in the past. LiveRunway is sponsored by IMG and will feature and Milly by Michelle Smith runway shows on their official channel. For more, check out the official Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week channel (MBFashionWeek).</p><p>youtube.com/user/mbfashionweek</p><p>youtube.com/liverunway</p><p></p><p>First Comes Fashion</p><p>First Comes Fashion was created in 2010 to broadcast Fashion Week collections — sometimes with designer commentary. This season, tune in live to see collections from designers like J Mendel, and .</p><p>firstcomesfashion.com</p><p></p><p>Designer Websites</p><p>Several designers have taken to showcasing their collections on their own retail sites. BCBG Max Azria and Herve Leger will be streaming again on their microsite Runway World and are also on LiveRunway.</p><p>bcbgmaxazriarunway.com</p><p>hervelegerrunway.com</p><p></p><p>Livestream</p><p>Designers including and have created their own channels on the video hosting site. The Associated Press also has a channel, where you can watch both shows and behind-the-scenes news.</p><p>livestream.com/ap_fashion</p><p></p><p>Milk Made</p><p>The Web component of Milk Group — Milk Studios has been competing with Lincoln Center to host the “it” shows of the season — will be live-streaming shows from designers including the Blondes.</p><p>livestream.com/macandmilk</p><p></p><p>Facebook</p><p>One more reason to “like” your favorite designers. Brands including Tommy Hilfiger and Hugo Boss will be streaming Fall 2012 runway shows on their Facebook pages.</p><p>facebook.com/events/309031385806051</p><p>facebook.com/tommyhilfiger</p><p>The seats were packed at Lincoln Center Sunday, but downtown Manhattan was never far from anyone's mind.</p><p>Designers paid tribute to the 10th anniversary of 9/11 in their own ways: Victoria Beckham held two moments of silence at her morning show, and Diane Von Furstenberg handed out American flags during her finale.</p><p>Before Lela Rose's show of floral prints and feminine silhouettes, John Lennon's "Imagine" played and guests sang along.</p><p>But perhaps the biggest celebration was the clothing itself.</p><p>There was plenty of red, white and blue — a recurring palette that was no accident — with pops of yellow and grass green. The sunny outlook came with floppy hats and parasols, and historical references took audiences on a trip through U.S. fashion.</p><p>At DVF, sky-high beehive 'dos were reminiscent of a '60s housewife, and at Thakoon cowboy getups stole the show.</p><p>Tracy Reese's models sashayed in front of a woodland backdrop, but would have looked at home on the boardwalk in Coney Island's golden age. They showed off swimwear while twirling parasols, or stayed cool in jaunty straw hats.</p><p>At DKNY at the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet space, Donna Karan's models walked to "American Woman" by The Guess Who, and a parked taxi cab and W. 26th St. served as the backdrop. They were exuberant and confident in wide-brimmed hats and bold pinks and purples.</p><p>The message was clear: This spring, it'll be good to be an American woman.</p><p>And especially one in New York.</p><p><br>From left to right: DVF, Christian Siriano, Alexander Wang, Derek Lam. (Getty)</p><p><br>Christopher King, 24, is a fan of simple fashion.</p><p>His straightforward style means never having to worry about mismatched outfits.</p><p>"I really only wear plain solid colors. When everything you have goes together and you wake up in the morning and feel really sleepy, you can reach into your closet and pull out whatever," he laughs.</p><p>As the art director for Melville House Publishing, King, who lives in Prospect Heights, often finds inspiration on the runways.</p><p>"As a graphic designer, I'm interested in what is going on in fashion because the fashion world is first in terms of trends. I like to know what kind of colors or styles other designers are using. It comes back into my work in some way."</p><p>- Patty Lee</p><p>Joanna Hillman, senior market editor Harper's Bazaar, is all about being organized.</p><p>Especially during Fashion Week, when she needs to dress to impress. Already a favorite of fashion blogs who that watch her style, Hillman puts together outfits based partly on her mood and partly on a pre-ordained schedule.</p><p>"It's really about how I feel in the morning and what mood I'm in," she says.</p><p>Recently, for instance, she's been feeling an urge to match similar prints — from her blouse and trousers to even purses.<br>"I used to hate matchy-matchy when I was younger, but I'm very into it these days."</p><p>So how does she look so impeccable?</p><p>"I plan!" She says. "I really do set aside what I'm going to wear every single day. It's too stressful not to."  </p><p>- David Yi</p><p>Discover how your star sign influences your individual style.<br><br>ARIES: Individual Style - Your appearance is important; you fill your closet with the latest fashion trends and love every minute of it. People might mistake you for an Abercrombie and Fitch model at the gym as you reflect an air of confidence wherever you go. Your sporty sense of style needs to be able to keep pace with your energetic personality. Fashion Couture – Sleek couture that is comfortable will tempt your fashion taste buds. Michael Kors has a clean and contemporary clothing line with the perfect amount of edge. Red Carpet Accessory – To attract attention, wear the latest bulky wrist watch.<br><br>TAURUS: Individual Style – When it comes to style, money is not an object. The world's most exclusive clothing labels can be found in your closet as far as the eye can see. You spoil your skin with soft and sumptuous fabric, of only the highest quality. You take pleasure in experimenting with color and bold patterns as long as they aren't too flamboyant. Fashion Couture – Your style is extravagant, yet classy, and polished. Chanel is a perfect brand name for fashion conscious Taurus. Red Carpet Accessory – Take a trip to Tiffany and Co., to find a one-of-a-kind pair of brilliant diamond earrings.<br><br>GEMINI: Individual Style - You don't like to make a fuss about brand names or labels, but stay on the forefront of fashion. You like to find distinctive pieces that fit into your budget and suit your ever-changing moods. Comfort and practicality are important but you aren't afraid of color or prints. Fashion Couture – Slip into a loose fitting, iconic piece by Diane Von Furstenberg that can be worn as several different outfits. Red Carpet Accessory- A colorful handbag or fashionable belt is just what the accessory doctor ordered.<br><br>CANCER: Individual Style - A pair of fashionable jeans with a lightweight silk shirt suits your naturally glamorous style. You like to add a touch of shimmer to your wardrobe, and a hint of cleavage can transform any outfit into something extraordinary. Fashion Couture –Valentino has a verdant and exclusive couture that will match your stylish taste. Red Carpet Accessory- Unlock the safe deposit box and get ready to put all of your best pieces on display! Drape yourself from top to bottom with delicate pearls and jewels.<br><br>LEO: Individual Style – You spend big bucks on leather, fur, and high end labels. Self image is important to you, and you enjoy the compliments you gain from looking your best. You are full of confidence and appreciate being the center of attention. Fashion Couture – John Galliano's fashion collection is known to create a buzz in the industry, and will give you the attention you desire. Red Carpet Accessory- A pair of expensive shoes will polish your already sleek look.<br><br>VIRGO: Individual Style - A proper or conservative vibe is your style of choice. The quality of your clothing is important, however labels are not. A crisp white top and a pair of wrinkle-free pants is a classic style that suits you. Fashion Couture – Ralph Lauren's collection is casual chic with a high society twist. The design is form fitting, just the way you like it. Red Carpet Accessory- Create an up-to-the minute look by mixing your favorite necklace with a matching bag and cardigan.<br><br>LIBRA: Individual Style - You are known to color coordinate your wardrobe on a daily basis. You like to make a killer first impression, and are not afraid to show a little skin. You strive to look your best and keep your hair, skin, and nails perfectly coiffed. Fashion Couture – BCBG Max Azria's style has a romantic-urban flare with a celebrity client base to match. Red Carpet Accessory- Accessorize with a pastel handbag, or hair accessory.<br><br>SCORPIO: Individual Style - Risque lingerie, a power skirt suit and anything black are your signature pieces. You have the uncanny ability to turn something simple into something slightly provocative, yet remain classy. Your passion-filled personality carries over to your fashion taste and illustrates your alluring and seductive nature. Fashion Couture – Dolce and Gabbana is a perfect label for Scorpio, and one thing this line is known for is their aggressive and sexy campaigns that captivate audiences worldwide. Red Carpet Accessory- Reveal a tattoo or diamante drop earrings.<br><br>SAGITTARIUS: Individual Style - You seek a look that is sophisticated yet sassy, but not exaggerated. Slip into a pair of designer jeans and a classic white button-down shirt. Your style is timeless but can take time to create. Make gold or navy blue the essential colors of your wardrobe and you will feel fashionable in anything you put on. Fashion Couture – Designer Alexander Wang combines a casual downtown style with chic cotton tees and tanks. Red Carpet Accessory – A modern scarf or a distinguished pair of eyeglasses will add a pinch of panache to your cool look.<br><br>CAPRICORN: Individual Style – You own a number of timeless luxury fashion pieces, a keystone to your wardrobe. Effortlessly chic with an alluring appeal, you know how to bring out your best features. It is impossible for you to blend in; you can't help but stand out no matter where you are. Fashion Couture – Safari-chic and high fashion dress shirts look fabulous on you. Yves Saint Laurent embodies high society and innovative flair. Red Carpet Accessory – A fashionable and functional handbag in a contrast color will add a finishing touch.<br><br>AQUARIUS: Individual Style – Outrageous accessories found at vintage stores speak to who you are. Garments that represent your eccentric personality allow you to literally wear your personality on your sleeve. You really aren't capable of following a trend, instead you create one! Fashion Couture – L.A.M.B. by Gwen Stefani is the perfect blend of label influenced attire, and funky casual fashion. Red Carpet Accessory – Unusual gold, silver, and chrome costume jewelry will highlight your individuality.<br><br>PISCES: Individual Style – A low neckline, a painted-on pair of jeans, and the combination of lace and sheer fabrics will make an impression. You have an individual style and a knack of combining different looks to make a fashion statement fit for a movie star. Fashion Couture – Zac Posen is famous for his strong sense of style with unique and sometimes even outlandish pieces. Red Carpet Accessory – A colorful pair of stilettos will give your look the perfect amount of pizzazz!</p><p>Fashion Week kicks off this morning with 's Fall collection but so much of the excitement surrounding the $10 billion industry's biggest event is taking place outside the tents. </p><p>Proof the style spectacular is starting to loosen its exclusivity? Designers like and are, for the first time ever, broadcasting their shows online. opened up tomorrow's Fashion for runway show to the paying public (it's sold out). And even is letting her right hand man serve as judge on "." </p><p>Since the fashion industry in NY employs 175,000 regular folk to get these clothes on racks and into shoppers' hands, letting everybody in on the behind-the-scenes magic is more important now than ever. </p><p>1. ANNA WINTOUR, editor, The British-born but New York-made editor made a slinky appearance on Letterman's couch to promote her career-capping docusoap, "The September Issue," and proved herself yet again the most famous and most powerful person in fashion. Ever. </p><p>2. , designer & CFDA chairwoman DVF still juggles designing her collection with steering fashion's version of the , not to mention the now-annual Fashion's Night Out each September.</p><p>3. , head of Worldwide When it comes to Fashion Week, IMG is the company that runs the shows. And the man with the international plan is Peter Levy, whose runways reach from Bryant Park to , , , , and beyond. </p><p>4. , mayor, When term limits got the boot, the fashion industry must have sighed and rejoiced to see that such a champion of the rag trade remaining part of the fabric of was likely to remain mayor. His new initiative with the CFDA, a fashion incubator for emerging talent, only underscored his loyalty. </p><p>5. , fashion director, For the last six years, Fischelis has steered the stock at the chain's more than 250 stores, tapping into the contacts she gained during gigs as a buyer at and in to update and upgrade. </p><p>6. , dermabrasionist, Christine Chin spa Chin has more actresses and models on speed-dial than : The faces of Gisele, , and all rely on her proprietary dermabrasion machine. In 2010, Chin will launch a line of anti-aging products. </p><p>7. , manager, brand experience marketing, is an expensive operation, and it's money from sponsors that offsets the cost to designers. For the last nine years, Holladay has been wielding Mercedez-Benz' hefty Fashion Week budget (doubtless, editors are sucking up for rides more than ever). </p><p>Working in teen magazines for 10 years, it's no wonder new Seventeen editor in chief Ann Shoket is drawn to girlish getups. But heading up a major magazine, her daily duties often call for more conservative costumes.</p><p>"I think that I struggle with the same challenges that every single woman in Manhattan struggles with," she shares. "How do you look cool and great and fun and young and yet at the same time look professional?"</p><p>We caught up with Shoket at Barneys New York the week her first issue hits (on stands now), where a personal shopper sifted out styles that flawlessly fit her busy lifestyle.</p><p>"Because I am 17 on the inside and 34 on the outside, there are times when I need to look younger, and there are corporate meetings where I need to look a little more buttoned up," says Shoket. "I spend all my days looking at cute little junior stuff so it changes the way you think when you go shopping as a grownup."</p><p>Working for an adolescent audience not only sways her buying habits, but the way she runs Seventeen.</p><p>"My mission with the magazine is to make this the fun, confidence-building, interactive, fashion and beauty magazine for teenage girls," Shoket says. "And you can't have fun in the pages of a magazine unless you're having fun working at the magazine. I really have fostered a party atmosphere. We had Red Bull and Oreos at my first staff meeting because I wanted to connect people with that hyper, caffeinated energy of being a teenager."</p><p>And it's no coincidence that Avril Lavigne, who's gone from punk to playful, is splashed across the April issue.</p><p>"Even Avril Lavigne is happy these days," Shoket says. "She used to be so dark and brooding and the queen of smudged eyeliner. She's so happy. She's in love. She's moved beyond the super angsty part of her life. You can hear it in her music."</p><p>Expect to see a prompt on every page of the magazine that leads girls to Seventeen's Web site. It's Shoket's commitment to make the brand interactive, with a more visible online, TV and mobile presence.</p><p>But the former executive editor of CosmoGIRL! hasn't let Seventeen's core content slip from the spotlight.</p><p>"Seventeen is much more fashion- and beauty-focused than CosmoGIRL!," says Shoket. So it's only natural that she drape herself in classy but up-to-date duds.</p><p></p><p>MAGAZINE COVER SHOOT<br>J Brand 914 jeans, $158; Alexander Wang thermal sweater, $345; Mike &amp; Chris leather lambskin jacket, $810.</p><p>"A leather jacket can look harsh on some people, but because [this one is] kind of washed, it softens the whole look with the jeans and the sweater," says Laura Mannix, personal shopper at Barneys New York. "It looks chic and effortless for day. You don't want to look contrived, like you're putting outfits together."</p><p>COCKTAIL PARTY<br>Tucker by Gaby Basora dress, $345; Miu Miu belt, $285; Sigerson Morrison wedges, $450.</p><p>Mannix likens this look to margaritas and summer. "It's perfect for a cocktail party that you're going to from the office," she adds. "The greatest part of this dress is that it's a day look with flip-flops. All you have to do is put on your metallic wedges and spruce it up with a belt and all of a sudden you have this fabulous outfit. It's really feminine and pretty."</p><p>BUSINESS LUNCHEON<br>Helmut Lang jacket, $505; 3.1 Phillip Lim rosette tank, $230.</p><p>"The Helmut Lang suit goes back to that minimalist, very official, simplified clean look," says Mannix. "It's not distracting. It's perfect for a business luncheon. It looks polished, and it looks very, very put together and very crisp with the black and white. Yet, with the rosettes on the tank, there is an element of femininity to what is otherwise a very masculine look. It's a nice balance."</p><p>The chance to toss a few more shovels of dirt on the Rangers' season has been wasted by the Islanders. It's up to the Blueshirts now whether their head-to-head meeting Tuesday on Long Island might still have some meaning. The Isles couldn't fully solve Ed Belfour despite a hefty shot advantage, dropping a 5-2 decision to the hated Maple Leafs last night to disappoint the 10th sellout crowd this season at Nassau Coliseum. Goals by Roman Hamrlik and Steve Webb (first) weren't enough for the Isles, who remained six points ahead of the Rangers for the final playoff berth in the Eastern Conference with five games remaining for each team. The Isles' magic number for clinching their second straight postseason berth remains five points entering tomorrow's game against the Devils. The Rangers are slated to play twice before Tuesday's visit to Long Island. Belfour was ever-sturdy in making 37 saves for Toronto, which buried three goals on 15 shots through two periods against Garth Snow before Robert Reichel and Alexander Mogilny (empty-netter) sealed it in the third. There was a distinct playoff feel from the get-go, beginning with a few louts booing the Canadian national anthem despite a taped plea from owner Charles Wang and GM Mike Milbury to be respectful. By the song's end, the remainder of fans had drowned out the boos with loud cheers, which intensified when Isles legend Clark Gillies also offered a live pregame pep talk. Still, Toronto jumped to a 2-0 lead in a physical first period on goals by Alexander Mogilny (4-on-4) and Mats Sundin (power play) by 8:07. Roman Hamrlik's ninth drew the Isles within one barely one minute later, but Tomas Kaberle's power-play blast 4:51 into the second made it 3-1. Webb also was back to his battering-ram ways, earning thunderous chants of his name for dropping Richard Jackman and later drawing a retaliatory slash by Tom Fitzgerald following another hearty check. Webb even added his first goal in 95 games since Oct. 2001 - and his first point this season - with a stuffer at Ed Belfour's left post for a 3-2 game 8:44 into the second. TIES ONE ON: Jason Wiemer scrapped with Tie Domi in first after unpenalized hit-from-behind on Jason Blake. . . . Broadcaster Howie Rose, in eighth year covering Isles, has agreed to multi-year extension.</p><p> keeps feeling the love from the fashion world.</p><p>The announced Monday that Mrs. Obama will be honored with a special tribute from the group’s board of directors at its annual awards gala in June.</p><p>“We wanted to acknowledge her in a serious way for her commitment to American fashion,” said CFDA president . A grant also will be established in her name to assist a young fashion company.</p><p>Meanwhile, three designers that Mrs. Obama has been known to wear — , and — also received CFDA nominations.</p><p>Rodriguez joins and sisters Laura and of Rodarte as the nominees for womenswear designer of the year, and Wu, Panichgul and are in the running for the Swarovski Award for emerging talent in women’s fashion.</p><p>Jacobs, already one of the industry’s favorite sons, continued to rack up his own accolades as a nominee once again in accessory design and as the winner of the international designer award for his work at . (Jacobs splits his time between the Vuitton label, headquartered in , and his own signature collection, which is shown in .)</p><p>“He’s a pioneer as an American in ,” Kolb said.</p><p> is to receive the lifetime achievement award named for the late .</p><p>The ceremony is moving this year from the to , which will also become the Fashion Week hub next year. Mrs. Obama will receive an invitation, but Kolb was unsure if she’d attend.</p><p>“We’ll do whatever we can to get her here, but the award isn’t about getting her to come,” he said.</p><p>Celebrity designers, 's hottest actors, top models and musicians - the city will be buzzing with fun parties Thursday for Fashion's Night Out.</p><p>And you're invited! </p><p>From 6 to 11, over 300 retailers across the five boroughs will host events to support the global initiative intended to boost consumer confidence and celebrate fashion.</p><p>Fashionistas can rub elbows with the likes of , and , while celeb gawkers can vie for photo ops with film stars like .</p><p>Even Vogue editor in chief and FNO mastermind will meet and greet fans.</p><p>So dust off the camera: Here's the who's who list and where they'll be.</p><p>Where to spot fashion royalty</p><p> creates unique paintings for customers (for a price, of course) at from 5 to 6 p.m. Stick around, as "" host   conducts a cookoff between designers , and from 6 to 7. Time for a drink? Guest bartenders Mary-Kate and serve cocktails and appetizers from 7 to 8. editor at large hosts a game show featuring designer Donna Karan and stylist from 8 to 9. Designer/mogul answers questions from fans at 9. If you hang out long enough, you may catch celeb appearances by , and . 754 Fifth Ave. at 58th St. </p><p>Queen and company</p><p>Anna Wintour signs autographs for the first 50 customers in line at the Queens Center store. Also, see designer and "" judge and some cast members from the Broadway musical "Hair" stop by to perform. 5 p.m.; 90-01 Queens Blvd., Queens. makes a special appearance at Macy's . And don't miss top designer , who shows off her diffusion line Rachel and greets shoppers. Enjoy special makeover events all night and a performance by the Michael Fredo Jazz Trio. 6 to 7 p.m.; 151 34th St. at Broadway.</p><p>Hipster heaven</p><p> stops in at DKNY to deejay and customers receive complimentary sweets and champagne. 9 to 11 p.m.; 655 Madison Ave. at 60th St. Hasidic rapper performs at 's flagship store. 8 to 11 p.m.; 610 Fifth Ave. at 50th St. The Misshapes perform a deejay set at the Versace store, which also serves free vodka martinis while customers view a collection designed by celebs like and , to name a few. 6 to 11 p.m.; 647 Fifth Ave. between 51st and 52nd Sts.</p><p>TAMPA - The fish practically were jumping into boats this summer at the Minnesota lake where Mark Parrish spends his offseasons, but the Islanders' winger felt like the only one not catching many of them. "It was just the way the whole year went for me," Parrish said. An unproductive 2000-01 hockey season led to a similar summer for Parrish, but he expects that to change after the Isles reeled in two big catches this offseason - centers Alexei Yashin and Michael Peca. Parrish, who totaled just 16 goals during the team's dead-last finish last season, was among the most excited of the Isles' returning players for last night's season opener against the Lightning. "From the second I heard about the trades, I couldn't wait to get on the ice and I think a lot of guys feel that way," Parrish said. "Nothing worked for anybody here last year, but I definitely expected much better offensive output from myself.</p><p>" Injuries limited Parrish to 70 games last season after he was obtained with Oleg Kvasha from Florida in the ballyhooed trade of stud goalie prospect Roberto Luongo. Parrish, 24, who totaled three goals and two assists in seven preseason games, was expected to skate last night on coach Peter Laviolette's second forward line with Peca and fellow newcomer Shawn Bates. "You can sense the changes in the locker room, it feels 10 times better than last year," Parrish said. "I think we should make the playoffs; there's no reason (we won't) be in the hunt. I know that's something we said last year, too, but I think guys really believe it now.</p><p>" Peca pumped: Laviolette, behind the bench for his first NHL game as a head coach, noted the usually cool Peca was "shaking in anticipation" for his first NHL game after sitting out all of last season in Buffalo as an unsigned free agent. "I'm really excited. I haven't played an NHL game since the (2000 playoffs) against Philadelphia (almost) two years ago. I can't wait for the first shift," Peca said. . . . Tampa captain Vincent Lecavalier signed a four-year, $10.</p><p>2 million contract Thursday, but wasn't in the lineup. . . . Laviolette dressed seven defensemen, including Czech rookie Radek Martinek and 29-year-old European import Marko Kiprusoff. Veteran D Ken Sutton and wingers Steve Webb and Alexander Kharitonov were healthy scratches. . . . Owners Charles Wang and Sanjay Kumar and their families flew here yesterday for the game. . . . Legendary Isles coach Al Arbour, a Florida retiree, also was in attendance. . . . Singer Joan Jett, who is from Long Island, will perform prior to the Oct. 13 home opener vs. Detroit at 5:30 p.</p><p>m. at the Coliseum Box Office Plaza.</p><p>The could be the kings of in a few years, but Tuesday night they fell just short again of being Kings of their current castle.</p><p>The Isles, who continue to attract public attention from potential suitors off the ice, dropped their third straight close game on it following a four-game winning streak with a 4-3 shootout loss to at . </p><p>"We're playing a lot better hockey and competing every night," rookie said. "But it's still a loss, any way you look at it." </p><p> forced a 3-3 tie with a rebound conversion on the power play with 13:19 remaining in regulation. And was the lone scorer in the shootout, beating , whose 36 saves included a handful on another Los Angeles power play in overtime. </p><p>Still, turned to three young forwards - Okposo, and - in the shootout with future seasons clearly in mind. </p><p>"They're going to be the guys of the future," Gordon said. "They're going to be the guys taking the shots. There's nothing like the present to get some experience." </p><p>Or to discuss the franchise's long-term future beyond its hockey operations. </p><p>The Daily News reported Tuesday that the is considering a long-shot bid to lure the Isles from . The move would be part of redevelopment plans, including a convention center, for the auto-body shops near , to coincide with the Isles' current Coliseum/SMG lease running out in 2015. </p><p>Isles owner had no comment through a team spokesman, but he continues to haggle with the Town of for approval of the Lighthouse Project to renovate the Coliseum and to develop its surrounding acreage. </p><p>If nothing else, public interest from Queens will provide Wang a local option as leverage in negotiations after the Isles previously announced last month they will hold 2009 training camp in . They'll also play a September exhibition against the Kings in - another city expressing interest in acquiring an franchise. </p><p>OFF THE MARK: All-Star (shoulder) missed his third straight game but might return Wednesday night in . Center Nate Thompson will be out 4-to-6 weeks with a shoulder injury. , and scored in regulation.</p><p>Jenni (JWoWW) Farley played hide and chic with a new man at in , L.I., on Sunday. A source says the well-endowed "Jersey Shore" star, who split from fiancé/manager last month, brought the new dude shoe-shopping with her to , but took evasive action when fans brought out cameras. We hear the Jersey girl and her new piece of man candy, who our witness says is "really tan with lots of tattoos" and muscles, hid in a shoe-store stockroom. She ended up buying some black over-the-knee boots and multicolored "Carissa G" sparkly heels.</p><p>, are you listening? At Sunday's Special Evening for dinner at Monkey Bar, was overheard telling her pal that she prefers the music and decor of Le Bain at Balazs Standard Hotel to its sister club, which is now called the Top of the Standard. Campbell attended the event to present an award to filmmaker , but had to leave immediately after her speech to catch a flight to to attend Monday's memorial for . While she's across the pond, we hear Campbell will be reprising the interpretative panther dance she first performed at the Dolce &amp; Gabbana boutique on . She'll do encores in London, and to raise money for her Fashion for Relief charity.</p><p>Chef isn't one for subtlety when it comes to his playboy lifestyle. After bailing on bride-to-be last fall, he's been seen about town with many lovely ladies — sometimes many lovely ladies at once. Most recently, tipsters tell us, the 50-year-old foodie was spotted dining at the West Village's Flex Mussels with not one but four young blond beauties. To make things even more obvious, he dined on a plate of oysters. Take it easy, Todd. Even likes the occasional night in with .</p><p>Kings and princesses and Presidents, oh my! 's Auction House has added 's Swan Lake Suite necklace to its Friday public auction at Park Avenue Armory. The necklace, constructed by crown jewelers Garrard with 214 diamonds and seven South Sea pearls, was worn by Diana at her last official engagement, at the on June 3, 1997. We hear it's expected to sell for $1.5 million to $2 million.</p><p>If that's a little rich for you, Guernsey's also will be auctioning what it claims is the only baseball in the world signed by six Presidents: , , , and both George Bushes.</p><p>Instead of just gawking at the high-end designs that were worn at Monday night's Museum of Art's , fashion enthusiasts have the chance to own their own piece of couture.<br><br>In addition to co-sponsoring the star-studded event, the teamed up with some of today's hottest young designers to dress a slew of celebrity attendees, including , and .<br><br>"I had the opportunity to meet some of the most amazing talent in the world today like , Rodarte, and Thakoon," Gap Executive Vice President of Global Design Patrick Robinson told . "The collaboration wasn't me going to them and saying ‘I want you to make dresses for Gap.' It was really ‘I want you to make dresses for these women that we're all going to talk about and work on but I want you to express yourself and express what your brand is about.'" <br><br>Alba, who looked retro chic in a pink Sophie Theallet for Gap dress, applauded the designer for being able to make "chic fashion affordable and accessible."<br><br>"" actress also donned a Sophie Theallet creation, while Kirsten Dunst and model wore Rodarte for Gap dresses. Singer M.I.A. and were dressed in Alexander Wang for Gap designs, and model choose Thakoon for Gap.<br><br>Also wearing a Thakoon for Gap dress, Washington gushed about the designer's "unique vision for the whimsical with Gap's all-American cool." <br><br>Though the eight dresses won't be stocked in stores, they will go up for sale during Gap's silent auction from May 5 until May 31 at . During this time, they will be on display at Gap's Fifth Avenue pop-up shop in .<br><br>Proceeds on the auction will be donated to fund The Met's Costume Institute.</p><p> - may have more than a dozen to his name, but fear of the fashion world turned the rapper, singer and music producer extraordinaire into a nervous wreck on Saturday, as he debuted his new luxury clothing line.</p><p>He was right to worry: The fashion industry is notoriously catty and, even though West had been a front-row regular at fashion shows for years, it had greeted the news that he was planning to launch his own line with raised eyebrows, preemptively consigning him to the same category of celebrity designers as the likes of and her leggings.</p><p>But West proved nay-sayers wrong with his slick collection of sexy, hard-edged looks that were hands-down better - in terms of design and construction - than much of what's been shown during the first five days of Paris' spring-summer 2012 ready-to-wear collections.</p><p>Attended by the creme de la creme of the fashion world and a sprinkling of celebrities, including Lohan herself, West's debut was THE event of , and it stole the thunder from Saturday's other shows.</p><p> can usually be counted on to deliver a real fashion spectacle, but Saturday's show was strangely plodding and staid. With Paris in the grips of a freak heat wave, the venue became an sort of inferno and the show's hour-late start turned the whole thing into a sort of Chinese torture, redeemed only by the beauty of the clothes.</p><p>Usually Viktor &amp; Rolf collections are exercises in an almost ostentatious creativity, but Saturday's display was less about over-the-top experimentation than detail. But outrageousness had not completely deserted the building: The models took to the catwalk from beneath a giant pleated skirt the size of a giant teepee.</p><p>'s reigning queen of knitwear, , was also more subdued than usual, though her pleated culottes and relaxed pant suits in creamy whites and yellows were as still sporty and fun as usual.</p><p><br>Looks from West's runway. (Dominique Charriau/; Pascal Le Segretain/Getty)</p><p>It was as if 's were in touch with the weather gods: With the Indian summer beating down on , her tropical themed separates felt spot-on. Looks from West's runway show.</p><p>Australian-born designer 's was one of those collections where you coveted simply everything. The wide-legged trousers in canary silk jersey; the halter tops in graphic black and white prints; the maxi-dresses hung with floor-length strips, like seaweed. It was a great collection and among the strongest shows of the day.</p><p>, man of many talents, man of many moods.<br></p><p>When we caught Kayne West in the morning, alone outside the tents, it seemed his usual title of demanding diva did not apply. <br></p><p>Maybe it’s because the rapper wants to get into fashion. Maybe it’s because he’s focused on his blog. Maybe he just likes to mingle with the populace. But the sight of the pint-sized hip-hopper all by his lonesome on the sidewalk outside the men’s show Sunday afternoon baffled showgoers. How do you react to the uber-famous Kanye when there’s no publicist, posse or security toughs in sight?<br></p><p>“Hey, man, will you read my blog?” offered one hipster. “I’m from ,” said an attractive blond, “We should get you on the cover.” Kanye shrugged. “I didn’t like the cover shot you used the last time,” he shot back. “I wanted something dead-on into the camera. If I do it again I’m going to need final approval.”<br></p><p>By the time he turned up to Y-3 an hour later – everything had changed.<br></p><p>“I don’t want to do any press,” he kept repeating to event staffers. When a reporter from magazine tried to grab him as he sauntered around backstage, the rap titan smiled, shook her hand, refused to say a word, and was swiftly saved by a pal who escorted him not only out of the area, but out of the building. <br></p><p>“I hope he hasn’t left for good,” one panicked worker mumbled under his breath. Another barked into her walkie-talkie, “Kanye said he’s talked too much today! If you see media people, keep them away from him!”<br></p><p>Just as the lights were dimming in the Pier 40 venue, an enclave of hipsters rushed forward with West in the middle. As his oddly dressed entouragians raised their hands to block video cameras, West took his seat. <br></p><p>After the show, West asked to try on a jacket he saw on the runway, but didn’t take it because “this isn’t an XL.” Then he proceeded to dodge more photographers. <br></p><p>We’d like to think that maybe all the ducking and diving away from attention was because he was ashamed of his haircut, but we’re onto West. A ducktail of ’fro puff at the back of his neck is probably his own design for Fall/Winter 2009.<br></p><p>Seen and heard<br></p><p>Newly single put all rumors of a reunion with ex to rest on Valentine’s Day by celebrating her single-girl solidarity with a gal pal. The “” starlet enjoyed early morning mimosas with a female friend backstage at the W Lounge and toasted, “Here’s to being single . . . . My one true love right now is fashion!”  Hewitt was also spotted on Sunday snapping photos of hot male models at the Nicholas K show. <br><br> definitely isn’t preggers again. “I designed a little black dress for her to wear in recently,” designer told us Sunday at her presentation, adding, “There were no alterations made for a preganancy.” Also there was an apologetic who told Acra, “I felt awful staring at your live models like animals!”  <br><br> getting to crack a smile at show . . . walking in to the Waverly Inn with a twentysomething blond on each arm. . . . and stepping out as a new couple at Lavo in on Valentine’s Day. <br><br>Wicked whisper:  </p><p>Which celeb chef’s wife mans his reservation stand while he secretly slips out the back door with his girlfriend? <br></p><p>Is headed for the poorhouse? Short answer: no. But the actress may soon be “stockpiling” Benjamins now that she doesn’t have Tom Cruise’s $250M fortune to fall back on, according to a well-placed source.</p><p>The insider says Holmes’ “people are putting the word out she’s willing to do paid appearances and just seeing what opportunities come to her.” But she won’t come cheap: Although a second source can’t say what it’ll cost to book Holmes, 33 — rates vary per event — “[an appearance] could be around six figures.”</p><p>A source close to Holmes’ agency confirms, “She was approached by Hilfiger for a Fashion Show appearance and she passed (and) she was approached by a liquor company and she passed.” The Holmes source says companies see Holmes as more approachable since her split from Cruise, but she’s not personally involved in any corporate courtships.</p><p>“Katie never did this before her split with Tom,” the first insider says. Popping into parties isn’t the only way Holmes could pocket extra cash. “Brands (want) Katie to wear their clothing for money, and then she’ll get photographed in it,” says our first source, who adds at least one retailer already has Holmes in their duds, though our Holmes source isn’t aware of any such deal. Holmes reportedly receives $400,000 a year in child support, along with expenses, for their 6-year-old daughter, Suri, until she turns 18. Not that Holmes will be clipping coupons.</p><p>It was announced Thursday the former “Dawson’s Creek” actress will be the first celeb face of Bobbi Brown when the 2013 Spring campaign launches — a deal that will reportedly earn her between $2M and $3M. Wednesday, Holmes shows her Holmes &amp; Yang collection for Fashion Week. A rep for Holmes had no comment.</p><p>THAT IRRITATINGPARIS HILTON</p><p>Go figure.</p><p>SCARJO DENIES REIGNITING OLD FLAME</p><p>Scarlett Johanssonappeared to be going “forward” with ex-boyfriend Jared Leto at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday. But her rep released a statement saying this isn’t change you should believe in. “Scarlett is still dating Nate [Naylor],” her rep claims, adding, “This is very innocent.” The News has previously reported ScarJo and Leto, who dated in 2004, have stayed close since her divorce from actor Ryan Reynolds in late 2010.</p><p>Kevin Smith isn’t writing a tell-all, but he is spilling about the A-listers he has worked with. </p><p>The director, who’s shooting “A Couple of Dicks” with , revealed that he and didn’t exactly see eye to eye while filming “Catch and Release” in 2006.</p><p>“Jennifer does not share the same sense of humor as me — she did not like my jokes,” Smith said during the “Silent Bob Speaks” chat at on Wednesday night. “I was picking on [Jen’s husband] and making fun of him because I’ve known him for a really long time — I was talking smack — and Jennifer goes, ‘You know, if you keep saying stuff about him, I’m going to kick your a—.’ And she could — I’ve seen ‘Alias.’ She has a real girly sense of humor and didn’t understand that I was kidding.” </p><p>The portly Smith, who first directed Affleck in 1995’s “Mallrats,” continued, “I remember talking to Ben and being like, ‘I know your lady is not finding me amusing. Ben, I’ve known you for years, and you are far sicker than I am!’ His jokes are way dirtier than mine. He’s made jokes to me, and I’ve been like, ‘Ben, you need to go to church.’”</p><p>All kidding aside, Smith clearly has a lot of affection for Affleck. </p><p>“Ben is one of the most intelligent people on the planet,” he said. “He will run for office and one day be President, and then we’ll smoke a joint in the . He’s very well-spoken and been brought up extremely well, but he’s filthy!”</p><p>Smith also chatted about his love for the late and for Willis, who he says has “been in literally every cop movie ever made.” He added — rather randomly — that he’d save ’s life over ’s or ’, and went on to profess his admiration for comedy king of the moment .</p><p>“Seth is on top of the world. He has nine movies going on — all of them with [Judd] Apatow,” Smith said of his “Zack and Miri” star. “I was like, ‘Seth, you changed my definition of success — you are a functioning stoner.’”</p><p>WHITNEY IS KEEPING HER NEW ALBUM TOP SECRET  — even from her family! “I haven’t heard anything from it yet,” the diva’s cousin confided at a event. “Whitney has been saying, ‘You’re going to hear it when everyone else does.’ It’s killing me!” As for a future duet, Warwick said, “Absolutely. It’s inevitable.” </p><p>IF WERE STRANDED on a desert island, he’d want to be with his “” co-star . “Tracy’s so rich that he’d have a cell phone that would work even on a deserted island, and he would be able to call over a big cruise ship,” Friedlander said before performing at Carolines. “Then we’d go on the cruise ship and just party with hot chicks the whole time.”</p><p>SEEN & HEARD<br>Designers and dancing until the wee hours at The Gates. ... and his “Remember Me” co-star smoking cigarettes outside of Freemans. ... Mommy-to-be hosting a ladies’ lunch at the roof deck.</p><p>WICKED WHISPERS:  Which music mogul looks at himself in the mirror every morning and recites an ode to his greatness?</p><p> knows how to throw a party.</p><p>To mark the end of New York Fashion Week and fete “Fame,” her first fragrance, Gaga invited her famous friends to watch her sleep.</p><p>She arrived to the black-tie masquerade around 6:30 p.m., bypassing the red carpet where reporters weren’t expecting her for another hour. According to a source Gaga was fashionably early because she wanted to prepare for her performance art piece, “Sleeping with Gaga.”</p><p>Around 9 p.m. she climbed into some sort of egg/claw combo that allowed partygoers, including Paris Hilton and Marc Jacobs, to stick their fingers through a hole in the installation and touch her as she “slept.” Gaga emerged from the egg at 9:45 p.m. when assistants stripped her down to lingerie and thigh highs.</p><p>She crawled back inside with a tattoo artist who inked a cherub looking suspiciously like Honey Boo Boo on her neck for all to see on a big-screen TV.</p><p>Mother Monster has said she wants her perfume to smell “like an expensive hooker,” and said that blood and semen “is in the perfume, but it doesn’t smell like it.”</p><p>Confidenti@l has learned exclusively that Gaga was very strict when it came to invites for her Thursday night party at the Guggenheim celebrating her foray into fragrance with “Fame.”</p><p>“She personally decided who got the nod for invitations and who couldn’t come,” says an ultra-insider. Although the songstress has been busy with her “Born This Way” tour and a new album, “she’s really hard-working and took this upon herself,” says our source. The party “is important to her.”</p><p>The fashion-forward few approved for the soiree, hosted by celebrity photographers Nick Knight and Steven Klein (who directed Gaga’s “Alejandro” music video), included Alexander Wang, Rachel Zoe, Alexandra Richards and Yoko Ono.</p><p></p><p>USA’S BEST, LOCHTE &amp; CULPO, GET CLOSE</p><p>Ryan Lochte was “really affectionate” toward Miss USA Olivia Culpo at Wednesday’s Grey Goose-sponsored EleVen by Venus Williams fashion show, according to a source.</p><p>“They sat next to each other and were really flirty,” observed the insider. “He kept telling her how beautiful she was.”</p><p>We hear Culpo is “playing it safe” with Lochte, but was “thrilled” when the swimmer told E!, “She’s beautiful. I love hanging out with her. She has a great sense of humor.”</p><p>Later that night, Lochte and Culpo attended Us Weekly’s “25 Most Stylish New Yorkers” launch at STK in Midtown, but didn’t spend much time together there.</p><p>“I really want to sit next to him,” Culpo said, as she tried to get through the crowd.</p><p>Alas, Lochte’s stay was brief. He headed to SL sans Culpo and left solo. This wasn’t the first time since they met at a Four Seasons party last Wednesday that the genetically blessed pair have been spotted together. They also hit Sherri Hill’s Friday fashion show and later partied at 1Oak.</p><p>CHUNG’S BRIT BEAT</p><p>Alexa Chung can’t shake British rockers. After belting out “Sympathy for the Devil” at Chez Andre for the Fashion Week elite — including Olivier Theyskens and supermodel Anouck Lepere — Chung split for Cabin Down Below, where Confidenti@l sat with her alongside members of Florence and the Machine and rising rock band Spector, with whom Flo is touring. Chung, who dated Alex Stevens of Arctic Turner until last year, left the subterranean haunt around 3 a.m.</p><p>MILES MAY GO FAR</p><p>Musician Miles Robbins, the 20-year-old son of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, may have found a well-connected manager: his mom. “I’m very hands on,” Sarandon told Confidenti@l at the “Arbitrage” premiere at Walter Reade Theater. “I mean I’m definitely there all the time. Does that make me a stage mom? Maybe.” Miles’ unsigned folk band Pow Pow is in talks with the French Kiss record label.</p><p>STRUTHERS’ DUI BUST</p><p>Sally Struthers appeared to be all in the bottle Wednesday night. The “All in the Family” actress and spokeswoman for Childfund International was arrested for DUI in Maine at 12:30 a.m. Thursday morning, according to local news station WLBZ. She posted $160 bail and was released from jail. A rep for the actress says, “We deny these charges.”</p><p>THE EFRON-TERY!</p><p>You would think Zac Efron could afford his own smokes. On Wednesday, Confidenti@l was standing outside Monkey Bar taking a break from the Piaget-sponsored “Arbitrage” premiere after-party when Zefron asked, “Hey, you mind if I bum a cigarette?” After a few drags, he rejoined stars , Susan Sarandon and Brit Marling inside.</p><p>PINK IS OUT OF FASHION</p><p>Proenza Schouler picked the wrong rocker to play its Irving Plaza after-party Wednesday. Around midnight, a burned-out-looking Ariel Pink took the stage in a glittery dress. The super-arty singer seemed a better fit for a Bushwick loft than big fashion parties. Jessica Alba, Kate Bosworth, Erin Heatherton and other guests at the Belvedere-sponsored bash were not into it. “If you don’t like it you can leave!” Pink snarled at the crowd. “You’re so rude.” Confidenti@l spotted the A-listers filing out before the band finished.</p><p>BABS SINGS AT MEMORIAL</p><p>Barbra Streisand will perform at a memorial service honoring her longtime collaborator, the late Marvin Hamlisch, at the Juilliard School Tuesday night. Among the other greats set to take the stage are Aretha Franklin, Liza Minnelli, Itzhak Perlman, Lang Lang, Michael Feinstein, Chris Botti, Maria Friedman, Brian d’Arcy James, Carter Brey, former cast members of “A Chorus Line” and cast members of “The Nutty Professor.” Scholarships in honor of the composer and conductor, who died last month, also will be announced.</p><p>RASSI DOES THE BUMP</p><p>What sucker punch? Milk Studios founder Mazdack Rassi got a little bruised at the Alexander Wang bash, but it wasn’t because of bad blood, as was widely reported. “Everybody made such a big deal about it,” the black-eyed Rassi told Confidenti@l at Chez Andre. “We were just dancing and an elbow hit me. I’m totally okay.” He went on to mingle with the crowd, which included actor Stephen Dorff.</p><p>BON JOVI ON TOUR</p><p>Rocker Jon Bon Jovi and a few pals grabbed lunch at Lure Seafood Restaurant Thursday, then wandered around SoHo just being regular dudes. “They were goofing around,” said an onlooker. “He was in a great mood, laughing with his friends.”</p><p>MISSING A SISTER ACT</p><p>“Venus and Serena” premiered Wednesday at the Toronto Film Festival — minus Venus and Serena Williams. “I was here working late last night on the show, so unfortunately, there was a schedule conflict — I had to be here,” Venus told Confidenti@l at Thursday’s launch for her EleVen clothing line. She denied a Los Angeles Times report claiming she and her sister boycotted the debut because of how the film portrayed their dad. “I’m in full support of the documentary,” she said.</p><p>AJ CAN GIVE DIRECTIONS</p><p>After hosting Duracell Powermats at Jay-Z’s 40/40 club Wednesday, Backstreet Boy AJ McClean told Confidenti@l he’s met members of One Direction, but wouldn’t tell the boy band du jour which way to go. “We don’t really want to give any kind of advice other than stick to your own path and be true to yourself,” says the 34-year-old song-and-dance man. The Backstreet Boys perform Friday at Old Navy’s 4 p.m. Bryant Park fashion show.</p><p>GERE CHANGES HIS ACT</p><p>Richard Gere’s an American gigolo no more. When Whoopi Goldberg introduced him to real estate guru Barbara Corcoran at ABC’s studios, where he was taping an episode of “Good Morning America” Tuesday, a source says Corcoran unabashedly asked Gere, “Is there any chance you would sleep with me? I’m old, but I’m pretty good in bed.” We hear the actor chuckled and replied, “I don’t think so.” Gere and Corcoran are both 63. Gere’s wife, Carey Lowell, is 51.</p><p>Contact Confidenti@l:</p><p>Carson Griffith: cgriffith@nydailynews.com</p><p>Brian Niemietz: bniemietz@nydailynews.com</p><p>Lisa Lang: llang@nydailynews.com</p><p>Nate Freeman: nfreeman@nydailynews.com</p><p>Follow us on Twitter: @nycConfidential</p><p>Rupert, who?</p><p> was all smiles as she stepped out with a mystery man in London Monday night, the follies of her husband Rupert Sanders' affair clearly in a land far, far away.</p><p>Ross, 33, stunned in a fur coat and leather pants as she and her gentleman companion wandered toward the Groucho Club in London's Soho neighborhood, and the British model could hardly stop grinning as paparazzi snapped her photo.</p><p>Her wedding ring was noticeably absent from her left hand.</p><p>This isn't the first time that Ross has stepped out into the public following her husband's affair with much-younger , however.</p><p>Ross in New York earlier this month, strutting her stuff in a white hooded pullover and pencil skirt that accentuated her long legs and striking bone structure.</p><p>In July, Stewart, 22, and Sanders, 41, both admitted to having an affair, issuing apologies to their respective partners and the public.</p><p>&quot;I am utterly distraught about the pain I have caused my family,&quot; Sanders said in a statement at the time. &quot;My beautiful wife and heavenly children are all I have in this world.</p><p>&quot;I love them with all my heart. I am praying that we can get through this together.&quot;</p><p>It is not clear whether Ross has decided to give their marriage another chance, though Robert Pattinson has reportedly decided to reconcile with Stewart, according to tabloid reports.</p><p>&quot;Rob can see how truly sorry Kristen is and has totally forgiven her,&quot; The Sun reports. &quot;They really do love each other.&quot;</p><p>jchen@nydailynews.com</p><p>LiLo is laying low. Lindsay Lohan wasn't reported in any front rows this past weekend, but she has been making the rounds. On Saturday afternoon, Kim Kardashian tweeted that she spent the day shopping with the jailbird. And later that night, an insider tells us the native dined at The Lion with "four or five friends, upstairs in the private room so no one could see her."</p><p>She capped it off at the Standard's Boom Boom Room, where she held court until after 2 a.m. with a group of gal pals.</p><p> didn't really need his pal M.I.A to perform at his spring collection soiree on Saturday. Privileged party goers were plenty distracted by the carousel, bumper cars and cotton candy at the carnival-themed party, which took up almost an entire Chelsea block at 10 Ave. and 17th St.</p><p>But the singer's presence set off rumors that she would take the mic until she shot them down. "Today's my day off!" she told us, then ran off to congratulate Wang on his show, leaving her future hubby and baby daddy, 's heir , to show off pictures of the couple's 19-month son Ikhyd Edgar Arular Bronfman to a group of fashionistas tottering around on their stilettos. "He's huge! He's pouring drinks now!" Brewer said of his son before leaving a hefty $60 tip at the bar for his two free beverages.</p><p>A little more planning needs to go into the party portion of 's next collection. The designer turned up his nose at the menu for his own Bertolli foods-sponsored fete at the tents on Saturday.</p><p>The shindig featured dishes devised by contest winners using Bertolli's brand of sausage, but Posen, dapper in a hot-pink lace jacket, seemed to think the idea was the wurst. "I need something vegetarian," he said, and left the party too early to get a tiny cone of meat-free gelato.</p><p>It was a veritable beauty pageant at jeweler Gilan's Fifth Ave. store on Fashions Night Out with (2010) , Miss Massachusetts (2009) and modeling and Gilan's gems.</p><p>The Vision Vodka and -sponsored night benefited the of FIT (), which celebrated 's birthday earlier in the day with board members and Jean Shafiroff.</p><p>Reality definitely doesn't bite when you're . Word circulating about the designer's secretive show at his Madison Ave. boutique Sunday night was that Ford was showing his clothes on "real" women. Among the Average Josephines who participated were , , and . Women so stunning, even Ford joked he was "turned straight."</p>Mary-Kate Olsen’s bohemian, bag-lady look may get slammed by fashion police. But it has just been praised by the country’s top designers. <br><br>The 23-year-old mini-mogul, along with twin sister Ashley, joins New York-based designers Alexander Wang and Jason Wu as some of the newest members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. <br><br>The Olsens were among 31 designers inducted into the couture cathedral this year. “We are proud to welcome these 31 new members into the CFDA family and we are excited to add such a variety of creative talent to our ranks,” CFDA executive director Steven Kolb said in the Tuesday announcement. <br><br>The twins are honored for their clothing lines, Elizabeth and James (named for the twins’ sister and brother), and The Row, a high-end fashion line inspired by London's Savile Row. The nod is a sign of respect among the industry, which normally frowns upon celebrities making a second career as designers. <br><br>The ladies may have CFDA president Diane Von Furstenberg to thank directly for the honor.<br><br>Furstenberg dressed the attention-grabbing pair for The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala last year.<p>A who's who of Hollywood and fashion elite hit the red carpet to celebrate the annual Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Gala Benefit.<br><br>The theme for Monday night's event was "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" to coincide with an elaborate new museum exhibition that highlights the work of the late designer, who committed suicide in February 2010 at age 40.<br><br>"I miss him terribly, not only as a person but as a designer," said a visibly emotional Madonna, who was wearing an icy blue gown by Stella McCartney.<br><br>"I think the fashion business is a little bit dull without him and I loved his provocative punk rock attitude. I think his designs were brilliant. I think he was brilliant. And I hope he's having fun wherever he is right now," she said.</p><p></p><p>Designer Rachel Roy chose her own gown for the event with McQueen in mind. She said she picked a more refined design to showcase that part of his personality.<br><br>"I wanted to show his more ethereal side," she said.</p><p>Many celebrities who attend the Met gala are escorted by the designer who dressed them. Blake Lively, in a goddess gown, was on the arm of Karl Lagerfeld, Diana Agron in a flame-red halter was with Michael Kors, and Gilles Mendel arrived with Taylor Swift, wearing a champagne-colored gown with black lace trim.<br><br>Sarah Jessica Parker, who once attended the annual Met event with McQueen as her date, chose a McQueen-label, beaded, high-neck gown in a champagne color.<br><br>Francois-Henri Pinault, chief executive of luxury conglomerate PPR, and his wife, Salma Hayek, served as the event's honorary chairs. McCartney, Colin Firth and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour were vice chairs.</p><p>Diane Kruger (l.) showed a lot of leg in a Jason Wu dress, Madonna (c.) wore a blue Stella McCartney gown, and Jennifer Lopez (r.) opted for a hot pink Gucci concoction. (Peter Kramer/AP; Dimitrios Kambouris/FilmMagic; Kevin Mazur/WireImage)</p><p>Sarah Burton, now the top designer at McQueen (who famously wardrobed Kate Middleton on her wedding day), wore a flowy white gown with a jeweled waist.<br><br>Others who walked the red carpet included Jennifer Lopez and husband Marc Anthony, both in Gucci; Burberry-clad couple Ryan Seacrest and Julianne Hough; Gwyneth Paltrow in a statuesque crystal-covered Stella McCartney gown; Penelope Cruz in a black tiered Oscar de la Renta; Jessica Alba in a shimmery, strapless gold Ralph Lauren; and Fergie in an embroidered platinum number with a flared mermaid hemline by Marchesa.</p><p>Jennifer Hudson's smoke-gray, tissue-weight ballgown was by Vera Wang, and Christina Hendricks' off-the-shoulder, ombre rust gown was by Carolina Herrera.<br><br>Donna Karan made Ashley Greene a one-of-a-kind blush tulle strapless gown with fishbone-pattern beads; and Kristen Stewart wore a crimson-colored column gown by Proenza Schouler with black embroidery.<br><br>Rumer Willis, wearing a black feather-and-bead gown by Badgley Mischka, said she was most looking forward to chatting with her mother, Demi Moore, once they got inside. But they didn't coordinate their outfits.<br><br>A reporter asked who designed Moore's dress: "You know I don't actually know," Willis said with a laugh.<br><br>Turns out, Moore had picked Prabal Gurung's ostrich feather-covered gown. Her McQueen-spirited feather headpiece was by his longtime collaborator Philip Treacy.<br><br>The "Savage Beauty" exhibit will be on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art starting Wednesday through July 31.</p><p>A Brooklyn jury convicted an Egyptian businessman yesterday of trying to hire a hit man to take out his wife and her 93-year-old father. Mohamed Khadry was arrested last June after he was caught on tape making a deal to whack his wife, Marilyn, and her father for nearly $500,000 in inheritance money and assets. The hit man he tried to hire turned out to be an undercover detective. Khadry was convicted on two counts of conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of solicitation to commit murder. Beverley Wang Admit kickbacks Seven school custodians have pleaded guilty to accepting kickbacks and rigging bids, and agreed to pay $50,000 in restitution, the special commissioner of investigation said yesterday. The seven workers got kickbacks - ranging from $1,000 to $4,000 - for contracts to clean school windows across the city from 1996 to 2001, Special Commissioner Richard Condon said. They were nabbed in a joint sting that teamed the special commissioner's office and the state attorney general's office. Each has agreed to pay restitution in exchange for no jail time and is barred from ever working in the city's public schools. The seven custodians are: Ron Alexander of Richmond Hill High School, Kevin Davies of Public School 62 in Brooklyn, Donald Gardner of PS 62 in Queens, Michael Graffeo of PS 314 in Queens, Patrick Graffeo of Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, Kerry Ryan of PS 57 in Staten Island and John Shanley of PS 147 in Brooklyn. Alison Gendar Teen moms rap City schools are vastly underreporting the number of pregnant students, leaving thousands of teen mothers without needed services, the city controller charged yesterday. The Education Department reports about 150 student pregnancies a year, according to Controller William Thompson. But a citywide review by Thompson found 8,000 mothers under age 17, leading him to suspect that the number of pregnant teens still in school is much higher. "If we are going to help these young mothers, we must first know who they are and what they need," he said. "It's a question of focus.</p><p>" Thompson wants to expand the opportunities for pregnant students and teen mothers to get child care, parent-training classes, extra tutoring and social service referrals. He called on Chancellor Joel Klein to revamp the way schools track pregnant students and to expand the services schools provide. Spokesman Kevin Ortiz said the department will work with Thompson's office. Alison Gendar Sweeter sendoff The Brooklyn fifth-graders whose graduation ceremony turned into a melee between parents and security guards may get a kinder, gentler commencement. Schools officials said yesterday they are willing to hold another ceremony for the Public School 92 students at the 750-seat auditorium at Erasmus High School. And a local caterer has even offered to donate food for the occasion. The graduation was abruptly cut short Tuesday after some rowdy parents, trying to enter an overcrowded auditorium at Medgar Evers College, scrapped with security guards - prompting one guard to use pepper spray on the crowd. At least 10 people were sprayed. The attorney for one of the people hospitalized vowed to file a $5 million lawsuit today against the college and the Department of Education. Helen Peterson and Joe Williams Judge warns Five teens accused of attacking a high school baseball team with guns, bats and bottles during a game were warned by an angry judge yesterday not to threaten witnesses in the case. "There will be very serious consequences," Queens Supreme Court Justice William Erlbaum told the defendants. "You leave each other alone.</p><p>" The youths, all 16 or 17, were being arraigned in the May 1 rampage against Grover Cleveland High School ballplayers when a prosecutor told the judge that witnesses were being threatened. Erlbaum issued restraining orders for all witnesses. The attack stemmed from a dispute a star outfielder had with one of the teens, a prosecutor said. Scott Shifrel</p><p>There's a reason she's called the First Lady of Fashion.</p><p> was honored Monday night by the with a for her contributions to the industry. </p><p>"Her meteoric rise in the world of fashion has echoed her husband in the world of politics," said council President . </p><p>"This past year has been an extraordinary time for me," Obama said in a taped message yesterday that was played at the awards gala. "On behalf of women everywhere, I want to thank you for making fashion liberating, inspiring, but most of all, fun." </p><p>Celebs including , , , and filed into 's newly revamped for the Oscars of the fashion world. Established designers and fashion rookies alike were honored for the past year's work. </p><p>Although Obama didn't make the trip to , her influence last night was palpable. </p><p>Two of her favorite designers - , who made her inaugural ball gown, and , whom she has worn several times, were nominated for the coveted Swarovski award for emerging talent (the prize went to risktaker ). </p><p>And , whose creations are in constant rotation in Obama's closet, went up against and the two sisters behind Rodarte for the night's biggest honor - Womenswear Designer of the Year. </p><p>Rodarte took home that one. </p><p>For the first time ever, the public could vote on a designer. They picked -born . </p><p>Host drew a few giggles from the fancy fashion crowd. "I'm not going to stay on too long because I hear is backstage and going to head-butt me," she said, referring to the recent bloody altercation between the actor and , one half of design duo . </p><p>McCullough - along with partner - got the last laugh, though, when he received the award for accessories design. </p><p>ll eyes were on the First Lady Michelle Obama's red Alexander McQueen dress at the White House state dinner, in honor of Chinese President Hu Jintao, on Wednesday night.</p><p>The gown, which featured an asymmetrical neckline in a red petal print, has raised a few eyebrows, both for its bold choice and because she chose a British designer.</p><p>With the party-crashing Michaele Salahi's crimson-colored sari nowhere in sight, the First Lady stole the spotlight.</p><p>Critics wondered whether she ought to have selected Vera Wang, who has Chinese roots and was a guest at the dinner or Jason Wu, the Taiwanese designer who created the First Lady's inaugural dress.</p><p></p><p>Several fashionistas were in attendance at the dinner, including Vogue editor Anna Wintour, left, and designer Vera Wang, right. (Vucci/AP)</p><p>Why Michelle Obama didn't choose an American designer was also a hot topic.</p><p>"Red is an obvious color because in China it means good luck, but you expect and American or an American-based designer for an occasion like this," said Kate Betts, author of "Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style."</p><p>"But she's always surprising, and that's why we're all riveted by her," Betts said.</p><p>McQueen, an adored designer in style circles, committed suicide less than a year ago. Fashion reporters were quick to point the First Lady's choice so close to the one-year anniversary of his death on Feb. 11.</p><p></p><p>President Obama also dressed to the nines in a classic tux. (Loeb/Getty)</p><p>Obama's dress was actually designed by McQueen's successor and former assistant Sarah Burton.</p><p></p><p>And while the blogosphere and Twittersphere were abuzz with both fans and critics of the gown, the reviews were overwhelmingly positive.</p><p>"The dress also served as a razzle-dazzle fashion moment," Robin Givhan, who covers style and culture. "An American First Lady was embracing a brand known for its willingness to push boundaries, to agitate, and even to offend."</p><p> who runs a website devoted to Obama's style, praised the First Lady: "The gown is a daring, high-glamour, yet pitch perfect choice for the occasion."</p><p></p><p>With News Wire Services</p><p>There's trouble in Neverland. Elizabeth Taylor's relationship with Michael Jackson has run its course, according to a new bio about the violet-eyed star. "A Passion for Life," by Marilyn Monroe biographer Donald Spoto, rolls off the presses next week. Spoto told us, "There hasn't been a falling-out with Michael. But he's not as important a presence in her life anymore.</p><p>" Spoto said he will be sending Liz one of the first copies of his HarperCollins book. Among the morsels she can digest are: The day of her wedding to Larry Fortensky, she shouted at hovering press helicopters: "Those sons of bitches! The hell with them! They can't touch us! This is our day!</p><p>" She bickered with Sen. John Warner from the start of their marriage. She told him she would do anything he wanted, except have a baby, because, "I don't have the tubes.</p><p>" To which Warner said: "We're going to find a way around that problem, too.</p><p>" Liz shot back, "You don't own me like your cattle.</p><p>" "Oh, yes I do!," Warner thundered. "I'm a Virginia farmer to the hilt you're my property.</p><p>" When George Cukor asked her what the lovely pendant around her neck was, La Liz replied, "That's the Taj Mahal diamond, you dumb s---!</p><p>" At a London banquet, Princess Margaret remarked that Elizabeth's 69.</p><p>42-carat ring was "large and vulgar.</p><p>" "Yes," said Liz, admiring the rock. "Ain't it great?</p><p>" Husband Nicky Hilton beat her. Novelist John le Carre told Spoto that when he shared a room adjacent to Liz and Dick Burton, he heard "the sound of slapping.</p><p>" Spoto sees Taylor as the most honest of people. But his rival biographer, C. David Heymann, whose own "Liz" is due out the end of April, thinks: "She's deceived herself from childhood. One of her biggest lies is that she only goes to bed with men she loves or marries. The traffic to her bedroom resembles the Lincoln Tunnel.</p><p>" Rumor control For years, we'd heard that Barry Diller and Greg Louganis had once been the best of friends. So Wednesday night at the Guggenheim Museum party for Diller's friend Ross Bleckner, we asked the media mogul what he thought of Louganis' announcement that he had AIDS. Diller stopped in his tracks, locked his eyes on us, and said, "I don't know Greg Louganis. Greg Louganis has never been a friend of mine.</p><p>" Having cleared that up, Diller said he was "saddened" to learn of Louganis' condition. The tycoon, who found time to quietly comfort an AIDS-afflicted friend during his 1993 bid for Paramount, added, "I think Greg Louganis has shown a lot of courage.</p><p>Welcome to the Apollo. Celebrate the legendary with a weekend-long open house, featuring behind-the-scenes tours, performances, dance demonstrations and children’s activities. Noon-5 p.m. Free. Apollo Theater, 253 W. 125th St. (212) 531-5300. <br><br>Shop til you drop. Score a bargain in . A huge sample sale, offering as much as 30% to 90% off labels such as , Acne and , takes place all weekend. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Free admission. Stuart &amp; Wright, 85 Lafayette Ave. (718) 797-0011.<br><br>Lend a helping hand. Support Share Our Strength, a nonprofit group dedicated to alleviating child hunger in . The admission ticket enters you into a raffle and a free food tasting. 11 a.m.- 2:30 p.m. $10. , 40-24 College Point Blvd. (718) 460-2000.<br><br>Autism &amp; art. Attend an art workshop for families affected by autism. 11 a.m. Free with preregistration. , Flushing Meadows-<br>Corona Park. (718) 592-9700, ext. 138.<br><br>Young Broadway. Starting today, kids ages 6 to 18 get free admission to Broadway shows when accompanied by a full-paying adult. The deal ends Thursday. Check out kidsnightonbroadway.com for more information. <br><br>Snow day. Don’t miss Winter Jam, an annual outdoor festival with free snowboarding and skiing lessons. Watch as adventurous riders duke it out in the Red Bull Butter Cup snowboarding event. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. The Nethermead in , Ocean Ave. and Lincoln Road, Brooklyn. (718) 965-8951.<br><br>R&amp;B Songstress. Called the “best-kept Secret in R&amp;B,” sings in the BAM Cafe Live series. 9 p.m. Free. , 30 Lafayette Ave. (718) 636-4100.<br><br>Get wise. Learn fun facts about the owl with experts at the . Kids also <br>can go outside and join in story time, games and crafts. Ages 5 to 7. 11 a.m. Free. , Amboy Road and Barclay Ave., <br>. (917) 751-0071.<br><br>Eat local. Meet local food producers from all over the city at Williams-Sonoma’s monthly Artisan Market. Today features goodies from Baked , Brooklyn Brine, Anarchy in a Jar and more. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Free admission. 10 Columbus Circle, Suite 114. (212) 823-9750.</p><p>Late-night movie. Stay up for a midnight showing of ??s “Rear Window” (1954), the tale of a man who may have learned too much about his neighbors. Midnight. $9-$13. Sunshine Cinema, 143 E. Houston St. (212) 330-8182.</p><p>- Edited by &amp; </p><p>When a voter for the Calder Trophy sits down to select who will be the top NHL rookie this season, the criteria should include excellence. Not, "This guy is really annoying.</p><p>" Yet it looks as if the duel between Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin could come down to the cult of personality. There is a perception that Crosby is less the new Wayne Gretzky and more the old bratty Jan Brady. Perhaps as a backlash against all the hype that painted the 18-year-old Crosby as the league's savior, he has gained a reputation as a whiner. It's hard to pinpoint where this all started - Don Cherry is always a likely culprit, but Crosby isn't European, he's Canadian - but it could end with Crosby getting the short end of the Calder stick. When asked to compare Crosby and Ovechkin last week, Senators winger Daniel Alfredsson told an Ottawa newspaper, "(Ovechkin) doesn't get frustrated if he gets hit . . . He gets up and keeps playing. Not like (Crosby), who starts crying. I think there's a big difference in the attitude.</p><p>" Crosby is definitely a yapper, as anyone who has ever listened to one of the TV broadcasts where the young Penguins star has been miked can attest. His mouth got him into trouble in Thursday's 2-1 loss to the Devils at the Meadowlands, when Crosby complained to the referees about a non-call and served two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct. Opponents have come to realize that Crosby has a short fuse and happily skate around with matchbooks in their pockets, waiting for the next chance to light him up. My vote will probably go to Ovechkin over Crosby and Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist, but not because of the alleged whining. After all, Gretzky complained to the refs a lot, too, and he was a pretty decent player. Crosby arguably had a better supporting cast than Ovechkin, or at least it seemed that way at the start of the season. The way things played out with Mario Lemieux and Mark Recchi, perhaps I should award Crosby bonus points for carrying those guys for the first few months. Ovechkin and Crosby play distinctly different styles, Crosby being subtle and smooth, and Ovechkin high-octane and dynamic. Crosby makes players around him better, while Ovechkin is a virtual do-it-yourselfer. Ovechkin is just shy of two years older than Crosby, and has an edge in maturity that is both physical and mental. Two seasons from now Crosby could be the better player, but he and the Big O have to be judged on this season. And they should be assessed on the way they play, not by what they say. Ruff time The Buffalo Sabres, whom I have officially adopted as my Eastern Conference team ever since I made them my dark-horse pick to make the playoffs back in October, have been one of the feel-good stories of the renewed NHL. A small-market team, the Sabres have thrived under the salary cap and under the continued guidance of GM Darcy Regier and coach Lindy Ruff - both carryovers from before the lockout - to make a lot of noise without a single superstar in the lineup. Real life has intruded on this happy saga, as it so often does. Ruff's 11-year-old daughter, Madeline, has a mass on her brain that was detected last week after she suffered from severe headaches. Ruff has been taking time away from the Sabres, while assistant coaches Scott Arniel and Brian McCutcheon fill in whenever needed. The Sabres, who have more points in the standings than the Rangers, will probably have to do without Ruff more and more down the stretch as the family deals with Madeline's illness. Atlanta burning A few weeks ago in this space, I made a joke that Thrashers GM Don Waddell's playoff guarantee wouldn't go down in history the way Mark Messier's did. Earlier this week, I apologized to Waddell after his team beat the Rangers at the Garden to pull within striking distance of one of the eight playoff spots. While the Thrashers will still have to beat out Montreal - and/or Tampa Bay, and/or the Devils - to secure one of the last playoff berths in the East, the southerners appear headed for the playoffs for the first time in only their sixth NHL season. You have to give the Thrashers credit for a pretty cool charity idea, too. The team wore special shamrock practice jerseys Thursday (the day before St. Patrick's Day). The sweaters were autographed and auctioned off at the arena before Atlanta's 4-2 win over the Islanders. QUICK WHISTLES Islanders owner Charles Wang was the winner of a $200 million development project on Long Island, which should just about help him pay off Alexei Yashin's contract. The Olympic video diary that Rangers defenseman Darius Kasparaitis shot for the MSG Network is the funniest thing I've seen on TV since those Geico commercials with the car-less mom picking up her kid after school. The Florida Panthers are squandering any good will they generated with their free meat promotion by planning to charge fans who park at a nearby shopping mall and walk to the games a $5 fee. Shouldn't the Panthers pay $5 to ANYONE who shows up? One might have expected Jaromir Jagr, Ilya Kovalchuk, and Alexander Ovechkin to be three of the first four players to break the 40-goal barrier this season, but Jonathan Cheechoo being the fourth is like having Millard Fillmore between Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson on Mount Rushmore. FAST ICE Pro soccer's New York Red Bulls may signal a new era in sports and advertising cross-promotion. Although some may argue that the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim crossed that line years ahead of anyone else, here are some potential future NHL/corporate mergers: 1. Dallas Starz Movies on Demand 2. Toronto Log Cabin Maple Syrup Leafs 3. New York Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios 4. Washington Capital One What's In Your Wallet? 5. Florida Pink Panthers</p><p>NYC fashion week wrapup: The shows are over, but the memories of the latest creations remain. Six Daily Newsers dish on what new styles they have designs on and what they'd discard.</p><p>1. What one item do I want to find in my closet? Or what one item would I give to someone I loved?</p><p>2. Which designer can come dress me anytime?</p><p>3. What one item would I return or regift if it showed up in the mail? </p><p>AMANDA P. SIDMAN, Daily News Feature Reporter:</p><p>1.Elie Tahari's gold sequined skirt. Sequins were alive and well in a serious way this Fashion Week, and Tahari's signature skirt would be a statement piece I'd want to own - forever.</p><p>2. Peter Som. I would wear a lot of the pieces he designed this season right off the runway. Well, if they were in my size ...</p><p>3. Probably the high-waisted leopard-print Betsey Johnson pants. Don't get me wrong, I love Betsey's energy and how much fun she has with fashion. I just don't think that I could ever - ever!! - pull them off. </p><p>JOYCE CHEN, Daily News Multimedia Editor:</p><p>1. I would love to have Lela Rose's camel-colored quarter-sleeve trench with the surprise tangerine lining hanging in my closet. So classic and pretty on the outside, but with a fun flair and pop of color on the inside. In terms of one item I would give to someone I loved, I think I would give them a pair of United Bamboo elevated pumps - sturdy, versatile and still so quirky and fun. They're a great pair of shoes for a night out on the town or just for an extra oomph at the office.</p><p>2. Badgley Mischka shoes are to die for, but I think I'd love any of Carolina Herrera's spring frocks - so effortless yet quirky. Lela Rose's spring collection is also so refreshing, with its interesting silhouettes and understated whimsy.</p><p>3. That would have to be Thakoon's bicolor cowboy hats, simply because I think few people can pull off a piece of Western lore that colorful - in a serious way. While I love floppy hats and other head adornments, these would be swiftly put in my return/regift pile!</p><p><br>The spring 2012 collection of designer Jenny Packham (Richard Drew/AP)</p><p>DAVID YI:</p><p>1. This season I need something warm but not too heavy. Something classic but not too safe - a statement piece that isn't trying too hard and that's unaffected. For the perfect piece, I just need to get the Comme des Garcons jacquard varsity jacket. A mix between wool and leather; I'm loving the combination of fabrics and how subtly cool it is. Can be worn and dressed down in classic New York streetwear, or dressed up with a bow tie and a white button-up. I'd love to give my sister or any of my girlfriends a simple white-hot frock from Calvin Klein. It's just so incredibly chic with its clean lines-makes any woman look that much better.</p><p> - scored the full-hoopla treatment at the on Wednesday, a tribute to his country's growing global clout.</p><p> rolled out the literal red carpet for a critical if uncertain strategic partner, not to mention one of 's largest bondholders.</p><p>A full pomp-and-circumstance arrival ceremony on the South Lawn launched a day of talks capped by a rarity in the Obama years - a glittering state dinner Hu didn't rate on his 2006 visit during the Bush administration.</p><p>A tuxedoed Obama and , wearing a stunning red full-length dress with black accents from late British fashion icon , greeted Hu on the steps of the North Portico of the White House before the state dinner.</p><p>The guestlist for the star-studded affair was stocked with A-listers like songstress and celebs with Chinese ties, including fashionista , action actor and figure skater .</p><p>Obama toasted the American and Chinese peoples, referring to a Chinese proverb that guarantees "100 years of prosperity" to nations that focus on people.</p><p>"May they grow together in friendship. May they prosper together in peace," the President said.</p><p>Hu responded by toasting the Obamas' health and "the steady growth of -U.S. relations."</p><p>Earlier in the day, Obama and Hu hashed over ways to expand exports - and create jobs - fortheir respective countries and explored common ground on , and other world hot spots.</p><p>They both resorted to the standard "candid," "pragmatic," "constructive" and "frank" diplospeak to signal that there was plenty of discussion over sore spots in the relationship.</p><p>"We discussed some disagreements in the economic and trade area," Hu said, euphemistically referring to U.S. complaints over China's undervalued currency and restrictive trade policies.</p><p>Obama pressed Hu on China's less-than-stellar human rights record.</p><p>"There has been movement, but it's not as fast as we want," he noted at an East Room news conference that dragged because of translation glitches.</p><p>Hu was defensive, maintaining China has made "enormous progress" on human rights but pleading "different national circumstances" to justify China's Internet censorship and other measures stifling what Obama called "core values" of all citizens.</p><p>Still, Hu came armed with a huge diplomatic gift - China agreed to let and Tian Tian, the National Zoo's rock-star pandas, stay in Washington another five years.</p><p></p><p>Olivia Wilde, Zoe Kravitz and rapper Theophilus London turned a party for Ellen Barkin’s “Another Happy Day” into another wild night.</p><p>The actresses and others came to the Top of the Standard ready to dance on Monday, and they got what they wanted.</p><p>Wilde, Kravitz, London and his longtime friend Jordan Watson were among a fashionable crew that headed to the Meatpacking District hotspot after the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards at Skylight Studios in Soho. Prabal Gurung, Alexander Wang and a beer-swigging Amanda Seyfried also ventured up to the rooftop nightclub, where the Peggy Siegal Co.’s after-party for its screening of “Another Happy Day” was already in progress.</p><p>Barkin and her 26-year-old boyfriend, Sam Levinson, who directed the film; actress Julianne Moore, who hosted the party; and Kravitz’s ex-boyfriend Ezra Miller were among those celebrating the independent film when London, 24, and Watson jumped into the club’s deejay booth and changed the mood of the party.</p><p>The duo disconnected the iPod that had been providing the low-key conversation-friendly soundtrack for the party. Instead, they started blasting the high-energy “Dance (Ass)” by Big Sean — also featuring Nicki Minaj — at foundation-shaking levels.</p><p>A pack of partygoers responded to the soundtrack adjustment by racing to the dance floor to let their freak flags fly. But one person who seemed taken aback by the party’s sudden mood swing was Standard owner Andre Balazs, who was on the scene.</p><p>A source at the party says that when Balazs gauged that Siegal’s party was not happy with the “dramatic” change in the music, he approached the booth.</p><p>We heard Balazs asking London and his pal, “Where did you come from?” before coaxing out of the deejay’s booth.</p><p>“You don’t gotta f—ng flip. Relax!” London told Balazs at one point, though he later admitted he didn’t know who Balazs was.</p><p>London and Watson’s departure prompted groans from the dance floor, which included Wilde and Kravitz.</p><p>Fortunately, the party restarted when, the source says, one of Siegal’s staffers okayed the change in musical direction. We also watched Wilde and Kravitz seek out Balazs to engage in what looked like a little lobbying.</p><p>After the actresses and the handsome hotelier engaged in a roundof air kisses, Theophilus and Watson returned to the deejay booth.</p><p>There they ran into one last glitch: The team appeared to selecting songs from a Spotify-equipped computer, which resulted in a buzz-killing pause between each song.</p><p>“F—ing Spotify!” Wilde yelled, hands in the air, as she and Kravitz boogied near the deejay booth.</p><p>An unexpected stretch of high temperatures had New Yorkers getting creative with their summer-to-fall looks.</p><p>Some kept their warm-weather staples - open-toed shoes and floral dresses - but also threw on autumn accents.</p><p>These four women are especially excited to break out their new fall finds.</p><p> </p><p><br></p><p>Wilde, 26, calls her style eclectic.</p><p>She looks all over the place - from the streets of to her mother's closet - for ideas.</p><p>"I'm lucky my mom is a designer, so I've inherited some of her things, like this bag. It's probably older than me."</p><p>For autumn, the songwriter and session singer is trading summer brights for subdued hues.</p><p>"I'm really into neutrals this fall in a way I never have been. I'm buying massive sweaters that are cream-<br>colored. I'm liking orange, too."</p><p>To make sure her outfits still pop, Wilde plans to accessorize with colorful scarves and her favorite jacket.</p><p>"I've got a great seafoam-green coat that looks amazing with some of the neutrals," she says. "You don't want to go totally overboard."</p><p><br><br>COBBLE HILL</p><p>For Sciarrillo, 37, fashion is all about balance.</p><p>"I love both vintage and modern, so I combine them. I also appreciate style from around the world."</p><p>Recently, Sciarrillo, a master's student at of Social Work, has found herself trying to look professional, yet with a stylish edge - all without overspending.</p><p>"I like to think that it doesn't take money to be creative or have fun with how you express your style," she says.</p><p>She searches consignment stores for deals and creates new combos using what she already owns.</p><p>"I have to be very creative," Sciarrillo says. "I'm trying to look at my closet with fresh eyes. You dig deep enough, you might surprise yourself."</p><p><br> and prefer more muted neutrals for the season. (Patty Lee for News)</p><p>Kayla Reece<br></p><p>Reece, 21, believes there's always a reason to dress up.</p><p>"I'm so fed up with jeans and T-shirts," she says. "Every day is an opportunity to put something on that makes you feel confident and makes you feel happy."</p><p>For her, that means a pair of high heels and unique accessories, which she usually picks up at Zara, and DSW.</p><p>"I like funky hairstyles and lots of jewelry," says Reece, a senior at .</p><p>Although she can't always afford designer pieces, Reece still finds inspiration from high-end fashion. Her favorites include , and .</p><p>"You pick up an Elle or and you run through them and see what you like."</p><p><br><br>Rita Nakouzi<br></p><p>Despite her job as a trend forecaster, Nakouzi, 36, doesn't follow what's in.</p><p>"I have a sense of style, but I'm not trendy. I like to mix classics with a bit of humor. If I'm going to wear a button-down, it's going to have some interesting detail."</p><p>Her outfits change drastically, depending on her mood.</p><p>"My taste is very eclectic," she says. "I have some people see me and say, 'Oh, I didn't recognize you,' because I look so different from day to day."</p><p>Because of her profession, Nakouzi wears plenty of high-end designs, but she doesn't limit herself to big brands.</p><p>"I tell you all these labels, but I also love to shop vintage," she says. "To have style is to be democratic in your shopping choices. I don't discriminate. It's about finding these treasures."</p><p></p><p>Who says you have to sacrifice style to keep warm?</p><p>Not these fashionable New Yorkers.</p><p>Just follow in their footsteps and throw on a cape, poncho or printed coat.</p><p>In between running to meetings and college classes, these four women stop to show us how chic jackets can elevate a fall look.</p><p>, , </p><p>Bryant, 25, loves vintage fashion.</p><p>"I'm very inspired by the '30s and '40s and the way women wore coats that really catered to their bodies."</p><p>It's one of the reasons her poncho, a purchase from , is a fall staple.</p><p>"I do travel overseas quite a bit and I'm really inspired by their sense of fashion," says the FIT grad. "This poncho is eight years old. It's easy to throw on and it's wool, so it's warm."</p><p>Bryant, who owns Leidy Elle, a boutique public-relations firm specializing in entertainment and media, is always looking for great outfits on the street.</p><p>"I just love to see women in a head-to-toe outfitted piece with hat, gloves and big shoes. It looks effortless."</p><p>Kiki He, , </p><p>He, 21, does most her shopping in .</p><p>A native, He, who moved to for school, thinks fashion gets updated more quickly abroad.</p><p>"That's why I read and follow Asian fashion magazines more," she explains.</p><p>Most importantly, the clothes she finds in Asia, like her cobalt blue cape, are usually a better fit. Instead of chasing trends and buying new items all the time, she works with what she already owns.</p><p>"I do whatever looks good on me. I will look at the bigger picture, instead of just this season."</p><p>Her other piece of money-saving advice?</p><p>"Get one shirt in different colors because you can match up with different things and it still looks new and fresh."</p><p>, upper East Side</p><p>Malangone, 25, mixes classic styles with new ones.</p><p>"I try and stay a little bit cautious because I don't like things I'm only going to wear once. I like pieces that are versatile, that are going to stand the test of time. I don't want to look back at myself 20 years from now and go 'Oh my god, that was crazy.'"</p><p>She'll balance trendy items, such as her chambray shirt and poncho, with a timeless accessory, like her grandmother's handbag.</p><p>"It's an actual vintage bag," she laughs.</p><p>Malangone, who works in fashion, is a big supporter of brands and follows her favorite ones, which include Zara and , closely.</p><p>"They seem to be up with the times," she says of J. Crew. "I'm always excited to see their catalog."</p><p>Tiara Hargrave, , Brooklyn</p><p>Hargrave, 26, often builds her outfits from the bottom up.</p><p>"I feel like if you have a good shoe, it doesn't even matter what you have on."</p><p>She then works in other accessories to make the look really pop.</p><p>Hargrave, the publicity manager at , is especially fond of bright hues and interesting designs.</p><p>"Because I have a really plain dress on today, I put the printed jacket on it to balance out the monotone colors. Then, I threw in a scarf."</p><p>She admires designers , and , but usually shops at , and H&amp;M.</p><p>"It's a mix of comfy and casual, a mix of high and low," she sums up. "I feel like clothes are a way to express yourself so wear what fits you."</p><p></p><br><p>Here are the ladies who will set the tone for small-screen style this season, from the sexy working girls of "Cashmere Mafia" to "Gossip Girl"'s plaid-clad uptown prepster.</p><p>GOSSIP GIRL</p><p>Wed., 9 p.m., CW</p><p>Synopsis: Prime-time soap about the hook-ups and heartache of the upper East Side prep-school elite.</p><p>The Look: Uptown with an edge.</p><p>"Before we started filming, I staked out Catholic schools up there and the girls, they all had the Tory Burch flats and the newest Balenciaga bags," says "Gossip Girl" costume designer Eric Daman. "For Serena [van der Woodsen, played by Blake Lively] we were really inspired by Kate Moss," says Daman. "Really European, thrown together but not sloppy ... and not just Chanel and Ferragamo, but Alexander Wang, Chris Benz and Phillip Lim."</p><p>"Blair [Waldorf, played by Leighton Meester], on the other hand, is more upper crust, and meticulous. The Ralph Lauren collection really sums up who Blair is."</p><p>SAMANTHA WHO?</p><p>Mon., 9:30 p.m., ABC</p><p>Synopsis: A woman suffering from amnesia gets a chance to start over when she discovers her unsavory former personality.</p><p>The Look: Midwest Carrie Bradshaw.</p><p>"Samantha Who?" takes place in the chilly metropolis of Chicago, which meant costume designer Lori Eskowitz-Carter "spent a lot of the wardrobe money on great coats."</p><p>In addition to keeping her actors stylishly bundled up, Carter had fun playing off the fact that Christina Applegate's character, Samantha Newly, basically has two personalities. A mean one, who dresses more "slick," represents Samantha before she came down with retrograde amnesia, and a nice one, who sports "softer silhouettes," represents Samantha's present-day forgetful self.</p><p>Carter estimates that Applegate wears about nine outfits per show full of Fendi, Paige jeans, Lambertson Truex purses, and Brian Atwood heels.</p><p>WOMEN'S MURDER CLUB</p><p>Fri., 9 p.m., ABC</p><p>Synopsis: One-hour crime show about four friends who investigate murders in San Francisco.</p><p>The Look: Cop couture.</p><p>Inspired by City by the Bay locals, costume designer Kelli Jones says, "They're not afraid of color. I do a lot of opposing patterns of opposite colors and put those together. And I'm just trying to make all four of the characters have their own individual style."</p><p>The most fashion-savvy lady is District Attorney Jill Barnhart, played by Laura Harris. "We've decided the Annie Hall look is really nice. We'll go to J.Crew and get some great men's shirts - those crinkled ones - in a small. And she tucks them into low trousers that tie at the waist or hip in a really wide leg."</p><p>There's something familiar about - and it's not just because she's been on the arm of for eight years.</p><p>It's because the beautiful brunette, who announced her engagement to William Tuesday, is strikingly similar to his late mother, .</p><p>"I see a regal resemblance between what Kate wears and what Princess Diana wore," says stylist . "She always looks put- together in an effortless way, much how Princess Di appeared."</p><p>Middleton, who now sports Diana's 18-carat oval sapphire engagement ring (which, at the time, was priced at nearly $45K), has taken notable fashion cues from Shy Di, including her affinity for clean-cut lines, big hats and bold color choices.</p><p>During the 2006 Sovereign's Parade in , , Kate sported a bright red coat and large black hat shockingly similar to an ensemble Diana wore on Christmas Day at Sandringham 13 years earlier.</p><p>On another occasion, Kate wore a below-the-knee beige jacket that mirrored an outfit Di wore during her first official visit to in 1981.</p><p>"Kate's demure and ladylike style would most definitely make Princess Di proud," says Cohen.</p><p>Perhaps Kate is similar to Di in more ways than just her wardrobe. The 28-year-old, although nine years older than the late princess was when she joined the royal family, was also publicly educated in England, and seems to have quickly mastered the art of controlling the press.</p><p>"As Kate prepares to enter the royal family, the public will be asking whether she is able to take up Diana's mantle as their favorite princess," reported the U.K.'s Daily Mail. "Keeping her mouth shut and with a lawyer in tow, Kate is already acting on the hindsight that Diana's legacy left behind."</p><p> <br>Though their trips were 19 years apart, Diana and Kate wore similar ski outfits on the slopes in Klosters, (Graham/Getty).</p><p>FIRST GOWN, THEN CROWN </p><p>For the designer tapped to create Kate Middleton's dress, it's the opportunity of a lifetime.</p><p>Like 's inaugural gown or 's wedding confection, it'll be the dress seen 'round the world.</p><p>At this point, the style is the stuff of pure speculation, but one thing's for sure: Diana's fashion Doppelganger will forgo the puffy sleeves. And the designer she picks, most likely, will be British (which knocks out local contenders from to ).</p><p>Across the pond, buzz started as soon as the announcement was made: Which lucky needle-wielder is about to start sketching the most important dress he or she will ever make? Here are the front-runners:</p><p></p><p>Need we say more? Stella is just the coolest - and knows a thing or two about living in the spotlight. After all, she's the princess of England's greatest rock dynasty.</p><p></p><p>The grand dame of bad-girl fashion (whose elaborate wedding dress was a highlight of the first "" movie) could give Kate the modern edge she'll need to differentiate herself from the royal family's stodgy rep.</p><p> FOR </p><p>One of the "most high-profile British names," as Tatler editor told the UK's Guardian, Bailey has the street cred, the celeb following ("'s" is the face of the brand) and the know-how to create a gown worthy of a princess-to-be.</p><p></p><p>New creative director could craft something extraordinary in a touching homage to the late McQueen, who tragically took his own life.</p><p></p><p>Sure, it's a long shot that Kate would choose 's poutiest export (and a former , no less). But Posh's dresses are quite flattering and beautiful (as seen on her runway in September). And as the 's fashion queen pointed out, "Stranger things have happened."</p><p>With </p><p>SEE MORE PHOTOS OF </p><p>AND CHECK OUT OUR GALLERY OF </p><p> is still trying to shock us. Every network rejected the commercial for his new , which showed nipple-baring writhing in a bedsheet. But a tamer version featuring the actress is due to grace a billboard on Thursday. </p><p> wit thinks five-months' pregnant hit on a "genius accessory" when she covered the baby she's carrying with her infant brother as her mother, , was declared 's choice for veep. Doonan, who emceed a Rainbow Room lunch benefit Wednesday for the Museum at FIT, wasn't as wild about the style of the beauty-queen-turned-governor, comparing her with "a spokesmodel." Guest of honor was designer , a fave of , whose husband is a fave of . Asked how Americans can still look fabulous despite the recession, Talley said, "Wear something old that you love" until Election Day. "Then, vote for , who'll fix the economy."</p><p>Female fans of have reason for hope. The crooner came back on the market in July when he split with , but then he was snapped kissing singer . "I went on one date with her," Buble told us. "It was nice, but I haven't seen her again. I'm single - and ready to mingle." He'll be blowing some kisses tomorrow morning when he performs on "Today."</p><p>Eco beauty brand Aveda will fete  design houses Rodarte, , and Preen tonight at The .</p><p></p><p>The cruel joke going around the courtroom in the case is that if her son is convicted of altering her will so he could inherit millions, his sentence will be “life — with Charlene,” his unpopular wife. But few believe that at 85 and the oldest defendant in memory, Marshall would be sent to jail by if convicted. House arrest is more likely, which would make Marshall’s UES building quite notorious. That’s where Diana (Dede) Brooks did house time for her role in the price-fixing scandal.</p><p>How mad was when rapper muscled into his duet with at the ? Though he tried to stay cool onstage, a backstage source tells us, “He went ballistic. He was screaming at the producers about the lack of security. He apparently thought at first she was just a fan. finally calmed him down.” </p><p> is said to drink five cans of a day, so things got dire when he ran out while on a river cruise in with . Buffett reached out to concierge of the Guilin Sheraton, where they’d stayed, asking him to deliver another case, according to globe-hopping journalist . “Lloyd told me that he hopped in the hotel’s Mercedes with the case and drove for two hours toward where the yacht was anchored in the , but the road ended,” says Nash.</p><p>“He paid a guy to let him borrow his bike, which he rode down to the dock, balancing the case. But the boat was too big to dock, so he paid a cormorant fisherman to borrow what was basically a raft, and rowed out to Buffett’s boat and delivered the case, to great applause. He was wearing a three-piece Armani suit, by the way.” Hear more of Nash’s stories Tuesday night at the National Arts Club at the opening of his photo exhibit, “The China That’s Passed Us By.”</p><p>After 25 years of reporting from some of the world’s most dangerous places, will be hanging around more. </p><p>One big reason for taking ’s offer to host her own talk show: her 9-year-old son, Darius. “I owe my child,” she told us at Michael’s last week. In the past, she says, she often didn’t let him watch the news. </p><p>“I didn’t tell him where I was going,” Amanpour said. </p><p>But now he’s one of her legion of viewers: “He’s become interested in guns and soldiers and wars. </p><p>So now I’m cool: ‘Look, Mommy’s on a tank!’?” </p><p>Single , at Bungalow 8 with the guys last Sunday, shouting out to actor , “I admire your taste in women!” after eyeballing Castelluccio’s girlfriend, , the German actress. ... washing down two pills backstage at ’s runway show at . They could have been aspirin, but our source then saw her walk into a parked car... nuzzled with in a back booth at DC's , where they celebrated his 41st birthday. The couple, in town for the Awards, also got some face-time earlier in the day with the President.</p><p>The future's so bright for Spring 2010 fashion you gotta wear shades.</p><p>Like the runway girls at did Saturday morning: Big, bold, canary yellow frames for a sporty stroll down the boardwalk, where creative director set his show. </p><p>It wasn't too long ago we got a short shot at basking in the sun this past summer, but Lacoste brought us back to the sand and surf with cerulean blue skinny pants and polo shirts, plus tennis-ready white minis topped with floppy hats and kicky scarves.  </p><p>The optimism in the air was so invigorating it was a shame that troubled starlet , who nabbed a front-row seat next to "High School Musical" crooner , put on a funereal black frock and a frown. </p><p>Maybe she thought she was going to ' birthday party. Or else she just didn't get the memo that crisp, clean colors were the order of the day.</p><p> did. Mischa could use a break at the designer's seaside holiday resort, where girls wear flippy dresses in trippy prints, navy striped sailor tees with either killer heels or suede boat shoes for a day on the waves.</p><p>Model favorite and fashion darling  clearly wants to join the varsity football squad this season (or at least meet ) with pigskin-inspired laced tops, striped knit jerseys and knee socks.</p><p>At VPL, attached what look like knitted straps of ammo to girls in high-waisted taupe bikinis; the bullets were slung over their shoulders and around their hips. </p><p>Pieces in slate gray and orange were languidly draped over skinny shorts and pants, for a clean, sporty effect. Sparkling pailettes covered maillots and bikinis like fashion armor.</p><p>No worries, though. The only thing you'll need to protect yourself next spring is sunscreen.</p><p>And a pair of killer shades.</p><p>Talk about haute coffee.<br><br> has teamed up with hot clothing designer that looks as though you've been splashed with hot java.<br><br>Along with the spilled design, the brand's logo appears in the tossed latte design. <br><br>Wang, the 27-year-old -based designer created the unisex cotton knit T-shirt and logo for the -based coffee company's 40th anniversary. <br><br>"When and the CFDA approached us with this project, the first thing we thought of is what everyone tries to avoid — spilled coffee on a T-shirt,” he said. "This turned into the design, hoping people would have fun with it."<br><br>The coffee chain is also selling other high-priced T-shirts to celebrate its anniversary: A coffee bean-colored shirt with a mocha splash design by designer as well as a faux bleach-splashed design by .<br><br>The T-shirts, as well as a significantly cheaper $25 version that also features the brand's sea siren icon, is available at , Starbucks locations and online.</p><p>’S friends shouldn’t get too worried about Hollywood hounddog , who had his eyes on another blond hottie on Monday morning. Although we reported he and Conrad were looking cozy at her 26th birthday party at the Redbury Hotel in Los Angeles last month, we saw Dorff looking deeply into the eyes of the new young beauty at a late-night Oscars after-party that Relativity Media execs and Tucker Tooley threw at a private home in the Hollywood Hills. Miami Dolphin and former flame and , who had just returned to the social scene after a stint in rehab, were also seen hanging out. A source close to Conrad tells us Dorff was chatty “because Lauren wasn’t there,” adding that the two are “just hooking up for now.” We’ll make sure to keep an eye on things.</p><p>THE CRADLE will definitely rock at the home. Q104.3 deejay Ian O'Malley and his wife Debbie are elated that their newborn son has finally come home. Beck was born Feb. 2 at Yale New Haven Hospital but spent three weeks in the ICU unit there because of a respiratory issue. Dad reports that his boy “is doing great now,” thanks to the expert care of and his team. “The guy is a genius. We can’t thank him enough,” says O’Malley, who adds that he also can’t thank “ enough for writing ‘Dance the Night Away.’” O’Malley met Debbie when she requested a Van Halen song on his show, and he played that tune. The Edward in Beck’s name is a nod to the guitar genius, and O’Malley says that Beck’s grandparents watched him Saturday night so Mom and Dad could catch Van Halen at Mohegan Sun. Get this kid a Frankenstrat guitar and a “Diver Down” onesie!</p><p> was talking to himself Monday. The NBA Hall of Famer surprised the cast of Broadway’s upcoming “Magic/Bird” with a visit to the Longacre Theater. There, he dished out advice to actor , who will portray him in the drama, which traces his storied rivalry and friendship with fellow . A source at the theater says Johnson instructed Daniels to “keep pushing that smile,” adding: “the positive personality has to shine through for you to be Magic.”</p><p> wasn’t a witness to the melee involving and last month because she wasn’t even in the country, say sources. Despite reports that the Polish supermodel was sitting at Hock’s table at Double Seven with runway regulars and , an eyewitness tells us she wasn’t present, and Rubik’s spokeswoman at Next Models concurs. “Anja was not in New York” that evening, the rep says, adding: “Rest assured she was not even in the country when this happened.”</p><p>Rubik walked in the show during New York Fashion Week in the middle of February, then left the city soon after for a series of modeling gigs abroad. Manhattan prosecutors continue to probe the nightclub fracas, in which Hock was charged with four counts of third-degree assault for punching Casiraghi, , and at the Meatpacking District hot spot.</p><p>SCENE STEALERS:</p><p>Diddyand provided the entertainment at the Total Rewards concert at Gotham Hall on Thursday, but “Mob Wives” stole the show. Fans of the VH1 series swarmed the VIP area where Angela (Big Ang) Raiola and sat to beg for pictures with the ladies. Even paid homage. &quot;I want to give a shout-out to the Mob Wives,&quot; he said at the end of his show. &quot;I'm busy, but I watch TV and all that s***!&quot;….Bail bondsman to the stars Ira Judelson joined his Mamaroneck High-School pals Kevin and at the Links Club on East 62nd Street to cheer on the actors’ dad , who was honored for his work as Fordham University’s head golf coach.</p><p>Contact Gatecrasher:</p><p>Frank DiGiacomo: </p><p>Carson Griffith: </p><p>Adam Caparell: ac</p><p>Follow us on Twitter:</p><p>@NYDNGatecrasher</p><p>Alexander Villafane and Michael Munoz, students at Townsend Harris High School, were the top two finalists in the "I Am New York" essay contest sponsored last spring by the Gateway America Committee. They and their families were treated to all-expenses-paid weekends in Manhattan. Their essay described how New Yorkers can make the city a friendlier place and were the best of more than 500 entries from 53 city public high schools. Villafane, the first place winner and resident of the Bronx, wrote about educating the public about the importance of tourism. Rego Park resident Munoz' second-place essay dealt with residents taking pride in the city and going the extra mile to show others just how great the city really is. Prof's On Board Susan Stabile, an assistant professor of law at St. John's University, has been appointed to the board of directors of Albank, FSB. Founded in 1820 as Albany Savings Bank, Albank, FSB is the oldest operating savings bank in the state and the second oldest in the United States. Stabile currently teaches courses in pension and employe benefits, employment law and business organization. Water Winners Queens Library's dragon boat team took part in the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival held at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park last month just for the fun of it, but they came away winners. The team tied for first place in the Class 2 division, breaking the finish line in a dead heat with the race favorite, the Big Apple team. "I was speechless. I couldn't believe it," said organizer Stanley Gornish. The team, he said, had only been formed a month earlier and had only four practice sessions. Other teams had been practicing for months. "We went in just for the fun of it. We would have been happy simply not to finish last," he said. Other members of the library team included: Anne Volk, Yasha Hu, Bruce Whitham, Albert Chan, Xuemau Wang, Victor Cintron, Vinny Sgaglion, Takashi Curd, Louis Riveros, Derek Leif, Mario Almonte, Al Acampora, Frank McKenna and Sal Angioletti. The dragon boat is a slim, 39-foot teakwood racer with crews of up to 20 members.</p><p>Young science scholars at Stuyvesant High School took home more semifinalist awards from the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search than any other school in the country, officials said yesterday. Of the 300 top high school science researchers in the country this year, 19 came from Stuyvesant. Overall, 56 New York City students were named semifinalists. "I didn't think I would win, but it feels great," said Jonathan Schwartz, 17, of Manhattan, after a reception at Stuyvesant honoring the school's winners. Schwartz won for his project, "Design and Construction of an Infrared Radiator, Which Couples Heat to Outer Space," which he completed with the help of Prof. Klaus Lackner of Columbia University. The semifinalists were selected from 1,581 applicants nationwide. Students were judged on their individual research ability, scientific originality and creative thinking. Projects covered chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, social science and biology. Later this month, the field of 300 semifinalists will be trimmed to 40, and that group will compete in Washington for the contest's top prizes. "I certainly understand the work that goes into this," Stuyvesant Principal Stanley Teitel told the winners. "You deserve this.</p><p>" For years, Stuyvesant has been a top contender in the highly publicized awards, wrestling with such other strong programs as those at Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and Midwood High School at Brooklyn College. The top prizes, often considered the "junior Nobel Prizes," have gone to young researchers who have subsequently won many of the world's top prizes for scientists. As the semifinalists were announced inside the Stuyvesant auditorium, many students asked an Intel spokesman how many awards rival Bronx Science High School got this year. The answer was 10. The closest any school in America came to matching Stuyvesant was Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Md., which claimed a dozen semifinalists. Each of the students named yesterday will receive $1,000 in recognition for his or her scientific achievements. Their schools will receive an additional $1,000 for each semifinalist. CITY BOASTS DOZENS IN SEMIFINALS. Stuyvesant High School: Varun Narendra, Jacob Till, Aleksander Chechkin, Andrew Laitman, John Lee, Joel Lewis, Alexander Ellis, Kevin Lai, Michael Shaw, John Hui, Alice Chen, Samuel Cross, Arcady Goldmints-Orlov, Jonathan Schwartz, Pei Wang, Samba Silla, Kevin Kuo, Alex Levin, Betty Luan. . Bronx High School of Science: Debra Liu, Dmitry Kashlev, Omar Montan, Emmanuel Sin, Yi-Chen Zhang, Leon Abbo, Ying Yi Dang, Min Wah Leung, Mita Singh, Jay Ramesh. . Edward R. Murrow HS: Svetlana Alkayeva, Kevin Shenderov. . Midwood HS: Rachel Fischer, Joshua Marshack, Sacha Rood, Leigh Stuckhardt. . Brooklyn Tech: Anna Gecker, Amiya Vaz, Ilya Vinogradov, Jessie Pinchoff, Linda Santoro. . St. Francis Prep: Erwin Wang, Monika Laszkowska, Christina Morgan. . Francis Lewis HS: Alice Shen, Sun Ling Yang. . Townsend Harris HS: Jonathan Kamler, Jessica Hetherington, Bharati Kalasapudi. . Hunter College HS: Emily Yau, Jason Chen. . Other area semifinalists: David Hersh, Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman HS; Damien Soghoian, Columbia Grammar and Prep School; Jared Friedman, Horace Mann; Jennifer Choy, Benjamin N. Cardozo HS; Qichao Hu, Newtown HS; Hialy Gutierrez, Staten Island Tech.</p><p> Use of this website signifies your agreement to the and . </p> <p>&#169; Copyright 2012 NYDailyNews.com. All rights reserved.</p><p> is the fast-talking, -happy creative director at . As the fashion industry gears up for the CFDA Awards (think fashion ) Monday night, Zee takes a breather to share the secrets of his life in the fashion world.<br> <br>Who is your favorite designer right now?</p><p>Oh my gosh, there are so many. I love the crop of new-generation designers like and Rodarte. And Prabal Gurung, of course, who is a friend of mine. I remember when he was just starting out, and now is wearing his stuff. Amazing.</p><p>Is watching new talent a fun part of your job?</p><p>Of course. But I really love my job because literally no day is like the one before. I run to meetings, cover photo shoots, film the show [," in which Zee is a main character]. I also go to see designers and talk about their collections. It really runs the gamut.</p><p>Isn't that overwhelming?</p><p>My brain thinks 125 miles per hour, so any job that was always the same would be boring to me.</p><p>So, for example, at a cover photo shoot, what would you be doing?</p><p>I have a vision of what I want to see as the final product. So I direct people, whether it's the photographer, the makeup artist, whoever. My job is very collaborative. There's no way to do something creative - in any field - if you can't work with other people.</p><p>Wow. It sounds like you are really calling the shots.</p><p>I'm not a control freak, though. I like the control part. Not the freak.</p><p>Do you ever sleep?</p><p>Not a lot.</p><p>Is there any part of your life that is routine?</p><p>Yes. Every morning, I wake up at like 6 a.m. and get on my laptop and read everything: blogs, newspapers, magazines. I read until my computer dies. Then I go to work. I just really like knowing everything. And at night, I watch all the TV shows that people are talking about. I've always had a huge appetite for culture.</p><p>Beyond fashion?</p><p>Yes. I love music, art, celebrity, TV - everything. And that's why my job is amazing, because I can express this love in the magazine. Like, for example, for one season of "," I was watching it thinking, "Wow. I would love to see her in this dress or him look like this." So I did a big shoot for Elle where I did just that. I made over the top 10 from the show. It was so fun.</p><p>The Futures Game is baseball's showcase for minor-league talent, and Yankees such as Alfonso Soriano (two homers, five RBI and an MVP award in the 1999 game) have used it to polish their reputations. Now, two more Yankee prospects have a chance to turn the game into their platform - Double-A righthander Chien-Ming Wang and Class-A second baseman Robinson Cano. Wang, 23, who recently came off the disabled list after a blister on his pitching hand healed, is 4-3 with a 4.</p><p>33 ERA and leads Trenton with 45 strikeouts. Cano, 20, is batting .</p><p>290 with five homers and 45 RBI in 70 games and leads Tampa in hits (83) and RBI. Both players will play for the World Team, which will be played July 13 in Chicago. "We're really pleased with their progress," said Gordon Blakeley, the Yanks VP of baseball operations. Using his mid-90s fastball, Wang has gone up two levels since the end of last year. "Cano is hitting better in the Florida State League than he did at lower levels," Blakeley said. "He'll probably go up to Double-A after playing in the Futures Game. ON THE MARK: Lefty Mark Phillips, the former No. 1 pick the Yankees got along with Bubba Trammell in a spring training trade for Rondell White, won three consecutive starts from June 7-24 for Single-A Tampa, allowing eight hits and three runs in 16 innings. The strong stretch lowered his ERA to 5.</p><p>50, which had ballooned because he was clobbered in his last five starts, going 0-3 with a 9.</p><p>69 ERA. Overall, Phillips is 6-4 in 13 games (11 starts). He has walked 37 and struck out 37 in 55.</p><p>2 innings. ... The Mets Class-A team in the FSL, St. Lucie, has thrown three no-hitters this season and nearly had a fourth Thursday until Tampa shortstop Jared Koutnik spoiled it with a two-out single off Orlando Roman in the eighth inning. Anthony McCarron Dan Garcia's momentum once carried him into a pole at the left- center field wall after he dived to snare a line drive, opening a gash on his head. But the sparkplug wouldn't leave the game, though he later needed four stitches. Instead, in Garcia's next at-bat, he homered over 40-foot-high netting - "one of the farthest homers I hit in all of college," Garcia said. Said Pepperdine coach Steve Rodriguez: "If you want a gamer, that's the kid.</p><p>" The Mets picked Garcia in the fifth round in 2001. And after a rapid ascension to Triple-A, Garcia could soon get a look at second base at Shea, especially if Roberto Alomar and Rey Sanchez exit. Garcia - a prep shortstop in Riverside, Calif. - shifted to center in college after getting beat out in the middle infield. Still, Garcia came to practice an hour early every day as a sophomore and worked with Rodriguez at second. Garcia then passed on a Team USA invite as a reserve outfielder to return to the low-glamour Alaskan summer league, enduring five-hour bus rides to hone his skills at second and get at-bats. "I needed to get drafted," said Garcia, who moved to second as a junior. "My bat is much more eye-opening as an infielder.</p><p>LONDON The sleekest Spice Girl on the rack has chosen Manhattan bridal baroness Vera Wang to make her wedding dress and soften her image. "I don't want to be out-and-out sexy," Victoria Adams, better known to her fans as Posh Spice, told a British magazine. "I want to do it in a subtle way.</p><p>" Posh, 25, a new mom who usually graces the stage in a skintight, strapless minidress, said she is aiming for a "virginal" look. So what's the wedding gown going to look like? That's Victoria's secret. Posh would not divulge the details in her interview with OK! Magazine, which has bought exclusive rights to photograph her July 4 wedding to English soccer star David Beckham. Wang's associates also declined to dish about the dress, reveal the price tag or even confirm that Posh would be wearing white. "We really are sworn to secrecy," said Wang spokeswoman Laura O'Brien. But O'Brien said Posh won't have any trouble cutting the rug at the reception in her Vera Wang creation. She has already regained her sultry figure after giving birth in March to son Brooklyn Joseph. "I think she can perform in anything she's wearing," O'Brien said. "She's young. She's sexy. Vera was thrilled to meet her and is thrilled to be doing this.</p><p>" The magazine reported that Wang flew to London last week to meet Posh and her mom, Jackie, and to start sketches and measurements. Adams' stylist and Wang's design director Herve Pierre also joined in the meetings at a London hotel. Adams said she chose Wang because she admires her work and believed she would welcome the bride-to-be's ideas. She said she had no use for designers who thought they were "too cool.</p><p>" And in a move that appeared to clash with the new image she is trying to cultivate, Posh singled out British designer Alexander McQueen for derision, suggesting he shove his collection you know where.</p><p>With a Clinton running for President, a spinoff of the small-screen hit "Beverly Hills 90210" in development and the reuniting, it seems inevitable that fashion from the early 1990s will also be returning. Even locally Bust magazine is throwing a '90s-themed craft event, Spring Fling Craftacular, Sunday in (11 a.m.-9 p.m., , 26 Driggs St., Brooklyn) featuring vendors hawking their jewlery, crafts and clothes to the tunes of Peal Jam and the Lemonheads. </p><p>The '90s are also taking fashion by storm. Consider the model-of-the-moment, , who's been making headlines with her , Lollapalooza-ready outfits and hair reminiscent of circa 1991. </p><p>Meanwhile on the runways, reinterpreted flannels as flirty dresses and dressed his models in stocking caps and ripped tights for his Spring 2008 show. </p><p>So does this mean grunge, one of the most divisive fads in recent memory, is back? </p><p>"It's definitely a trend that's been 'in' for the past few seasons," acknowledges , director of trends at the Intelligence Group. </p><p>"We're seeing a lot of this look on teens," she explains. "They were too young to live through this trend the first time around, so for them it's retro and kitschy. For the rest of us it's a reminder of a time when we were younger." </p><p>This grunge revamp isn't just about nostalgia. It's also about supply and demand. Young trendsetters have already pillaged thrift stores and vintage shops for looks from the '60s, '70s and '80s, with these styles working their way up to the fashion mainstream. Meanwhile, these old-is-new looks are slowly becoming passé all over again, whereas "looks from the '90s are still fairly edgy," she says. Nason predicts that other '90s styles are really the new frontier in fashion. "It's evolving into a different era of the '90s, almost a 90210 look," she explains, citing 's collection for Opening Ceremony, with its floral baby-doll dresses and bustiers straight out of West Beverly High. </p><p>But before you reach for your long underwear and dog collar, keep in mind that all these trends are definitely modified versions of the ubiquitous early-'90s styles. "Back then, the look was much more tomboyish. But now it has a much more feminine twist," says , 's senior market editor. </p><p>This means that fabrics are lighter, shoes are ever so slightly more delicate, and those grunge staples are balanced with more contemporary looks. </p><p>HOW TO MAKE THE '90s LOOK WORK IN 2008</p><p>Flannel: Aim to keep your plaid feminine, in the form of a dress or skirt, or pair your masculine flannel with ultra-girly shoes or jewelry. </p><p>Denim: Keep it seasonal by looking for frayed miniskirts and cutoffs. </p><p>Heavy Boots: To balance out the clunkiness of heavy Dr. Martens, pair them with figure-flaunting leggings or narrow jeans. </p><p>Layers: Layering sleeveless sweatshirts over shirts, or cutoffs over tights is in, but to avoid looking too costumey, shun loud patterns or mixing bright colors. </p><p> </p><p>Jason Alexander, Julia Louis Dreyfus and Michael Richards were stars on "Seinfeld.</p><p>" Since then, their new shows have been failures. Yet the networks continue to cast them, hoping to strike it rich twice. The same thing happens with corporations, but the reality is that, as for most actors, it's often difficult to star in a second hit. This thought was drummed home last week when AT&T announced it was de-emphasizing its consumer business. Ma Bell was once the bluest of blue chips - the company that reached out and touched every American. In the past decade, AT&T made a series of bad acquisitions, but its biggest problem is that deregulation left it with an untenable business model. Investors held on, remembering the glory years, as prices and profits continued to drop. The same thing is happening to Kodak. My albums are filled with old pictures, but now I only use digital, a field where Kodak is second rate. Kodak is rushing to transform itself from film to digital, but these transitions are hard to manage. Remember Polaroid, a member of the nifty-50? There was a time when the greatest miracule was seeing your picture in 60 seconds. Now, 60 seconds is an eternity. When the world changes, companies often focus on defending their entrenched positions. When Netflix began shipping by mail, Blockbuster waited, because it had a huge fixed investment in real estate. Now it's late to the DVD-by- mail game. But Netflix, too, will likely miss the next transition - movies-on-demand via cable or computer. One of the biggest mistakes most investors make is to give entrenched companies too much credit when the world is changing. When DVDs arrived, Blockbuster registered strong sales, and investors extrapolated long-term growth. They're doing the same with Netflix today. But it should be clear delivery-by-mail won't compete with instant online delivery. The major airlines built their business around hub-and-spoke routes and variable pricing. The pricing game became so complex that an online industry grew up to help consumers outsmart the airlines. Newer carriers came along with a simpler model: direct flights and low prices. All the major airlines now have failed business models. Many will go the way of Pan Am, National, TWA and Eastern. Second acts are most difficult in technology, because change is so rapid. Sun Micro and Gateway appear headed to the same tech junkyard that claimed Wang, Iomega, Digital Equipment and many others. They all got stuck defending entrenched models as the world changed. Retailing is littered with concepts that have failed - like W.</p><p>T. Grant, Woolco, Caldor and Kmart. The message is simple. It is very difficult for a company to reinvent itself. Some, like IBM, have done a credible job, but most fail when they end up fighting rear guard actions. As stocks, this makes them lousy investments. Peter Siris, a New York hedge fund manager, owns Footlocker and is short Netflix and many of the airlines. Guerrillainvesting@hotmail.</p><p>com</p><p>The laws of fashion have never been about logic or reality.</p><p>Take Thursday evening, the first night of . On W. 29th St., tastemakers stood with chattering teeth outside the , as a dapper gentleman with a clipboard informed them they would not be entering the GQ/CFDA Best New Menswear Designers party any time soon because "the fire marshal" had deemed the party to be "at capacity."</p><p>One beat later, a town car purred to a stop, releasing and a small entourage. The apparently fire-retardant 59-year-old designer and a pack of five glided through the doors, where and were inside doing shots together at the crowded bar.</p><p>The scene became positively surreal Friday evening when Barney's window dresser unveiled a diorama at the Style Studio in that involved live models perched atop stacked empty Diet Pepsi cans.</p><p>That was, until one model's stiletto heels punctured one of the containers. Physics took over, and a source tells us, the woman began to "slowly tip backwards" like a leaning tower of anorexia.</p><p>Fortunately, Doonan spotted the listing looker and "grabbed her hand just before she hit an 8-foot soda can," that was on display.</p><p>Uptown, was hanging with the beer-and-shot crowd at .</p><p>Wintour took in the game courtside with her 23-year-old daughter and the latter's comrades. A source tells us Bee and her mom bonded through the first quarter of the game, but for the second, Shaffer gave her seat to CollegeHumor's . Later, Amir handed over the prime real estate to Bee's beau, . Anna even ended up on the Garden's during the contest. One game goer says the crowd didn't seem to recognize Wintour, even though she was ID'd on the screen. At least she didn't get booed like was on Feb. 2.</p><p>And despite tweeting about anticipating 's show at on Saturday, stayed long enough to pose for pics and "mingle on the runway." She rushed out before the presentation began to watch her beau, b-baller , lose to the Knicks in <br>.</p><p>Speaking of Ronsons, 's sis Samantha sported a hostile look at the Z-Spoke and Purple Magazine party at The 's Le Bain. Perhaps it was her surroundings. The deejay seemed to chill after storming, entourage in tow, to the adjacent Top of the Standard, where Mary-Kate and , and partied.</p><p>Contact Gatecrasher: Frank DiGiacomo: <br>: <br>: </p><p>You know you've reached as close to rock bottom as you can when you play down to the Devil Rays - which is what the $203 million Yankees did in losing three out of four to Vince Naimoli's $29 million wonder bunch last week. And then we saw Mariano Rivera walking home a run against the A's. Incredibly, the ruins of this Yankee season are now everywhere. At first base/DH, where Jason Giambi lingers uselessly with his disproportionate salary and production; in center field, where Bernie Williams' aching wing and sagging bat have been mercifully removed from the premises; behind the plate, where Jorge Posada's entire game, both physical and mental, seems to have deserted him at 33 with another year and an onerous $12 million option left on his contract; in the bullpen, where Rivera stands alone and without save opportunities; at the back of the rotation, where Kevin Brown, the re-incarnation of Doyle Alexander, begs to be released, and Chien-Ming Wang begs answers to what his role really is; and finally to the farm system which, with the possible exceptions of the last two first-round draft picks, Eric Duncan and Philip Hughes, remains virtually barren. Needless to say, the finger-pointing has already begun with George Steinbrenner turning up the heat on Brian Cashman, Joe Torre and Mel Stottlemyre. There are others who cite the Yankees' unseemly payroll and maintain the finger of blame should point first to Steinbrenner. There's plenty of blame to go around for everyone and The Boss - whose fondness for mottos has curiously never included Harry Truman's "the buck stops here" - deserves his share. But with the exception of Giambi, for whom the Yankees foolishly bid against themselves, Steinbrenner can't be blamed for his spending. Unless, that is, you'd prefer having someone like Naimoli, or Cincinnati's billionaire banana man Carl Lindner, owning the Yankees all these years. The fact is, Steinbrenner has had to allot a healthy portion of his bloated payroll to retaining core players such as Williams, Posada, Derek Jeter and Rivera, while others, such as Mike Mussina, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright were signed at market value. If Steinbrenner wanted to spend $48 million on 41-year-old Randy Johnson, why should anyone care? What disillusioned Yankee fans should care about is the neglect and waste that Steinbrenner has allowed to fester in the Tampa-based scouting and player development system. More than anyone, it is the entire Tampa branch of the Yankee hierarchy - the quintet of VPs, Mark Newman, Damon Oppenheimer, Bill Emslie, Lin Garrett and pitching guru Billy Connors - who should be answering for the absence of frontline talent coming through the system since the last (Jeter/Williams/Posada/Rivera/Andy Pettitte) bumper crop produced by former farm director Bill Livesey in the early 1990s. These are also the same people who didn't feel Yhency Brazoban was a prospect worth keeping and who pushed for the signing of Tony Womack (at the expense of Miguel Cairo) last winter. Cashman certainly has to be held accountable for misreading the pitching market last winter and gambling on the injury-prone, one-year wonder Wright over sure-thing Jon Lieber. In the Yanks' seemingly endless pursuit of starting pitchers who can handle the pressures of New York, it has to be especially perplexing (not to mention galling) to the Yankee high command that Javy Vazquez, Jose Contreras, Orlando Hernandez and Brad Halsey, all of whom were in last year's rotation at various times, were a combined 10-3 in their respective new digs as of Friday. The undertakers have likened this collapse to 1965 when the Mickey Mantle-Whitey Ford Yankees suddenly got old. A better comparison might be 1982 which, like this season, followed a bitterly disappointing postseason in which the Yankees lost the World Series to the far-less-talented Dodgers in six games and Steinbrenner, after wreaking havoc on the team with his L.</p><p>Backstage yesterday at the show, prepared for her first turn down the runway for the spring 2011 season. "I wasn’t going to do the shows, but you know, Alex called, and I love him," Deyn told us. "He killed a cockroach in our house at Coachella, so she owes him," her friend and business partner Fiona Byrne interjected. "We were at Coachella, and we all had a house together," Deyn explained. "There were like seventeen of us," Byrne added. "And Alex came to our party — we had a pretty wild party — and we had this huge insect in this house, and he high-kicked and nearly put his foot through the wall and killed this thing, so I kind of owe him," Deyn said. Though actually, Byrne clarified, maybe he owes her: "He did us a favor by killing the cockroach, but then he left a massive footprint on the wall, which we had to pay for — thanks, Alex."</p><p>See more: </p>Profile <p> </p> <p>Opened in February 2011, the Alexander Wang flagship is a bold, white-marble-dipped palace that seems befitting for the celebrated designer&rsquo;s first-ever store. A seasonally redesigned steel cage greets visitors near the entrance, and, upon crossing through it, they&rsquo;ll find a white expanse that&rsquo;s sparsely sprinkled with all of Wang&rsquo;s lines. Downtown-friendly womenswear hangs along the walls, along with androgynously loose basics from T by Alexander Wang, and an assemblage of his coveted handbags, sunglasses, and footwear are scattered throughout. At the center of the shop, a leather couch and a cheeky, black, mink hammock give rest to the weary shopping companions of the off-duty models that browse the racks. &mdash; Ray Rahman</p><p>Parsons dropout Alexander Wang launched his first full women’s collection in 2007. The label embodies casually cool downtown style, drawing inspiration from the eighties, French chic, and rock grunge — always finished with a slouchy rolled-out-of-bed edge. Wang launched a diffusion line of pre-weathered cotton tees, tanks, and T-shirt dresses in spring 2009, T by Alexander Wang, as well as a footwear collection of towering platform sandals. He won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund in 2008, an honor accompanied by a $20,000 award to expand one’s business.</p>StatusCritics' Favorite, NewcomerClientsMegan Fox, Mary-Kate Olsen, Nicole Richie, Gwyneth PaltrowOther Product LinesEyewear, Handbags, ShoesCollaborationsAlexander Wang for Keds (Fall 2008), Alexander Wang for Uniqlo (May 2008), Alexander Wang for Sally Hansen (Spring 2012)Owned ByAlexander WangAddress386 Broadway, third fl.<br> New York, New York 10013<br>212-532-3110Where To Buy, , , , , , , Related Websites<p> said the ladies she's dressing for the Costume Institute gala the ball's , but the lucky ladies donning and will. This is Wang's first year attending the ball, and he wouldn't reveal who he's dressing, but he told us last night at the Parsons Benefit at the Grand Hyatt that he was pumped about the theme. "If it was like Paul Poiret or something like that," said Wang, citing last year's theme, "I would not have known what to do.&#8230; It&rsquo;s something that&rsquo;s so formal, and then they pick superheroes and people are like, 'What the hell am I supposed to do?'" Wang, who "rarely, rarely" dresses up himself, wouldn't reveal too many details about his lady's look. "It&rsquo;s definitely not a dress, I can tell you that much. That&rsquo;s all I&rsquo;m going to give away," he said. "That&rsquo;s why I got happy, because I was like, 'Yes! I don&rsquo;t have to design a dress!'" </p><p>'s career continues to skyrocket with the announcement of his CFDA Award nomination for Womenswear Designer of the Year. The honor is made all the more impressive by his fellow nominees, industry veterans and . Wang has already won a number of the industry's most important awards: Last year, he won the CFDA's Swarovski Award for Womenswear, which recognizes emerging talent; in 2009 he won the prestigious Swiss Textile Award; and in 2008 the Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund.</p><p>Last night in Zurich, collected the prestigious Swiss Textile Award, a 100,000 euro or $147,000 prize. The award was established to bolster the Swiss textile industry, so $14,700 of the prize money is allocated for the winner to buy Swiss fabrics. They can go crazy with the rest, as long as they use it to make and market upcoming collections. The other six finalists vying for the prize included , , Alexis Mabille, , and . Last year, won the award. Kate Mulleavy, who presented Wang with the prize, told British Vogue, "The investment made such a difference for us in the past year — we have taken the business in a direction we just couldn't have otherwise — and I'm sure it will change things for Alex too." Last year, Wang won the $200,000 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award. Maybe next season he can have his after-party at the car wash instead of the gas station.</p><p> [FWD]<br> [Vogue UK]</p><p>Though it had been taking place twice a year, once in the summer and once in the winter, Wang's office couldn't confirm whether or not the physical sample sale would return. But we could be seeing more and more labels turning exclusively to Gilt. It's easier &#8212; and cheaper &#8212; for a label to send the merchandise to someone else, rather than working for days on hosting a sale, finding a space for it, hiring people to work it, and promoting it. But we're sad. The prices on Gilt seem higher than those at Wang's sales ( were around $50 at the last Wang sale). And shopping on Gilt never results in the same thrill that buying something at a sale produces. There's no digging, no battling for mirrors, no fighting to make sure someone doesn't take your stuff. In the end, all of that makes the sample sale so much more worth it.</p><p>It's no surprise that 's camp vehemently denies that the company violated labor laws at a so-called "sweatshop" in Chinatown. According to a lawsuit filed by former employee Wenyu Lu in Queens, Wang's employees were forced to work up to 25-hour-long days without breaks or overtime pay. The plaintiffs include Lu and roughly 30 other employees, who are demanding$50 million in damages for each of the suit&rsquo;s nine charges. Although Wang's representatives say they have yet to be served with the lawsuit, they're already defending the company.</p><p>&#8226 , , , , , , , and are among the 50 designers creating Barbie outfits for the Barbie fashion show at Fashion Week. Alex Wang Barbie? We need. []</p><p>&#8226 's first Liz Claiborne collection is online for your viewing and purchasing pleasure. []</p><p>&#8226 The Humane Society is patting on the back for putting his fur collection . But they plan to implore him to go fur-free. []</p><p>&#8226 Apparently Madonna's new model flame Jesus Luz is just "keeping her warm at night," and she'd never marry him. []</p><p>&#8226 Jay Lyons, Whitney Port's boyfriend on The City, got a record deal with Universal. Also, he and Whitney are reportedly not together in real life. Hold us back. Really. []</p><p>The February 14 date of 's fashion show could not be more fitting for the unveiling of the limited-edition condom he designed in collaboration with Planned Parenthood. The Proper Attire rubbers will be sold at Thompson Hotels and , with all profits going to Planned Parenthood. “When Planned Parenthood approached me to collaborate with them on a project that makes condoms more appealing to women, I loved the idea!" Wang said. "I used a spare design that felt sexy, modern and empowering; after all, women should always come first!” Damn straight. Get a side of condoms with your next cocktail at . It's for a good cause.<br> <br></p><p>A reporter for the Telegraph was having a nice little interview with at Liberty's in London last week when suddenly the designer noticed that his T-shirt was on backward. You'll never believe what happened next: He turned his shirt around, putting his arms in the right holes and everything. The reporter was dazzled. "There and then, he removes the sweater, taking his arms out of the grey silk-cotton T-shirt — with its carefully selected 'slightly worn-in' slub — and turns the garment round the right way. Casual but startlingly confident, it's a gesture that's 100 per cent Alexander Wang." []</p><p>The very most important thing that we learned from this video with is that he does not use hair conditioner (should you be really curious, he apparently keeps his hair nice and greasy-looking with something called No-Poo). The second most important thing is that he just launched his much-anticipated menswear collection at Barneys. Here's what Wang has to say about what you're already thinking:<br></p><p>When I launched menswear, people were looking at my womenswear and saying, 'Oh, it's so easy for you to do menswear, because your stuff is so androgynous already, wouldn't you just re-cut certain things?' And I was like, well, yes and no.</p><p>Wang fans should hurry to the store to score one of the dresses, all hovering around the $50 to $60 range. The collection will be replenished a few times throughout the day with about 200 more units per style. For those stuck at work, here's a glimmer of hope: They will be restocking "a really small amount" on Monday as well. Wang admitted he learned a lot teaming up with Uniqlo. "They're such a huge team, which I'm not used to. They come in and present options, fabrics to pick from, everything down to the seam. It's very controlled, very focused. I wanted to create something very classic. A lot of times high-end collaborations look very trendy, like, 'Oh, there's that dress from that low-high collection.' But I just wanted mine to be streamlined and affordable prices. Pieces you can easily mix with my regular collection too." Indeed, the dresses are done in slate grays and black, typical of Wang's emerging signature look. Why not play with more color for summertime? "I thought about it. But color for me has to be so specific." </p><p> announced today that he's secured a corner space inside the Paris department store Printemps, where he'll open a large shop-in-shop in November. Printemps gave Wang an initial trial run with a pop-up boutique on the store's second floor, which will close at the end of October and, incidentally, features a "customized tufted ottoman." His new shop will be his largest presence in Paris to date.</p><p>What that exactly means remains vague. LVMH investing in &#8212; or buying &#8212; Wang's business wouldn't be unheard of, especially if LVMH is considering him for a future position. And if Jacobs does go to Dior, some shuffling amongst LVMH's top designers would surely take place, in which case Wang may might be tapped for another house ( comes to mind, since Phoebe Philo is considered the front-runner for Jacobs's replacement at ). Still, nothing about this story has been confirmed by LVMH or Wang, so it's pure speculation at this point.</p><p>Style.com spoke to him about the line before the show: "'I&rsquo;ve always had a fascination with home, but wanted to take it step by step,' Wang said over the phone in between fittings. 'If I can&rsquo;t start with a couch, at least I can start with a coaster.' ...The line&rsquo;s hot ticket, though, is a blackened steel bike chain with a mock croc-covered brass lock."</p><p>Formerly draped with garlands made of baby's breath, the cage sculpture in the foyer of 's new flagship store has now been stripped of foliage and installed with "geometric matte posts embedded with LED lighting," a press release from Wang states. Should you have a hankering to see this cage thing yourself, you'll have to go before the end of June, when presumably it'll be replaced by some other artsy installation that will still fail to . </p><p>• ’s website got a makeover. The site now carries a larger selection of McCartney’s ready-to-wear, accessories, and lingerie, and there is also a section devoted to the designer’s tips on eco-conscious living. []</p><p>• People actually shopped yesterday! Cyber Monday sales were about 20 percent higher than last year. []</p><p>• HSN is selling a line of undergarments called Ch'Arms, which look like Spanx for your arms. []</p><p>• Speaking of, Jill Zarin is launching a line of shapewear called Skweez Couture. []<br></p><p>It seemed like immediately after 's walked, girls across the city took shears to their panty hose and stopped washing their hair. After his , many also probably contemplated sitting in the bathroom with the shower running on hot after getting dressed to get that just-walked-through-a-sauna look. After his , we seriously contemplated cutting holes in our blazers and cocktail dresses. His collections are so cool, so seductive, we don't know how they last on the racks without accumulating a massive amount of drool marks. Naturally, his business is expanding at an unbelievable pace, especially for this economic climate. He'll introduce eyewear for spring. His lower-priced T line will expand to include menswear and pieces that go beyond tank tops and T-shirt basics. But what's in store for spring 2010? He recently told W:</p>Marc Jacobs and Tom Ford would always talk about how they're Seventies kids. And now, I'm thinking about how I'm really a Nineties kid. My ideas come from things that I didn't notice were trends at the time, like seeing my sister wear Via Spiga and watching Saved by the Bell. <br><p> flew around earlier this week that was teaming up with Nike, but alas, WWD confirmed with both Nike and Wang that it's not happening. The gossip wasn't baseless, though — it turns out they'd been scheming up a partnership for spring 2011 that fell through. "Nothing made it to market or will," WWD stated, which is really too bad: Since many of his past designs already resemble workout gear (), he could have just repurposed some of his stuff so that it could be machine washable when you've sweated all over it. Although, if you can afford those shorts, you probably don't mind paying to have your gym clothes dry cleaned.</p><p> [WWD]</p><p>Sweatshop allegations against Alexander Wang were refiled in the New York Federal Court on Friday by a new law firm, Kraselnik &amp; Lee,following an from the original lawyer last week. (The, filed at the Queens County Supreme Court a few weeks ago, were dropped so that the suit could be bumped up to the federal level.) The two named plaintiffs, former Wang employeesWenyu Lu andFlor Duante, remain the same; Lu that about 30 other co-workers stand with him on the allegations, but none of them want to be named yet because they're afraid of getting fired.</p><p>And hot on the heels (har har) of a successful Uniqlo pairing &mdash; we really do love our $60 black dress &mdash; Wang's got a new lower-priced label in the works, which is actually a line of tees, starting at $28 wholesale for a tank top and $40 for a T-shirt dress. Called T by Alexander Wang, it includes twelve styles in colors like white, gray, lavender, chartreuse, and cerulean. Wang told WWD, &ldquo;Necklines are stretched and armholes are strategically lowered so that it looks worn in &#8230; It&rsquo;s like sleeping in a T-shirt and then wearing it the next day. It&rsquo;s not this crisp little T out of the dryer. It&rsquo;s draped and kind of wilted." We can't remember the last time we felt excited about T-shirts, but lo &#8212; now we are. </p><p>The against has been dropped for several reasons, but don't worry &mdash;it's very far from over. The plaintiffs' lawyer, Ming Hai,filed a motion on Thursday to discontinue the case without prejudice, announcing that he's relinquished it to a different lawyer who will refile the case in federal court.Meanwhile, Wang's lawyer, Hugh Mo, says that Hai's original case is so flawed that it should be dismissed with prejudice, which would prevent the new lawyers from being able to refile in federal court or anywhere else. Perhaps most interesting is the beef between Hai and Mo that's totally unrelated to Wang: Just last week, Hai issued a $5,000 fine and court-ordered letter of apology to Mo for misconduct regarding an entirely different case that they clashed over in court last year. In other words, it's been a highly entertaining day on the phone with each of them.</p><p>HAIR<br>• The new issue of Zoo has two covers, one with and one with , who's laughing hard at something. Possibly her curled bangs? []</p><p>• once bleached his eyebrows (seemingly as part of his last Halloween costume) but then called colorist Lena Ott a day later for advice and help on restoring them to their natural color. []</p><p>• Gillette used nanotechnology to write tiny, tiny brand slogans out on an actual single beard hair as part of a new ad campaign. Then they shaved off all that hard work with one of their razors, which seems a little silly, but oh well. []</p><p>SKIN<br>• Before last week, Kate Middleton was spotted at the British high-street beauty store Boots, where she's reported to have bought some Nivea moisturizer. So too bad if you use it, too, because it'll now be sold out everywhere, always. []</p><p>The show is scheduled to begin in less than one hour. What to expect? Sunglasses with fur lanyards. But are they the thing you never knew you've always needed or the thing you've always known you'd never need? []</p><p>Despite 's athletically inspired spring 2010 collection — complete with letter jackets, — he is not much of a sports man. Today at his trunk show at Barneys, Wang told us he has never played on a sports team. Might he be rooting for the Yankees? "To be honest, I didn't even know they were in the World Series," he confessed. Not that it matters when you're 25 years old, won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion award after dropping out of Parsons, and have women around the world salivating over your clothes. "After coming off of a season that felt very structured and graphic, I wanted something that had a little bit more of a nostalgic feeling," he explained of the spring show. So he jumped into studying the fashion of football, with more of an eye for twenties headgear than Tom Brady. "I thought, 'Oh I don't know that much about the history of American football. How did it come about? What did they used to wear as helmets?' The idea of leather heads — it brings you back into a different era, and looking at magazines or books you'd never look at." <br> </p><p>Lu claims he was hospitalized for several days after he passed out at his work station because he was forced to work 25 hours straight &mdash; without a break &mdash; and was told he&rsquo;d be fired if he didn&rsquo;t follow orders.</p><p>Lu, 56, a three-year employee of teh [sic] Wang factory, claims he was also ordered to &ldquo;knit and perfect a professional grade leather trouser from cut to finish in four hours.&rdquo;</p><p>The job normally takes 12 hours, and results in a pair of pricey pants that can retail for $300, the suit says.</p><p>When the four hours passed, Lu claims he was insulted and called names by Dennis Wang, who ordered him to not take a break or go home until the job was completed, the lawsuit says.</p><p>Lu was ultimately fired on Feb. 16 after complaining about the labor law violations, bad working conditions, and applying for worker&rsquo;s compensation, said Ming Hai, his lawyer.</p><p>was already set to his fall show on Saturday via SHOWstudio.com, but the designer has decided to take his "of the people" mentality to the next level. He became "fixated with the idea of projecting the live feed onto a New York City wall," he tells WWD, and at the last minute, he secured the ultimate location: Times Square. (Kimora Lee Simmons was way on this one.) Wang has reached an agreement with to project his show on the giant LED screen that wraps around the AE flagship store at 46th Street and Broadway. Show up at 7 p.m. on Saturday to watch the collection in all its runway glory. (Though the live show starts at 5 p.m., Wang's PR department confirms there will be a slight delay before the Times Square broadcast, to ward off technical issues.) Wang says he expects "a small crowd" and "confused tourists" to show up. Modest words for a guy who can incite snaking lines with a party at a .</p><p> [WWD]</p><p>MAKEUP<br>&#8226 is reportedly doing a makeup collaboration with Shu Uemura. []</p><p>&#8226 Makeup legend Poppy King launches Black Tie Optional for her new line, Lipstick Queen. It's a sheer black, and it looks sexy as hell. []</p><p>HAIR<br>&#8226 Completely Bare opened a new hair-removal spa, the ten-year-old chain's fifth, at 25 Bond Street. So go get waxed or something. []</p><p>FRAGRANCE<br>&#8226 Apparently Paris Hilton spritzes doggy perfume on her pooch Tinkerbell before parties. She also makes her own line of doggy perfume, obviously. []</p><p>&#8226 's next fragrance, Onde, is a trio of Asian-inspired scents — one for India, Japan, and the Middle East. Money-spending East, here Armani comes. []<br></p><p>Now that he's got his own store to populate with furry hammocks and baby's breath vines and whatever else he pleases, has decided to design some branded knickknacks for people's homes. He tells W, "I'm actually working on — or, well, coming soon, I should say — special desk accessories and home lifestyle pieces ... Our own custom Moleskine notebooks and little table lighters and that sort of thing." Ah, yes! It was getting so tiresome to record our grocery lists and meeting notes and deepest thoughts on those blank, boring, nonbranded pages. </p><p>Update: A rep from Moleskine states, "Moleskine does not have any plans to collaborate with Alexander Wang right now." The company has worked with Wang on an event in the past, but doesn't currently have any projects with him in the works. So ... what Wang's cooking up is anyone's guess.</p><p>Alexander Wang - The Opening of a Flagship []</p><p>The joys of 's divinely cut, stretched-out tank tops won't be just for chicks much longer. Wang plans to launch a men's collection for spring 2010. We never liked sharing, but three cheers for fashion companies expanding in These Times! Might his $200,000 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund prize have helped? Wang likes to road test the men's samples himself, so keep your eyes peeled downtown. []</p><p>NAILS<br>• is collaborating with Sally Hansen on a line of nail polishes, which will debut alongside his spring 2012 collection at New York Fashion Week next month. [] </p><p>MAKEUP<br>• Scarlett Johansson appears in a new ad for 's "Secret Eyes" mascara, which isn't really very secret-looking. [] </p><p>HAIR<br>• What Not To Wear stylist Ted Gibson has started a Facebook campaign to add an Academy Award for best hairdressing. His rationale: If makeup is deemed Oscar-worthy, hair should be too. [] </p><p> on designing in this economic climate: "There’s no point in creating clothes so out-there, so special that no one can wear them. I try to stay in touch with the customer. We’ve been lucky &#8212 our sales are growing. I think we were also pretty lucky to get out a T-shirt line. It’s nice to have a $65 product. But it’s also nice to have a $1,200 dress, say, for that person at Colette. The key now is that dress has to be worth what it costs." []</p><p>’s spring collection, like so many of the spring runways, was , which is a scary thing when you live in a city full of dirty park benches, grimy subway turnstiles, and jostling crowds who spill their coffee on you and then rush off without so much as proffering a napkin. Wang himself is the first to understand: “It's just more risky to wear something like that, in the sense that you don't want to sit down on the subway and things like that,” he explained at his spring collection trunk show at Barneys last night. “How to keep it clean? I don't know. Carry a Tide pen with you?” He was, however, careful to feature fabrics and prints that could weather the abuse of city living: “Why I mixed it up with some rubber and some prints, and if you get a nick on it or a stain on it, you just play it off like it's been there the whole time.”</p><p>To debut his fall promotional videos, has dispatched a fleet of vans that will travel around New York City and project the commercials onto large buildings from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. tonight, tomorrow night, and Friday night. The video, which stars , was shot in an abandoned grain factory in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and set to a soundtrack of SebastiAn’s “C.T.F.O.” Which won't annoy people trying to sleep at 3 a.m. at all! </p><p>To avoid the cocktail-guzzling masses who don't actually buy anything on Fashion's Night Out, had the clever idea to station himself comfortably in his Soho store while a select group of people perform a talent show for him. To enter, send a 30–90 second clip of yourself performing your "talent" to info@alexanderwang by the end of next week; the chosen contestants will be invited to compete on the night of September 8th, where they can win free clothes. []</p><p> finally confirmed he will open his first stand-alone store in New York "sometime this year." He says he's close to signing a lease, but won't say where. He probably doesn't need a new line to fill it up, as we imagine he'll round it out with things like large slabs of acid-treated rock and glass boxes filled with steam and sculptures made from staples, but he's launching one anyway. The collection of "essentials" will initially include three pairs of pants, two jackets, and one flat-front shirt, with prices ranging from $260 to $550. </p><p>• will debut men's ready-to-wear and swimwear collections this summer. []</p><p>• Rumors about getting married in a gown by John Galliano persist despite her fiancé Jamie Hince's . Now, the Daily Mail hilariously claims John Galliano’s boyfriend will help make sure the dress looks just right. []</p><p>• In other Kate Moss wedding news, Mario Testino will photograph the whole thing, so says iPad newspaper The Daily. []</p><p>• covers the new issue of Spanish V. Pictures of her fellow Brazilian hotties are inside. []</p><p>Last night won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. That means he gets $200,000 to grow his business and a year of mentoring. The selection committee this year included CFDA president , Vogue's Anna Wintour and Sally Singer, Patrick Robinson from the Gap, and Julie Gilhart from Barneys. When we saw Anna at the Alexander Wang show in September, she looked mighty unimpressed, barely turning her head to look at the clothes. Perhaps she just had a stiff neck?</p><p>Runners-up were designers and Sophie Buhai and Albertus Quartus designer Albertus Q. Swanepoel. They'll each receive $50,000 and a business mentor. Past top-prize winners include Rogan in 2007, in 2006, in 2005, and in 2004. Past runners-up include 3.1 , Philip Crangi Jewelry, , , , , Cloak, and Habitual. So this prize is a sign of big things to come. Congrats, Alex!</p><p> [WWD]</p><p>According to his publicist, won't be introducing fashion folks to novel pleasures like after his show next week. This is disappointing, particularly since his last few after-parties were such ragers (complete with). No need to mourn, though — Wang's camp says they'll resume their after-partying in September.</p><p>If the fashion issue's of wasn't enough Wang for you, enjoy these bonus shots of child Wang. Here you see the designer during his stint at Stevenson boarding school in Pebble Beach, California — wearing a T-shirt with a toucan on it. It looks like the faded, worn-in type of thing Wang likes to this day, but God, we hope this isn't the last we see of him wearing a tropical bird.</p><p>Related: </p><p>In March, Alexander Wang was who claimed they were forced to work under "sweatshop" conditions &mdash; sixteen-hour days in a windowless room in Chinatown with no bathroom breaks or overtime pay, allegedly&mdash; and then fired when they complained about it. Wang swiftly denied the charges,, and commenced of the first plaintiff, Wenyu Lu. But regardless of how much merit the lawsuit may or may not have had, fashion hates cases of this nature (even trademark infringement is more glamorous than labor), so it's no surprise that the case was settled out of court earlier this month, .</p><p>Many of the guests at Barneys' launch of Maje, a capsule collection by stylist Vanessa Traina, go way back with the Traina clan. "We designed Victoria [Traina]'s dress for when she came to New York," said 's Lazaro Hernandez. "She had, like, a debut I guess. It's not a debutante ball, it was more of a party ... she was 17 or 18." Also in attendance was , who attended high school with Vanessa in San Francisco, and , who described Vanessa as his "best friend." Best friend? "We met in Paris a while ago and we just clicked and became really close."</p><p>Apparently part of being selected as one of the past three CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winners is designing T-shirts for Starbucks! Alexander Wang, Sophie Theallet, and Billy Reid all got the honor of making tees to celebrate Starbucks's "40 years of coffee [and] culture." The $85 shirts go on sale today at and at select Nordstrom locations.</p><p> <br></p><p>Instead of or , this year's Alexander Wang after-party unfolded at the Emigrant Bank Building across from City Hall in downtown Manhattan last night. State law likely mandated the metal detectors, probably one of the first and last times you'll see that at a fashion party. But once inside, the scene was straight out of the Ben Affleck classic, The Town, complete with Wang himself arriving dressed as a bank robbing nun (spooking several attendees). Staff were given president-themed masks to wear (an homage to bank-robbery movie Point Break), though many ditched them as the space proceeded to get more crowded and sweaty. The bank-teller wall served as the bar, and guests lined up at each window to watch the bartenders contort into odd positions in order to mix drinks in the cramped space.</p><p>DJs spun bumping old school hip hop exclusively for the first hour (DMX! Biggie! Mary J. Blige!) before South African duo Die Antwoord took the stage. Penis imagery flashed repeatedly through the duration of their first song, "Wat Kyk Jy" which they concluded with a heartfelt, "FUCK YOOOOOOOOOOU NEW YORK CITY", while everybody went bananas. Garance Dor&eacute; and Jenna Lyons danced along enthusiastically as did Hanne Gaby Odiele and Lindsay Ellingson. Eventually made her way through the crowd, while a photo of flashed on the screen to Die Antwoord's angry songs. So obviously they're also on Team Liberty Ross as well. As the night wore on, more and more guests spilled in from Carine Roitfeld's CR gala, and eventually Busta Rhymes took to the stage and kept the party going into the wee hours.</p><p>Click through to see all of the likes of getting down, Jared Leto looking remarkably comfortable in a thick denim jacket and full beard, plus flashing her new engagement ring while cozying up to fianc&eacute; Michael Polish.</p><p>'s fall stuff just hit Shopbop.com. The paired with numerous looks in the cost $395 and are one of Shopbop's Editors' Picks. Cheap JAP reacts: "When first I saw the price on Wang’s Pseudopants, I assumed they were made from leather, snakeskin, or the tusks of a rare, near-extinct breed of rhinoceri. That wouldn’t excuse paying the $395 pricetag, but at least it’d explain the ludicrous cost ... If I’m paying upwards of $400 for SHORTS, that shit better be drenched in diamond dust a la Madonna’s eyelashes. Not made out of fucking rayon and spandex." []</p><p>Screw upholstered furniture, plumbing, and standing around with nothing to do but drink. What was perhaps the coolest party of Fashion Week, thrown last night to celebrate 's spring 2011 collection, made a naughty appeal to the fashion crowd's childlike sensibilities. The party took place in a parking lot under the High Line on Tenth Avenue and 17th Street, as rumored, and boasted Porta-Potties and a full-fledged rented carnival that included bumper cars, a carousel, various games, and an inflatable bouncy castle. Guests' six-inch heels and finest Fashion Week wardrobes didn't stop them from climbing into the bumper cars or bathrooms. Similarly, butt-cheek grazing minidresses didn't stop a lot of girls from having a romp in the bouncy castle or straddling a carousel horse. To top it off, everywhere you looked there was someone really good-looking (, , , ) or famous (Terry Richardson, Russell Simmons, Alexander Wang). Overall, one would assume that either spending money on these shindigs is back — or parking lots and carnival games are relatively cheap to rent, if not exactly demure.</p><p>Next week's fashion issue of New York includes a Carl Swanson, who, apparently, really likes to dance: "He’ll get down almost anywhere, from the grubby Williamsburg Sugarland gay dance garage to the old Sunday-night Hiro party at the Maritime Hotel to traveling German raves that are text-invitation-only to his model pal Agyness Deyn’s party house at the Coachella music festival (where Wang dispatched a model-terrifying desert insect on the wall with a deadly high-kick). He’ll drive to Philly for a good dance party or fly to Barcelona or hit the 'underwear' party in ramshackle Cherry Grove."<p></p><p> [NYM]</p><p> got his year off with a bang. Or three. After showing his and having the designer just rolled out the online lookbook for his new diffusion line this week. And, , we're buying it all. First announced last August, the line features 12 styles of comfortable T-shirt dresses, tanks, and shirts that look already worn-in, slept-in, and partied-in, all for a third of what his regular line costs — a V-neck dress is $85, a tank dress is $89, a boatneck dress is $85, and a sleeveless tee is $74. And you won't have to wait much longer to get your hands on pieces — the line will hit stores by the end of this month, a representative told us today. , , and are all confirmed to stock the line, and the clothes are available for pre-order now on . So, come Fashion Week, you'll have something new and affordable to wear. Win win!</p><p>Earlier: </p><p> [Nitro:Licious]<br> [Alexander Wang]<br></p><p>If you were a guest in 's home, a 2,200-square-foot Tribeca loft, you could sit on all kinds of things — which is something you can't say about the average New York apartment that probably has only, like, two chairs or a love seat if you're lucky. But not chez Wang, where you might sit on crocodile, goat hair, or fox fur. Former New York Times style editor Holly Brubach sold Wang the space and recently went back to see what he's done with the $2 million investment and write about it for W. <br></p><p>Standing in the place where my pantry used to be, I took in the scene: white walls, black velvet couch, black Karl Springer coffee table, black crocodile dining chairs, black Serge Mouille floor lamps, a pair of chairs covered in black goat fur, zebra rugs, a black fox throw.</p><p>In the wake of being named the Best New Menswear Designer by GQ and the CFDA, the designer will launch his first ready-to-wear men's collection this fall (yes, usually things happen in the opposite order, but this is Alexander Wang, so normal rules don't apply). Even Wang admits his surprise at winning: “I got nominated and at first I was like, really?" he told Style.com. But since everyone told him he should and showered him with money to do so, Wang went ahead and made a full menswear collection, which consists of nylon tracksuit pants as well as lots of leather-trimmed coats, black sweatpants, and black leather shorts. Prices begin right where the men's T line tops out, ranging from $375 to $2,150. </p><p> [Style.com]</p><p>• ’s show on the third floor of the Plaza, because the other one was being held for Anna Wintour. []</p><p>• Guests could use only one of two working elevators to get to ]</p><p>• Robert Duffy has tweeted his last tweet for and Joseph ]</p><p>• &#8217;s home décor line exclusively, so now you know where to go for your zebra-printed dinnerware needs. []</p><p>Despite not doing a menswear show this season and having a small presence in the menswear market so far, won GQ's prize for Best New Menswear Designer in America. Beating out fellow nominees by Michael Bastian, Patrik Ervell, Warriors of Radness, Miller’s Oath, and Riviera Club, Wang's prize includes the schmancy title, a mentorship from Dockers, Bloomingdale's, and GQ editors, and the chance to design a capsule collection for Dockers. So this is also a big win for Dockers, because even if dudes don't get turned on by the idea of a little extra Wang in their pants, chicks sure will, and are likely to buy the stuff anyway. </p><p></p><p><br></p><p>Anna Wintour isn't the only fashion person to serve for . After casting South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord in his spring campaign for T, Alexander Wang became fast friends with the trio &mdash; that's lead vocalists Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er, with tracks by D.J. Hi-Tek. From Elle's May issue:</p><p>"He's like a wispy little punk," says Ninja, recalling a debauched night on the town with Wang in December. ("We were like, Whoa, this is VIP shit!") In fact, the duo was so taken with the experience that they name-checked Wang twice on their second album, Ten$ion, released in February. "We had to make a song right after [that night] because we wanted to quickly give him a shout-out," says Ninja, who raps in "Hey Sexy": "I know how to get da dough, I know how to spend da dough/ Rockin' Alexander Wang from head to toe." Adds Yo-Landi, several verses later: "I like partying, partying, partying, damn! Ask my man Alexander Wang."</p>Alexander Wang’s New Menswear Video Features A$AP Rocky, Diplo, and a Longshore Fisherman Just Returned From Months at Sea Tags: , , , , , ,<p>As his prize for winning the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, gets $200,000 and business mentoring from an industry veteran. CFDA president has been named as his mentor. Wang will work with her and her team, including DVF president Paula Sutter. </p><p>We never would have imagined Wang and Von Furstenberg working together. She's all about easy, breezy dresses and pretty, colorful prints, and he's all about ripped jeans and shoes that look like they could double as a weapon. We adore both lines, it's just hard for us to imagine Wang and DVF holding hands and skipping down Seventh Avenue together. (But we would love to see that on The City.) </p><p>As for the runners-up, Albertus Swanepoel will be mentored by Andy and Kate Spade, and Sophie Buhai and Lisa Mayock of will be mentored by Patrick Robinson and Andrew Rosen.</p><p> [British Vogue]</p><p>HAIR<br>• It may not be spring, but it's already time to copy 's spring 2010 loose, unraveled side-braid. Rachel McAdams rocked the look at the premiere of Sherlock Holmes in London last night, while also wore a Wang-ish do for the January issue of Vogue. [, ]</p><p>• Gray hair is becoming fashionable in Britain. showed the hue for his spring show, and Pixie Geldof wears the color now after three years of being blonde. "I didn’t want to do another color like pink, gray just seemed obvious," Geldof says. Would you go gray on purpose (or stop dyeing your whites)? []</p><p>MAKEUP<br>• stars in the spring 2010 campaign for Nars cosmetics. The collection features pink and peach colors with touches of purple for eyes, lips, and nails. []</p><p> used to be 's girl Friday. She styled his shows, served as his muse, kept him company in his studio &#8212 all those fun things most twentysomething girls who hate getting up early wish they could do all day. But some months ago, Wasson got busy doing her own line. We just knew any day dearest Alex would ring us up and tell us he really needed us to come try on his next collection and giggle with him over Starbucks in his studio all day every day for at least the next six months. We didn't know what was taking him so long to call, until we saw this video of Alice Dellal running around in Alexander Wang clothes shot by Dan Martensen. We'll assume she's just keeping them warm for us. </p><p>Designers who have already volunteered to make swag for the Obama campaign include many of those whose careers have profited from , like Rachel Roy, Jason Wu, and Narciso Rodriguez; also onboard are Marc Jacobs, Diane Von Furstenberg, rag &amp; bone, Altuzarra, Alexander Wang, Tory Burch, and Tracy Reese. Notably absent is Donna Karan, whose parent company, LVMH, initially discouraged their brands from participating for fear of alienating Republican customers (Marc Jacobs apparently went ahead and made T-shirts for the initiative anyway). Merchandise will go on sale online at runwaytowin.com on Thursday, with all proceeds going to the Obama Victory Fund.</p><p>Looks like Alexander Wang&rsquo;s legal troubles won&rsquo;t be swept under his fur hammock any time soon. After thirty workers accusing the designer of running an alleged sweatshop in Chinatown, another plaintiff has come forward, putting a second name to the case. Flor Duante, a 48-year-old single mother of three, says she had to work more than 90 hours a week in the windowless, 200-square-foot room and that she was terminated after filing for workers&rsquo; compensation. On Friday, Gawker took a field trip to 386 Broadway, the scene of the supposed crime, but didn&rsquo;t see much, other thanthe company&rsquo;s CFO Mark Greene, who referred them to the brand&rsquo;s press rep.</p><p></p><p>Aja Mangum, New York's tireless beauty editor, has hit the shows yet again, this time scoping out the hotness backstage at . According to makeup artist Dick Page, the styling was inspired by "street girls" au naturel. No, he didn't mean hooker-chic (damn!), but more the look of a simply glam gal out on the town. Think textured hair, some "murk in the eye," a bit of bronzer &#8212; and voil&#224;! The show was also styled by former model , who summed up Dick's work in one word: "amazing." See it to believe it, people.</p><p>&bull; tapped Azealia Banks to be the face of his T collection for fall. []</p><p>&bull; Though they now have the option to compete in T-shirts and shorts, the U.S. female Olympic volleyball players insist on continuing to play in their teeny bikinis. []</p><p>&bull; And in more Olympics news: Basketball players Kevin Durant and Carmelo Anthony posted a picture of themselves in their Ralph Lauren&ndash;designed uniforms. They really manage to make the berets work. [ via ]</p><p>&bull; goes for baroque in a feathered jacket on the cover of WSJ. magazine's September issue. []</p><p>&bull; S&atilde;o Paulo Fashion Week is becoming one of the biggest fashion weeks in the world. []</p><p>&bull; Pregnant appeared in an editorial for Love magazine, shot the day before she gave birth. [ via ]</p><p> was all about sharp linear cutouts and neutral colors, and when our artist Samantha Hahn went backstage with her watercolors, she zeroed in on some of the most striking details. Shapes were boxy and sophisticated with plenty of leather and a few exotic skins, while shoes were strapped high up models' calves. Hairstylist Guido Palau added an edgy accent to the ponytail by placing a strip of black or white duct tape across center parts, and the beauty look aimed for flawless and sexy, with a bold brow and rosy cheeks. Click ahead for Hahn's portraits.</p><p>The inspiration for 's spring 2011 show, which walked on Pier 54 yesterday, was "" — and the collection was quite white, right down to the hair. The plaster-looking goop was actually clay, made specially for the show by Redken stylists, who combed it through the models' hair before tying it in a knot. Top model , who has had all kinds of crazy things done to her hair, wasn't worried about whether or not it would come out, but was worried that no one would pick her up in a cab after the show. Hear more from her and in the video after the jump.</p><p>Last season, camera bulbs flashed nonstop backstage at Alexander Wang as Gisele, Shalom Harlow, and Karolina Kurkova were prepped to make their surprise appearance on the runway. This time, probably because Mrs. Brady is busy being pregnant, the beauty look was the big secret. Makeup artist Diane Kendal and hairstylist Guido Palau were good at keeping their lips sealed, and colorist Laurie Foley was on hand to bleach all of the blonde models' eyebrows ... but why? Foley wouldn't say; however she alluded to a possible finale "lightshow" (!!!). And their faces were highlighted with unusual amounts of white shimmer on their temples, cupid's bow, and cheeks, so we're thinking those areas will glow. Everyone's hair was parted and accessorized with a strip of electrical tape &mdash; the brunettes got black; the blondes, tape was that off-white. We're looking forward to seeing if our super-sleuthing worked and whether Wang has been watching Tron on repeat.</p><p></p><p>Athletic-inspired pieces were a huge , withdesigners taking sneakers, visors, and workout pants out of the gym. This T by Alexander Wang top offers an edgy take on a football jersey silhouette with mesh panels. Opaque jersey keeps the top from being overly revealing, but it's ideal for a night out or when the weather gets unbearably hot.</p><p>T by Alexander Wang Cotton Netting Combo Tee, $110 .</p><p>It's no surprise the fall runways are full of boots. ('Tis the season for keeping your toes warm.) But designers found new ways to update the basics this season. 's lace-up booties featured a capped silver toe, while sent out calf-high velvet versions in either black or burgundy. played with color by covering the shoe in blue and purple prints and adding accents of cobalt metallic, yellow piping, and teal velvet. See more close-up shots of footwear, jewelry, and accessories in our details slideshows. Click "full screen" to see everything up close.</p><p>DETAILS<br><br><br></p><p>Alexander Wang is on a roll. His show has morphed over the past couple of years into one of the hottest of New York Fashion Week, working its way toward Marc Jacobs–level buzz, with ticketing so strict you might think the room was home to not only a runway show, but also the free world's nuclear secrets. His only kept the buzz going well into the next day — if Fashion Week attendees weren't debating his collection and fretting over their ability not to spill on next year's whites, they were talking about which carnival rides they went on and how late the fun kept them out. Did he have two bars or three? Etc. But today, Cathy Horyn brings her reliably sober view to the excitement over the designer.</p><p>Cathy Horyn was a bit nonplussed by some of the frattier aspects of 's after-party last night. "Inside the pier, which was partly carpeted in moist Astroturf that squished under my feet, some of the models were chugging extra-large cans of beer," she reported. This wasn't the only alcohol option, however: "Some waiters were passing around trays of Jello shots, and I saw Mr. Wang grab a couple, down them and dance off. The shots looked like beef consommé."</p><p> [On the Runway/NYT]<br>Related: <br><br><br></p><p>In addition to our runway galleries, we've also got oodles of videos from the shows, should you want to see the clothes actually move and the models actually walk in those shoes. There's also lots of backstage footage, too, so you can see just how much mayhem goes on at these things. See our latest batch of films, below.</p><p>• <br>• <br>• <br></p><p>Ricci, who stars in the new TV series Pan Am, says that she's always been a fan of the era. "I've always been a big vintage shopper and the sixties were my period," she told the Cut. "It's the cut that looks good on me. It's very feminine and has a sense of fun and a sense of humor about it. It's kind of an ideal thing for me. Now my job is to dress up in sixties fashion." Maybe Ricci's affinity for all things sixties runs in the family: Her mom was a mod fashion model, after all. "That has a huge influence on me as well. My first images of beauty were images of her fashion tear sheets," she added. But shooting the show isn't just about playing dress up: Ricci is terrified of being filmed in high-definition. How is she coping? "Sleep as much as possible, intensify the face cream and I'm getting a prescription for Retin-A," she told us. "The rest is out of my hands."</p><p>Cintra Wilson gave a rave review of the new store in Soho in today's Times, which comes as no surprise considering her weakness for Wang's T-shirts. While in August, she confessed to purchasing one: "I know what you’ll think, and you’re right: an $89 T-shirt is a crime against humanity ... But it was so soft, it was making my brain flood with dopamine, like a security blanket." Her experience in Wang's boutique is similar: "An $80 black rayon T-shirt should be a grotesque plutocratic sin. But when you put on one of Mr. Wang’s, you realize: oh. This would be equally appropriate for work, bowling, lawn darts, gnocchi fights ... and it drapes well enough to be worn as rebellious evening wear. It connects dots you hadn’t imagined were connectible before." []</p><p>At least the salespeople won't have to worry about a customer asking them to take the last pair of size-two pants off the mannequin so that she can try them on.</p><p>THE HITS:</p><p></p><p>&bull; "Mr. Wu was completely at home in his retelling of Shanghai Lily...This show worked because he recognized an opportunity to exaggerate the motifs, even parody them, rather than merely borrow a bit of Chinese texture." []</p><p>&bull; "[H]is most confident [show] to date...But if [the lace evening dresses] will be too costumey for Wu's crowd, there was plenty of that reliably strong sportswear to march away with." []</p><p>&bull; "[F]ierce in many ways...It was a startling change for Wu, but impressive, and showed off both his range as a designer and his technical abilities...an exciting about-face." []</p><p>&bull; "Jason Wu has proved once again that his golden boy status was no fluke...We expected heaven, and he delivered." []</p><p>&bull; "[T]ackling Asia was a risk...Wu handled all [archetypes] with calculated polish and savvy commerciality...costume-y flourishes were intentional...this was Wu&rsquo;s most severe and sophisticated work yet." []</p><p>&bull; "[I]t was Wu&rsquo;s most dramatic runway show to date &ndash; and if you looked closely, his most dramatic collection as well...Wu&rsquo;s woman has gotten way stronger." []</p><p></p><p></p><p>HAIR<br>• A clump of Elvis Presley's hair is going up for auction on October 18 in Chicago, and it's expected to sell for $12,000. The hair is from 1958, when the singer had to shave his sideburns for the Army. []</p><p>• The show featured a loose side braid, a similar look to what sent out weeks ago (Wang had a side part, Miu Miu's was in the center). Perhaps it's because hairstylist Guido Palau was the hair leader working on both shows. []</p><p>• Pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, Obama adviser David Axelrod, and Attorney General Eric Holder are among the nominees for the Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year. You can vote for a winner online at the . []</p><p>EVENTS<br>&#8226 More than 70 venues teamed up for the , in which shops like Bloomingdale's Soho, M Missoni, Theory, Via Spiga, and others stay open late and offer discounts to raise money and awareness for New York City's homeless. Visit to purchase a $20 bracelet to attend, or call 212-274-0550 for more information. 6?11. </p><p>&#8226 Get a free "MD Skin-care Facial" (worth $50) with any purchase at Trina Turk. 67 Gansevoort St., nr. Washington St. (212-206-7383); 6?9. </p><p>&#8226 Stop by Lord & Taylor for a guys' shopping night with Details magazine and 1050 ESPN radio station. Spend $1,000 or more and receive a free iPod Touch. 424 Fifth Ave., at 39th St., tenth fl. (212-391-3344); 5?8.<br></p><p>&#8226 Castor & Pollux is marking up to 60 percent off the fall stock from 3.1 , , and . 238 W 10th St., nr. Bleecker St.; 212-645-6572; Mon.&#8211;Sat. (noon&#8211;7); Sun. (1&#8211;6).<br> <br>&#8226 Swarovski crystal jewelry is on sale up to 75 percent off at the Ted Rossi sale starting today. Also find big discounts on python and leather bags and accessories. Through 4/4. 15 E. 30th St, nr. Fifth Ave.; Ste 300 (212-683-1726); 11&#8211;7.<br><br>ENDING TODAY<br>&#8226 The big denim sale ends today at the SOS Sample Sale with men&rsquo;s and women&rsquo;s apparel 40 to 90 percent off. Brands like Seven for All Mankind start at $70, while Joe&rsquo;s Jeans start at $55. Through 4/2. 264 W. 40th St., nr. Seventh Ave. (978-602-5585); 11&ndash;8.</p><p>&#8226 Sandals, heels, and more, from Hollywould&rsquo;s cruise collection, are up to 80 percent off. Through 6/30. 198 Elizabeth St., nr. Prince St. (212-219-1905); Thurs.&#150;Sat. (11:30&#150;7); Sun. (noon&#150;5).<br> <br>&#8226 Society for Rational Dress, Diabless, , and Morphine Generation are all 20 to 75 percent off at the Woodley & Bunny sale. 490 Driggs Ave., nr. N. 9th St. (718-218-6449); Daily (noon&#150;8).</p><p>The Day Before is Sundance's documentary series that follows several fashion designers in the final (roughly) 24 hours leading up to their fashion shows. The next season, which follows , , , 's Peter Copping, and as they prepare for their fall 2010 shows, premieres tomorrow at 10 p.m. EST. We have two exclusive clips from the Versace and Wang episodes to share with you. In the first, Donatella does a fitting on model-of-the-moment , who is known for her lips and is only 16 years old. Versace puts her in a seriously sexy cutout dress and can't get over how hot she is at such a young age.</p><p>As the music blasted backstage at Alexander Wang, Fabiola Beracasa caught up with model Jaime King, fashion editor Meredith Fisher, a very soft-spoken Chanel Iman, and the designer himself ("Did I mention he's cute?" said Paper's Mr. Mickey). Wang talked about his edgy aesthetic as "something that's a little bit loose and baggy. Own it. It doesn't have to fit in every little place. It's all about the flaws and imperfections."</p><p>Alexander Wang<br>&#8217;s show has had steady buzz for two weeks, peaking when word came out that former model Erin Wasson was styling his show and DJs AM and Aoki were spinning his after-party. But did the man live up to the hype? Sort of. Cathy Horyn lamented that while WWD said Flattering. The Daily, on the other hand, was eager to appoint Wang the new king of the hipsters, claiming his Style.com noted that there were some standout pieces, But WWD asked the most important question: </p>Beach SweatersOpen-weave knits are a surfer thing, but they&rsquo;realso very helpful in a spring that can&rsquo;t makeup its mind.<p>We caught Foxy Brown after her performance at after-party at Cortlandt Alley last night, her first show in NYC since being released from Rikers Island earlier this year. Decked out in a custom fuchsia Alexander Wang dress, Foxy treated the sweaty crowd to some of the best of Il Na Na, and Wang to some stage time. "The highlight was fucking Alexander doing the fucking booty shake what your mama gave ya! That was fly," Foxy told us. &ldquo;So you're right at home at Fashion Week?&rdquo; we asked the Park Slope native. "It feels so good," Foxy said. "Karl said to me, and also Marc &hellip; they all said to me that they never saw a little black girl that was so interested in couture and haute couture. I would be in our house, with the brush singing and [my mom's] fur coats. And her high-heeled slippers &hellip; my mom has an Herm&#232;s Birkin bag from back in the day that I rock now and is sicker than any bag ever. Fashion is totally embedded in me."<br></p><p>We're busily publishing today's shows right now. Check out runway video of what might be a and Alexander Wang's . Plus, slideshows for , , , , , and .</p><p> &#8212; rocker Gavin Rossdale's surprise daughter &#8212; fared less elegantly. Clutching a petite white pooch who looked as drenched as her brunette bangs, Daisy perched in the front row next to boyfriend Mark Ronson, whose severe-storm gear of choice was tight mid-thigh plaid shorts, a T-shirt that read "Bikini Kill," and sneakers. We can't wait until CNN's live-on-the-scene hurricane reporters adopt this approach. Down the way, Erin Wasson merrily chirped to reporters about how pieces from her jewelry line, Low Luv, would appear on Wang's models. And we can't quite believe Jessica Szohr is the first Gossip Girl cast member we've seen at the tents, considering she plays our least favorite character (tied with Jenny Humphrey). In fact, we've spied her twice today: once, studiously avoiding photographers alongside Jessica Stam as they hustled into the tents pre&#8211;Charlotte Ronson, and again in Wang's front row watching her model pal strut the catwalk. We hope she had a raincoat, because her paper-thin white V-neck isn't going to stand up to the weather unless she takes shelter near Anna's weather-repellent bob.</p><p>Over 400 people are on the waiting list for it at Barneys. "Now we’re going to have to figure out how to produce more bags so our section won’t be empty come January," reassures. His similar denim leather Coco duffel is available for $850. []</p><p>Armed with squeegees and buckets, the brand's Soho flagship employees wore their fall/winter best to clean up an egging that occurred outside the store sometime last night. None of them looked too amused about the task ... nor like they'd had enough coffee to discuss .</p><p>A model sneaked in a few bites while getting her hair done backstage before , which walked at 5 p.m. today at Pier 94. </p><p></p><p>Some designers are known for playing favorites with models. basically lives on the runway. &rsquo;s a go-to for . Luckily for up-and-coming models, there are also designers like , who gives the newbies a real shot. He said he likes how rising novices give the show &ldquo;a fresh feeling.&rdquo; Fresh, indeed: He was the first designer to pick up , who went on to huge bookings all over Paris. So, how can you earn a spot on his September runway? &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the attitude and feeling you get from a girl when she walks in. If she&rsquo;s confident and has an awesome stomp, we&rsquo;ll prob book her,&rdquo; Wang said. So, girls, ditch your wallflower ways and work on your walk. You&rsquo;ve got all summer. &#8212;Kendall Herbst</p><p>Ivanka Trump wore a knotted dress to the 2012 Good Awards at the Empire Hotel yesterday. She paired the dress with pointy flats.</p><p>Do the draped panels on this dress flatter Ivanka? All in all, can she pull off Wang's edgy aesthetic?</p><p><br>The Egyptian-inspired collection from design duo Sophie Buhai and Lisa Mayock was simply stunning. They have taken their expert draping and love of whimsical details to a beautiful new level of sophistication. I loved the offbeat pairing of long and lean silhouettes in silk twill with cropped and shrunken leather vests and jackets and the quirky combinations of colors like marigold, pistachio, and rust. Every cool girl will be in line to get her hands on one of the black Egyptian-beaded collars. The sleeveless tropical wool power suit and the printed silk shirtdress worn over buttery-soft brown leather leggings were amazing. The skeletal silver jewelry from Jill Platner was a perfect match to the pyramid embellishments and embroidered hieroglyphs. And I want every pair of their new shoe collection for Via Spiga! Especially the studded high-heel suede mules. </p><p>• is on the cover of the new issue of Vogue Japan, shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. []</p><p>• says he was one of those kids who split expensive purchases across lots of different credit cards so that his parents wouldn’t notice. []</p><p>• This weekend, designers Laura and Kate Mulleavy took over the airwaves at L.A. station KCRW for a five-song set that included the theme song from Star Wars. []</p><p>• More news: Liz Goldwyn takes some credit for ’s success. “I remember the first Rodarte show ? of course, at first, everyone was like, 'Really, Liz? They're from California!' But I told the editors they had to trust me.” []</p><p>• Stephanie Phair, director of the Outnet, shares tips on discount shopping. []</p><p>Alexander Wang has been doing swift business for the past few seasons in soft cashmere T-shirts that are beautifully proportioned and draped, exactly what all sorts of women would like to wear in all sorts of situations: to the office, to the beach. So it is perhaps ironic that the biggest problem with the collection he showed yesterday afternoon at Pier 94 was that it was so incredibly stiff: charcoal and pinstripe suiting, for example, looked rough and itchy and square. Narrow cropped trousers and woolen shorts were neat updates, but blazers hacked to reveal midriffs and extended into tails looked awkward and, frankly, uncomfortable. The occasional panel of lace did more to soften the effect than the chiffon ribbons dangling from backpacks (the little knapsacks and the thick-heeled shoes called to mind late-nineties Prada) or the application of velvet or chenille.<br></p><p>"To be so fucking incredibly creative and genius ... " Busta Rhymes said last night as he toasted Alexander Wang at the designer&rsquo;sChambers Street bank after party. "Just put your fucking drinks up," he concluded before spraying the crowd with champagne.</p><p>Subversion (plus pot and cigarette smoke) was in the air. The scene felt like aDark Knightdream sequence where a gaggle of Occupy Wall Street rouges, backed by a battalion of models, hold up a bank by demanding Belvedere and orange juice. The event staff donned rubber president masks, cocktails were ordered from teller windows, and Wang arrived surreptitiously as a masked nun in a full habit.<br> <br> Liberty Ross danced to opener Die Antwoord and said of her , &ldquo;To be honest I was totally terrified. I hadn&rsquo;t actually been out of my house for seven weeks so I was really anxious. But it felt amazing.&rdquo; Wang, who was fully enjoying the party &mdash; dancing with models and climbing on shoulders &mdash; said he invited her to do the show, &ldquo;Because I love her and I support her.&rdquo;</p><p>Get your legs ready, ladies! Because now you can purchase Lindsay Lohan's 6126 line without those bothersome shipping and handling charges. Last night LiLo launched the stretchy things at our very own Henri Bendel — mom Dina and sister Ali in tow — with more than 300 fans looking on, screaming, and possibly flailing. Lohan wore a smashing dress, shoes, and 6126 leggings but revealed that is one of her favorite designers. </p>“I wanted to go to his show so bad, but his publicist said they weren’t allowing any celebrities to attend,” she said. “So I said, ‘Consider me a normal person then!’ But they wouldn’t.”<br><p><br>That's interesting. Because we were at Wang's show, and included Jessica Szohr, , and Mark Ronson. We guess Wang's team didn't want someone as famous as Lindsay, who attracts photographers and chaos like a magnet does iron filings, and can't help but steal attention from the clothes. But still &#8212 being exiled from the Wang show? Lindsay, if you need a hug, ours are free.</p><p> [WWD]</p><br> <p><p>While the average 24-year-old was contemplating how many nights a week he could call ramen ?dinner,? Alexander Wang was readying his fifth (!) collection for Fashion Week. </p></p> <p><p>So he&rsquo;s a little farther along on the career track than most of his peers?CFDA nomination, check, Vogue editor in front row, check?but he still parties like an art student, with his school friends. Right before his show, despite endless fittings, hair and makeup tests, and so on, Wang rented a full-size, fully loaded party bus for his California-high-school?Parsons-art-school crew and ran around town until the wee hours. Because success is only fun if it means you can buy Hooters T-shirts for the gang.</p></p>Look, Another Picture of Alexander Wang’s Adorable Niece Tags: , Photo: Courtesy of American Express<p>Prabal Gurung holds his show on Pier 57 at 15th Street, a former bus depot which &mdash; not-so-fun fact &mdash; was used as a makeshift detention center for protesters during the . Gurung installs a long, long runway that is enveloped with smoke at one end (but no mirrors &mdash; or only the ones backstage) and sends out layers of chiffon in varying lengths that echo, albeit with a certain sophistication, the long-in-the-back-short-in-the-front aesthetic every teenager seemed to embrace this summer. There are mirrors but no smoke at Threeasfour, held at the in-felicitously named Hole Gallery on the Bowery. The venue reeks of incense &mdash; you might be in a college dorm circa 1968, queuing up your Iron Butterfly album &mdash; but thankfully the clothes don't look back. The aforementioned mirrors show up riveted to spectacular platform shoes (sometimes the model wears one reflective boot instead) and the ensembles, with Threeasfour's trademark curved seams and elaborate construction, employ fabrics that include a surprisingly sporty purple mesh.</p><p>“Definitely Michael Alig–inspired,” says the young woman behind me at the Bess show, citing approvingly the club kid/murderer currently doing twenty years upstate. But in fact, this small event on the first day of the spring 2012 New York collections, in the Bess store on Lafayette Street — the former home of Keith Haring's Pop Shop — far transcends that dumb killer’s dubious charms. The models include lollypop-sucking Lolitas in skirts whose hems are obscured by Beanie Babies, and bare-chested guys in clown collars, walking a makeshift runway covered with superhero bedspreads. It’s a delightfully benevolent vision of transgressive dressing — an exuberant burst of laughter in the dark, a cry of subversive joy in a city that hasn’t been the same since 2001 and a fashion industry that has never fully recovered from 2008.</p><p>• Michelle Obama is the cover model for Condé Nast Traveler's May issue. The dress she's wearing is not the same one she wore on the cover of Vogue's March 2009 issue, though it looks similar. []</p><p>• on finding the perfect location for her store, which opens today on Broome Street: “I’ve heard about Meatpacking, about Bleecker Street, about Brooklyn. So I’ve been scouting all around, all those places where things are happening. But my heart was still in SoHo because there are beautiful buildings and I wanted to open a quieter, spacey shop.” []</p><p>• launched his first underwear collection yesterday on his website. The pieces — crop tops, triangle bra tops, and one-shoulder shelf bras — are part of his T by Alexander Wang collection and retail for $48 to $72. []</p><p>Ever wonder what happens after the blank-faced models glide off the runway and disappear backstage at the end of the show? In the case of Saturday's show, they actually reanimate! Photographer Jeremy Kost has been shooting video for us all week, and he caught the mannequins as they exited the runway and immediately turned into lovely, bouncy cheerleaders. It's actually kind of cute watching them shout "Whooo!" after they've finished walking &#8212; the momentary sense of camaraderie is like a high-school sports team, minus the muscle mass.<br></p><p>There's been a lot of mood black on the runways so far this New York Fashion Week, so some of today's highlights came from the other end of the color palette. showed shiny structured pieces that would work perfectly with last season's , mixed crisp white collars and (furry) trims with intricate embroidery and gold paillettes, and ' Scott Sternberg seemed to have taken inspiration from a day's clear skies over A Little House on the Prairie. See these shows and many more &mdash; including today's Top Model alum on the runway, (with cocktail sticks stuck on her face, it would seem) walking for &mdash; in our of all this season's shows.</p><p>RUNWAY<br>&bull; <br>&bull; <br>&bull; </p><p>'s diffusion label T by Alexander Wang's fall campaign stars musicians Santigold and Spankrock, shot by Dan Jackson. A curly-haired Malgosia Bela bagged the ads, and after we saw all of Saskia de Brauw's shots for yesterday, her male model counterpart Sean O'Pry's campaign images are here today too. <br>See these shots and more in our freshly updated slideshow of . </p><p>For his 2011 pre-fall collection, abandoned his in favor of tough black leather with pieces of khaki, stone-washed denim, and pumpkin-colored suede mixed in. Check out , plus hundreds more pre-fall looks, in our .</p><p>Pre-fall's not over yet, folks! Here are a few new collections, including lots of cropped double-breasted jackets from Wang, peplum skirts from McCartney, and gorgeous monochromatic patterns from Lam.</p><p>&bull;&bull;<br> &bull;</p><p>Resort collections were once intended for winter cruises, but they now comprise a good portion of what labels sell in stores to real people. (You've probably noticed a lot of weird runway stuff doesn't make it to racks.) Images of new lines trickle in as houses release them on a nice relaxed summer schedule — the calm before the September shows. We're getting them up for your viewing pleasure as they roll in: Today, enjoy slideshows of and 's complete 2011 resort collections. As you can see, Wang is pushing socks and sandals.</p><p>At this point you've probably already clicked through our runway galleries of's and s latest shows, but now you can view the collections in video form. Go on. You know you want to see Wang's fur shoes and Gurung's Miss Havisham get-ups in action. </p><p>We're getting into the belly of the beast that is New York Fashion Week: Saturday brought in 18 new shows, including , , , and . sent fluttery tunics and fur-trimmed sunglasses down the runway, and worked with rugged knit sweaters and floor-sweeping ponchos. Meanwhile, showed bias-cut dresses in shades of rust. See them all, plus tons of backstage and front row photos, in our runway galleries.</p><p>• <br>• <br>• </p><p>Today's latest shows are available for your viewing pleasure. Richard Chai showed his mens- and womenswear collections back-to-back, Christian Siriano used funky prints, and Alexander Wang went for an athletic vibe, mixing sporty sweatpants with leather. See the latest runway galleries. </p><p><br><br><br><br></p><p>One of the most surprising moments of Fashion Week so far came from , not his leather-filled, slashed up collection. Meanwhile, brought sleek silhouettes adorned with gold scales and tassels and showed peplums, skirts, and dresses in strong prints and dazzling sequins. See these collections and many more on our updated .</p><p>&bull; <br>&bull; <br>&bull; </p><p>, , and might be the obvious breakthrough faces of 2011, but don&rsquo;t you forget Polish model . The 17-year-old debuted with a spring 2011 ad spot for Prada and then exploded during fall 2011, landing campaign work for Chlo&eacute;, Louis Vuitton, Proenza Schouler, and Yves Saint Laurent cosmetics. For 2012, Bijoch was tapped to be the face of, Trussardi, Paul &amp; Joe, and now Alexander McQueen. Meanwhile, Alexander Wang hired South African hip-hop band, Die Antwoord, for his T by Alexander Wang spring ads.</p><p>See these images, and more shots from &rsquo;s Sonia Rykiel campaign, in our ever-growing .</p><p>It was the biggest day of shows yet for Spring 2011 Fashion Week, and we've reeled in sixteen batches of new looks from , , , , , and many more. put white clay in his models' hair and dressed them in sheer neutral-colored layers, while turned out girly florals and light-washed denim. Meanwhile, there were cone boobs at , cool blues at , and bright color-blocking at . Click below to see the galleries in full.</p><p>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• <br>• </p><p>More new collections have arrived! 's spring 2012 show featured wet-haired models tromping down a concrete catwalk in white ankle-strap shoes, while showed purple metallics, sheer paneling, and bondage-style details. At , leather details and playful red-striped suspenders spiced up a mostly black-and-white palette. See them all, plus , , , and more, below.</p><p>• <br>• <br>• </p><p>New York Fashion Week is almost over, and the last shows are trickling in: today saw 's pastel florals and feather boas, as well as 's Victorian-inspired hourglass shapes. Meanwhile, (a.k.a. the Wang clothes that you might actually be able to afford) showed simple shapes in soft cotton and mesh.</p><p>RUNWAY<br>• <br>• <br>• </p><p>Karl Lagerfeld shepherded his angelic-looking godson, toddler Hudson Kroenig, down the red carpet at last night's party forThe Little Black Jacket: Chanel's Classic Revisited, a betweenLagerfeld and Carine Roitfeld. Kroenig is no stranger to the limelight, having walked the Chanel runway , and he braved the cameras with aplomb (of course, Lagerfeld kept a stern gloved hand on his shoulder at all times). The guest list included in Black Jacket, including Alexander Wang, who admitted he was "sweating all over the place" during the shoot. "Karl kept asking for towels," he said. See Frankie Rayder, Linda Evangelista, and other party guests in our slideshow.</p><p>Meanwhile, the same unnamed source says that 's hat is now in the ring. This seems far-fetched for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Wang has never attempted anything even close to couture. What's more, he probably wouldn't even want the job, considering he's currently making a killing with his surefire formula of slouchy streetwear. (Also, if Ackermann is "way too edgy" for Dior, per this source, then what does that make Wang?) Jacobs lacks couture experience as well, but many critics believe that he's ready to attempt it, particularly after his latest collection. And finally, it's doubtful that LVMH would allow about negotiations between Dior and Jacobs if they wanted to keep him at Vuitton all along. In short, he's still the most likely candidate.</p><p>Last season held his after-party in the gas station next to Milk Studios. It drew a line so big and scary that many people who had planned to go walked away at the mere site of it, not knowing they'd miss a surprise performance by Courtney Love and kick themselves for it later. Fashionologie has heard that this year Wang's after-party — the coolest event in all of Fashion Week as of recent seasons — will take place in a "miniature amusement park." Sources say the carnival party will include cotton candy, games, and "a small set of rides." And they plan to institute some sort of wrist-band system to prevent crashers. Since animals are so in, we'd like to suggest the Wang people rent a petting zoo, including a , and have pony rides with ponies attired in new spring Alexander Wang horsewear.</p><p> [Fashionologie]</p><p>Update: Fashionologie's post has been taken down but! We promise to keep you updated with all news and facts regarding the Wang after party as they break.</p><p>Photographer Ryan McGinley is buddies with , and would invite him to gay dance parties he used to host on the Lower East Side. "Have you seen him dance?" says McGinley. "He could've been a Fly Girl on In Living Color. I never made out with Alex, but we bumped and grinded on the dance floor." []</p><p>SALES:<br>Clothes<br>Through 3/2: Um, Barneys. As in, the , where you'll get your entire wardrobe for the next year for a fraction of the price. Markdowns on Lanvin, Jil Sander, Balenciaga, Manolo &#8230; you get the idea. And if you don't at this point, we're not sure we can help you. 255 W. 17th St., nr. Seventh Ave.; 2/14&#8211;2/15 (8&#8211;9); weekdays (10&#8211;9); weekends (10&#8211;7).</p><p>&#8226 Bidders, get excited! The grand opening of the Lower East Side Auction House is hosting their first auction this year today called &ldquo;Everything Must Go.&rdquo; Stock includes estate furniture and heirlooms imported from upstate New York and Pennsylvania. Register for $10. 139 Norfolk St., nr. Rivington St. (646-478-7689); 4 p.m.. </p><p>&#8226 Perennially fashionable men&rsquo;s and women&rsquo;s hunting-inspired clothes and accessories are reduced by up to 70 percent at Beretta. 317 W. 33rd St., nr. Eighth Ave. (718-747-1656); 4/8 and 4/9 (9&ndash;6:30); 4/10 (9&ndash;5).<br><br>&#8226 Tufi Duek is already marking down the spring collection by 60 percent; jersey dresses were $395 but are now $140. 530 Broadway, nr. Spring St., tenth fl. (212-925-8277); 4/8&ndash;4/10 (9:30&ndash;7).</p><p>Last night, and Love magazine threw one hell of a bash to celebrate the designer's spring collection. The mayhem was enough to rival any college rager — by now, you've no doubt heard of the Jell-O shots, glow sticks, special performance by Tyler the Creator — and editor in chief of Love, Katie Grand, was there to capture it all. Click through to see her personal photos from the evening. </p><p><br></p><p>As part of his fall 2012 Confessional Series, Alexander Wang chronicled Shalom Harlow's return to the runway (and wearing of his mesh face-cage) after her four-year-long hiatus. "I was scouted at a Cure concert," Harlow remembers. "A model scout approached me there and asked me if I modeled, and I thought that was ludicrous. When I started coming to do shows in New York, New York had a pretty electric energy then. It was the early-nineties, and there was a lot of really fun theatrical types that were designing, and so the runway kind of became this stage for all of these mega model personalities to flaunt their stuff." She adds, "This idea of returning to the catwalk is &mdash; I do feel some nerves, and I do feel the height of those shoes. I hope I don't slip was the next thought." Harlow rounds out the video, saying, "I think there's a lot projected on beautiful women, period. At least, maybe this is just my fear, but I do sometimes feel dismissed before I've even been allowed to participate. I have moments of feeling really wounded. But I am pretty optimistic, and I do enjoy a lot of my life. And I'm peaceful inside."</p><p>The mere sight of the line outside Alexander Wang's show stopped us dead. Despite our punctuality, it snaked three abreast down the street and around the corner. "I feel like I'm waiting for the Backstreet Boys to come out," groused a woman nearby. Now there's an idea for PR companies: Entertain the cold, cranky journalists with some choreography and close-harmony singing.</p><p>By the time we got inside, it was mere minutes to showtime, leaving us little time to confirm whether singer Roisin Murphy looked as insane as usual. She did, however, sport some skintight, rubbery pants with teeny holes. Perfect for ventilation, or if she is trying to sprout something through them, but maybe not ideal for cold temperatures.</p><p>When first introduced his T collection in spring 2009, he focused on — no surprise here — T-shirts. Now that he's mastered the most basic of basics, he's taking T to the next level, with a full-blown ready-to-wear collection. The cohesive fall/winter 2010 line introduces knits, leather detailing, and more elaborate construction, but is still very Wang in essence — not to mention plebe-friendly. Hoodies, hats, scarves, sweats, floor-length dresses, and more are all priced between $60 and $215, and will be available for purchase on starting August 1. Click ahead to see a few of our favorite looks from the expanded collection.</p><br> <p><p>Y ou can&rsquo;t keep away from a dance party. He&rsquo;ll get down almost anywhere, from the grubby Williamsburg gay dance garage to the old Sunday-night party at the Maritime Hotel to traveling German raves that are text-invitation-only to his model pal Agyness Deyn&rsquo;s party house at the Coachella music festival (where Wang dispatched a model-terrifying desert insect on the wall with a deadly high-kick). He&rsquo;ll drive to Philly for a good dance party or fly to Barcelona or hit the ?underwear? party in ramshackle Cherry Grove. On the seventh floor of on Fashion&rsquo;s Night Out this past fall, Mark Lee, the store&rsquo;s newly installed CEO, who hadn&rsquo;t met Wang before, says he couldn&rsquo;t get close enough to introduce himself. ?He was dancing like a madman,? Lee says, ?like it was the Mudd Club in 1979. He was at the dead center of a mosh pit of fans. It was the night before his show, and he was covered in sweat.? </p></p> <p><p>The next night, Wang ended his show with a dancer&rsquo;s spin at the top of the runway, hands clasped over his head, grinning and almost falling over, before heading to his own always-major after-party. This time, he installed a mini San Gennaro festival by the West Side Highway, with a bouncy castle, games of chance and skill, and a cranked-up carousel. There he, of course, danced. </p></p> <p><p>In many ways, dance party is his brand: He&rsquo;s built an approximately $25 million business on cool but benign day-into-night clothes for lithe, pragmatic downtown girls who all appear to work in galleries or PR or in fashion somehow themselves?anything vaguely ?creative.? Wang synthesized the street-style-blog-derived notion of looking like a ?model off duty,? a louche fantasy of effortlessly sexy living if ever there was one. After all, what exactly does a model do when she&rsquo;s off duty? The Wang girl is, therefore, always ready to go out, dance with careful abandon, drink in hand, accessorized with a cigarette and a handsomely scruffy boy, swaying her hair around, pushing it behind her ears. Mimetic youth is what sells his lower-priced T line of tanks, tees, and sweatpants to Upper East Side moms who probably won&rsquo;t make it to Coachella this year.</p></p> <p><p>Wang&rsquo;s clothes have been described as both androgynous and ?humorously slutty.? Not unlike Wang, a flirty, pretty, beaming 27-year-old who talks quickly and holds himself lightly, as if to belie the weightiness of the expectations upon him. He&rsquo;s still young enough to have his high-school friends say he hasn&rsquo;t changed?two of them, Victoria and Vanessa Traina, who styled his early looks, still see him almost every week. His closest friend, Ryan Korban (who doubles as his interior designer), he met at Parsons before dropping out after his sophomore year. </p></p> <p><p></p></p> <p><p>That was in 2004. He and his sister-in-law put together what he thought would be a unisex line of cashmere sweaters with pictures of his cool-girl friends woven on the backs. By the fall of 2008, he had won the Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund Award, which includes $200,000 and membership in an elite club. CFDA president and Anna Wintour became his, in his words, ?fairy godmothers.? Von Furstenberg would call him at ten o&rsquo;clock at night and ask how he was, if he was sleeping, taking care of himself.</p></p> <p><p>Wintour launched the fund to invigorate American fashion with fresh talent, and, she e-mails to say, Wang ?embodies absolutely everything that it takes to be a winner? of the award. ?He is like or inasmuch as he has big aspirations for what he thinks his brand can achieve, and he knows he can do it because he has this ability to connect with the way his generation wants to dress.? (Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza were the first winners in 2004.) The Fashion Fund works both as a Hollywood-style star-making system and also as a business-development workshop. It began in the boom, when many in the city&rsquo;s industry were worried that New York lacked enough new designers to sop up all that consumer confidence. Wang, however, won as the downturn was beginning. ?He came on the scene just at the right time,? says Julie Gilhart, who until last fall was the women&rsquo;s fashion director at Barneys. ?Designer prices were rocketing upward, and luxury customers were not afraid to buy less-expensive things as long as those things had style, quality, and, in Alex&rsquo;s case, image. This all adds up to a very fast-tracking, successful business.?</p></p> <p><p>?A designer, you&rsquo;re designing a lifestyle, you&rsquo;re designing a brand, you&rsquo;re not just designing clothes,? Wang says, one arm of his loose-fitting T-shirt pushed up, in sneakers and black cords, BlackBerry at the ready on the white marble-top table in his showroom. He&rsquo;s preparing for his February 12 show?there are stacks of model face cards on the other white marble tables lined up, cafeteria style, in the room?while renovations at both his first store, on Grand Street in Soho, and his new $2 million Tribeca loft are running behind schedule (his sublet ran out, and he&rsquo;s been living in a hotel). ?I never say that I&rsquo;m an artist. I like to create things that lead to a bigger picture.?</p></p>Kiss, Kiss, Shoot, ShootA photographic portfolio, taken at the shows in Paris, Milan, and New York.<p>Prigent and Constant start filming for ten straight days ("and some nights") on Thursday in preparation for the Alexander Wang show on Saturday, the DVF show on Sunday, the Narciso Rodriguez show on Tuesday, and the Jeremy Scott show on Wednesday. This is the first time they will be using two crews (four to six people are in each crew) so that they can film two designers at the same time. "We are not going to sleep a lot," Constant said. The show begins airing in September.</p>The Approval Matrix: Week of February 20, 2012Our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies.<p>Performance-art duo The Bumbys imagine the coming New York apocalypse, with zombies outfitted by Alexander Wang.</p><p></p><p><br>Related: <br></p><p>This season's Alexander Wang show was located all the way out at Pier 94, so far that we wondered if we should have brought our passports. But every editor in town, including Carine Roitfeld and everyone who's ever worked at Vogue, made the torturous trek, befitting Wang's stature as designer-darling of the moment. Teen blogging-sensation-of-the-moment Tavi walked down the runway in gray hair and a turban, surrounded by a camera crew from FashionTelevision and a man who looked like a producer. "Go talk to her, she's a supporter," the man said, gesturing to Diane von Furstenberg. Tavi approached the great DVF, looking a bit queasy, and we can't say we blame her. We almost stepped on DVF's toes trying to get to our seats and very nearly threw up from the shame ourselves. But it certainly looked like the kid got a successful interview. All we know is, Tavi has a way better set-up than we did when we were thirteen and had to make extra scratch by babysitting.</p><p>David Sims shot the fall ad campaigns for both and McQ by Alexander McQueen, which were released today and press release respectively. Sims is known for his gray backgrounds and somber black-and-white images, but don't these ads look particularly alike, with the mussy damp bangs, head-on stance, and so forth? Which isn't to say anyone copied anyone else, of course. Perhaps standing solemnly in your fitted wool coat with your hands by your sides and your hair all crazylike will just be a big trend this fall.</p><p>Huh. We walked away with the impression he was inspired by people who had just killed somebody or were on their way to kill somebody. But sometimes that is terribly chic, no? Anyway, we're not sure about these new Wang leg warmers. They may end up being the kind of thing we lust after, then try on for fun, because &#8212; don't you know? &#8212; they're $500 (just speculating here), but it's a good thing we can't afford them anyway because they make our thighs pucker something unsightly, only drawing attention to the exact fattest part of our body. As we've seen, , much less a normal person. They're sort of a faux-looking thigh-high boot, and did last fall's over-the-knees boots really catch on? Outside of the uniforms for bottle girls at this city's skeaziest finest nightclubs (ahem, Provocateur), no.</p><p>EVENTS<br>TOMORROW<br>• Get glowing with a free illuminating makeover from Stila at Sephora, and receive a free gift too. 555 Broadway, nr. Prince St. (212-625-1309); 12–7.</p><p>ENDING SUNDAY<br>• Cool down at the Donna Karan Cashmere Mist counter at and receive a hand, arm, and back chair massage with your purchase of any Donna Karan Cashmere Mist product. 1000 Third Ave., at 59th St. (212-705-2000); 10–8:30.</p><p>SALES<br>STARTING TOMORROW<br>• Select sofas and furniture are 20 percent off at Semi-Annual Sale. Floor sample designs are also up to 60 percent off. Mariposa Deluxe chairs are $319 (originally $399) and a stained oak veneer and brushed steel dresser is $1,755 (originally $2,195).Through 8/31. 69 Greene St., nr. Broome St. (212-966-8188); M–F (10–7), S–Su (noon–6).</p><p>EVENTS<br>TOMORROW<br>• Check out Clinique’s new skin-care diagnostic tool for iPad at . Shoppers will receive a complimentary consultation and take home a free travel-size Acne Solutions spot healing gel. Call to make an appointment. Walk-ins are welcome if space is available. 597 Fifth Ave., nr. 48th St. (212-980-6534); 11–7.</p><p>• Join Plush Fashion Styling at the Maidstone for exclusive shopping from NYLA STAR, Malini Murjani, Basta Surf, and Belle Plage. The Maidstone, 207 Main St., East Hampton. 4–6. RSVP to .</p><p>SUNDAY<br>• Support young cancer patients at the first annual Runway to Recovery charity fashion show at the Hyatt Regency Wind Watch Hotel. Proceeds will support families of childhood cancer patients. 1717 Motor Parkway, Hauppauge, Long Island (516-903-3518); 9–12:30. Buy tickets at .</p><p>EVENTS<br>TOMORROW<br>• Enjoy a Premium Tan from for eight cents (originally $39) with this . Text the coupon to your phone or print it out. The deal includes tanning beds and spray tans and is good for one session per person (75th Street location only). No appointment necessary. Through 6/6. 207 W. 75th St., nr. Broadway (212-595-9700); M?F (10?10), S (10?8), Su (12?8).</p><p>SUNDAY<br>• Designer Adam Lippes will open up his for a day of dog adoptions. New dog owners will get a leash and T-shirt, and 10 percent of all other proceeds that day will be donated to the Humane Society. Through 5/31. 678 Hudson St., nr 14th St. (212-229-2838); 12?7.</p><p>MONDAY<br>• spa hosts a night of summer-inspired beauty, including a watermelon pedicure. Food and watermelon martinis will be served, and prizes of free treatments are up for grabs. 55 W. 8th St., nr. Sixth Ave. (212-807-8054); 4?8. RSVP: evesalon.nyc@gmail.com.</p><p>SALES<br>STARTING TOMORROW<br>• is having a one-day sale, featuring 40 to 70 percent off designers like , , Rogan, , and more. Through 5/30. 505 Greenwich St., nr. Spring St. (212-925-0882); 12?8. </p><p>ENDING TOMORROW<br>• Snag spring merchandise for up to 80 percent off at the ready-to-wear sample sale. Through 5/30. 225 W. 39th St., nr. Seventh Ave., ninth fl.; W?F (9?7), S (12?4).</p><p>SALES<br>STARTING TOMORROW<br>• Beauty and grooming products from Ole Henriksen, Molton Brown, Red Flower, Seda France, and more are 50 to 75 percent off at garage sale. Through 8/7. 196 N. 10th St., nr. Driggs Ave. (718-218-6621); F (10–9), S (9–8), Su (11–7).</p><p>• Spend $1000 and receive a 20 percent discount on your next purchase at summer sale, with discounts of 50 percent off on seasonal tableware and accessories. A stacked chrome-and-copper accent lamp from the 1940s is $275 (originally $850). A chaise lounge from the 1960s is $2400 (originally $9800), and a Thomas O'Brien for Hickory Chair dining table is $2400 (originally $5619). Through 9/3. 419 Broome St., nr. Crosby St. (212-966-1500); M–S (11–6). </p><p>ENDING TOMORROW<br>• Dresses, shoes, and swimwear are 20 to 50 percent off at . Big Buddha oxfords are $26 (originally $52), Elizabeth O'Brien Berg pin-up style swimsuits are $92 (originally $184), and Yumi Kim silk dresses are $133 (originally $166). 99 Franklin St., nr. Milton St., Greenpoint (718-389-0837); Th–F (3–10). </p><p>EVENTS<br>STARTING TOMORROW<br>• Ecofriendly water bottles are on sale at pop-up shop at . Through 7/11. 712 Fifth Ave., nr. 56th St. (855-692-5796); M–S (10–8), Su (noon–7).</p><p>SALES<br>ENDING TOMORROW<br>• Select merchandise from , , , , and more is 40 to 70 percent off at . 1368 Lexington Ave., at 91st St. (212-876-1368); M–S (10:30–6:30).</p><p>ONGOING<br>• Select furniture and accessories are 15 to 50 percent off at Design Within Reach's annual Yard Sale. Through 7/26. Sale available online at and at all locations. M–S (11–7), Su (noon–6).</p><p>• Merchandise from is half-off and merchandise from Cauliflower is 30 percent off at the Pleats Please boutique. The Bilbao bag is $250 (originally $500), and the sleeveless pleated baby-doll tunic is $182.50 (originally $365). Through 6/17. 128 Wooster St., nr. Prince St. (212-226-3600); M–S (11–7), Su (noon–6).</p><p>EVENTS<br>STARTING TOMORROW<br>• Browse the Independent Designer Pop Shop at , with apparel and accessories from Atlantis Jewelry, Ceola by Imani Alexander, Clo Studio, Wendel Johnston, and more. Through 8/8. Chelsea Market. 75 Ninth Ave., nr. 15th St; Store hours M–Su (11–8), Reception W (6–9). RSVP at .</p><p>SALES<br>STARTING TOMORROW<br>• resort and spring ready-to-wear collections are up to 70 percent off. Dresses and jackets are $180 (originally $685 and $625), tops are $100 (originally $350) and Men's T by Alexander Wang tops are $100 (originally $145). Through 8/7. 97 Greene St., nr. Prince St.; W (3–8), Th–S (10–7), Su (10–4).</p><p>ONGOING<br>• Receive 40 percent off vintage and antique furniture, art, lighting, and home accessories at the Sentimento Antiques closing sale. Starting August 8, discounts jump to 50 percent. Through 8/19. 306 E 61st St., nr. Second Ave. (212-750-3111); M–Th (10–6), F (10–3).</p><p>[The defendants at Alexander Wang Inc.] has complied with all applicable wage and hour and leave laws, and there is no basis whatsoever for plaintiffs&rsquo; frivolous and entirely unsupportable accusations that defendants have harassed them or discriminated against them on the basis of their race, or on any other protected basis ...</p><p>[The plaintiffs are]two disgruntled former employees with axes to grind ... who have mischaracterized their former workplace as a hovel, while attempting to portray defendants as 'sweatshop owners.'</p><p>[Lu and Durante were]properly paid all wages owed ...provided with regular and multiple breaks during their work time ... [and] eligible for and provided with paid vacation, paid sick days, paid holidays, paid personal days, medical and dental insurance and other benefits.</p><p>You've read the . You've seen the . Now, watch the video that captures the total fashion mayhem that was 's after-party, a veritable carnival complete with bouncy castle, bumper cars, and riding a carousel. Terry Richardson gave it the thumbs-up, said it reminded her of a party at Coachella, and Joe Zee called it better than Disneyland. Finally — a fashion party that doesn't inspire wrist cutting! </p><p>Alexander Wang makes clothes for "modern-day carnivores," according to the designer himself. "My girls like to go out, they want to have fun, they want to explore," Wang told Jada Yuan in this backstage video, and you can count Sarah Jessica Parker, Santigold, and Erin Wasson among those followers. Press play to see models dancing, Parker explain why she only goes to fashion shows once every five years, and Yuan's guess at the inspiration behind Wang's condom line.</p><p>We went backstage before Alexander Wang's show to talk with Noni Cream of Butter London about the shades appearing on the runway's well-manicured hands: Fall is about texture, and for Alexander Wang that texture is matte. Click to watch.</p><p> is a genius businessman. He's slowly rolling out menswear with a small collection of tops under his lower-priced T line that bridges the gap between the label-whoring guy who seeks out jeans with a and the guy whose significant other buys all his clothes for him at the Gap. All too often men's designers that suggest they have paid the conservative fashion-fearing male, many of whom shop exclusively online to avoid the embarrassment of being seen in an actual clothing store, no consideration. But Wang's first collection is decidedly non-flamboyant. “It’s a guy who doesn’t think he’s fashionable, but is just cool and has taste and style," he last month. "That’s much more appealing than a guy who’s fighting his girlfriend for the mirror." A video preview of the line recently went up on Wang's website. It depicts model Vincent LaCrocq hanging around a basketball court in a filmy tank top with those really large armholes that would be great for this god-awful heat wave. Just think, ladies: You can be an Alex Wang couple now. Looking sweaty will never be the same!</p><p>Artist Jeremy Kost went backstage at last night to capture the wunder-designer in a Warholian screen test. Watch, stare, giggle with delight.</p><p>See the collection.</p><p>Vogue organized a contest on Polyvore to get the plebeians excited about buying things at Fashion's Night Out. Polyvore users and some Vogue editors will create sets from merchandise by retailers participating in the third annual shopping festival. Each week going forward, Blake Lively, , and Grace Coddington will pick their favorite two sets. Then Vogue.com readers will vote on their favorite, which will be crowned the winner on September 9. The prize for the best set is a trip to New York with a friend to tour the Vogue office and watch a Vogue photo shoot. So, do promotional events like this make you excited for FNO, part three? Or were you with Cathy Horyn when she , "I don't want it to continue"?</p><p>, who hasn't been seen on a catwalk in years, popped up in 's runway show just a few minutes ago! (Her , Rupert Sanders, was nowhere in sight.) Clad in a white hooded anorak and matching skirt, her dark hair slicked back in a ponytail, and her head taped with a glow-in-the-dark strip, she walked without fanfare in the middle of the lineup. Forget ; this is a comeback.</p><p>Related:<br> <br> <br> <br> </p><p>• 's new campaign for his T line stars his buddy Zoe Kravitz with model Max Motta. Meanwhile, the video for his main collection campaign stars Abbey Lee. []</p><p>• American Apparel clearly believes in the trend-setting fashion power of cats. []</p><p>• Esteban Cortazar designed a capsule collection for Exito, which is sort of the Latin American equivalent of Target. []</p><p>• CEO Angela Ahrendts cashed in 400,000 of her company shares this week for a nice little sum of $5.3 million. She still has 364,000 shares leftover, not counting stock options and future share awards. []</p><p>• British Elle is now part of a TV show airing in the U.K. about "budding journalist Lydia as she moves to London hoping for her big break in the industry." But it's called Push, not The City UK. []</p><p>At the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala celebrating “American Woman: Fashioning a Nation,” on Monday evening in NYC, fashion literally imitated art.   Hosted by Anna Wintour, Patrick Robinson of the Gap and Oprah Winfrey, the red carpet was flooded with the A-list’s most fashionable men and women, including fashion designers, supermodels and actresses, who looked runway ready in luxurious couture.</p><p></p><p>It was no surprise that Burberry darlings Emma Watson and Claire Danes were outfitted in custom-designed gowns created by the Brit labels Chief Creative Officer Christopher Bailey.  The beauties (Claire’s plus one was hubby Hugh Dancy, who also rocked Burberry!) also sat at his dinner table, along with Daniel Craig and his wife Satsuki Mitchell, Edward Norton and famed photographer Mario Testino.</p><p></p><p>Zoe Saldana and Diane Kruger, who usually opt for eccentric and complicated couture, walked down the carpet in stunning, minimalist style.  Zoe looked flawless in a navy blue Calvin Klein Collection, one-sleeved gown, while Diane opted for an ivory, simply sleeved number from the same collection. Just goes to show, simple can be just as dramatic as elaborate!</p><p>Eva Mendes defined Hollywood glamour girl, wearing a black, ruched, rose print Dolce & Gabbana strapless mermaid gown, which flaunted her covetable curves, while Kerry Washington wore a Thakoon for Gap gown, which will be auctioned off for charity.</p><p></p><p>Other charitably chic guests?  M.I.A and Zoe Kravitz rocked edgy Alexander Wang for Gap gowns, Jessica Alba and Vera Farmiga looked gorgeous in Sophie Theallat for Gap and Kirsten Dunst and Jamie Bochert stunned in Rodarte for Gap.  All of the Gap collaborations will be displayed throughout the month at the Gap pop-up store in NYC, and will be auctioned off on their websites, with all proceeds goig to The MET in support of The Costume Institute.</p><p>Hilary Swank looked New York City smart on Monday, stepping out at the 2010 Fidelity Future Stage Finale in a lace-sleeved number from Andrew GN’s Fall 2009 collection.  The gorgeous actress rocked the skintight stunner with simple black peep-toed heels, looking super stylish as well as super skinny!</p><p></p><p>Jessica Biel may have landed on our Worst Dressed list for the fringed, sleeveless vest, we spotted her in, but the A-Team babe made up for it later on in the day, scoring a slot on the Best list, as well.  Hitting a Parisian photocall for her summer blockbuster film, Jessica looked babelicious in a body-skimming jumpsuit from Erin Fetherston’s Spring 2010 collection, which she paired with Christian Louboutin heels.</p><p></p><p>Dakota Fanning was anything but dull in shades of grey, while out and about in Los Angeles. The Twilight star paired her J Brand 901 leggings with Prada heeled sandals, a grey jersey top and her fave Alexander Wang Rocco duffle, resulting in a delightfully edgy yet casual look. Maggie Gyllenhaal hit the NYC Ballet’s Dance with the Dancers benefit, gorgeously draped in a 3.1 Phillip Lim jumpsuit, offsetting the dark duds with cream heels, earrings and bright red lipstick.</p><p>What Twilight hunk looked tres GQ in Montreal?  Check out the gallery in Style and find out.</p><p>The military trend is everywhere this Spring, and it is no surprise. Though the traditional “enlistment” look, tends to be made up of oversized jackets and baggy cargo pants, the latest trend is a little more flattering and refined.  Khloe Kardahsian and Hilary Duff have both gotten it right, stepping out in skinny “Houlihan” cargos from , which retail for $230.</p><p></p><p>Khloe headed to a polo match in Miami Beach, wearing her Houlihan’s beltedin brown with a black top, a Panama hat and Alexander Wang Leopard Wedges, while Hilary rocked hers with an oversized sweater and platform sandals.</p><p></p><p>The pants are available online at , in Vintage Olive, Black, Sahara, Vintage Navy And Sharkskin.</p><p>See the girls in their skinny cargos by checking out the gallery in Style.</p><p>The CFDA Awards took center stage in New York's fashion scene last night, with top American designers, celebrities, socialites and supermodels merging at Lincoln Center to tote the accomplishments and contributions made to American fashion by the industries' most influential and statement-making experts.</p><p>Marc Jacobs scooped up the International Award for his contribution to Louis Vuitton. Rodarte designers, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, took home the most prized Womenswear Designer of the Year Award, and Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough (recently bloodied by a Kiefer Sutherland headbutt) nabbed the accessories award. For the Emerging Talent Award, celebrity red carpet favorite Alexander Wang picked up the prize.</p><p>While the CFDA Awards are about the designers and industry insiders, everyone was looking to see who dressed who and what they were wearing.</p><p>Supermodel Heidi Klum showed off her high-end style in a silver-crushed lame Michael Kors asymmetrical mini, Diane Kruger also went mini in a flashy-yet-classy body-hugging Jason Wu belted number, Blake Lively scored high style points in a neon pink Michael Kors sheath dress with pockets, and more!<br></p><p>Although it was a fashion affair, some stars missed the style mark. Victoria's Secret Angel Doutzen Kroes wore a long, red Zac Posen gown that resembled a flamenco dancer's number, Park Avenue gal Fabiola Beracasa turned a fab Proenza Shouler number into a freaky, feathery costume, Michelle Trachtenberg looked stuffed into a Behnaz Sarafpour ensemble, and more!</p><p></p><p>Over the weekend celebs weren’t afraid of adding a little color to the mix. While some looked totally smashing in their color happy attire, others, including a certain Jersey Shore star, encountered clashing Situations in mismatched duds.<br></p><p>Nicole Scherzinger has been fulfilling her X-Factor judging duties in high style.  After rocking two Victoria Beckham dresses flawlessly, the Pussycat Doll showed up in a red and fuchsia pencil dress, which totally flaunted her fab figure.  Paired with pink lips, a red manicure/pedicure and bright red platforms, Nicole scored our Best look of the day.  The Situation has been busy jetsetting around the world, promoting his hit MTV television show in his infamous Jersey Shore style, so maybe he was a little fatigued when he accidentally sported different colored Reebok kicks on his feet?</p><p></p><p>As for ladies who opted for non-color, Dakota Fanning was a Twilight sight during a day of traveling, wearing an oversized Fluxus Funk Top with skinny jeans, motorcycle boots and her fave Alexander Wang Rocco bag.  Her cute costar Ashley Greene was haute-to-trot as well in neutral tones, wearing super sexy Pour la Victoire heels with skinny jeans and a black top.</p><p>What spicy Latina star shook her stuff in every color under the sun at the World Cup closing ceremony?  Check out the gallery in Style and find out.</p><p>It looked like true love was in the air for True Blood star Alexander Skarsgard Saturday night at the Spike TV Scream Awards.  </p><p></p><p>RadarOnline.com saw the Best Villain Award winner and Kate Bosworth acting like quite the happy couple backstage and they were spotted trying hard not to be seen together at the Chateau Marmont after the event.</p><p>Kate presented the award to her True Blood honey. When we asked the petite actress where she and Alexander met she told us "On the movie", referring to Straw Dogs, the movie they just finished filming together.</p><p></p><p>Kate looked gorgeous in an Alexander Wang dress and Alexander McQueen shoes (wait a minute, do we see an Alexander obsession here?) and backstage at the award show she and Alexander were very sweet together. The couple was very affectionate, holding hands as Alexander played with Kate's hair while they chatted with friends in the green room.  </p><p></p><p>Kate and Alexander hugged a few times and were often spotted whispering to each other.  As Alexander left the green room to go on stage gave Kate playfully slapped him on his butt a few times and said "Go, go, go."  </p><p>The golden haired couple was spotted at a Britney Spears concert in Louisiana last September but a rep claimed -- you guessed it -- they were "just friends."</p><p>Right!</p><p>Super-stylish RiRi stepped out in a demure (for her) getup July 1 in NYC, donning a chic, curve-clinging Alexander Wang mini dress. Hot! With sheer sleeves and grommet embellished shoulders, the edgy trendsetter teamed her fab frock with classic black Louboutin pumps.</p><p>On August 13, also in the Big Apple while promoting her new show Kourtney & Khloe Take Miami, Khloe Kardashian rocked out in the same sexy sheer number! The leggy Kardashian was there for an appearance on the Wendy Williams Show, finishing off the look with black booties and a knuckle-to-knuckle cocktail ring.</p><p>While everyone is wondering who wore it better -- Khloe exclusively told RadarOnline.com's Style Guy "I feel like a lot of people copy Rihanna."</p><p>"I'll take a vibe of hers," but the E! Reality starlet thinks it is most important to, "stay true to yourself and dress for you, because you will see when it is forced."</p><p>Toned down for Rihanna and dramatic for the Kardashian -- in our book, it's a tie!</p><p></p><p>Celebs raced over to Singapore last weekend for the 2009 Formula 1 F1 Rocks.  The 3-day long music festival in Fort Canning Park, which kicked off the Singapore Grand Prix, was hosted by fashionista Lindsay Lohan.  Pussycat Dolls Nicole Scherzinger, who dates Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton, pulled out of her hosting duties earlier this month, but still managed to make an appearance at the ultra glam event.  Nichole must have coordinated with her beau before choosing this stunning orange Alexander Wang number, which was a perfect match with his racing team polo!</p><p></p><p>Lohan was joined by girlfriend, Sam Ronson, who happened to be DJing at the event.</p><p>Sometimes, it's not just the clothes that get people talking during fashion week in New York. </p><p>On Valentine's Day, the still-not-official couple AnnaLynne McCcord and Kellan Lutz took their love further into the spotlight, openly canoodling at the Monarchy Collection Show. Possibly dreaming of more private quality time later that night, according to a source, Lutz eyed the KY Yours & Mine lubricant offered backstage. </p><p>Speaking of naughty accessories, that same night, Sarah Jessica Parker stopped by a showing of Alexander Wang's new fashion line and the debut of his designs for Proper Attire condoms. Says a showgoer: "[Parker] was in a totally sweet mood and seemed so happy to be there."</p><p>The night his pup passed away, Oscar-nominee Mickey Rourke attended the Domenico Vacca show. Despite getting escorted straight to the Tenjune Bar, the former-embattled star didn't look twice at the tempting goods. "He didn't even glance at the liquor and sipped on Smart Water," an onlooker confirms. </p><p>Miley Cyrus always seems have some controversy surrounding her, but ever since she parted ways with her Hannah Montana personality, the not-yet-legal star has made it clear that she Can’t Be Tamed! This past month Miley has been traveling the world promoting her new album, wearing skimpy and barely-there getup and grinding provocatively onstage with her dancers, but it was her scandalous onstage ensemble at the MuchMusic Awards, which really caught our attention.</p><p></p><p>With her father Billy Ray in attendance, she performed her new hit song in a see through, cutout leotard, itty-bitty leather shorts, striped athletic socks and open-toed Alexander Wang booties, not leaving much to the imagination.</p><p></p><p>In Europe, earlier this month, Miley rocked almost as edgy getup. From her spandex cutout mini dress, which bore a striking resemblance to Julia Roberts’ iconic Pretty Woman dress, to a spandex, corseted leotard, which hardly covered her bum, the previously family friendly phenomenon made it quite clear that she is coming of age!</p><p></p><p>What do you think about Miley’s sexy, new look? Check out the gallery in Style and let us know.</p><p>Kelly Rutherford lived up to her Gossip Girl rep, showing up for the Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York on Monday, wearing a fierce, leopard mini with black tights and heels.  Blake’s onscreen mom toted a luxe Hermes bag to the swanky runway show, which recognizes and supports emerging designers.  Past recipients of the Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award include Alexander Wang, Rodarte and Proenza Schouler.</p><p></p><p>Cheetah Girl and Rob Kardashian’s ex, the lovely Adrienne Bailon, channeled Kim Kardashian in a one-shouldered mini, showing off her svelte figure in sophisticated style.</p><p></p><p>What Private Practice star shed her scrubs for glam gear?  Check out the gallery in Style to find out.</p><p>Kristin Cavallari hit the NewNowNext Awards in Los Angeles on Tuesday night looking tres fab in a nude and cream mini.  The sexily structured dress showed off her flawless legs, which were elongated by strappy, cream platforms.  LA Ink star Kat Von D hit the same bash, though wasn’t quite as stylin’ as The Hills star.  Kat exposed her extensive collection of tattoos, wearing a safety-pinned blazer over a bandeau top with belted leggings, showing off WAY more than we needed to see.<br></p><p>Jessica Biel sported an emerald and sapphire Oscar de la Renta look we weren’t so keen on, while Scarlett Johansson and Kate Hudson showed off their bombshell style in Stella McCartney getup.  Dakota Fanning and Rosie Huntington-Whitely rocked the same Alexander Wang Rocco duffle, both scoring slots on the Best list, but the Jersey Shore crew weren’t so fortunate, spotted wearing terribly tacky threads in Los Angeles.</p><p></p><p>Who else rocked and shocked?  Check out the gallery in Style to find out.</p><p>Fringe is making a comeback, and celebs have been spotted in the trendy trim, everywhere from the Coachella Music Festival to the fancy Met Gala. It was difficult not to notice sexy supermodel Gisele in her skintight Alexander Wang on Monday night, walking the red carpet, with her leather tassels swinging behind her. But you can get the look, without the drama. Take it from Kristen Bell, who wore a sweetly fringed Monique Lhuillier dress to The Genesis Awards in March.</p><p></p><p>The easiest way to add a tad of tassel to your ensemble? Try on a pair of moccasin boots, which can be worn with anything from cutoff shorts and a tank, like Kristin Cavallari, or a flirty floral dress a la Nicole Richie.</p><p></p><p>Stay away from tacky tassels, like Phoebe Price’s revealing top, which will leave you looking like an Old West saloon girl!</p><p>What supermodel rocked a bohochic fringed shirt to Coachella last month? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.</p><p>Paris Hilton's musical stylings haven't quite hit the platinum plateaus that Rihanna's have, but the Hilton heiress can beat out any celeb in the copy and compete fashion game! Who says Stars Are Blind? Not when it comes to a fab dress or a statement necklace!</p><p>Rihanna avoided paps with the ol-cell phone trick while leaving Kanye West's apartment last month,styled out in a trend-setting two toned Alexander Wang strapless mini-dress and simple black pumps. Known as a fashion innovator, Riri knows how to make a fashion statement!</p><p>Last night, the heiress known as Paris soaked up paparazzi attention posing in the exact same mini number, while at the same time, sporting ex-bff Nicole Richie's designed House of Harlow 1960 resin necklace. The jet-setting socialite may not be a bargain hunter, but a style stealer for sure!</p><p>What would Rihanna say to the Hiltie: Shut Up And Drive!</p><p></p><p>Sexy summer style was all over the red carpet of the 2010 ESPY Awards in Los Angeles Wednesday night, where the dresses were short, tight and revealing! The ESPN awards show, which attracted the likes of Ashley Greene, Zac Efron, Mark Wahlberg and Marisa Miller had a casual but chic undertone, but it appeared that some people didn’t get the a la mode memo, dressing in over the top duds.</p><p></p><p>Ashley Greene continued her very vixen style streak, wearing a sleeveless Versace Fall 2010 frock, which featured an asymmetrical hemline and a high neck. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse star paired the red haute number with Brian Atwood studded heels (we would have liked to see her in something open-toed, but oh well) and an edgy Padma by Padma Lakshmi cuff.</p><p></p><p>Amber Rose, who generally uses the red carpet to show off her covetable curves, was shockingly appropriately attired in a mellow yellow Natalia Romano floorlength, which featured layered of refined tiers, while Brooklyn Decker delightfully poured her bikini bod into a carnation pink Herve Leger bandage dress.</p><p></p><p>Marisa Miller flaunted her Sports Illustrated figure in a nude strapped-and-backed Alexander Wang LBD, which she accessorized with plenty of Neil Lane bling, while Holly Robinson Peete drowned in an unflattering, navy blue embellished strapless.</p><p>What hot, High School coed looked all grown up in dapper fashion? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.</p><p>Over the past few years, Britney Spears has definitely made a couture comeback, but on Thursday afternoon the Toxic star relapsed into the ultimate fashion faux pas. Stepping out in Los Angeles clothed in a “wife beater” tank tucked into unflattering, skintight shorts, white tube socks pulled up to her knees and brightly hued sneakers, the pop star scored herself the Worst look of the day!</p><p></p><p>Dakota Fanning has been super busy promoting her latest flick, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. While other stars her age have been prancing around the world, scantily clad in inappropriate attire, the teenage stunner has been rocking super chic and classy duds, totally suited for someone her age. On Thursday, the blonde beauty paid a visit to Jimmy Kimmel Live!, in superior summer style. We love how she paired her metallic striped skirt with a sheer blouse and cropped motorcycle boots, rocking her favorite Alexander Wang Rocco bag on her arm.</p><p></p><p>Ashley Greene hit the London premiere of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse looking sensationally silver in L’Wren Scott Fall 2010, while Channing Tatum resurrected vintage Marky Mark, wearing super baggy threads with suspenders. Rachel Zoe and Kylie Minogue both were living large as well, indulging in the baggy pants look, which we aren’t finding so haute!</p><p>What gorgeous Aussie was spotted at LAX wearing a lace garter on her head? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.</p><p>Kim Kardashian recently stepped out in Miami, looking super edgy in hot new trends. Beginning with a pair of luxe and comfy jeggings ($139), and a simple black top, the gorgeous star added eccentric elements, which gave her a glam look.</p><p></p><p>Kim delved into the military trend, rocking an vest ($725), which featured a canvas front, adding a silver necklace of dangling medallions and a Work Bag ($1595) in beige.</p><p></p><p>The final luxe touch? Kim finished off the look with crave-worthy Yves Saint Laurent Cage Boots.</p><p>Taylor Momsen is known for her edgy, biker babe style. On screen and off, the wild child is always rocking fierce and fab looks, looking like just stepped off the Alexander Wang catwalk. Last week Taylor stepped out in NYC, rocking another covetable look wearing separates from , and .</p><p></p><p>Taylor paired a sexy, lace Miss Ferriday Pin Up Banded Mini Skirt ($107) with a Gypsy ’05 Shreds Tank ($95), adding combat boots and her fave DOMA Long Coat ($1,032). To complete the tough girl look, the Gossip Girl even carried her little white pooch in a grommeted dog bag!</p><p></p><p>Sizzling sports models steamed up the ESPY Awards, reality stars bid adieu to The Hills in geriatric fashion and starlets hit the red carpet of the hottest premieres in dazzling duds in this week's roundup up of the most impressive and offensive duds.</p><p></p><p>Spencer Pratt borrowed Grandpa's getup in an attempt to sneak into The Hills Finale party at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, but he pass by under our Radar. Neither did grandslam goddess Venus Williams, who sported a nightie-like babydoll dress to a party in the real hills of Hollywood.  Only problem with her summer style?  The whispery mini refused to stay in place, resulting in an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction!</p><p></p><p>We are still drooling over the gals who hit the red carpet of the ESPY Awards, in truly skin-tillating style.  Andy Roddick was definitely the source of jealousy for every dude in the crowd, with his bikini babe wife Brooklyn Decker flaunting her flawless bod in a perfectly pink Herve Leger bandage dress.  Marisa Miller also was hit at the athletic awards show, wearing a totally chic Alexander Wang LBD, which was sheer strapped and backed in nude mesh.</p><p></p><p>Good Taste was M.I.A. when the sassy Paper Planes singer hit The Late Show with David Letterman in a tie-dye shirt and shredded denim.  At least the talk show host got to feast his eyes on Kyra Sedgwick the day before, who stunned in a brocade Antonio Berardi Fall 2010 number.</p><p></p><p>What Inception star scored two slots on our coveted Best Dressed list?  How many re-offenders landed on the Worst Dressed once again?  Check out the gallery in Style and find out.</p><p>The big bang Fourth of July bash was Diddy's Annual White Party to benefit Malaria No More in Bev Hills and the A-list attendees didn't disappoint in the style department, stepping out in standout fashions.</p><p></p><p>Known for her outrageous edgy looks, Bad Boy diva Cassie went risque in a skeleton mesh Alexander Wang tank dress while at the same time poolside ready with a white bandeau bikini underneath. Demi Moore took a sophisticated approach to the white themed soiree, sporting a statement Andrew Gn cuff and a strapless white lace dress by the designer that flaunted her fab cougar-worthy physique with its curve-clinging appeal (and of course, the best accessory, Mr. Kutcher himself). Kanye's on-again-off-again flame Amber Rose made sure to show some skin in her stylized version of a cropped white halter complete with chiffon front panels and of course, tight white booty-hugging jeans.</p><p>Although not at Diddy's white themed affair, Hills hottie Audrina Patridge made a white statement in Vegas as a repeat offender sporting the same single-shoulder Preen white bandage dress that she wore two months ago to her 24th birthday bash in Los Angeles. Wearing the same fab frock -- no biggie, but the same head-to-toe ensemble doesn't earn her any points for fashion originality.</p><p>Across the pond in London, stylicious divas weren't stepping out for Independence day, but there is never a day not to celebrate fashion.</p><p>I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here host Myleene Klass flaunted her more refined side in a green satin Banana Republic dress going classic with a patent belt and YSL pumps for a photo call, while Kelly Osbourne looked dumpy-and-frumpy in a retro-ish getup consisting of leggings, a metallic dress, and Ugg boots -- say what?</p><p>Kelly Rowland, doing the metallic theme the fashionable way, blinged it in a Paco Rabanne black and silver dress, teamed with Christian Dior strappy<br>sandals for her performance at VIP in Paris.</p><p></p><p>Disney darling's Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato are growing up in style, both sporting sophisticated minis for the Princess Protection Program Toronto premiere. While Selena Gomez's single-shoulder white organza Tadashi Shoji number is original and stunning, Demi attempted a style war in the<br>very-widely publicized (i.e. played-out) Alexander Wang blush-and-black corset mini that has been seen on both Rihanna and Paris Hilton.</p><p>In London for a pre-Wimbledon event, the Williams sisters proved that their fashion sense rivals their tennis skills -- the style aces shimmered in Ralph Lauren summer looks -- Serena in gold-sequined Harem pants and Venus in a high-stylin' beige bow-collar dress.</p><p>Also in London, Sienna Miller was either a hot mess or messy hot in a skin-showing embellished blouse, Temperley London structured studded jacket, shimmery platforms, and an I-don't-care hairdo.</p><p>Contrasting their milky skin with popping color, Christina Ricci sported a purple-belted mini with stark white patent pumps in Los Angeles, while The Wrestler's Evan Rachel Wood worked a tight-fitting emerald green dress in Paris.</p><p></p><p>Though launching his line only 2 years ago, Alexander Wang has already established himself as a fashion frontrunner.  When he introduced his handbag collection earlier this year, fashionistas and starlets scooped them up quickly!</p><p>The Alexander Wang Coco Duffel is most definitely an It Bag.  The chicly shaped duffel is detailed with gold studs on the bottom, making it simple enough for daytime wear, yet stylish enough for a night on the town.  The Coco Duffel is a bargain in comparison to other It Bags, retailing at only $850. Mary-Kate Olsen was one of the first cool kids to wrap her paws around one, but a bevy of celebs have followed her fashion lead.</p><p></p><p></p><p>The Balenciaga Motorcycle bag launched in Balenciaga’s Spring 2001 collection, and immediately achieved It Bag status.  The rectangular bag, which has many zippers, pockets, tassels, and buckles, was perfect for boho chic celebs like Nicole Richie and Nicky Hilton.  The company has since expanded its handbag collection, adding styles like the City Bag, Weekender, and Lune Bag, all of which are coveted by fashionists around the globe.  </p><p></p><p>Crafted out of soft leather, the cleverly designed bags are conventional enough for daytime use, and chic enough for a night on the town.  Celebs, including Kim Kardashian, continue toting these haute handbags in a variety of shapes and sizes.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> &amp;lt;a href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" mce_href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" target="_top"&amp;gt; &amp;lt;img src="http://s27.sitemeter.com/meter.asp?site=s27radaronline" mce_src="http://s27.sitemeter.com/meter.asp?site=s27radaronline" alt="Site Meter" border="0"/&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; </p> <p><br> <br></p> <p></p> <p></p><p>In between Christmas and New Years very few celebs make it onto a red carpet, but that doesn’t mean they compromise style! Snow Angel Heidi Klum hit the ice rink in Aspen, looking positively wondrous in winter white, as she spent the day with Seal and the kids.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, in Miami, Coco spent the day frolicking on the beach with hubby Ice-T wearing a barely there bikini. How tiny was her top? Check out the gallery in Style to find out!</p><p></p>. One month, he&#8217;s throwing an epic carnival on the West Side Highway, the next he&#8217;s opening a giganticand gorgeousstore on Grand Street, and somewhere in between he&#8217;s relaunching his website and debuting his first ever print campaign. In an attempt to answer the eternal questionhow does he do it? enlisted Kate Finnigan to profile the 27-year-old wunderkind. Read on for eight endearing (and interesting) tidbits the designer revealed in his interview. </p><p>Alex was just two years old when he started drawing fashion sketches, and his family was totally into it. &#8220;I was fascinated by magazines. I scribbled, drew shoes, picked clothes out for my mom. She really encouraged me. She bought me my first sewing machine and she&#8217;d bring home fresh flowers and say, &#8216;Draw something for me.&#8217; I&#8217;ve always had a very supportive family. There are all these sorts of stereotypes that certain backgroundsAsian familieswant to direct you into certain [careers] but my family has always been, &#8216;This is where your talent is, let&#8217;s go for it.&#8217; And with that I&#8217;ve been very lucky.&#8221;</p><p>He&#8217;s as talented a business man as he is a fashion designer. &#8220;Designing a product and understanding how it filters through into the market and into the rest of the company is very important to me. The part about building a lifestyle brand while balancing the creative and commercial side &#8211; I think that&#8217;s where I find the biggest inspiration to push myself.&#8221;</p><p>There&#8217;s no &#8220;I&#8221; in &#8220;Team Alexander Wang&#8221; (literally and figuratively). &#8220;To me all sides of the business have been just as exciting and challenging in their own way. I&#8217;ve always said I&#8217;m not the kind of designer who likes to lock himself away in a studio and let the rest of the company deal with it. I work very closely with everyone on the team.&#8221;</p><p>His rapidly expanding office and construction on his new TriBeCa apartment inspired his Spring 2011 collection. &#8216;That&#8217;s where all the ideas of duct tape and the carpenter pant and the scribble print came from.&#8221;</p><p>His childhood friends, the Traina sisters, opened his eyes to the world of high fashion. &#8220;[Victoria] would come into class in some designer shoes that she&#8217;d cut the ankle straps off. And I&#8217;d be like, &#8216;Wow, you just spent however much money on those&#8230;&#8217; She treated everything in this very non-precious way. They would have racks of clothes brought from the stores to their house. And they&#8217;d be like, &#8216;Oh yeah, Prada just sent over their new collection&#8217; And their mom had this amazing couture closet.&#8221;</p><p>He&#8217;s keepin&#8217; it real. &#8220;Yes, y&#8217;know, my apartment is a little nicer now and I have a car and I don&#8217;t have to take the subway all the time, but I&#8217;m still the same person. That&#8217;s always been our idea with the clothes. There&#8217;s a certain sense of fantasy but at the same time it feels very, very grounded.&#8221;</p><p>&#8230; And he&#8217;s no social climber. &#8220;I mean, my closest friends are still the people I knew before I had any of this. They&#8217;re my core, the people I hang with the most. It&#8217;s not like all of a sudden is my best friend!&#8221;</p><p>He won&#8217;t stop until he has a Ralph Lauren-sized lifestyle brand. &#8220;He says he&#8217;ll have found success if he creates a brand &#8216;that lives on after I&#8217;ve gone&#8217;. He seems so fearless that you can see it happening. &#8216;But I do have fear&#8217; he says. &#8216;I&#8217;m just always willing to take the risk.&#8217;&#8221;</p><p>Photo: Nick Harvey, Getty Images</p><p>CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION</p><p>Incoming… In a sec, you’re going to receive an email from StyleCaster asking you to click on a link to confirm your subscription to the StyleCaster newsletter.</p><p>CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION</p><p>Incoming… In a sec, you’re going to receive an email from StyleCaster asking you to click on a link to confirm your subscription to the StyleCaster newsletter.</p>possibly have time to design clothes when he is so busy collecting awards? Last night, the uber-cool designer was presented with the in Zurich, an important award that is designed to boost the textile industry in Switzerland. The award includes nearly $150,000 granted to Wang, 10 percent of which is to be spent on Swiss fabric. We&#8217;re sure the fashion designer will have no problem adhering to those rules; Swiss products tend to be exceptional, and he will still have close to $135,000 to take his line in any direction he pleases. </p><p>Last year&#8217;s winner, Kate Mulleavy of Rodarte, presented Wang with the award, and told British Vogue that the award allowed her and Laura, her sister and co-designer, to take Rodarte &#8220;in a direction we just couldn&#8217;t have otherwise.&#8221; Maybe Wang will follow last year&#8217;s winner&#8217;s lead and do a line for .</p><p>CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION</p><p>Incoming… In a sec, you’re going to receive an email from StyleCaster asking you to click on a link to confirm your subscription to the StyleCaster newsletter.</p>doing the next CFDA collaboration, like what we did with the white shirts last year, only this year it&#8217;s with khaki. He did this incredible motorcycle jacket in khaki that&#8217;s going to be under $100. It&#8217;s coming out on June 16th, so get ready!&#8221; -Patrick Robinson</p><p>Enough said, we&#8217;re psyched.</p><p>[]</p> may be in some hot water. Coming to the rite of passage of being sued by his own employees, the designer was just slapped with a $50 million lawsuit (ouch!), accusing Alex of running a sweatshop in his Chinatown studio.</p><p>Apparently, some of the allegations include working a 25 hour workday and suffering from work-related illnesses. Obviously, Wang totally denies the accusations wholeheartedly stating: “The company takes its obligations to comply with the law very seriously, including the relevant wage and hour regulations, the payment of overtime to eligible employees and having a safe working environment for all of our employees. We will vehemently defend any allegations to the contrary.”</p><p>It’d be intense enough if this was just one suit, but no, this is one of nine, you heard me, nine $50 million suits. This just makes us all kinds of uncomfortable.</p>, &#8220;We wanted something really gritty and raw to contrast with the polished richness of what we showed on fall runway.&#8221; The video was shot in some seemingly creepy place in Red Hook, Brooklyn and I kind of want to stalk downtown tonight for a glimpse.</p>today that for his Fall 09 collection he has collaborated with jewelry designer Paris Kain of . Hold on, did you say jewelry? As usual, Wang is not content to create just your average pieces.</p><p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re working with ways of wearing earrings that aren&rsquo;t typical,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;How they work on your body, how they hang. We want to push the meaning of embellishment and how people interpret jewelry.&rdquo;</p><p>Kain appreciates Wang&rsquo;s penchant for taking risks with his collections, so the jewelry will go along with Wang&rsquo;s new aesthetic for fall. This season he will be trading sweaty for streamlined, citing inspiration like Tina Turner in &ldquo;Mad Max,&rdquo; to be unveiled during Fashion Week.</p><p>So, basically we will be holding our breath in excitement to see what is next for the CFDA winner.</p>released a new campaign video and is pasting ads all over New York City for his Fall &#8217;11 T by Alexander Wang line. Wang shows his still have 20/20 vision, as this new crop of ads and the accompanying video feature uber cool rapper/singer Santigold and rapper Spankrock continuing the freshness from past campaigns that featured Zoe Kravitz and Diplo.</p><p>The ads are shot by Dan Jackson and the video features a remix of Santigold&#8217;s single, &#8220;Go.&#8221; The Fall &#8217;11 T Collection also drops today, so if you&#8217;re local head down to his where we&#8217;re sure there&#8217;s also some jams playing.</p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p></p><p>Photo and video from </p>)<p>Karen Elson and Jack Black are getting a divorce and having a party because of it. ()</p><p>Ebay will be the first to offer Alexander Wang&#8217;s range of small leather goods. ()</p><p>The fashion director of British Vogue departed to become creative director of Topshop. ()</p><p>DOUBLE SHOT: TWEET, TWEET</p><p>RT @ Good Idea or Bad Idea: Chuck Taylor Flip Flops? hmmm&#8230; I&#8217;ll go bad.</p><p>RT @ A good dress is, first of all, a well fitted dress.I hate women who look as if they are dressed in a sack. &#8211; The Little Dictionary Fashion Alright then.</p><p>RT @ Adele is really not the best flight soundtrack. Melancholy staring out window. Clouds. Gets me every time.</p><p>RT @ &#8220;She&#8217;s kind of green, but she really has the drive and the family money one needs to succeed in the fashion industry.&#8221; The sad part is, someone totally was serious when they said that.</p></p><p>Reason #1</p><p>This is the perfect leather vest &#8212; classic enough to wear over and over, season after season, it&#8217;s a timeless piece that will just get better with age. At the same time it&#8217;s young, fresh, edgy, and fun in all the right ways.</p><p>Reason #2</p><p>Forget fussy and pretty fashion &#8212; this tough, rebel-without-a-cause, renegade-style leather motorcycle vest with silver hardware is the most coveted look of the moment.</p><p>Reason #3</p><p>And last but not least, this vest is designed by none other than New York&#8217;s CFDA winning designer Alexander Wang. He has become a fashion deity loved by editors, models, stylists, celebs, and fashionistas alike, and he is celebrated for his novel and nonconformist design aesthetic.</p>hones in on one little-known model, has her walk in his show, and voilshe&#8217;s an instant superstar. For Fall 2011, that girl was Aymeline Valade, a strong, striking French newcomer who not only opened Wang&#8217;s runway showher very first, by the wayshe was also chosen as the face of his fall collection, and her likeness is now plastered all over downtown Manhattan. The designer gave the model a video camera to document her journey from the castings and fittings to the runway, and created a short film that just debuted on the . <p>Aymeline&#8217;s thick accent is a bit tough to decipher at times, but she&#8217;s intriguing and intelligent, and compares her profession to being &#8220;clay that the photographer or designer can sculpt.&#8221; When asked why she got into modeling, she reveals that she loves to express herself with her body, and that &#8220;fashion is a kind of dialogueit gives people the opportunity to say something about themselves without having to speak.&#8221;</p><p> Watch the short teaser clip below, and head over to to see the full film.</p><p> <p><p><p><p></p><p>Video via </p>this season, the flagship store in SoHo, New York has set up quite an installation that will be sure to have Alfred Hitchcock fans &#8220;flocking&#8221; to the shop in no time.</p><p>The installation features a free-standing gridwall structure with model black birds surrounding the top it&#8217;s a bit eery, , but all around still pretty amazing.</p><p>The original 1963 film The Birds will also be playing in the store, in a color-coordinating version.</p><p>To check images of the latest installation inspired by The Birds, click through the photos in the slideshow above!</p><p>CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION</p><p>Incoming… In a sec, you’re going to receive an email from StyleCaster asking you to click on a link to confirm your subscription to the StyleCaster newsletter.</p>just keeps adding to his fashion empire. Resort unearthed new forays into both sneakers and swim to sporty, sleek, downtown chic results, obviously.</p><p>The recent CFDA Award winner has been mining the athletic vibe for a few seasons, but always manages to take a fresh approach to what could be considered old hat. For the season meant for beach getaways, the Alexander Wang sporto is a bit more colorful. There are vests resembling pinneys against leather shorts, a range of oversized parkas, unexpected suiting and, in keeping with the season&#8217;s overarching trend scuba elements. Red and black reigned, but there were bits of greys and blues to keep it light. </p><p>That new swim collection is probably what the Wang girl was missing on the beach sleek and cool, without the unneccesary bells, whistles and ruffles. As far as those sneakers, they&#8217;re cool, but those two-tone heels are what are most likely going to end up on the feet of girls below 14th Street. </p>Let&#8217;s be real: is one of the few designers out there who doesn&#8217;t really need to advertise, considering the blogosphere goes gaga over his every release, and celebrities and tastemakers turn to his designs for their daily uniforms. But we love ogling a good promotional image, so we&#8217;re not complaining. </p><p>The designer&#8217;s first-ever print ad starring model Aymeline Valade and shot by Craig McDean will exclusively appear in Interview Magazines March issue. In addition, a billboard of the image will be unveiled on the corner of Lafayette and Great Jones Streets on February 7, and a video of the shoot will premiere on March 1. </p><p>The austere image mirrors his spare, white runway show for spring, and was styled by Karl Templer under the creative direction of Fabien Baron. This is the same dream team behind the brand&#8217;s fall video starring , and although Wang is hesitant to call this venture an &#8220;,&#8221; we won&#8217;t be surprised if it tops most of the ads on our Spring 2011 favorites list. </p><p>Image courtesy of </p>sample sale, since few designers in New York have as dedicated of a following as he does. We heard that the line stretched over two whole blocks in Soho when it opened at ten this morning, which wouldn&#8217;t be surprising if it weren&#8217;t twenty degrees outside! Andrea, Kerry and I ventured to the Mercer Street sale last night, and we all emerged with some amazing steals. Great minds think alike, because all three of us snagged the same by T. If that&#8217;s not embarrassing enough, we all showed up to the office today wearing it each styled very differently, of course. While my colleagues grabbed all of the they could carry, I focused on the jackets, and found two that I just had to have.</p><p></p><p>One is a leather-sleeved blazer from the pre-fall collection, and the other is a collarless felt grey blazer from the fall runway show look six to be exact. The staff is helpful and super friendly, and as far as sample sales go, it&#8217;s roomy and impeccably organized. If you&#8217;re going to head to the , which runs until Sunday, here are some things to keep in mind: </p><p>1.. Judging by the masses that flocked to 93 Mercer Street earlier today, you&#8217;re going to have to wait out in the cold, at least for a while.</p><p>2. Get there as fast as you can. When we went yesterday before the sale was officially open to the public the bag and shoe selection was already sparse. There was a TON of ready-to-wear, but it will probably go quickly.</p><p>3. If you&#8217;re going for T, prepare to dig. Most of the women&#8217;s T by Alexander Wang goods are stuffed in cardboard boxes, so it&#8217;s hard to find specific styles. If you take your time like we did, you&#8217;re bound to discover a bounty of goodies! </p><p></p><p>Good luck, and happy shopping!</p>(pictured above) hit Net-a-Porter, it is SOLD OUT. How often do you hear those words nowadays? Kinda refreshing, isn&#8217;t it? Never thought I&#8217;d miss NOT being able to get my hands on a must-have item, but somehow this feels a tad bit better than seeing 80% off sales signs everywhere. Just leave it to Alex.</p><p>Now how do I get my hands on one??</p>, we hold a special place in our hearts for fashion&#8217;s golden boy, . With his wearable (and extremely covetable) collections season after season, what fashion-forward girl doesnt? If its even possible, we have some news that might warrant even more love for the young designer.</p><p>This fall, Wang is planning on expanding his lower priced diffusion line, T by Alexander Wang, beyond must-have tanks and tees. Pieces are slated to include the perfect slouchy wool trousers, a grey loose-cut blazer, and a fierce hooded cape/poncho amalgamation.</p><p>Known for his sensibility, the designer created T by Alexander Wang with comfort in mind. The end product is a line of basics every girl can use in her closet. This is about the foundations, says , clothes that people want to wear and live in. Our girl can use the ready-to-wear to sprinkle in the excitement, but these are the core pieces for her wardrobe.</p><p>With prices ranging from $80-$250, youll have to keep us from buying one of everything. Below are our favorite looks from the upcoming fall line.</p><p>More News We Love:<br></p>, images of young, edgy come to mind. So when the time came to celebrate Wang&#8217;s new Spring 2010 collection, the designer decided to go straight to his loyal followers &#8212; in where else? &#8212; the streets of downtown Manhattan, of course.</p><p>Starting Monday, February 1st, the winner&#8217;s ads will be plastered all over lower Manhattan in the East Village and the Lower East Side, covering the intersections of Third Avenue and 12th Street as well as Grand and Crosby Streets.The ads will be on display for four weeks and will be replenished weekly to keep things fresh. The campaign is only set to run in New York, but Wang explains that it may venture into other cities if it becomes something people really respond to, but right now New York City is where its at. This is our home.</p><p>Alexander Wang hired the same agency behind the , National Promotions &#038; Advertising, to manage his first ad campaign.Photographed by Dan Jackson, the ads feature model, sporting a cut-out top from the T collection. The images were so inspiring to the designer that what started out as a routine campaign, evolved into a full on guerilla marketing scheme. Wang explains, The [images] were originally only supposed to be posters we were going to send to editors and stores, but I felt the energy was much more appropriate for something like guerrilla marketing than anything too proper or formal. Because T is really the core foundation of what Alexander Wang stands for, I thought it should be something that could be much more democratic.</p><p>The last time there was this much buzz over an ad campaign, it involved a naked , but Alexander Wang does not disappoint. Not only is the designer giving us a peek at his new collection via posters on the sides of brick walls, but there is also a to be aired the same day the ad goes up. In case you can&#8217;t make it to the show, the video shot by Peter Szollosi will feature the madness that goes on backstage. The video is sure to be just as exciting as the ad campaign but if you can&#8217;t wait &#8217;til Monday to get it on , then check out a clip from the full video .</p><p>More News We Love:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>at Dior, British now reports that LVMH is not into that idea. Apparently, Marc , but higher-ups feel he is a better fit for Vuitton &#8211; which I completely agree with.</p><p>Now, a source close to LVMH claims thatAlexander Wang&#8216;s name is being tossed into the ring. I don&#8217;t even think I need to get into the multitude of reasons why this doesn&#8217;t make sense. The Wang aesthetic could not be further from the Dior aesthetic, and while people may want a fresh take on the brand following the Galliano disaster, if it ain&#8217;t broke &#8211; don&#8217;t fix it! A drastic change would throw everything off and the iconic label would lose its identity even more.</p><p>Honestly, I know how easy it is to gossip, but I wish people would just shut up about this issue until it&#8217;s actually resolved. At this point, no one knows what&#8217;s going to happen. So keep calm, carry on, and someday soon Dior&#8217;s fate will be revealed.</p>are joining forces for an uber fashionable video premiering this Thursday. It&#8217;s also shot by Craig McDean and styled by Karl Templer. Our heads are exploding. (, subscription required)</p><p>Can you tell the difference between 46-year old Courtney Love and? It&#8217;s harder than you may think! ()</p><p>Cole Haan teamed with blogger and photog of the cool kids Todd Selby for their Fall campaign. Think DJs and other creatives in their natural environments. ()<br><br>Photo courtesy of Cole Haan</p><p>W&#8216;s September issue is out, and it&#8217;s the first under Stefano Tonchi&#8217;s leadership. Do you dig the new look? ()<br><br>Photo by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin</p><p>Is ? Mia Farrow is claiming that the Super knew that diamonds she received were a gift from ex-Liberian Pres Charles Taylor. Apparently Naomi believed she was getting the precious gems from an unknown secret admirer? Yah, that happens to us all the time. ()</p><p>Justin Bieber joins Jessica Simpson and P. Diddy as a face of Proactiv. Solving acne everywhere a true sign that he&#8217;s finally made it. ()</p><p>TWITTER:<br>RT @ &#8211; Black and pink glitter<br>Indeed and a bit gross.<br><br>RT @ Um Thanks RT @ your like my own little yoda. in big Chanel sunglasses and Loubitons<br>I&#8217;ve been waiting my whole life for someone I love to call me their own little Yoda. Or not&#8230;</p><p>RT @ fall trends I am very happy with: teased updo&#8217;s, high-heeled hiking/rain boots, lipstick, below-the-knee skirts, capes.<br>Just please ladies, not all at once. Can you spell fashion victim?</p><p>RT @ Im being asked for 5 adjectives that describe me how conceited do I go? And then do I use conceited?<br>With a Twitter handle like narcissist, the adjective seems fitting, no?</p><p>RT @ Never seen Liza so serene. I miss my buddy.<br>Still deciding if this is cute or creepy.<br><br>Related:<br></p>. A black and white video aptly titled &#8220;Brilliant&#8221; took viewers inside the creative worlds of the nine 2010 Swarovski Award nominees: Joseph Altuzarra, Prabal Gurung, , Richard Chai, Patrik Ervell, Simon Spurr, Eddie Borgo, Dana Lorenz and .</p><p>Set to melodic beats by The Boohs and artfully directed by Josh Melnick and Xander Charity, the short film lends just enough insights from to leave you wanting to know more.</p><p> elucidates, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know if fashion can change the world, I don&#8217;t know if anything can change the world, but fashion to me is about change, because that&#8217;s the only constant in our lives.&#8221; Even though , we still think Prabal has it right. Check out the video below:</p><p> <p><p><p><p></p><p>Related : <br><br></p>invited the magazine into his newly renovated, 2,200 square-foot TriBeCa loft for a tourand it&#8217;s just as luxe and exotic as you&#8217;d dream it would be. Decorated by the designer&#8217;s dear friend Ryan Korban, the &#8220;sexy and youthful&#8221; space makes up for its lack of color with its rich, plush materials: zebra rugs, a black velvet couch, goat fur and crocodile skin chairs, and black fox fur throws. </p><p>The downtown location, high ceilings and ample light seem like reason enough to spend upwards of $2 million on this construction project, but the openness of the loft was the biggest selling point for Wang. Having lived in New York, where youre always out and your friends are always out because no one has enough space to entertain, I imagined an apartment where I could have my friends over and on the weekend not have to leave because I feel claustrophobic, he explained. We don&#8217;t know about you, but we&#8217;d forgo a night on the town for a cozy evening at Chez Wang any day.</p><p>Click through for some photos of the designer&#8217;s apartment and read the full article over at </p>is involved. He&#8217;s spent the night partying at Opening Ceremony and Barneys before he opened his own flagship store on Grand Street, but now that he&#8217;s got his own digs, things are about to get really crazy. He just posted this ad on his Facebook page:</p><p>&#8220;SEARCH: Looking for your freakiest talents or performances for our Fashion&#8217;s Night Out, September 8th, at 103 Grand Street.&#8221;</p><p>Amazing, right? The designer wants his fans to send in 30-90 second clips of themselves and friends performing their most awesome talents. According to the post, &#8220;finalists will be notified on Monday, August 29th and will be asked to perform in front of special guest judges on Fashion&#8217;s Night Out at our flagship store.&#8221; If we know Wang, said &#8220;special guests&#8221; will probably be some of his big-name buddies, like Zo Kravitz, Erin Wasson, Rye Rye or M.I.A.</p><p>Even though we&#8217;re still a few weeks out, I&#8217;m glad that I&#8217;ve pinned down my first stop on the whirlwind FNO tour of New York. Now, what are you waiting for? You have a video to make.</p><p>[via ]</p>. Not too much of a shocker, I suppose. Nonetheless, I can&#8217;t get over how such a young designer can curate such a diverse and cohesive collection season to season. And, as if that wasn&#8217;t enough, he finds the time to design shoes, bags and other goodies of the like.</p><p>Needless to say, I was on the edge of my seat when I finally caught wind of his Pre-Fall collection. First of all, sheer items will always hold a special spot in my heart and his rendition of the favorite effect is beyond divine as he fuses together a quirky enlarged plaid and sheer sweaters, overlays and blouses.</p><p>Obviously not stopping there, Wang offers functional pieces such as anoraks and puffer vests in awesome fabrics that appear almost metallic. Not to be mistaken with a totally futuristic vibe though, amazingly draped wrap-dresses, killer motorcycle jackets and masterfully tailored blazers with pleat-pocket details balance the collection marvelously.</p><p>So, without further adieu, check out my picks for Wang&#8217;s Pre-Fall collection. If I see you at a sample sale for this collection, I suggest staying away from these pieces &#8212; there&#8217;s no telling what I would do to get my hands on one of these.</p><p>Photos via .</p>is stepping out again to lend her support to elect Obama for a second term, rallying support for him in the fashion industry. With a successful fundraiser in August, (she hosted a soiree with Harvey Weinstein raising $2 million), we&#8217;re sure this next one will be a doozy. <br></p><p>Next month, Wintour will host a fundraiser along with with Theory as part of a campaign initiative called &#8220;Runway to Win.&#8221; Custom Obama-themed clothing and accessories will be curated by designers Alexander Wang, Narcisco Rodriguez, Rachel Roy, Tracy Reese, Tory Burch, Beyoncand Tina Knowles and Marchesa&#8217;s Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig.</p><p>We can only say, if Anna Wintour is for you, who can be against you?</p>. Really, we&#8217;re obsessed. That smile, that blonde hair, that killer bod&#8230; Everything&#8217;s better in Texas, right?</p><p>There&#8217;s one trait of Ashley&#8217;s that we didn&#8217;t know about until just now, and that&#8217;s her amazing dancing abilities. Girl&#8217;s got personality for days, and in this video for , she gets down with music producer Diplo for the campaign. Miss Smith is certainly not shy, and her moves make those supremely comfy clothes look good even though they start to fall off of her towards the end! </p><p>The will launch just in time for Fashion Week on February 7, and the posters will likely be plastered all over downtown New York. Watch Ashely jam out in the full video below.</p><p><p><p><p><p></p></p><p>Hip hop’s cutting-edge It-girl, , has scored a new gig as the face of T by Alexander Wang for Fall 2012. Appearing in a new that debuted online yesterday afternoon, we can&#8217;t help but dancing along with the singer.</p><p>The and notoriously err loud-mouthed singer-rapper seems like a natural choice, considering she was Wang&#8217;s much-publicized date to this year&#8217;s Met Gala. Banks is the latest in a procession of musicians ranging from Diplo to Die Antwood &#8212; it seems the designer prefers musicians over models when it comes to his more casual T collection.</p><p>The two have worked together before when Azealia provided the music for his Spring 2012 AW campaign. We can&#8217;t wait to see what&#8217;s in store for his runway show this year. Perhaps a live performance? We can only hope!</p>and/or ) , the tweetress has been writing a series of guest posts over the last few weeks right here on StyleCaster, offering outfit advice for a number of occasions just about everyone might eventually find themselves in.</p><p>The annual, &#8220;It&#8221; indie film festival known as is kicking off this week, and you know what that means Hollywood celebs, tons of chic winter attire and lots of hot tubs to hit up!</p><p>Make sure you and your wardrobe make the most out of your time there (no matter how long or short it may be) by remembering to bring your fashion A-game. And even if you&#8217;re not heading to Utah this week, you can still look like Park City perfection with some extremely helpful tips from the fabulously fabulous Babe Walker.</p><p>If you want to roll like Babe in the Rockies, be sure to check out all the fashionable deets down below!</p><p>Okay psychos, it&#8217;s that time of year again when everyone from LA decides that they&#8217;d rather be in a dank bar at the St. Regis Deer Valley half drunk and listening to a completely wasted Colin Farrell talk about his &#8220;super confusing&#8221; adolescence, than enjoying the warmth and sunshine from the safety of their own backyard pools. I&#8217;ve never quite understood the Sundance Film Festival, but I go every year because it&#8217;s part of my duties as&#8230; me.</p><p>This year however, things have been so hectic and I&#8217;ve been so stressed about my book&#8217;s launch, that I haven&#8217;t even started telling my maid what to pack, and I&#8217;m leaving in a few days! Normally my preparations involve she and I going through my fur and boot vault, but this year I&#8217;m having a hard time dealing. All I&#8217;m asking from Sundance 2012 is a little simplicity! I want to have some drinks, throw some drinks and maybe watch a movie or two.</p><p>Deep breaths&#8230; center&#8230; remember my mantra&#8230; okay.</p><p>I usually can only stay at Sundance for 24 hours because my hair gets really cold. No, I mean like so cold, and , which are incredibly stressful and not a joke. But whatever. This year as far as my sartorial issues are concerned, Utah in January will be all about not being in Utah in January. I plan on letting my epidermis show, and not giving a f*ck. Hollywood chows down on an unexpected skin moment. My packing list is as follows:</p><p>I&#8217;ll be taking a few slut dresses, like this Chlo Sevigny for OC ($1000, at ) moment. It reminds me of grandmas. Not mine, just grandmas in general, and that&#8217;s chic!</p><p><p><p>This Balmain ($4765, at ) is so easy to wear it&#8217;s almost criminal.</p><p><p><p>I&#8217;ll be taking this white Kimberly Ovitz ($475, at ).</p><p><p><p>Kim, if you&#8217;re reading this call me. I need the keys to my Range Rover back.</p><p>Also necessary are at least twelve pairs of huge, rude sunnies.</p><p><p><p>Proenza Schouler Cut Out Temple Frame, $350, at </p><p>Balenciaga Bicolor Sunglasses, $340, at </p><p>And lastly, I&#8217;ll throw in some major, major, MAJOR pumps.</p><p>Alexander Wang Eden Mesh Heels, $425, at </p><p>Viktor &#038; Rolf Open Toe Ruffle Platform Pumps, $537.50, at </p><p>After all, the parties are literally crawling with so many A-list actors, it&#8217;s sick. How am I going to suddenly trip and fall into &#8216;s lap if I&#8217;m in sensible Lanvin flats?</p><p>Besides that, I guess I&#8217;ll just be bringing every fur that I own, a box of cigars, and my prescribed anti-anxiety meds of choice, because the flight there can be rocky.</p><p>Love you, mean it.</p><p>Babe</p>hairspray. Next, use a hair dryer () to give the spray a firm hold. </p><p></p><p>To get the look off the runway, mimic the same deep side part, but use much less hairspray! </p><p><br> was also there to prep the models for the catwalk, and they set the focus on the eyes for the Fall/Winter season. The team used warm browns and burnt red cream-based shadows, layering and blending them in with a dry brush to create a bold eye. </p><p>They added black liner on the top lash line and halfway around the lower lash line to give the eye a more definitive shape. The brows were also filled in, but the face was kept au natural, with just a touch of concealor if needed. The M.A.C. team finished off the look with a bit of lip balm, and the girls were ready to go!</p><p>More Beauty News We Love:<br><br><br></p><p>CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION</p><p>Incoming… In a sec, you’re going to receive an email from StyleCaster asking you to click on a link to confirm your subscription to the StyleCaster newsletter.</p>last month, there wasn&#8217;t a single taxicab not plastered with advertisements for one of the city&#8217;s biggest events: Alexander Wang&#8217;s first flagship store opening in NYC. Now, go behind the scenes of the store&#8217;s creation, from three days before to thethe designer threw on opening night. Catch footage of Wang mingling with Anna Wintour and Kanye West, and hear the man himself speak about the store&#8217;s concept, which he claims aimed to &#8220;create a space thathard and pristine and at the same time.&#8221; </p><p><p></p></p><p>If you’re feeling like just about every designer is releasing a children’s line, you wouldn’t be too far off base. Considering the likes of debuted her kid’s line not too long ago and just showed his youngster collection during , one could argue that it’s the latest craze in the industry.</p><p>As it happens, former French Vogue editor  is not a big fan of the trend, and weighed in during a new interview . Roitfeld, who is newly a grandmother, mentions that daughter  won’t be dressing her baby girl in any designer duds any time soon, if it were up to her (lucky for , her place at the top of the stylish tyke pyramid is firmly intact).</p><p>In the interview, Roitfeld went so far as to say: “I hate fashion for little girls.” Eek! Perhaps we’ll have to reconsider our stance &#8212; we thought the Lanvin line for girls was pretty darn adorable (albeit completely out of our price range).</p><p>In better news, the stylish editor does love being a grandmother, saying, “I forget how … reassure … to have a baby on you; it makes me very quiet. Because it’s so small, and finally she’s so nice; and to relax, and… no phone, and you can’t talk.”</p>may split his time in that romantic tryst of a city, Paris Paris, but the New York fashion word still loves him. The designer took home the top honors last night winning Womenswear Designer of the Year. </p><p>Perhaps riffing off the theme behind Jacobs-designed , a very fit Jessica Biel presented the designer with the coveted prize. And in the veritable fashion Olympics ceremony, Hollywood and fashion mingled nicely cementing once again that celebrity-driven fashion trends are still king. CFDA president commented on the happy crowd: &#8220;Tonight is the night we designers and members of the industry salute our peers and celebrate their talents. We are a family.&#8221; The complete list of winners are&#8230;</p><p>Womenswear Designer of the Year: Marc Jacobs presented by Jessica Biel</p><p>Menswear Designer of the Year: David Neville &#038; Marcus Wainwright for Rag &#038; Bone, presented by Anthony Mackie</p><p>Accessory Designer of the Year: Alexis Bittar presented by Dakota Fanning</p><p>Swarovski Fashion Awards, all presented by and Ed Westwick:<br>Womenswear: <br>Menswear: Richard Chai<br>Accessories: Alexander Wang</p><p>Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award: Michael Kors, presented by Anna Wintour</p><p>Board of Directors Special Tribute Award: the , presented by </p><p>Fashion Icon Award: Iman presented by gal pal Isabella Rossellini</p><p>International Award: Christopher Bailey of , presented by Donna Karan</p><p>Eleanor Lambert Award: Tonne Goodman of Vogue, presented by Caroline Kennedy</p><p>Eugenia Sheppard Award for journalism: Kim Hastreiter, founding Editor and Publisher of Paper magazine, presented by Brooke Shields</p><p>L&#8217;Oreal Popular Vote Award: Ralph Lauren presented by Doutzen Kroes</p><p>Earlier: l</p>and we&#8217;ve got a little preview that should help you get excited. Every year, the nominees have fancy portraits taken of themselves with models and their muses for a journal that accompanies the ceremony, and the council tapped famed photographers Inez and Vinoodh for this year&#8217;s edition. </p><p>Luckily for us, the duo recently launched a Tumblr and a , and they&#8217;ve been posting outtakes of the CFDA shoots as they happen! Last week, they let it slip that Doutzen Kroes, Arizona Muse and were shooting in their studio, and they even released a few behind-the-scenes photos, including one of Raquel Zimmermann inmink sunglasses and another of Isabeli Fontana in a pair of gigantic Pamela Love cuffs. </p><p>Click through to see the CFDA portrait sneak peek! </p><p>Photos: via </p>with some help from son amie Carine Roitfeld, the exhibit features over a hundred (113 to be exact) black-and-white photographs featuring familiar faces from the art, music and fashion worlds.</p><p>CHANEL kicked off the exhibit by hosting a private event earlier this week in the Japanese capital, where guests included Sarah Jessica Parker, , Saskia de Brauw (all of whom are featured in the exhibit), and of course Carine and Karl.</p><p>If you didn&#8217;t manage to get an invite to the party like most of us, those of you in Tokyo can check out the exhibit from March 24th to April 15, 2012 over at G-Bldg, Minami Aoyama, Minami Aoyama 5-4-48 in Minato Ku, Tokyo.</p><p>For those not in Tokyo, CHANEL has put up images from the exhibit in an online gallery accessible to anyone from anywhere (well, except maybe China). Head over to to see images of a whole bunch of stylish folks, including–get ready–Carine Roitfeld, , Leigh Lezark, Kirsten Dunst, Daphne Guinness, The Fanning Sisters, The Richards Sisters, Elizabeth Olsen, Georgia May Jagger, , Riccardo Tisci, Sofia Coppola, Joshua Jackson (yes, really), Joan Smalls, Theophilus London (who also made it onto our list) and one Anna Wintour, who poses with her back to the camera which makes us think that she might have broken her sunglasses on the way to the shoot.</p><p>Nice one, Anna–nice.</p><p>Oh, and did we mention that Kanye West is in the exhibit as well?! Mr. 808 and Heartbreaks did pose for Karl as well, wearing the classic black jacket, looking very, very ladylike.</p><p>Who knows–maybe we&#8217;ll see some CHANEL-esque jackets during Kanye&#8217;s next Paris Fashion Week showing?</p><p>Photo by Delphine Achard</p><p>CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION</p><p>Incoming… In a sec, you’re going to receive an email from StyleCaster asking you to click on a link to confirm your subscription to the StyleCaster newsletter.</p>is back on the music scene with her brand new video for the single &#8220;Big Mouth&#8221;. The video is colorful, explosive and highly animatedjust exactly like the song itself.</p><p>Ever since entering into the media&#8217;s eye back in 2007 with her infectious vocals on tracks like &#8220;L.E.S. Artistes&#8221; and &#8220;Creator&#8221;, Santigold has made it clear that she&#8217;s that not your average chanteuse.</p><p>After keeping a pretty low-profile the last year or so (even though she managed to drop a single with back in April as well as star in an in July), it&#8217;s exciting to see Santigold come out with a new track and video off her upcoming release, Master of My Make-Believe.</p><p>The video is all sorts of crazy, loaded with her don&#8217;t-mess-with-us background dancers and the beat is even kinda catchy! But we&#8217;re a bit thrown off with thein the middle of the songwho knew that Santigold would be the type of lady willing to publicly drum up some beef, especially with someone like Gaga?</p><p>Minding the brief diss, the video is definitely worth the watch! Plus, it might even give you a Pee-wee&#8217;s Playhouse flashbackwell, at least for me it did.</p><p></p><p>CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION</p><p>Incoming… In a sec, you’re going to receive an email from StyleCaster asking you to click on a link to confirm your subscription to the StyleCaster newsletter.</p>. Rounding out the mix are some seriously flirty going-out looks we’re seeing in Miami and Boston, complete with bright color pops, peplum shapes, and statement jewelry.</p><p>Consider this not only our guide to the looks you need to get you pumped for fall, but an ode the ever-inspiring style in your own cities. Forget the supermodels; bring on the locals!</p><p>For more information on our relationship with Sperry: </p>, who has been rocking a for quite some time now. With her dark roots sticking out at the top, her &#8220;grungy cool&#8221; factor only gets even more points in my book of awesome.</p><p>Thankfully, I&#8217;m not the only one who noticed Charlotte&#8217;s radness as she&#8217;s been casted as the face of Argentinian ready-to-wear label for their Fall/Winter 2012 collection. COMPLOT is a brand that prides itself on being fresh, Eco-conscience and knowing that Rock &#8216;N Roll is not only just a genre of music, but a way to live your life.</p><p>If you don&#8217;t believe me then check out this brand new fashion film down below from COMPLOT starring an animated Charlotte Free, one heck of and a ton of clothes that I need to have in my closet–NOW.</p>releases its &#8220;30 Under 30&#8243; lists, we&#8217;re naturally left in awe of these youngsters who have managed to accomplish so much at such a young age. Here at StyleCaster we&#8217;re particularly fond of the , as it highlights the creative minds that are constantly revolutionizing the platforms and contexts that surround us in our daily lives.</p><p>This year, some of fashion&#8217;s most talented and noteworthy burgeoning talents found their way into the top 30, and we couldn&#8217;t be happier to see some familiar and loved faces in Forbes&#8216; picks &#8212; from Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen to Alexander Wang, New York&#8217;s darling knitwear master.</p><p>While we have tremendous respect for every member of this year&#8217;s &#8220;30 Under 30,&#8221; we had to highlight those members who influence our daily lives here at StyleCaster. So click through the slideshow above to check out the beloved designers and creative minds who make our jobs worth doing!</p><p>All images courtesy of .</p>.</p><p>Recently launched last month, the new shopping platform is the brainchild of former ShopBop Head Buyer Erin Crandall, who also runs the West Village boutique that goes by the same name as the site.</p><p>The new e-boutique features a slew of Downtown designers from New York and beyond, such as favorites like Chris Benz, Rebecca Taylor, , Yigal Azrouel, Vince, Dannijo and Jason Wu.</p><p>Filled with tons of options for guys and gals, A Man and a Woman will be your new one-stop destination to get New York City approved apparel and accessories without having to ever leave the house! </p>. So when we heard one of our all-time fave designers (not to mention StyleCaster BFF) Rebecca Minkoff was behind a , our interest was piqued.</p><p>First spotted during her spring 2012 NYFW show, these little lovelies are actually part of the collection and all proceeds benefit Planned Parenthood. Decorated in studs, zebra and leopard print packaging, Minkoff&#8217;s contribution (also available on her site), join the ranks of other big-name designers, including Alexander Wang, Jeremy Scott and Charlotte Ronson.</p><p>&#8220;I loved the idea of designing a condom that was made by a woman for a woman,&#8221; says Minkoff. &#8220;I got to use my classic studded Rebecca Minkoff design and apply it to the packaging, making a condom that girls can feel comfortable carrying with them.&#8221;</p><p>True, we know plenty of ladies that would prefer these to something you&#8217;d find at your neighborhood drug store, but then again we know quite a lot of gay boys who&#8217;d equally rejoice over a condom that actually color-coordinated with their ber-expensive Prada satchels.</p><p>CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION</p><p>Incoming… In a sec, you’re going to receive an email from StyleCaster asking you to click on a link to confirm your subscription to the StyleCaster newsletter.</p>and checkout NOW! Your size will not last. Trust me. And it&#8217;s Friday, you NEED new shoes.</p><p>Blake Fold Over Boot, $575; Alexis Fringe Boot, $575; Carrington Woven Boot, $595 &#8211; Alexander Wang at .</p><p>CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION</p><p>Incoming… In a sec, you’re going to receive an email from StyleCaster asking you to click on a link to confirm your subscription to the StyleCaster newsletter.</p>, and she&#8217;s getting some serious attention for it.</p><p>Her art has been featured inside Argentine Harper&#8217;s Bazaar and Harvey Nichols recently asked her to illustrate its spring/summer 2012 press book.</p><p>The 21-year-old has walked in shows for , Chanel, Givenchy and Balenciaga, and has appeared in , Interview and Love. Her pieces are reminiscent of that of a courtroom, and give us a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes of the fashion industry, from a .</p><p>She has to make her sketches quick because the models move around backstage, and sometimes she leaves her drawings unfinished, liking the way they look just like that. Other times, she&#8217;ll flesh out her work with paint, using vibrant, exaggerated colors that give her work a distinctive, carnivalesque look.</p><p>For fashion fans, it&#8217;s nice to see Preizler&#8217;s unique perspective through her playful artwork, but if the field were crowded with other models who also enjoyed to draw, one wonders if the hype surrounding her drawings would be the same.</p><p>Take a look at some of her work for yourself in the slideshow above, and let us know what you think below. Is Preizler&#8217;s artwork worth the rave reviews?</p><p>[Images courtesy of ]</p>)</p><p>Evan Rachel Wood looks hot although nearly unrecognizable in her new Gucci . Could it be that we&#8217;re missing the pale skin of the Vampire Queen of Louisiana? ()</p><p><br>Fall 2010 Gucci Guilty Ad Campaign</p><p> is releasing their first ads for Fall, a simple straightforward approach that really highlights, gasp, the clothes! ()<br><br>Fall 2010 Proenza Schouler Ad Campaign</p><p>J. Lo is out of the running to host American Idol. Sources are chalking it up to her diva-like demands. File under: unsurprising news of the day. ()</p><p> is all move over Whitney Port, I&#8217;m getting my own reality show. The Elle editor signed with the Sundance channel to host All On the Line, a show in which he&#8217;ll aid struggling designers. ()</p><p>TWITTER<br>RT @ Just used the term &#8220;hella sexy&#8221; in convo. Should probs get myself to eleqution lessons (once I have chopped off my tongue)<br>Are you trying to make &#8220;hella sexy&#8221; happen, Henry Holland?</p><p>RT @ Dear PR peeps, can we agree to stop sending Mischa Barton fashion credits? It&#8217;s just sad for all involved.<br>Spoken like an honest fashion writer. We&#8217;ll always have SoapNet&#8217;s OC reruns, Mischa!</p><p>RT @ As promised, here&#8217;s Abbey Lee Kershaw starring in the &#8220;Wall Street&#8221; inspired video campaign for Alexander Wang! &#8212; <br>Definitely worth a hot minute emphasis on the hot.</p><p> <p><p><p><p></p><p>RT @ Gorgeous grosgrain @carolina herrera..collection is going to b beyond!!! <br>Only a studied stylist could get psyched about the potential in ribbon&#8230;<br></p><p>RT @ DRYYYY cleaning.<br>Ask yourself, Alexa, was this worth tweeting? The unexamined life is not worth living after all.<br><br>Related:<br></p>Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Fashion&#8217;s Night Out is back &#8212; and this year, they&#8217;re determined to make it bigger than ever. While many have their gripes about FNO (the crowds! the tourists! the minimal free booze!), it&#8217;s actually a great idea that does bring a lot of people together, not to mention allows a more populist platform for the public to have its own fashion event amid the exclusive calendar that is Fashion Week. ()</p><p>In order to build the anticipation for &#8220;shopping&#8217;s biggest night&#8221; (side note: if you have ever actually made a purchase on FNO, please contact me), a slew of stars have teamed up for this year&#8217;s PSA &#8212; and we mean a slew. This is probably the most random group of stars ever, but we kind of dig it &#8212; and are also having fantasies about what a dinner party with all of these people would be like.</p><p>Here&#8217;s the complete list of who appears in the video: Victoria Beckham, Justin Bieber, Julie Bowen, Tory Burch, Tyson Chandler, Georgina Chapman, Francisco Costa, Keren Craig, Darren Criss, Peter Dundas, Carolina Herrera, Chanel Iman, Marc Jacobs, Liya Kebede, Karlie Kloss, Solange Knowles, Michael Kors, Doutzen Kroes, Pamela Love, Arizona Muse, David Neville, Jessica Paré, Usher Raymond, Coco Rocha, Hailee Steinfeld, Taylor Swift, Marcus Wainwright, Alexander Wang, Kristen Wiig, Olivia Wilde and Jason Wu. Yep.</p><p>.</p>)<p>Louis Vuitton&#8217;s Pre-Fall 2011 ads make you want to board a train from Milan to Paris ASAP. ()</p><p>For the resort season, Alexander Wang is launching swim, right on the heels of a launching a men&#8217;s ready to wear line. Busy bee. ()</p><p>DVF is taking a note out of the Stella McCartney handbook and collaborating on a Gap Kids line. ()</p><p>Summer Playlist! DJ Price did one for Blue &#038; Cream and his own label, Reason clothing. Check it. ()</p><p>DOUBLE SHOT: TWEET, TWEET</p><p>RT @ Looks like Erin Wasson is contemplating a brand new career move, into the interior design world! &#8212; Busy, busy lady.<br><br>RT @ Was just about to write a FB update with a &#8220;Happy Monday&#8221; sentiment until I realized&#8230;it&#8217;s Tuesday. #word<br><br>RT @ I think I must be seriously practicing for The Amazing Race. Travelling around the world in 10 days. Next stop tomorrow: Moscow. The exciting life of zee fashion editor.<br><br>RT @ How well do you know your Award nominees and honorees? Take our new quiz and find out: Love a good quiz.</p><p>RT @ aaand i just rode the elevator with Anna WIntour. GOOD MORNING BRAHS Love.it.</p>, but I found it vaguely ironic rocker, and therefore enjoyed it.</p><p>Recently spotted on the streets, hair blowing in wind (probably thinking about Alexander Skarsgrd), Kate was rocking wayfarers, a denim mini, pink knit and those suede booties she loves to love. The standout that&#8217;s going to have girls googling is that Fall 2011 Alexander Wang Jane bag in blush. It isn&#8217;t available until 7/1, but that color, those zippers, it looks kind of like a backpack in a really great size! I&#8217;m thinking it may be worth the wait. </p><p>Photo: </p>? Feed your daily &#8220;diet&#8221; with these juicy tidbits:</p><p>Bridal couturier Angel Sanchez is going contemporary. The designer is launching an 18-piece prt&#8211;porter line called Sanchez so young brides can continue to wear his frothy wares after their big day now you can &#8220;always the bride&#8221; and mean it. ()</p><p>isn&#8217;t one to rest on his laurels. The &#8220;it&#8221; girl favorite is launching an unnamed essentials collection comprised of the Wang stuff girls continue to scoop up seasonally think trousers, jackets and a flat front shirt. ()</p><p>Apparently ladies take four times longer to get ready on Mondays than Fridays. Is it that we&#8217;re just slow mo&#8217; on Mondays or unwilling to by Friday?<br>()</p><p> follows Proenza Schouler in designing a line of drapery textiles for Knoll Luxe. Anyone thinking of going the Scarlett O&#8217;Hara route and fashioning a frock out of the curtains, don&#8217;t bother, they&#8217;re going for $315 per yard. ()</p><p> told British Elle, People always ask me if Im dating Robert [Pattinson]. Its beyond annoying. People say that if I just tell them everything theyll leave me alone.&#8221; What&#8217;s annoying is when fame makes people wealthy and then they whine about being famous. ()</p><p>Related: </p>)<p>Gucci designed a limited edition bracelet to benefit Japan. It retails for $100 and is in stores now. ()</p><p>Prabal Gurung, Altuzarra, and Ohne Titel are all launching resort lines this coming season. So, those guys are about to get really, really tired. ()</p><p>It seems like Jenna Lyons is just trying to get Fox News all riled up. The J.Crew Creative Director talks about letting her son pick out sparkly shoes for her every morning. I&#8217;m loving this woman more every day. ()</p><p>Alexander Wang is diversifying into the home category, slowly. In particular, &#8220;special desk accessories and little home lifestyle pieces that I&#8217;m working on for the store as well . . . like our own custom notebooks and little table lighters and things like that. So that&#8217;s exciting,&#8221; the designer told . </p><p>DOUBLE SHOT: TWEET, TWEET</p><p>RT @ Decked Out: The BARNEYS NY VIPS Accessorize for Spring&#8230; These are way fun.</p><p>RT @ jessie spano on speed episode changed my life heh, it was totally caffeine pills and not speed. #overreactor</p><p>RT @ Dont you mean PS11? @ ? RT @: The one &#038; only @ PS2. We pray this isnt a dream Burn?</p><p>RT @ Hot sunny day in the Cotswolds. Leaving it all behind for Newcastle tomorrow. Going to see my mother who married a geordie lad. Way-aye. Is that in English?</p><p>RT @ Photo: Me and Lady Gaga at the end of the Bazaar shoot. Love.it. <p>RT @ Forever a queen of French fashion! Carine Roitfeld,having tea at the Wolseley, with Luigi Murenu and Iango Henzi: Gorg.</p>)<p>I&#8217;m loving the whimsical look of Tim Walker&#8217;s 2011 campaign for Korean fashion brand O2ND </p><p>Kelly Osbourne only went to the Badgley Mischka show this season and told Elle why: I dont know how to say this without being a dick, but Im contracted to only go to this one. And I really wanted to because Im looking for a dress for the Oscars because Im doing the red-carpet thingy. Um, maybe they shouldn&#8217;t pay her. ()</p><p>Vogue&#8217;s first iPad feature has a ton of exclusive info on cover girl Lady Gaga, in case there&#8217;s anything you don&#8217;t know about her yet. ()</p><p>DOUBLE SHOT: TWEET, TWEET</p><p>RT @ Lara Stone returned to Calvin Klrin&#8217;s runway to close the show. I&#8217;ve missed that hot Dutchness on the catwalk! LOVE it.<p>RT @ I&#8217;m sourounded by some of the best photographers in the world @ </p><p>RT @ Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly. Uh oh.</p><p>RT @ Just got the best blow dry in NY @! Nice plug.</p><p>RT @ Dear Las Vegas, we&#8217;re through. All the best, Paul. PS-Ditch the Pepsi and get some diet coke. Thanks so much. Is anyone anywhere but Vegas and NYC?</p></p><p>Well, this is absolutely amazing. If we weren&#8217;t already excited enough about Alexander Wang&#8216;s Spring 2013 show today at New York Fashion Week, this piece of news really takes it to another level.</p><p>Liberty Ross, the stunning yet scorned wife of Kristen Stewart&#8216;s fling Rupert Sanders, is walking in the Wang show. As you can see in this backstage snap of her getting her hair and makeup done, she looks amazing.</p><p>We&#8217;re waiting eagerly to see what she struts down the runway in, and we&#8217;ll keep you updated.</p><p>UPDATE: , including Ross&#8217;s catwalk moment. Stunning.</p>. She looks pretty good, considering my post-breakup attire consists of forest green kickline sweatpants from Kennedy High School that have been washed so many times they are practically transparent with a stained hanes t-shirt.</p>that might have been the list of talent set to perform at this year&#8217;s Lollapalooza music festival out in Chicago. Now, it looks like the Chicago Sun-Times has managed to release the names of musicians that are officially booked for the three-day festival.</p><p>But, as soon as other blogs caught wind of the news break, which broke out onto the Interwebs at 8:25 PM CST this evening from the , it was soon quickly taken down. Just 12 minutes after mega music blog picked up on the Lollapalooza line-up announcement (who will also have their own music festival this summer as well), looks like someone over at the Sun-Times decided to erase that article.</p><p>Thankfully, other blogs such as managed to get down the names of all the acts playing this year before that happened (and even from a different Chicago newspaper), which we will now present to you below:</p><p>Main event: Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Black Keys, Black Sabbath, Jack White, , At the Drive-In, Avicii, The Shins, Justice, Passion Pit, Sigur Ros, The Weeknd, M83, Miike Snow, The Afghan Whigs, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, Frank Ocean, J. Cole, Childish Gambino, Delta Spirit, Metric, The Temper Trap, Wale, , Dawes, tUnEyArDs, The Head &amp; the Heart, The Big Pink, Twin Shadow, The Tallest Man on Earth, Toro y Moi, Dr. Dog, Of Monsters and Men, Gary Clark Jr., Alabama Shakes, The Gaslight Anthem, Amadou &amp; Mariam, Band of Skulls, SBTRKT, Tame Impala, The Walkmen, JJ Grey &amp; Mofro, fun., Neon Indian, Dum Dum Girls, Washed Out, Aloe Blacc, Trampled by Turtles, Bear in Heaven, Blind Pilot, Chairlift, The Black Angels, Yellow Ostrich, Givers, Polica, Bombay Bicycle Club, Sharon Van Etten, White Rabbits, Doomtree, Macklemore &amp; Ryan Lewis, The Devil Makes Three, Oberhofer, The War on Drugs, Michael Kiwanuka, O Rappa, Bowerbirds, Orchard Lounge, Mona, The Growlers, Hey Rosetta!, JEFF the Brotherhood, Anamanaguchi, First Aid Kit, Wax, FIDLAR, JC Brooks &amp; the Uptown Sound, Milo Greene, Los Jaivas, Kopecky Family Band, The Jezabels, LP, Yuna, Walk Off the Earth, Animal Kingdom, Dev, The Sheepdogs, The Dunwells, DJ Mel, Empires, Kevin Devine, Dry the River, Helena, Haley Reinhart, Imaginary Cities, Overdoz, Ambassadors, DJ Zebo, Chancellor Warhol, Laura Warshauer and Red Oblivion.</p><p>Perry’s Stage: Bassnectar, Kaskade, Calvin Harris, NERO, , Knife Party, Zeds Dead, Big Gigantic, Skream &amp; Benga, Little Dragon, Porter Robinson, Sub Focus, Madeon, Zedd, Paper Diamond, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Star Slinger, Badastrom, DJ Nihal, SALVA &amp; Kid Color.</p><p>There are still some Lollapalooza tickets available for sale, over at the event&#8217;s , but be sure to act fast!</p>. Every year, Forbes reports on the world&#8217;s most wealthy residents, and while tends to be a barrage of tech nerds and ugly investment bankers, we can assure you this list is not.</p><p>For the past few years, Brazilian bombshell Gisele Bundchen has held court at the top spot, raking in well over $40 million thanks to a ton of endorsement deals and campaigns. Oh, and every once in awhile, she actually walks on a runway. This past year, she closed out shows for Alexander Wang and Givenchy.</p><p>While it&#8217;s no surprise that Gisele leads this glamorous pack, there are some shockers on this year&#8217;s list. Click through the gallery above to find out who made the cut &#8212; and more importantly, how much they made.</p>has not only wooed downtown leanings of many a fashion-committed tastemaker, but recently, the 26-year old . Things seem to be only on the up and up for the young designer and taking a look at his accessories, it&#8217;s obvious why. He dresses up classic shapes, like his and cool girl ubiquitous , in typical Wang style: tough hardware and studding. The next in line? Meet Darcy. This slouchy hobo can fit all your daily fixins&#8217; and comes in pebbled leather so you won&#8217;t come off looking too precious. Retailers, knowing an Alex Wang craze when they see one, are offering the bags for pre-sale. Order now and Darcy will arrive on your doorstep before July 20. Alexander Wang &#8216;Darcy&#8217; slouchy hobo with silver or brass studs, $850 for pre-sale at and </p><p>Related: <br><br></p>]</p><p>Someone vomited on The View! Miracles do happen. [Via ]</p><p>Kanye West showed his second collection in Paris and Kim Kardashian was there. What more could you want? [Via ]</p><p>Sarah Burton is still under a confidentiality agreement and can&#8217;t talk about the creation of Kate Middleton&#8216;s wedding dress. [Via ]</p><p>One brave man is going where no one has gone before &#8212; he&#8217;s suing AMC theaters over the price of their snacks. [Via ]</p>featuring those rapping zanies Die Antwoord, and now has just released their Spring/Summer 2012 campaign video via .</p><p>Keeping true to the collection&#8217;s 50s/60s motor city vibe, the fun fashion short takes place at one of the cleanest gas stations I have ever seen.</p><p>Hot rods, high fashion and hell-on-wheels heels? Yes, please!</p><p></p><p>(P.S. Did I hear a bit of in that video?)</p>In the past week, has loudly split from Lady Gaga&#8216;s manager Troy Carter (), deleted her Twitter account (which helped bring her to prominence in the first place) and denounced the &#8220;rap game,&#8221; claiming that she now wants to be considered a &#8220;vocalist.&#8221; This kind of behavior is something you&#8217;d expect from a more established artist like , not a 21-year-old who has yet to release a mixtape in completion.</p><p>That said, Banks has had quite a year: When Banks burst onto the scene nine months ago with the vulgar and outrageously catchy &#8220;212,&#8221; she captivated an audience in dire need of female rap representation. While Minaj had previously held the title of the hipster fashionista&#8217;s favorite hip-hop chanteuse, her pop music submergence has started to turn off her original supporters. While Banks may seem poised to take over her position, she still still has to earn her stripes, even if the fashion industry has convinced her otherwise (Alexander Wang invited her as his date to the , and Prada commissioned her to perform at their after party).</p><p>As StyleCaster&#8217;s  editor Susie G puts it, &#8220;Azealia Banks&#8217; rise to fame and Internet stardom is a product of the YouTube Generation we live in. Her lyrics and beats are easy to comprehend, along with her &#8216;this is who I am, deal with it, bitch&#8217; attitude.&#8221;</p><p>Susie was also quick to note the fact that even prior to the release of her EP 1991, she was performing a set at Coachella. It&#8217;s hard not to compare Banks to another artist who recently blew up thanks to viral videos, the approval of fashion folk, and high-profile appearances: . Del Rey&#8217;s now would have stunted anyone&#8217;s career ten years ago, but it just made people hungrier for more.</p><p>I rejected Banks at first. Candidly, I found her cavalier attitude and age off-putting, but I quickly retracted my negative feelings after hearing some of her songs (they&#8217;re great). However, now I feel like I&#8217;m back where I started. While her recent media stunts may make her fan base even stronger, they actually just come off as spoiled and ungrateful. A four song EP and a Karl Lagerfeld endorsement may get you plenty of gifted tweed to pair with your high-top sneakers, but it does not a career make.</p><p>What Azealia has proven thus far is that anyone with a pretty face, foul mouth and lively Internet personality can get famous. What she needs to prove is that they can stay famous for the right reasons.</p>is not shy about proclaiming his love of all things 90s, minimalism, Helmut Lang and Calvin Klein. Always the original though, Wang takes those influences, makes them his and in turn makes all the kids who love him want a taste of the Generation X decade.</p><p>Wang&#8217;s Fabianas are silver and sleek and make your legs look amazing and have that simplicity that we would have expected of Gwyneth in the Brad years [I mean, remember the Gwen/Brad years?]. The trick is, though, that they have this incredible, architectural covered heel that takes them instantly from everyday minimal moment to nearly art. I&#8217;m also really into that unabashed metallic right now, too which means these 4.5 inch heels are, basically, everything.</p><p></p><p>Alexander Wang Fabiana Heels, $495, at </p><p>CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION</p><p>Incoming… In a sec, you’re going to receive an email from StyleCaster asking you to click on a link to confirm your subscription to the StyleCaster newsletter.</p>shot the gorgeous portraits in black and white, and the designers featured prove that they could easily double as models. (I mean, check out the guns on Marc and Prabal!)</p><p>Click through to check out the nominees for the CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year AwardAlexander Wang, Jack and Lazaro of and Marc Jacobsand those up for the Swarovski Award for WomenswearPrabal Gurung, Joseph Altuzarra and the Olsen twins. And, of course, there&#8217;s a Lady Gaga portrait thrown in for good measure. </p><p>All photos by Inez &#038; Vinoodh</p></p><p>Hometown: Santa Barbara, California</p><p>New York City Neighborhood: Chelsea</p><p>Most Incredible Model Moment: Working with [photographer] for Italian Vogue</p><p>Favorite Designer Icon: </p><p>Favorite Photographer You&#8217;ve Worked With: </p><p>Describe Your Uniform: It&#8217;s a very minimalist look. Cut off jean shorts, tank top and Converse high tops.</p>. To the non-fashionite they may seem a little off the wall, but that just makes us love them even more.</p><p>One trend that recently caught our eye? Athletic sportswear. No, you don&#8217;t need to be a jock to sport this look (we&#8217;re certainly not). ’s spring 2012 collection delivered the trend in full force while followed suit with mesh shirts, rash guards and sport bras. Still wary of the trend? Take baby steps and throw a denim vest over your gym get-up.</p><p>For those of us who weren&#8217;t all-the-way varsity back in the day, incorporating this trend may appear a bit daunting. Don&#8217;t be intimidated! No, we&#8217;re not suggesting you wear your yoga pants to the office, but with the proper touches, you&#8217;ll be looking like you sprinted off the treadmill and onto a catwalk, for sure.</p><p>We decided to create a compilation of athletic wear at an affordable price. Check out our suggestions in the slideshow above and tell us your thoughts on the trend in the comments section below!</p></p><p>THE ADVICE: Only buy items that you really need in your wardrobe. Try not to get tempted by something if you truly do not need it. Trust me, you&#8217;ll never wear it.</p><p>BEST BUY: The best deal I ever got was a pair of Helmut Lang tuxedo shoes I had for ten years. A tuxedo shoe is something you really need and use all the time and I got it for sample sale price!<p><br>Sarah Rosen<br>Publicist, </p><p>THE ADVICE: Know the brand and always arrive early! It will help you focus and strategize in the midst of any overwhelming sample sale. If you know the product, you can determine the season(s) that will likely be at the sale. That way, you can steer clear of other distractions and get in and out quicker.</p><p><br>Elana Fishman<br>Fashion News Editor, </p><p>THE ADVICE: If a sale is continuing on for several days and you love the merchandise, make several visits! Prices may be slashed towards the end &#8212; plus you might end up spotting pieces that you missed the first time around.<br></p><p>BEST BUY: My favorite sample sale score was a beautiful flared Gryphon trench I &#8220;visited&#8221; a whopping three times before finally caving. I wound up getting it for almost $100 less than it was originally priced at the sale &#8212; and for about $600 less than it retailed! And with the staggering number of times I&#8217;ve worn it, that coat&#8217;s paid for itself.<br></p><p><br>Nicole Lam<br>Assistant Stylist, </p><p>THE ADVICE: Wear a neutral tank top and bike shorts or leggings under your clothes so you can try things on in front of people.</p><p>BEST BUY: One of the best deals I&#8217;ve scored was an Alexander Wang army vest, which I got for $40 at their sample sale about a year ago.</p><p><br>Sarah Schussheim<br>Assistant Fashion Editor, </p><p>THE ADVICE: Discuss what your goals are with a sample sale buddy before you go! Always go with a friend. Then, divide and conquer: one person hit RTW and the other accessories. Also, always pull more than you expect to purchase &#8212; if you don&#8217;t like something, you can always put it back.<br></p><p><br>Sara Lieberman<br>Newspaper Editor and Co-Founder, </p><p>THE ADVICE:<br>1. If you can, go during off hours. Try 11am (if the sale started at 9) or 5 (if it closes at 7). You avoid the risk of getting smacked in the face with a sample Botkier bag or fighting for the mirror in your skivvies!<br>2. Dress appropriately. The idea is to get in, score, and get out. Don&#8217;t wear a button down shirt or tights &#8212; you&#8217;ll be left stuffing buttons in holes while the girl next to you swipes up that last leather DVF mini skirt!<br>2. Finally, check Sample Sale Stakeout before you go! We hit early to provide shoppers with enough info to help them determine if it&#8217;s worth their time. Do you have to check your bag? Can you try on? Cash only? Bigger sizes? Deep enough discounts? Know before you go by checking with us!<br></p><p>BEST BUY: Best deal is a toughie &#8212; the majority of my closet is sample sale finds. Off the top of my head, I have to go with a pair of fringe leather Botkier booties that were $40! There was one pair left in my size and the original price was upwards of $400. I wore them to death and get compliments all the time.<p><br>Andrew Mukamal<br> <br></p><p>THE ADVICE: If you didn&#8217;t want it when it was full price, don&#8217;t take it home! Sample sales can get stressful, try and edit your buys to things you really love in order to avoid filling your closet with random cheap finds.</p><p><br>Dana Cirincione<br>Digital Media Manager, <br></p><p>THE ADVICE: My top sample sale shopping tip is to have patience and to be aggressive. The lines for top sample sales are usually long but once you get inside, beeline for what you want. Sample sales offer a limited number of pieces in a few sizes so chances are someone else is eyeing the same pieces you are. If you don&#8217;t get to it first, someone else will. <br></p><p>BEST BUY: The best deal I ever scored was back in 2008 at the Marc Jacobs sample sale. I bought this amazing turquoise jewel-toned handbag with chained straps at like 60% off. I still have it in my closet it and wear it when I need to add a pop of color to any outfit.</p><p><br>Ruthie Friedlander<br>Public Relations, </p><p>THE ADVICE Always wear leggings. Always wear a white tank top. And always come ready to undress in front of girls you wish you looked like.</p><p><br>Joane Amay<br>Senior Fashion Credits Editor,<p>THE ADVICE <br>1. Go early if you can. Try to be one of the first few shoppers. This is when you can snag gorgeous one of a kind samples or treasures in the bargain bins. <br>2. Go the last day if you can. Most designers reduce prices by up to half on the last day. You might not have wanted to spend $100 for that pleated skirt but for $50 that same skirt is coming home with you. <br>3. After you&#8217;ve done your first round through the racks, go through them a second time if you can. You might see something that you&#8217;ve missed. <br>4. Join the Facebook and Twitter pages of the brands that you like. They usually alert their followers of any upcoming sales.</p><p>BEST BUY: A few years back, I attended a Hayden Harnett sample sale and was the third person there. They had $1 bargain bins and I headed straight for them. I was able to snag 30 samples (including leather coats) at $1 each. Can you imagine that&#8230;30 items for $30!!! Unbelievable!</p><p>CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION</p><p>Incoming… In a sec, you’re going to receive an email from StyleCaster asking you to click on a link to confirm your subscription to the StyleCaster newsletter.</p>pointed out look like they could be bullets) hint at the &ldquo;Mad Max&rdquo; inspiration Wang mentioned .</p><p>Mary-Kate has a history of having covetable bags first. She was also given the PS1 by Proenza Schouler before it hit stores. reports (via facebook) that it looks like Julia Restoin-Roitfeld was given one too. Now we&rsquo;re wondering who else was so lucky.</p>, a collab debut or as was demonstrated in early August: an Alexander Wang sample sale. If you live in New York and have eyes and ears, then you were undoubtedly made privy to this sale. If you have absolutely no sense like us, you probably waited in line for two hours on Mercer street wishing and hoping your high school basketball skills would somehow resurface just in time for you to box out that super skinny chick standing by the sample sale shoe rack. </p><p>If you faked a doctor&#8217;s appointment at work to get in on the sale but still missed out on the goods, we&#8217;re here to tell you to breathe easy, sister. This tank dress from T by Alex Wang is just as covetable as any of the merch and it&#8217;s barely over $100. However, we just might beat you to the online checkout if you don&#8217;t act fast. Hey, we just wanted to give you a fair warning. </p><p>T by Alexander Wang heather classic long tank dress, $108, at </p></p><p>To celebrate 10 years of being one of the coolest boutiques in New York City (and in the world for that matter), Opening Ceremony will be releasing what looks to be a good textbook-size publication on all things OC from publishing house Rizzoli, that has also given us must-have reads on Alber Elbaz and Lanvin, , Christian Louboutin, Rick Owens, Carine Roitfeld and many more pieces of high-fashion-minded literature. According to their website, the Opening Ceremony book will include &#8220;&#8230;original photography by Terry Richardson, &#8216;zine inserts by and Spike Jonze, and memories and artwork by Ryan McGinley, , Sally Singer, M.I.A., Terence Koh, Marcel Dzama, Rodarte, Proenza Schouler, Jason Schwartzman [swoon], and so many more&#8230;&#8221;</p><p>For anyone who is a die-hard Opening Ceremony fan, even if you can&#8217;t afford anything in one of their shops, this book sounds like the perfect accessory to complete any school nerd ensemble in addition to being a must-read. If you head over to , you can pre-order the book now for its release on September 4th of this year.</p><p>And at $65 a pop, you can definitely put a few pennies aside to save up for a copy. Think of it this way–it will definitely make one hell of a stylish addition to your book shelf, or if you&#8217;re the kind of person that likes to put long reads next to the toilet, then the bathroom would be a safe bet too (though the thought of doing that makes us kind of cringe).</p><p>[via ]</p>, , and . Price points range from $75 &#8211; $600. Be sure to check out their site .</p><p>StyleCaster: What brought you two together to start Love, Zooey?</p><p>Alice Heller: I started my career in Levi Strauss&#8217; marketing department and then went on to become the head of the jeans and t-shirt division at Esprit. Working closely with Doug Tompkins, founder of Esprit, I was able to have a better understanding on what it meant to build a name, brand, and identity. I then launched my immediately successful t-shirt company, Zooey, in 2003. Grace worked closely with me as a designer at Zooey and then we came together again to create the next best thing: Love, Zooey.</p><p>Who is the woman who wears Love, Zooey?</p><p>The woman who wears Love, Zooey is a downtown girl with chic sophistication and a bit of an edge. She is the girl who isn&#8217;t afraid to mix what she wearing with other brands.</p><p>What&#8217;s the inspiration behind the Spring 2012 collection?</p><p>The inspiration behind the Spring collection was mainly pop colors and special treatments to contrast fabrics. We also incorporated stripes. We wanted to add more than one element, [and not just use] one plain fabric. We felt like this spring is a time for color and it definitely is shown in this collection in a comfortable way.</p><p>How do you like your line to be represented and known to customers?</p><p>We want our consumers to be able to mix our pieces with what they already own in their closet. Our pieces are then more of a staple. Our pieces give our consumers the option to mix and match the pieces to get the classic or more of a downtown edgy look. It&#8217;s the best of both worlds to have the balance of both in your closet.</p><p>Who are some designers who have been influential? </p><p> has been a huge influence for us mainly because she has such a fabulous casual look. Her collections have such style and attitude that is very appealing. Another designer that has been hugely influential is . He uses such simplistic elements that are so chic and for the everyday woman.</p></p><p>If writing is your thing and you want to be part of something revolutionary, drop us a line!</p><p>StyleCaster is looking for ambitious, talented and creative Junior Team Members to assist the Editorial Content and Fashion teams for the Summer 2012 season.</p><p>All editorial applicants must possess strong editing and proofreading skills, and basic knowledge of Photoshop is a plus.</p><p>You should be up to date on breaking fashion industry news, and be as familiar with prominent bloggers as you are with international editors.</p><p>We want you to think outside of the box and pitch story ideas to the editors, and you should be able to hit the ground running, producing content your first day on the job. Needless to say, you should be familiar with the voice and the content of StyleCaster if you apply.</p><p>You just might be the right guy or gal for the job if you can:</p><p>If this sounds like your dream job, contact us ASAP! E-mail your resume and a couple of writing samples to intern @ stylecaster.com with “Editorial JTM,” “Fashion JTM” or “Beauty JTM” as the subject line.</p>&#8216;s Fall 2011 show are going to be some of the season&#8217;s most sought after pieces come September, but let&#8217;s be honest: they&#8217;ll certainly cost a pretty penny. Luckily, the designer&#8217;s latest collection for T perfectly mirrors the feel of his main line&#8217;s offering for fallfrom the outerwear to the silky slip dresses to the shiny, textured accents. The , sweatshirt ponchos and chunky knits look like they could&#8217;ve come straight off of the runway, and at a price point that&#8217;s accessible to almost all of his fans, I&#8217;m willing to bet that they&#8217;ll be the first items to fly off of the racks at Wang&#8217;s new Grand Street store. Click through for our favorite looks from the collection. </p>because you get some of that signature downtown louche cool without having it fall under &#8220;investment purchase.&#8221; Pre-Falls standouts include navy maxi skirts, nude body conscious dresses, cropped sweaters and sheer button downs. </p><p>They&#8217;re not total game changers, they&#8217;re wearable, easy, make-you-look-awesome-without-trying-too-hard pieces. A step above staples, a collared dress looks work-ready but is sheer enough to take you for cocktails after and you&#8217;ll wear the cardis on the daily. I can skip some of those striped dresses, but, you know, that&#8217;s just me.</p><p>What are your faves?</p>is that it&#8217;s not trying to be a cheaper version of the main line it&#8217;s just easy, slouchy street wear for the girl who likes to still look cool but feel like she never left her t-shirt sheets.</p><p>I&#8217;m digging the lighter palette, , ankle length skirts and ruched minis for . Will you be investing in some T?</p><p>All Photos: </p>, the bohemian, denim and t-shirt centric partner brand to Elizabeth and James is debuting its first round of print ads, and they kind of make you want to go into the desert with nothing but a tee, a good pair of jeans and a day to waste.<p>Inspired by a 1969 trip to that place U2 made famous, Joshua Tree, the collection is as light, cotton, airy and modern-hippie-in-the-wilderness-but-still-looking-fine worthy as you&#8217;d expect.</p><p>It&#8217;s kind of for the girl who likes to let her indie spirit come through without sacrificing letting her butt look good in jeans. Mary-Kate Olsen headed up the concept, and I think it shows in the ads slated to run in August and September mags.</p><p>Also, keep an eye out for next season&#8217;s Elizabeth and James shoes, headed up by the former head of footwear design at Alexander Wang. All exciting things in the land where fashion meets Olsen.</p><p></p></p><p>While we were catching up on our weekly dose of drama courtesy of the other disputes were being settled quietly out of court. , ex-employees filed a $450 million lawsuit earlier this year against the downtown fashion set&#8217;s darling, Alexander Wang, alleging they suffered from sweatshop-like conditions in his Chinatown factory (so much for producing locally, yeesh).</p><p>According to , the suit has been dropped “following an undisclosed settlement between both sides.” Though the amount of the settlement and other terms of the agreement weren’t revealed (we would have asked to be paid in shoes), both sides did agree that they would not file an appeal after the case was dismissed,  so it&#8217;s safe to assume that the issue has been very much settled.</p><p>A spokesperson for Alexander Wang : &#8220;We are gratified that this matter has been dismissed, as the allegations were unfounded and completely false.&#8221;</p><p>In any case, hopefully this will help clear some time for Wang to focus on his upcoming show during New York Fashion Week – we’re counting down the days!</p><p>Photo courtesy of ImaxTree</p>which was quite the comeback move for the scorned wife and successful model.</p><p>The kicker, however, was a very playful finale in which a group of models in paneled white dresses appeared on the runway and all the lights went dark, revealing the dresses could, in fact, glow in the dark. A bit cheesy, perhaps, but New York Fashion Week often needs a dose of good old fashioned showmanship.</p>We&#8217;re always waiting with baited breath to see what the theme of the next exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art&#8217;s Costume Institute will be (especially after the explosive success of the McQueen show). Today, that next May, &#8220;Punk: Chaos to Couture&#8221; will be turning the fashion world upside down.</p><p>According to the article, the exhibit will &#8220;highlight the origins of the punk movement and draw direct connections to haute couture and ready-to-wear creations.&#8221; So basically, get ready to see a plethora of designs with skulls, ripped fabric and military-inspired jackets. Some designers that will be showcased include Haider Ackermann, Miguel Adrover, Azzedine Alaïa, Boudicca, Ann Demeulemeester, Dolce &amp; Gabbana, Andrew Groves, Marc Jacobs, Rei Kawakubo, Alexander McQueen, Rodarte, and Alexander Wang. John Galliano isn&#8217;t on the list &#8212; but we&#8217;d be a tad shocked if some of his collections are not featured.</p><p>The co-chairs of the exhibit are Rooney Mara, Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci, Lauren Santo Domingo and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. This seems like a strange group, but it&#8217;s no surprise to us that LSD is the socialite who was totally down to slap her regal name on a punk exhibit. What&#8217;s more, we&#8217;re betting the success of &#8220;The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo&#8221; among the fashion set likely had a bit to do with this.</p><p>We&#8217;re definitely excited to see what they come up with, but is anyone else worried that this exhibit may be a little tired?</p>Despite their reputation as &#8220;bad girl&#8221; attire, leather pants are quickly becoming one of our closet staples and might even go so far as to replace some of our pairs of jeans as a go-to trouser for fall. Much like denim, leather manages to seem either casual or glamorous &#8212; depending on the occasion and styling &#8212; and the more you wear them, the better leather pants get.</p><p>Now, it may still be sweltering outside, but we&#8217;re already thinking about the layering we&#8217;ll be doing in about a month&#8217;s time, as well as our key purchases for the fall season. As luck would have it, we spotted these black tapered leather pants by Alexander Wang, now 70% off at . (70% off!) As an added bonus, these bad boys have an elasticized waist band, so you don&#8217;t even have to give up eating to wear them. We especially love the more relaxed, trouser-inspired silhouette, complete with a pleated panel at the waist.</p><p>Get in and grab these quick because our best guess is they won&#8217;t be available for too much longer!</p><p>Alexander Wang tapered leather pants, $375, at </p>, messy hair and minimal makeup &#8212; that&#8217;s pretty much me in a nutshell.</p><p>So, it should come to no surprise that I am utterly in love with the new line of New Era baseball caps designed by Kenzo. Major kudos have to go (yet again) to the Parisian label&#8217;s creative directors, Opening Ceremony&#8216;s own Humberto Leon and Carol Kim for further expanding the label&#8217;s Spring/Summer 2012 motif of a sophisticated, sporty travelette.</p><p>But what&#8217;s great about these baseball caps is the fact that they&#8217;re perfect to rock for two of spring&#8217;s biggest trends: and sports couture.</p><p>I&#8217;m sure you remember that baseball hats were literally all the rage the first half of the 90s, especially if you wore that snapback hat backwards or to the side if you were feeling a like a rebel that day. And let&#8217;s face it &#8212; the 90s are back in a whole slew of varieties whether you , re-discover your or just straight up .</p><p>As for the other big trend of the season, tons of sporty and athleticwear influences were spotted on the Spring 2012 shows from designers like Alexander Wang and Rag &amp; Bone. But instead of shelving out some mad dollars for runway designs, it&#8217;s great to see a designer brand teaming up with another, more affordable fashion label that won&#8217;t break your bank account.</p><p>And at 40 Euros a pop (that&#8217;s about $50.65 each), you shouldn&#8217;t feel too guilty about adding this designer swag to your collection. While the caps are available now through , they only ship within the European Union. But definitely keep an eye out this week for the hats to hit select partnering boutiques like Opening Ceremony (surprise, surprise) and Barneys New York.</p>. As we&#8217;ve come to expect from the divine Miss Banks, the video features her quintessential trash-talking and vamping &#8212; all while wearing some seriously glamorous clothing.</p><p>She continues to up her fashion cred with references to brands like Dolce &amp; Gabbana and Celine. Additionally, superstar stylist and Lady Gaga&#8216;s BFF Nicola Formichetti () is responsible for her awesome outfits.</p><p>Despite initial skepticism on some of our parts regarding Azealia and her cavalier attitude, she has continued to prove herself as a credible voice in the crowded music scene. Watch the video above and let us know what you think of her latest work.</p>has seriously come a long way from playing the little girl in I Am Sam. The established fashionista is now grown up and a student at New York University.</p><p>As an alumnus of the school and a huge Fanning fan, I&#8217;m sad we didn&#8217;t cross paths. (Side note: I lived a few doors down from the talk of last year&#8217;s Sundance Film Fest and the little sister of the most famous twins in the world, .)</p><p>Going to college with celebrities is an interesting experience, and poses a lot of questions. For example, who knows what they&#8217;ll wear to class? Will they always look red carpet ready? Luckily, Dakota came clean and told about what she wore on the first day of NYU.</p><p>The actress opted for a pleated skirt, velvet Marni shoes, black knee socks, and an asymmetrical Alexander Wang sweater. I&#8217;m impressed that she didn&#8217;t show up in head-to-toe Rodarte knitwear and a Neil Lane necklace. This is modest and refined for some NYU girls. I had a nasty looking girl in one of my classes who rocked a beat-up Birkinand Louboutins like it was her damn job. Like, we get it, hon. You&#8217;re rich.</p><p>Anyway, click through the gallery for how you can get the look!</p>, it&#8217;s definitely something worth investigating. Basically, Anna Wintour snagged some of fashion&#8217;s elite and is spearheading a fund raiser for Barack Obama&#8216;s reelection campaign.</p><p>Instead of holding some boring black tie benefit, she had some amazing designers create t-shirts that are . Some of the designers include the boys of Proenza Schouler, Tory Burch, Diane Von Furstenberg, Alexander Wang, and a slew of other A-listers.</p><p>Perhaps my favorite part of the list isBeyonc and her mother, Tina Knowles, who have both flexed their fashion muscles as the creators ofHouse of Deron. Maybe they&#8217;re not exactly on the same level as the dudes who brought the PS1 to prominence, but they are certainly something!</p><p>Check out more , and good luck browsing the t-shirts without buying a few of your own. Seriously, politics and fashion rarely looks this fabulous.</p>has chosen to be the face for the latest T by Alexander Wang campaign comes from South Africa, and goes by the name of Die Antwoord.</p><p>Die Antwoord have had a buzz around them in the musical world for a while now, and have become known for their eccentric aesthetic and musical stylings, which comes out in full force in the new video for the .</p><p>In the video which you can check out down below, Die Antwoord from their one of their new tracks &#8220;Fatty Boom Boom&#8221;, while rocking the new season&#8217;s duds. Unfortunately, I can only seem to understand about half of the words they&#8217;re saying.</p><p>Take a look down below, and hopefully you&#8217;ll be able to fill me in on the rest.</p><p></p>recently sat down with downtown fashion impresario Alexander Wang for a little update on the king of the cool kid&#8217;s meteoric rise and where he&#8217;s looking to take his burgeoning fashion empire hint: think of someone named Ralph Lauren.</p><p>Despite mentions of his best friends, the Traina sisters, and quotes from Zoe Kravitz who calls Wang, one of the &#8220;kindest, most down-to-earth people,&#8221; Wang is not so into having an untouchable, too-cool-for-the-regular-people image. Apparently, a friend of the designer&#8217;s,&#8221;referenced his It status in a recent blog post,&#8221; according to the mag, and made Wang none too please. &#8220;I texted him right away and I was like, Please do not ever refer to me as anything It, whether it&#8217;s It boy, It designer, It person,&#8221; the designer explains.</p><p>What&#8217;s that lesson about making your bed and having to lying in it? I mean, you can&#8217;t really fight &#8220;it.&#8221;</p><p>Photo: Old School shot from </p>&#8211; You can receive up to 60% off designer duds like Donna Karan, Vera Wang, Doo.Ri and more. You&#8217;ll also be able to score some pretty cool style.com collaborations like the Proenza Schouler tee or the Alexander Wang sunglasses.<p>We&#8217;ve got something for any shopper. Whether you&#8217;re looking for an excuse to get out of the house or stay bundled up in bed you now know where to shop. Got a sale you know about? Drop us a line in the comments section below and we&#8217;ll add it. Keep checking back because our list will keep growing!</p>revealed his largest to date. He presented a spread of the very things that made him famous: Perfectly draped and dresses, distressed denim and leather and a whole lot of black (a far cry from his Spring showing). </p><p>Although the brand has only been around for a few years, the collection was as close to &#8220;classic Wang&#8221; as it could get, and it&#8217;ll surely be a huge seller. &#8220;Im giving the buyers the bread and butter, the designer told , and the dessert later. By dessert, he means the increasingly directional runway shows, that let&#8217;s be honest are a much tougher sell. </p><p>Judging by the sheer amount of merchandise available at his and on the at department stores, his Fall 2010 line must not have performed as well as past seasons. As much as I&#8217;d love to be able to wear a cropped blazer, I don&#8217;t have the tall, thin frame the collection was designed for. The beautiful, Belgian-inspired deconstructed silhouettes he showed for Spring 2011 were also met with mixed reviews, and don&#8217;t seem nearly as wearable as Wang&#8217;s past collections. </p><p>Personally, I think it&#8217;s great that Wang has reached a level of success that allows him to experiment his company has turned from a family run operation to a booming design empire in only half a decade. But you can&#8217;t keep a business afloat on studded handbags alone. Do you think the designer should continue to push the envelope even if the profit margins aren&#8217;t quite the same? </p><p></p>came knocking on your door asking for a little dough? We&#8217;d shell out some change, that&#8217;s for sure. Apparently, so would a lot of other well-known designers. With President Obama&#8217;s re-election campaign beginning, Wintour approached several fashion heavy hitters to participate in her new initiative, Runway to Win.</p><p>No, this is not another fashion contest/reality show/stressball. Designers such as , , and Jason Wu will design one-of-a-kind products for the website, runwaytowin.com, with proceeds going straight to the Obama Victory Fund.</p><p>What seems to be the most controversial is not the fact that Anna is so transparent about her support (as she was with the previous election) but the question of how much pressure she placed on each of these designers to participate. I mean, who can really say no to Anna?</p>), an enviable wardrobe of effortlessly cool vintage and designer pieces, the style icon Lisa Bonet as a mom and a burgeoning career as an actress and musician. Yeah, she&#8217;s in a band, too!</p><p>To celebrate her role in the upcoming , Zoe is ASOS magazine&#8217;s cover girl for July 2011, and aside from sporting some sick ensembles from the retailer, she reveals a little about what her life has been like growing up in the spotlight. On her inevitable label as an &#8220;It&#8221; girl, she told the magazine:<br>All that it girl shit makes me kind of uncomfortable. Im only at the beginning of my career, but I feel successful in that I havent sold out in any way, shape or form. I feel good about the choices Ive made, and I dont feel like Ive let go of any of my values. Fame has become this obsession for people, which kind of creeps me out.</p><p>She also (not surprisingly) shares clothes with both her mom and dad, and claims that her pops has stolen t-shirts from her on a number of occasions. Kravitz says that she&#8217;s always been very close with her parents, but she does admit: I used to be a little embarrassed by how [my mom] and my dad would dress but now I steal their clothes all the time.</p><p>Click through to check out Zoe&#8217;s shoot for ASOS, and watch some behind-the-scenes footage below! </p><p><p><p><p><p></p>11 Fashionable Predictions For The Year Ahead <p>by 11:10 am, January 1st, 2011</p> <p><br>Happy Hangovers! Since we&#8217;ve spent the last few weeks , we thought we&#8217;d take a little time this fine morning to look forward. Herewith, eleven fashionable, if not entirely serious predictions we have for the year to come. </p><p>***</p><p> will take over &#8216;s role at Vogue. (Sorry, we couldn&#8217;t resist.) In all seriousness, this isn&#8217;t going to happen. Instead, she will probably move on to consulting &#8212; what we&#8217;d give to see Balenciaga .</p><p>After much internal debate, Gap will redesign their logo . It will look exactly like J.Crew&#8217;s.</p><p>The CFDA will slowly but inexorably move towards the annual fashion calendar. Though they won&#8217;t do the sensible thing and show clothes in (or at least close to) season, they will make a valiant (and consumer-focused) effort to make collections available as soon as possible. Lauren Santo Domingo will and Burberry and Tom Ford will fight over who did it first.</p><p>Anna Dello Russo will buy the Rosetta Stone and become fluent in English. We will miss her .</p><p>In direct competition to Natalie Portman&#8217;s, Ben Millepied will become &#8216;s new muse. will move on to co-star with Cher in the straight-to-tv sequel of Burlesque.</p><p>The Federal Trade Commission with ban the use Photoshop in advertising. Magazines will follow suit. And bloggers around the world will continue to dream.</p><p>Willow Smith will wear a dress made of veal. ?</p><p>Kanye West will denounce fashion (it really did ) and wear only burlap sacks.</p><p>Land&#8217;s End and LL Bean will stage a very public battle over licensing rights to the first ever Martha by Martha Stewart collection of gardening clothes.</p><p> will about during Fall Fashion Week, declare him the best possibly successor for at Chanel.</p><p>People will continue to ignore the fact that leggings aren&#8217;t pants.</p><p>Leave your predictions in the comments!</p> <p></p>A Comprehensive Guide To Met Gala Dates And Who Is Wearing What <p>by 7:10 pm, May 6th, 2012</p> <p><br>And the countdown begins! Tomorrow at 6:30PM (that&#8217;s less than 24 hours from now!) we will all be collectively glued to our , taking in the red carpet in outfits decidedly more comfortable (and, alas, decidedly less fabulous) than the ones we will be seeing on screen. What to expect? Well here are the dates, dresses, and tables we know of so far:</p><p>&#8226; Alexander Wang  Azaelia Banks</p><p>&#8226; Anthony Vaccarello Anja Rubik (wearing jewelry by Eddie Borgo)</p><p>&#8226; Balenciaga&#8216;s Nicolas Ghesquière Kristen Stewart</p><p>&#8226; Balmain&#8216;s Olivier Rousteing Joan Smalls</p><p>&#8226; Calvin Klein&#8216;s Francisco Costa and blogger Hanneli Mustaparta</p><p>&#8226; Cameron Diaz is wearing Stella McCartney</p><p>&#8226; Chris Benz and entrepreneur Julie Macklowe</p><p>&#8226; Chanel Gaspard Ulliel</p><p>&#8226; Coco Rocha in vintage Givenchy previously owned by Elizabeth Taylor and will walk the red carpet with her husband, interior designer James Conran</p><p>&#8226; Dakota Fanning is wearing Louis Vuitton</p><p>&#8226; Dolce &#038; Gabbana Scarlett Johansson</p><p>&#8226; Donna Karan Nina Dobrev and Ashley Greene</p><p>&#8226; Emma Roberts is wearing Escada</p><p>&#8226; Erdem Moralioglu Arizona Muse</p><p>&#8226; Gisele Bundchen is wearing either Balmain or Versace</p><p>&#8226; Gwyneth Paltrow Prada</p><p>&#8226; Haider Ackermann Constance Jablonski</p><p>&#8226; Heidi Klum in a Escada gown.</p><p>&#8226; J Crew&#8217;s Jenna Lyons Tom Munro</p><p>&#8226; Jason Wu Karlie Kloss</p><p>&#8226; Jessica Stam Dior</p><p>&#8226; Joseph Altuzarra Lana Del Rey</p><p>&#8226; Lauren Santo Domingo Oscar de la Renta</p><p>&#8226; Leighton Meester Marchesa</p><p>&#8226; Mary Katrantzou actress Elizabeth Banks</p><p>&#8226; Michael Kors Liu Wen and Kate Upton and actresses Hilary Swank and Jessica Alba</p><p>&#8226; Olivier Theyskens and model Caroline Trentini</p><p>&#8226; Proenza Schouler&#8216;s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez Isabel Lucas</p><p>&#8226; Rachel Zoe/Rodger Berman Karolina Kurkova</p><p>&#8226; Rag &#038; Bone&#8216;s David Neville and Marcus Wainwright are bringing and dressing Candice Swanepoel and Carmelo Anthony</p><p>&#8226; Roland Mouret Doutzen Kroes</p><p>&#8226; Thakoon Panichgul Christina Ricci</p><p>&#8226; Tom Ford Chanel Iman (he will also be dressing both Tom Brady and Justin Timberlake)</p><p>&#8226; Tommy Hilfiger Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard</p><p>&#8226; Tory Burch models Liya Kebede, Brooklyn Decker, and actress Rashida Jones</p><p>&#8226; Valentino&#8216;s Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli will bring actress Lily Collins, Princess Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis, actress/writer Brit Marling, and designer Charlotte Olympia Dellal</p><p>&#8226; Zac Posen Amber Heard</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Agyness Does Not Look Happy About This Haircut <p>by 12:58 pm, September 21st, 2010</p> <p> probably has the most exciting hair of any model working today. It&#8217;s been short, it&#8217;s been long(er), it&#8217;s been a few different shades of blonde and brunette. This summer, when she chopped off for Coachella, we thought for sure it wouldn&#8217;t get shorter. We were wrong.</p><p>Grazia that before Deyn walked in yesterday&#8217;s Giles show for London Fashion Week, she got her already lean locks shorn into a military-grade high-and-tight. Good models do what they can to accommodate a designer, and Agyness is nothing if she&#8217;s not good. But is it just us, or does she look not at all happy about the new &#8216;do?</p><p>Deyn only walked in one show during New York Fashion Week, as a favor to designer for killing a cockroach for her.</p><p>For comparison, check out how happy she is just two days before, sitting in the front row at the House of Holland show with Lily Allen.</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>[Via ]</p> <p> </p>Today Is The One Year Anniversary Of McQueen&#8217;s Death <p>by 12:57 pm, February 11th, 2011</p> <p>Today marks the one year anniversary of &#8216;s death. In memoriam, we&#8217;ve compiled a year&#8217;s worth of posts about the brilliant designer, his iconic brand and his enduring legacy.<br><br><br>• </p><p>• </p><p>• </p><p>• </p><p>• </p><p>• </p><p>• </p><p>• </p><p>• </p><p>• </p><p>• </p><p>&#8226; <br></p><p></p> <p> </p>WATCH: The Many References In Alexander Wang&#8217;s Fall Ad Campaign <p>by 4:14 pm, July 17th, 2011</p> <p></p><p></p><p> has a thing for vaguely non-traditional advertising — remember those ? — which is why his latest effort doesn&#8217;t come as much of a surprise. To promote his fall collection, the designer projected a Fabien Baron-lensed video (starring a Wang-wearing in an abandoned warehouse) all over New York City.</p><p>This video reminds us of many things! Let&#8217;s discuss. First things first, here is the Wang video:</p><p><p><p><p><p></p><p>The creep factor recalls Proenza Schouler&#8216;s :</p><p><p><p><p><p></p><p>Like the Oscar de la Renta , Wang&#8217;s was shot in Red Hook, Brooklyn:</p><p><p><p><p><p></p><p>The music in Wang&#8217;s video comes courtesy of SebastiAn and M.I.A. M.I.A. is a mentor to Rye Rye, the star of &#8216;s :</p><p><p><p><p><p></p><p>Of course, the video above is similar to Wang&#8217;s T video starring Santigold, who is compared to both M.I.A. and Rye Rye.</p><p><p><p><p><p></p><p>BAM. FULL CIRCLE.</p> <p> </p>So, What Does Alexander Wang Like To Eat For Dinner? <p>by 5:10 pm, July 20th, 2011</p> <p> is a family guy, as evidenced by his affection for his niece Aila. His familial love also extends to the kitchen, which allows us to discuss what exactly Alex likes to eat.</p><p>On a weekly basis, Wang does the home-cooked meal thing at his brother&#8217;s. So lovely! Asian comfort food is what&#8217;s always on the menu: &#8221;Its like the one thing that still hasn’t changed since I was little. No matter how busy or how little we see each other, cooking always brings us back memories of growing up.” Friends are also invited to partake in these dinners, and often help the Wang sibs cook. Can we come next week?  The Food Life:</p><p>Tonight, they have made a few of Alex’s favorite dishes to share with us — diced spicy string beans with minced pork, grilled Chinese sausage with sliced garlic, marinated sticky rice steamed with mushrooms and pork belly, braised beef noodle stew, and last but not least a simple yet time consuming pickled cabbage and radish. When everyone sits down to eat, chopsticks are passed around the table and food is piled into bowls, atop perfectly cooked white rice. There is never a dull moment at the Wang abode as constant conversation and laughter fills the dinner table.</p><p>YUM. Also, in case you were interested, Wang is also into ABC Kitchen and Tamarind (us too!), and he digs the sushi at EN. Seriously, we just need to be best friends already.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Sally Hansen Is Making Alexander Wang Nail Polish <p>by 11:34 am, August 23rd, 2011</p> <p></p><p>We&#8217;re unabashed superfans over here at Styleite, so we&#8217;re extremely excited about Wang teaming up with Sally Hansen. Nail polish! A-Wang! OMG!</p><p>From what we gather, Hansen will be whipping up some for Wang&#8217;s spring 2012 show in September. We&#8217;re hoping the shades will be available in stores soon after — and in the Sally Hansen price range, as opposed to the Wang one.</p><p>But what will the colors be?! Variations of black, black, and more ? Maybe some ? A bit of ? Or perhaps some ? We&#8217;d also be down for some Hansen/Wang in .</p><p>[via ]</p> <p> </p>Know Any Dudes Who Can Pull Off Alexander Wang Men&#8217;s Clothes? <p>by 3:25 pm, March 29th, 2011</p> <p>So what we&#8217;re going to ask you to do is take a look at this picture. Really, really look at this picture. Look at the , look at the guy wearing the clothes, look at the way they&#8217;re styled. We&#8217;ll wait. OK. Did you look? Great. Now answer us this: Can you imagine a guy you actually know wearing any of these garments? Because the guy who designed them, , thinks they&#8217;re gonna sell like hotcakes.</p><p>Wang&#8217;s men&#8217;s business has been experiencing a little bit of a boom here lately. His lower-priced line T by Alexander Wang was so good it earned him awards from both GQ and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. He&#8217;s up for the CFDA&#8217;s Swarovski Emerging Talent in menswear design this year, too. But perhaps the biggest accolade of all is that menswear is among the most requested items in his Soho store.</p><p>And he deserves those accolades &#8212; his clothes are inventive and forward-thinking, utilitarian and kind of luxurious all at the same time. The 14-piece men&#8217;s collection includes wool overcoats with leather sleeves, leather shorts, and suit pants made of sweatsuit material. , but not as dark. All of which we think is cool. But like. Who? Who will wear these clothes? Jared Leto&#8216;s band mates? Those random guys who hang out with in the Village? Disaffected hipsters with too much money on their hands?</p><p>Then again, it&#8217;s Alexander Wang. Guys might just snap up the collection based on that alone.</p><p> [Style File]</p> <p> </p>FLASH FASHION: Alexander Wang Goes Light And Bright <p>by 11:06 am, September 12th, 2010</p> <p>We should preface this write-up by confessing that we have a seriously unhealthy obsession with . Fashion&#8217;s current golden boy could walk a garbage bag down the runway, and we&#8217;d immediately add it to our list of seasonal must-haves. Thankfully for us, Wang did not walk garbage bags down the runway on Saturday. Instead, it was a collection of light, white, and confectionary-colored creations that featured his signature deconstructed layers and body-skimming silhouettes.</p><p>Wang, whose was an all-black and gothic nod to Wall Street, went with a much more optimistic color scheme this season, though the looks were no less monochromatic for it. White, mustard yellow, mint green, and burnt peach came down the runway in a mix of oversized knits and silks, and paint-splattered prints that reminded us of construction workers and contractors.</p><p>Wang is known for his legions of downtown chic fans, so this is certainly an interesting departure. But considering fashion&#8217;s &#8217;90s nostalgia and recent embrace of anything tea-length, we think he may do just fine.</p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>Alexander Wang Denies Sweatshop Allegations, Vows To Fight $450M Suit <p>by 12:15 pm, March 7th, 2012</p> <p>Vowing to fight the $450 million lawsuit brought against him, has officially denied those .</p><p>Though there were conflicting reports yesterday, WWD has that ex-employee Wenyu Lu filed a suit against Wang last month. About 30 other Wang employees have been added to the case since then, believing the company is in violation of several New York State labor laws. They want $50 million for each of the nine charges filed against Wang.</p><p>The designer denies the claims, as a spokesperson for the company told WWD:</p><p>“The company takes its obligations to comply with the law very seriously, including the relevant wage and hour regulations, the payment of overtime to eligible employees and having a safe working environment for all of our employees. We will vehemently defend any allegations to the contrary.”</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Alexander Wang Sent A Swarm Of Supermodels Down His Runway <p>by 5:19 pm, February 12th, 2012</p> <p>We&#8217;ve complained before that designers should be a little more theatrical with their shows, amp up the production and the performance, and make the whole rigamarole that goes into going to fashion week feel like it&#8217;s about more than just looking at pretty (and often not-so-pretty) clothes. &#8216;s fall display did just that.</p><p>Wang stuck with the mirrored block runway set up he&#8217;s used in past seasons, sending models out &#8212; their faces half covered with fishnet turtlenecks and high leather collars &#8212; in a somewhat convoluted figure-eight pattern. The staging was dark and dramatic, which suited the post-apocalyptic but decidedly refined styles, and was in keeping with the theme of the show: &#8220;suffocation&#8221;.</p><p>A soundtrack of pounding bass and heaving drums pumped so loudly through the lofty pier that the audience (us) could see ourselves rumbling in the vibrating mirrors which, depending on where you looked, showed more of the crowd than the clothes. And that was perhaps the only problem &#8212; the atmosphere was just dark and grungy enough to feel interesting, but the sparse lighting meant that for every turn the models took, another .</p><p>But clothing aside &#8212; what a show it was. The program notes made no mention of the supermodels we&#8217;d heard were prepping backstage, asking only that patrons &#8220;remain seated&#8221; after the show. When a darted to her front row seat just minutes before the show began, we hoped (in vain) for a surprise Die Antwoord performance. Instead, we got an encore of Gisele, , , , among others, who walked the mirrored maze and then posed in front of individual boxes before tearing their masks off and turning to face the cheering crowd. </p><p>WATCH:</p><p><br></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>Don&#8217;t Call Alexander Wang&#8217;s New Ad An Ad <p>by 2:26 pm, January 19th, 2011</p> <p><br><br>For &#8216;s first campaign, the preferred terminology is &#8216;image piece,&#8217; not ad, thank you very much.</p><p>The designer told WWD that his first foray into the wild world of print um, brand awareness, would be very untraditional. The image piece will appear on a billboard in New York City and exclusively in Interview magazine&#8217;s March issue. And in the not-so-puzzling trend of advertisements image pieces looking more and more like editorial content, Wang hired Interview editorial director Fabien Baron and creative director Karl Templer to consult and style the shoot. </p><p>So why all the supposed newness? Wang says he&#8217;s trying to avoid becoming just like everybody else. We have to wonder why he didn&#8217;t come up with some weird name for that video campaign starring from last summer, but that&#8217;s beside the point.</p><p>“We restrained from using those words [advertising and campaign], because you set yourself up for doing things in a systematic way — like rolling out ads in the magazines certain times of the year &#8230; For us, it’s about testing the waters and doing something out of the box.” </p><p>And while we can respect the desire (or the absolutely vital need) not to look like anyone else, we also stick to the age old wisdom that you should call a spade a spade. Wang is still paying to have his &#8216;image piece&#8217; featured in this magazine, and he&#8217;s still expecting it to do all of the things traditional ads do &#8212; make people aware of the brand and make people want to buy it. We get that it&#8217;s special because its his first time, but that doesn&#8217;t mean, at the end of the day, that it wont be another page an Interview reader can turn over.</p><p>Nevertheless, we&#8217;re excited to see how people will react to &#8216;s pictures of model Aymeline Valade jumping around a sky blue studio. What do you think of the image piece?</p><p>[WWD (Subscription Required)]</p> <p> </p>Alex Wang&#8217;s Doodle Print Was Designed By His Interns! <p>by 1:45 pm, September 22nd, 2010</p> <p></p><p>Ah, fashion internships. The Styleite staff knows well the copious amounts of seam pressing, reservation phoning and copy making being an intern in this industry often entails. It&#8217;s not miserable work, per se, but there is a lot of dues paying involved in fashion, and you do what you can to get ahead.</p><p>But somewhere in between all of the menial tasks and fighting with other interns to be noticed, you get to do something really cool &#8212; something normally only your boss or your boss&#8217;s boss would have the opportunity to do. The interns at got to design a print.</p><p>Specifically, they designed the doodle print that appeared in Wang&#8217;s spring 2011 collection. Wang told BSides that he had his interns sit down around a piece of paper for ten minutes and told them to just doodle &#8212; with no specific direction in mind. The was a print that actually showed up in the collection. We&#8217;re trying to get in touch with the interns now, so we don&#8217;t know exactly how they feel, but we&#8217;d be absolutely ecstatic. Hooray for non-objective expressionism, and hooray for people who believe in their interns!</p><p>[Via ]</p> <p> </p>Alexander Wang Lawsuit To Be Moved To Federal Court <p>by 12:07 pm, March 18th, 2012</p> <p>It looks like is going to be caught up in legal battles for longer than expected. Page Six that the $450 million lawsuit the designer is currently embroiled in is now set to move to federal court.</p><p>Former employee Wenyu Lu initially filed the suit in Queens Supreme Court, in the designer&#8217;s manufacturing floor were such that he and his fellow employees &#8220;were forced to work 16 hours a day or longer — without overtime — in a suffocating, windowless, 200-square-foot room”. A was filed soon after by another former employee, Flor Duante, who cited similar &#8220;sweatshop&#8221; conditions and exploitative practices that forced her to work 90 hour+ work weeks without breaks or overtime pay.</p><p>Lu&#8217;s lawyers are now moving to discontinue the case and re-file at the federal level, at which point Lu will be represented by new counsel who specializes in labor law.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>WATCH: Alex Wang Chats With Simon Doonan About His Menswear Line <p>by 2:33 pm, September 26th, 2011</p> <p></p><p>&#8216;s much talked about is being sold exclusively at Barneys, so it&#8217;s only fitting that sat down with the designer to chat about the duds.</p><p>We&#8217;re huge Wang fans &#8217;round these parts, and we also find Doonan completely irresistible. As such, we think  is delightful! Not only do we find out Wang doesn&#8217;t use conditioner, we also learn more about his collection. Wang sees it as clothes for the &#8220;guy that&#8217;s attracted to our girl&#8221;. Oh, we can work with that. Explains Wang:</p><p>&#8220;I always loved the idea of the guy going shopping with his girlfriend, who just kind of sits around and doesn&#8217;t do anything, just kind of waits and sits on the couch and is very disinterested in fashion, but has a good sense of what he looks good in.&#8221;</p><p>Got it. Now check out the boy talk below:</p><p></p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Alexander Wang&#8217;s Glow-In-The-Dark Dresses Are The Highlight Of Our NYFW <p>by 4:29 pm, September 9th, 2012</p> <p> took the day-glo trend and turned it on its ever-rearing head at yesterday&#8217;s slam-dunk spring show. For the finale, a group of ice blonde models filed into formation on the runway at Pier 94, all wearing pale lime pieces. The lights went out; the dresses glowed in the dark. Even in the pitch black warehouse, the audience&#8217;s excitement was palpable — this was a collection for the books.</p><p>Other than the glowing pieces and a smattering of neutrals, the palette throughout the show was purely black and white. The silhouettes, too, were typical Wang fare — formfitting dresses and boxy, oversized separates, though this season they were sliced at the seams and suspended with transparent string, revealing strips of bare skin through the leathers and skins. The look was completed with slicked-back tresses with strips down the center part courtesy of Guido Palau, as well as some of the coolest shoes we&#8217;ve seen yet this week, banded up the leg to echo the &#8220;suspension&#8221; theme of the matching ensembles.</p><p>Despite the pouring rain, the energy outside after the show was buzzing. Glow-in-the-dark! ! There was plenty to talk about while waiting out the downpour. Paper&#8216;s Mickey Boardman called it &#8220;one of the best shows I&#8217;ve seen in a long time.&#8221; The thing with Wang, he enthused, is &#8220;when he&#8217;s good he&#8217;s amazing. Sometimes I&#8217;m not 100% understanding of what all the excitement is, but when he&#8217;s good&#8230;wow.&#8221; Both Boardman and Anna Dello Russo proclaimed the designer &#8220;the new Helmut Lang,&#8221; and while that isn&#8217;t the first time the comparison has been made, it was perhaps more apt than ever this season. Dello Russo opined, &#8220;it was very strong, very powerful. Full of energy. I think he is so talented, Alexander, because he has done so much in so few years.&#8221; And don&#8217;t worry, we definitely didn&#8217;t pass up the opportunity to make a quip to the editrix amidst the umbrella-toting showgoers.</p><p>The festivities continued late into the night at the afterparty, held in a converted bank across from City Hall. Suffice it to say, it was a rager. One that concluded with Wang taking the stage to bow down before Busta Rhymes, whose set brought down the house (have you ever seen a mosh pit made of models? We have). Busta then had the crowd of Wang fans raise a glass to the downtown designer of the hour. We&#8217;ll cheers to that.</p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>******</p> <p> </p>Alexander Wang’s New York Flagship Store Gets Egged <p>by 1:19 pm, March 20th, 2012</p> <p></p><p></p><p>Halloween came early for designer as a camera-wielding tipster sent a picture of his Soho store’s egg-covered window. We&#8217;re guessing it&#8217;s a response to Wang’s recent filed by his employees. You can read up on the case  and , and please do tell us your thoughts in the comments.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>A Second Employee Is Now Suing Alexander Wang <p>by 12:38 pm, March 12th, 2012</p> <p><br>&#8216;s legal troubles just got a little more complicated. , a second employee has filed a civil action lawsuit against the designer, alleging &#8220;sweatshop&#8221; conditions and 90-hour work weeks.</p><p></p><p>Flor Duante, a 48-year-old single mother of four, says she was fired after filing for workers compensation. Last week, Wenyu Lucomplaining that employees in Wang&#8217;s lower Manhattan headquarters were forced to work &#8220;16 hours a day or longer — without overtime — in a suffocating, windowless, 200-square-foot room”.</p><p>On Friday, Gawker writer Leah Beckmann visited the building at 386 Broadway, but was prohibited from exploring what they was the &#8220;design and manufacturing&#8221; floor. After trying and failing to get past company CFO Mark Greene, Beckmann left. Here&#8217;s how she described the setup:</p><p></p><p>No sight of hunched-over, overworked employees. No cramped spaces full of dark Dickensian sewing machines. The discretion of their employees doesn&#8217;t mean much, and other than the standard office clutter, there was nothing unusual or exceptional about the space or our interactions at all. While the office normalcy doesn&#8217;t point to any seedy goings-on in the world of the fashion underbelly, it certainly doesn&#8217;t disqualify them either.</p><p>Wang has said he the $450 million suit, but has yet to respond to the second complaint.</p><p>[, .]</p> <p> </p>Is Alexander Wang Running A Sweatshop In Chinatown? <p>by 11:04 am, March 6th, 2012</p> <p></p><p>It looks like could be in some seriously hot water.</p><p>According to the , a 56-year-old man who worked &#8220;84-hour week in [Wang's] Broadway sweatshop&#8221; is suing the designer for $50 million. The Daily News reports Wenyu Lu passed out after working for 25 hours without a break, and his lawyer hopes to mount a class-action lawsuit.</p><p>However, according to the , a class-action suit has already been filed. An article in today&#8217;s paper reports &#8220;30 workers claim they were forced to work 16 hours a day or longer — without overtime — in a suffocating, windowless, 200-square-foot room&#8221;. They believe Wang and his brother Dennis (who serves as the company&#8217;s chief principal officer) have violated New York state labor laws, and they want $50 million in return.</p><p>The Post makes note of Lu&#8217;s claim that he passed out after working 25 hours straight, and adds that his lawyer says he was &#8220;ultimately fired on Feb. 16 after complaining about the working conditions and applying for worker’s compensation&#8221;. We have reached out to the company for comment, though reps told the Post they had no comment as they had not yet been served with papers.</p><p>[h/t ]</p> <p> </p>Alexander Wang&#8217;s &#8216;Sweatshop&#8217; Allegations Dismissed <p>by 11:42 am, August 15th, 2012</p> <p><br>Earlier this week, the fashion world&#8217;s most highly publicized legal battles as of late was dismissed by a New York federal court Judge Harold Baer. Back in March, two former employees of slapped the designer with a that claimed the company was in violation of numerous labor laws — running their Chinatown factory like a &#8220;sweatshop,&#8221; stuffing workers in a small, windowless room, denying them overtime pay, and firing those who complained.</p><p>Wang time and time again, that the workspace is in fact a “modern, brightly lit studio with high ceilings and large windows,” and that the two plaintiffs, Wenyu Lu and Flor Durante, were merely “disgruntled former employees with axes to grind.” Now the parties involved have reached a settlement out of court, reports . And while the terms of the settlement were not disclosed, we do know that there will be no appeals made, as the case was dismissed without prejudice. A representative for the designer expressed the company&#8217;s relief at having gotten through the mess:</p><p>“We are gratified that this matter has been dismissed, as the allegations were unfounded and completely false.”</p><p>We can almost hear the sighs of relief coming up Broadway from the Wang HQ.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Alexander Wang Woos Reporter By Wearing Shirt Backwards <p>by 2:00 pm, March 22nd, 2011</p> <p><br> may no longer be fashion&#8217;s only golden child &#8212; he now has to share the spotlight with his , among others &#8212; but he still knows how to charm the pants off a reporter during interviews. </p><p>Take, for example, his interaction with the Telegraph&#8217;s Kate Finnigan.</p><p>Some minutes into our interview he realises his T-shirt is on back-to-front, so, there and then, he removes the sweater, taking his arms out of the grey silk-cotton T-shirt &#8211; with its carefully selected &#8216;slightly worn-in&#8217; slub &#8211; and turns the garment round the right way. Casual but startlingly confident, it&#8217;s a gesture that&#8217;s 100 per cent Alexander Wang.</p><p>How, exactly, does one casually but confidently do such a thing? Only Alexander Wang knows. </p><p>Clearly we kid, but Wang does share some nice anecdotes about his upbringing and his current fancy-schmancy lifestyle.</p><p>&#8216;But I think with more success it&#8217;s more important that you do stay grounded and that you surround yourself with people who,&#8217; he giggles, &#8216;keep it real. And yes, y&#8217;know, my apartment is a little nicer now and I have a car and I don&#8217;t have to take the subway all the time, but I&#8217;m still the same person. That&#8217;s always been our idea with the clothes. There&#8217;s a certain sense of fantasy but at the same time it feels very, very grounded.&#8217;</p><p>Then again, Wang&#8217;s story isn&#8217;t exactly a rags to riches tale. He&#8217;s been besties with Victoria Traina, daughter of bajillionaire author and Danielle Steele, since high school (they both went to the same Bay-area boarding school) during which he lived in his own apartment in a building his parents owned. (The rags to riches bit happened before he was born: his parents emigrated to Taiwan with his two older siblings, and his mother started out as a dishwasher before founding a plastics manufacturing business with her husband which they moved to China almost twenty years ago. Clearly a good business decision. Anyway!) Back to Traina &#8212; she&#8217;s been a source of inspiration to him ever since she wowed him with her casual attitude towards very expensive things.</p><p>&#8216;[Victoria] would come into class in some designer shoes that she&#8217;d cut the ankle straps off. And I&#8217;d be like, &#8220;Wow, you just spent however much money on those&#8230;&#8217; he remembers. &#8216;She treated everything in this very non-precious way. They would have racks of clothes brought from the stores to their house. And they&#8217;d be like, &#8220;Oh yeah, Prada just sent over their new collection…&#8221;&#8216;</p><p>We&#8217;ll refrain from pointing out that the main reason Traina was able to treat precious things so non-preciously involves having an unlimited amount of cash with which to purchase more precious things, but that really doesn&#8217;t do much for Wang&#8217;s inspiration. And now he makes clothes we love (and can ), so&#8230; let&#8217;s move on to the bit where Wang&#8217;s brother rides a motorcycle through a Ritz-Carlton.</p><p>He hosted his first fashion show at [his brother's] wedding when he was 15, showing 35 outfits he&#8217;d designed for Aimie, [his sister-in-law]. Wasn&#8217;t he worried about upstaging the bride and groom? &#8216;Ha-ha-ha! No, because my brother had a lot of tricks up his sleeve! He somehow got the Ritz-Carlton to let him bring his Harley-Davidson motorbike into the lobby and down the stairs, then he rode it into the ballroom.&#8217;</p><p>Wang&#8217;s clothing may be considered contemporary, but we&#8217;ll be darned if his life isn&#8217;t aspirational. </p><p> [Telegraph]</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Alexander Wang&#8217;s Apartment Is Covered In Fur <p>by 4:18 pm, April 12th, 2011</p> <p>As much as we love fashion people&#8217;s clothes, we love their just as much. This month W at Styleite fave &#8216;s swanky Tribeca pad, and it looks exactly how we imagined.</p><p>There&#8217;s a lot of black and a bit of white, and leather, velvet, and fur. He has crocodile dining chairs! And a zebra rug! In a fun twist, W got former New York Times style editor Holly Brubach to interview Wang about his apartment — the apartment she sold to him just eight months ago. Wang&#8217;s college buddy Ryan Korban decorated the place, and it is indeed in keeping with the wiz kid&#8217;s downtown aesthetic:</p><p>This loft, they claim, is the most personal expression so far of the visual “language” the pair have formulated over the course of five years and two apartments, Wang’s showroom and first store, and the shop-within-shops that serve as worldwide outposts for his brand. “Very rich, very luxe” is Korban’s verdict on the result.</p><p>Oh yes, we would agree with Korban on that. All of the photos can be found , but our favorites are below:</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>[]</p> <p> </p>Alexander Wang Hopes His Niece Will Work For Him Some Day <p>by 12:38 pm, March 25th, 2011</p> <p>Even casual observers of will know that his rise to fame and acclaim in the fashion industry has been meteoritic. And if the attention his niece Aila got at Wang&#8217;s New York flagship store Thursday night is any indication, making a name for yourself when you&#8217;re young is something the Wang family has down pat.</p><p>Wang opened up his store after hours to let a few fashion-obsessed card holders come in, shop and chat with him about, well, anything and everything. A coterie of Wang&#8217;s friends held court over the massive black leather chairs (and the ) in the middle of the store while the designer himself placated bloggers and helped customers find pieces to take home &#8212; which he dutifully autographed with a Sharpie.</p><p>But when Aila showed up, the party nearly shut down with awws and cheers as the toddler crawled around and danced. Photographers went stark raving mad when she started swinging on the hammock, and it seemed like the entire world revolved around her. And it for a moment, it really did.</p><p>So of course we had to ask Wang, whose business is a family run affair, whether or not Aila will work for (or perhaps even run) Wang Inc. someday.</p><p>&#8220;Hopefully!&#8221; he said. &#8220;I mean, she&#8217;s such a star. I&#8217;d love to keep it within the family.&#8221;</p><p>And if she&#8217;s one tenth as fashion-savvy when she grows up as she is adorable now, we&#8217;d love for that to happen, too.</p> <p> </p>Amanda Brooks Steps Down As Barneys Fashion Director <p>by 2:08 pm, March 15th, 2012</p> <p> In an announcement that surprised just about everyone this morning, Barneys vice president and fashion director Amanda Brooks has resigned. WWD that Brooks, who signed on with the luxury retailer early last year, will be moving to the UK with her husband, English artist Christopher Brooks.</p><p>Hired as an integral part of CEO Mark Lee&#8217;s plan to restructure the retailer&#8217;s creative vision, Brooks was in charge of working with designers and selecting which trends to feature. She was also tasked with expanding the retailer&#8217;s social media presence, which we discussed with her. Her cumulative experience within the New York fashion scene — from director of fashion at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment to creative director at Tuleh — made her seem like a lasting presence.</p><p>“To be the fashion director of a store with such a unique and inspiring vision has always been a dream job,” Brooks said. “I have had the pleasure of working with an incredibly talented team, but have resigned to temporarily relocate to England with my husband and children in the interest of further pursuing other opportunities. It is a personal decision, and I will miss working with the Barneys team.”</p><p>As such, it appears that Brooks will be stepping down for personal reasons. However, a source inside the company told us there had been rumblings about the fashion team&#8217;s dissatisfaction with Brooks for quite some time. According to WWD,  Barneys is not planning to replace Brooks anytime soon.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Seriously Funny Girls Of SRSLY Chat With Us About Blogs, Boys, &#038; More <p>by 1:05 pm, January 20th, 2012</p> <p></p><p>Danielle Gibson and Alex Fiber of are known for their hysterical (and hysterically on point) videos that spoof everything from street style to blind dates. While it&#8217;s not every day that we get to interview a girl crush — let alone two of them at the same time — the talented duo indulged us as we took a tour of their hilarious work.</p><p>Okay, first things first. How did you two meet?<br>DANIELLE GIBSON: We met at NYU when we were both in the musical theater program, but we weren’t friends. We weren’t enemies, but we didn’t run in the same circles. Alex was in the Rodgers and Hammerstein clique, which rivaled the Leonard Bernstein gang I ran with.<br>ALEX FIBER: Senior year, we both transferred into NYU&#8217;s Film &amp; TV Acting program. I remember being really nervous Danielle wouldn&#8217;t like me, but then we realized we were both really into the same things (television, noodles, striped shirts), and the rest, as they say, is herstory.</p><p>Your , &#8220;SHOPGIRL&#8221;, perfectly encapsulated why we prefer online shopping to IRL shopping:</p><p></p><p>Tell us about your worst shopping experience.<br>DG: Honestly, no shopping experience is ever awesome for me — I’m a really bad shopper. I get bored and overwhelmed and really sweaty (so sweaty!) and just want to give up. That’s why I depend on brands like Rag &amp; Bone or Alice &amp; Olivia. I know I can walk into their stores, love everything, and buy enough to last me two years without having to go shopping again.<br>AF: Last year, a nice PR girl let me in early to the Alexander Wang sample sale, and it was terrifying. I turned into this crazed animal, hungry for discounted knitwear. All sample sales are so high stakes, they make me feel like I HAVE to buy something and I have to buy it NOW. And of course everyone else is going nuts too, hoarding boxes of tank tops and running around in their underwear. It&#8217;s extremely stressful. Unfortunately, I never learn and I always go back. &#8220;Shopping, shopping, never stopping&#8221; — that&#8217;s my motto.</p><p>Where do you get the inspiration for your videos?<br>AF: Just being in New York gives us a lot of great material, and we often brainstorm or get ideas while we&#8217;re hanging out or chatting online. We&#8217;ve both studied improv at UCB, and a big part of that training is forcing your brain to think in non-linear, free-associative ways. So, getting a cup of coffee can turn into an idea about a barista sexting you with messages in latte froth.<br>DG: We’re both passionate about the same ridiculous problems, which aren’t even problems. Like when a doorman is rude to you, or your bed from Williams-Sonoma Home isn’t the size you thought it was in the store. Non-problems, but things that bug you all the same.</p><p>Next up: &#8220;STREETSTYLE&#8221;. We have to admit this hit pretty close to home:</p><p></p><p>Are there any photographers you want to be spotted by?<br>DG: I actually love style blogs, that’s why I like to mock them. I like , , and . I used to work in Soho, and I’d see Scott Schuman looking for people to snap. And I’ll admit I walked reaaaaalllly slooooowwly past him, trying to look like I was in deep thought about harem pants or something. No dice though. I probably wasn&#8217;t wearing enough layers.<br>AF: One of my biggest goals in life is to be mistaken for a French person, so for me it&#8217;s really all about . I love her website, I love her photos, I love her humblebraggy posts. I met someone recently who lives in her building, and it&#8217;s actually really close to where I live. I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s only a matter of time before Garance and I are sipping cafe au lait together and complaining about how early we have to get up for yoga.</p><p>There really is too much internet, but what are your must-read sites?<br>DG: I always read for news, compelling articles, and viral stuff. We both love for celebrity gossip and TV and movie news. I also read an embarrassing amount of healthy living blogs, like and . Alex reads the whole internet. I never know what the hell she’s talking about.<br>AF: I do read the entire internet. Some of my favorites include and for stylish voyeurism, and for general I-Want-To-Go-To-There-ness, and for food porn.</p><p>Some of your videos touch on dating and relationship issues, like Amazing-But-Short Guy Syndrome:</p><p></p><p>Who is our ultimate celebrity crush?<br>DG: People tease me, but I love Geoff on Ace of Cakes in a big way. He’s sexy and deadpan and he makes cakes! I’m also obsessed with Jimmy Stewart and late &#8217;80s Michael Keaton. Of course, I’m also a hot-blooded woman, so I am not immune to Zac Efron’s charms…and arms.<br>AF: I&#8217;m mostly into older European celebs like Gabriel Byrne, Colin Firth, and the Fiennes brothers. And I really really love Javier Bardem. He is so debonair and charming! I want him to quiz me on my Spanish vocabulary and call me Alejandra. Last year at our Oscar party, Danielle gave me a cookie with his face painted on it in royal icing. I still can&#8217;t bring myself to eat it.</p><p>And who are your funny lady heroes?<br>DG: I love Jane Curtin. People talk about how much they loved Gilda Radner (Of course! She’s phenomenal!), but I relate to Jane Curtin. I think Catherine O’Hara and Joan Cusack are criminally underused, but perfect in everything they do. In the New York-y scene, Kristen Schaal and Andrea Rosen are flawless, as are all of the ladies at UCB. And of course, we both worship the SNL trifecta of terrific: Wiig, Poehler, and Fey.<br>AF: Completely agree. There are so many! Maria Bamford and Mary Lynn Rajskub are two of my favorites stand-ups EVER. I also love all of the Golden Girls, and Jane Fonda.</p><p>We totally identify with the girl whose boyfriend didn&#8217;t get her movie references in &#8220;ICE CREAM&#8221;. Because, seriously, can you ever just be whelmed?</p><p></p><p>What does your dream sleepover movie marathon line-up look like?<br>DG: Oh my gosh! Father of the Bride (parts 1 and 2!), I Spit on Your Grave (original and remake!) and I would end the night with Dangerous Liaisons so that we would all have sexy dreams!<br>AF: We&#8217;re agreed on the FOTB movies — those are must-watch. My other top choices are The American President, You&#8217;ve Got Mail, and A League of Their Own.</p><p>And lastly, what great things can we expect from SRSLY in the future?<br>AF: We&#8217;re going to keep writing episodes, contributing to some of our favorite blogs, and hopefully start working on a pilot script. We&#8217;ve been talking to and meeting with a lot of amazing people since launching the show, so we&#8217;re hoping for more of the same! We actually just wrapped on season two of SRSLY yesterday!<br>DG: Yeah! We&#8217;re taking a couple of weeks off, but our new episodes will go live starting in February. Personally, I’m working on getting to live in America again. All marriage proposals welcome, appreciated, and considered thoughtfully.</p> <p> </p>10 Reasons To Wish Anna Wintour A Happy 62nd Birthday <p>by 6:12 pm, November 3rd, 2011</p> <p>American Vogue editor-in-chief turns 62 today, but she&#8217;s not spending the happy occasion with her family &#8212; or even anywhere close to home. Instead, Wintour, ever the workaholic, is busy being the best cheerleader for the Vogue brand there is in Japan.</p><p>But just because she&#8217;s half a world away doesn&#8217;t mean we can&#8217;t (or you know, shouldn&#8217;t) wish her a happy birthday! Poke fun at her though we might from time to time, there&#8217;s really no getting around the fact that Wintour is a bona fide fashion powerhouse, and she&#8217;s more or less regulating the entire global fashion industry from an assortment of tightly organized mobile devices.</p><p>In respect to that (because really, how can you not respect this woman?) here are ten reasons you should join us in wishing Wintour the happiest of birthdays:</p><p>1. You just, you have to. That&#8217;s the way this business works.</p><p>2. She&#8217;s among Black people. No, really.</p><p>3. Outside of that, she&#8217;s not just one of the most powerful people in fashion &#8212; she&#8217;s one of the most powerful people in the world.</p><p>4. You know that whole thing about &#8220;The Devil&#8221; wearing Prada? She still . And equal rights for gays, too.</p><p>5. The of Vogue kicks major ass.</p><p>6. She as much as you do.</p><p>7. She&#8217;s besties with , and Karl is our favorite.</p><p>8. She supports young talent! Your cashmere intarsia sweater would not be a thing if it weren&#8217;t for her.</p><p>9. That earthquake in Japan? She&#8217;s there trying to right now.</p><p>10. And finally, her (even when it doesn&#8217;t look that great) is unparalleled.</p><p>So happy 62nd birthday, Anna &#8212; and here&#8217;s to many more!</p> <p> </p>Anna Wintour&#8217;s 60 Minutes Episode Was A Repeat Worth Watching <p>by 11:16 am, February 6th, 2012</p> <p>In what may have been the most genius programming move of all time, CBS aired an interview featuring during Sunday night&#8217;s Super Bowl telecast. While made it seem like a new profile, a close watch (on our part) showed that it&#8217;s merely a repackaged version of an episode that originally aired in 2009. But that doesn&#8217;t mean it wasn&#8217;t worth watching. </p><p>It&#8217;s always refreshing to watch Wintour defend her alleged &#8220;bitchiness&#8221;, mainly because it clearly works for her. </p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m very driven at what I do. I&#8217;m certainly very competitive. What else am I? Needy? I&#8217;m probably very needy, yes. A bitch? &#8230;Well, I hope I&#8217;m not, I- I- I- try not to be, but I like people who represent the best of what they do and if that turns you into a perfectionist, then maybe I am.&#8221;<br><br>&#8230;I can only say that I have so many people here, Morley, that have worked for me for 15, 20 years, and if I&#8217;m such a bitch, then they must really be a glutton for punishment. We&#8217;re here to work. We&#8217;re here to work and there&#8217;s on duty time and off duty time&#8230; And if one comes across sometimes as being cold or brusque, it&#8217;s only because I&#8217;m striving for the best.&#8221;</p><p>There&#8217;s the requisite mention of her alleged $200,000 per year clothing allowance (and the fact that CondeNast picks up the bill for her hair and makeup every day of the week), interviews with and , and, of course, footage of Vogue staffers trotting feverishly around the Vogue offices. But while some parts are certainly out of date (a segment featuring an adorably young getting feedback from Wintour on a $1,200 sequined dress, in a ), others have been notably updated. An interview with features a voice-over noting that the designer is no longer at Dior. Helpful!</p><p>Watch the whole episode below &#8212; Wintour&#8217;s segment starts around the 14:45 minute mark. </p><p></p> <p> </p>WATCH: Azealia Banks Is The New Face Of Alexander Wang <p>by 6:22 pm, July 26th, 2012</p> <p><br>Following in the footsteps of and , Azealia Banks is the new face of T by Alexander Wang&#8217;s Fall 2012 collection. Perhaps this is something they ? </p><p>Check it out below, and try your best not to bop along.</p><p></p> <p> </p>WATCH: Azealia Banks Is Bringing Back Suspenders In Her &#8216;Luxury&#8217; Video <p>by 5:18 pm, September 27th, 2012</p> <p><br>Azealia Banks has got the Nineties look down pat: from sweaters to to waist-length mermaid locks, the girl knows her decade.</p><p>Her latest style statement comes in the form of a cropped turtleneck, cowboy hat, and what appear to be a pair of leather suspenders, which the Harlem rapper sports in the just-released video for her track &#8220;Luxury.&#8221; A fitting title given that Banks is currently flitting about Paris, sitting front row at Mugler and donning swanky threads by and .</p><p>Here, though, Banks is bopping around good old NYC, rapping on rooftops and strutting her stuff down the streets of Chinatown. Would you try this look at home?</p><p></p> <p> </p>Azealia Banks Will Perform At The Met Gala In Custom Alexander Wang <p>by 4:30 pm, April 30th, 2012</p> <p>Azealia Banks announced via  that not only will attend this year&#8217;s Met Gala with , she will also perform at fashion&#8217;s hottest bash. Peep Banks&#8217;s very excited tweet:</p><p>I can&#8217;t wait for the MET ball! I&#8217;m going as Alexander Wang&#8217;s date. He custom made my outfit and shoes ! !!!! It&#8217;s soooo hot !</p><p>— ? YUNG RAPUNXEL ? (@AZEALIABANKS) </p><p> And another one:</p><p>I&#8217;ve Been invited to Perform for PRADA next week in NYC! Gonna b so lush !! Let&#8217;s see what new songs I debut there! — ? YUNG RAPUNXEL ? (@AZEALIABANKS) </p><p>We&#8217;re adding Banks and Wang to the of Met Gala couples. Hopefully someone will tweet a photo of this custom-made ensemble — and soon. Spare us the wait, people!</p> <p> </p>Is Azealia Banks Replacing Nicki Minaj At Monday&#8217;s Met Gala? <p>by 10:16 am, May 1st, 2012</p> <p></p><p>Yesterday Azealia Banks she would be performing at Monday&#8217;s Met Gala — but was this really the plan all along?</p><p>Nope, at least according to , who report it was actually Nicki Minaj who was supposed to perform. However, she never signed a contract and bailed last week. If this is true, Banks was a very late (though and ) addition to the festivities. The rapper deleted her two Met Gala-related tweets some time last night, probably at the behest of Anna Wintour. (She really hates when people .) We assume Banks is indeed still on the bill and that she&#8217;ll be wearing custom Alexander Wang.</p><p>That said, this Minaj business sounds about right. She with Wintour at Fashion Week back in September, and she was featured in Vogue&#8216;s . And don&#8217;t forget she&#8217;s already performed at a Vogue event (one that !). But what about those Jennifer Lopez ? Perhaps we&#8217;ll never know.</p><p>As a bit of context, last year&#8217;s performance came courtesy of Florence Welch, while Lady Gaga in 2010.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Why Is Azealia Banks&#8217; Dazed &#038; Confused Cover Getting Banned? <p>by 3:49 pm, August 8th, 2012</p> <p><br>The September issue of British fashion/culture glossy Dazed &amp; Confused featuring Harlem rapper/ Azealia Banks is due out in stores next week. Unless, that is, you live in one of the seven countries that have already banned the cover from hitting newsstands.</p><p>The magazine this afternoon:</p><p>&#8220;Just been told our upcoming @AZEALIABANKS cover has been banned from 7 countries so far. Thank God for the Internet, huh?&#8221;</p><p>Why the extreme measures, you ask? Well, we&#8217;re not quite sure yet, but we have some ideas:</p><p>1. Banks takes a cue from Hailee Steinfeld is shown doing something super dangerous like .</p><p>2. The lewdest lyrics from 212 are splashed across the cover in size 72 font. &#8220;I guess that $%^# gettin&#8217; eaten,&#8221; anyone?</p><p>3. The rapper ; is half-naked. If this seems unlikely, remember that she was in fact born in the nineties and does have a serious predilection for Mickey Mouse gear.</p><p>4. She tries to be subversive by replacing with a gun, .</p><p>5. </p><p>But, you know, even if it was banned for any of those reasons, couldn&#8217;t they just slap a Playboy-style poly-bag on it and call it a day? Guess we&#8217;ll just have to wait and see.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>OMFG: Here Is A Video Of Valentino Singing Sinatra At Carine&#8217;s Karaoke Party <p>by 3:08 pm, September 11th, 2011</p> <p>Last night, there were many a Fashion Week party. While we hung out at &#8216;s Meatpacking shindig, others saw Odd Future perform at &#8216;s or went celeb spotting at the Purple party at Le Bain. But it was the Barneys fete that has everyone talking. It all comes down to one word and one word only: KARAOKE.</p><p>Roitfeld entertained her guests at Westway, a former strip club near the West Side Highway. We knew the former editor , but we are beyond impressed that Roitfeld was able to get her fashionable friends to join in on the fun. &#8216;s Bennett Marcus was there, and here is how he described what went down:</p><p>Roitfeld jumped on the runway — undoubtedly used by the strippers in the club&#8217;s previous incarnation — to launch the karaoke with a gleeful rendition of George Michael&#8217;s &#8220;Careless Whisper.&#8221; Roitfeld&#8217;s bravery loosened up the crowd and Simon Doonan followed, rocking &#8220;Nasty Girl.&#8221; Stefano Tonchi joined Anna Dello Russo in a duet. (Actually, Dello Russo joined almost everybody on duets.)</p><p>Oh, don&#8217;t worry. WE HAVE PICTURES. And then&#8230;Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti arrived. And they sang &#8220;Unforgettable&#8221; and &#8220;My Way&#8221;. Oh, don&#8217;t worry. WE HAVE VIDEO. Thank you to the Billy Farrell Agency for this amazing moment on film:</p><p><p><p><p><br></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>[via ]</p> <p> </p>Blind Item Round Up: Tampons, Car Crashes, &#038; Reality TV <p>by 3:02 pm, January 21st, 2011</p> <p><br>It&#8217;s Friday and nobody wants to work. (Us included!) And what better way to while away a good hour of your afternoon than by playing blind item guessing games? We&#8217;ve rounded up the best fashion-related ones we could find and included our thoughts as to the answers. Leave yours in the comments.</p><p>Which eccentric fashion designer carries tampons to be in touch with his feminine side while he designs women&#8217;s clothes? []</p><p>We&#8217;ve seen a few people throw out and, but our most credible sources indicate that the true culprit may well be .</p><p>Which drunk actress tucked her dress into her undies at the Golden Globes? []</p><p>Minnie Driver described the culprit as a &#8220;beautiful young actress&#8221; and we&#8217;ve got our money on someone from Glee. While the physics of Lea Michele&#8217;s dress make this unlikely, how great of a mental picture is that?</p><p>Which lifestyle editor totalled the one-of-a-kind car she was lent for an out-of-state test drive? []<br><br>This one actually has us totally stumped, only because who really knows the names of &#8220;Editor/Writers&#8221; at &#8220;fashion-lifestyle publications&#8221;? Answer: it wasn&#8217;t us.</p><p>Which well known fashion blogger has been asked to star in R.J. Cutler&#8217;s new fashion-focused docu-drama, but isn&#8217;t biting? []</p><p>Ooh, this is a fun one. Besides the fact that we made the R.J. Cutler-Teen Vogue over a week ago, this item suffers from too broad a swath of options. ? from Fashionista? herself? Us?! The options are endless. Fact is, we can&#8217;t really think of anyone who would bite.</p><p>OK, it&#8217;s your turn now!</p> <p> </p>THE GOODS: Waris Ahluwalia Wants You To Be His Boo <p>by 6:00 pm, February 7th, 2012</p> <p>The way to our hearts is officially through cheeky jewelry.</p><p>Remember those with the R. Kelly lyrics? They have serious competition now, thanks to . Just in time for Valentine&#8217;s Day, the designer teamed up with for a capsule collection called . There&#8217;s a gold bracelet, necklace, and pair of earrings, all with a nameplate that reads &#8220;Boo&#8221;, as in &#8220;you&#8217;re my boo&#8221;. We love it. (Also, we just learned that the term &#8220;boo&#8221; is derived from &#8220;beau&#8221;. Who knew?!)</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>And, you know, context:</p><p><p><p><p></p> <p> </p>Carine Roitfeld Loves Karaoke And Wants To Be A Bartender <p>by 5:47 pm, September 29th, 2010</p> <p>Just how great is ? So great. We love her. And we are so jealous that the Times&#8216; got to sit down with the who is celebrating her mag&#8217;s . We compiled some of our fave Carine quotes below — enjoy!</p><p>On the difference between Vogue in 2010 and Vogue in 1920: I think we have less freedom. Today some pictures would not even be publishable. It’s not just about the nudity, but when you talk about things politically, the military, kids, it would all be politically incorrect and not publishable today. We have to fight to keep this un-politically correct attitude of French Vogue, but it’s more and more difficult to be able do that. You cannot smoke, you cannot show arms, you cannot show little girls, because everyone now is very anxious not to have problems with the law.</p><p>On how Anna motivated her to discover young designers: It’s good that was the one who needed to kick our butt, in a way, to do something. She did a lot in America, but in Paris, we were a bit slow. Now we understand, and we’ve seen so much return that we are going to be more and more aware to help.</p><p>On who&#8217;s hot now: I am very surprised by someone like . I am amazed how he is good with fashion, with business, with public relations himself, with an attitude in his clothes that is spoken immediately. And I think a young guy called Joseph Altuzarra, who went to New York, is the next one to be big. The clothes he makes are very beautiful, and they are very wearable.</p><p>On the hassle of Fashion Week: Sometimes I think, Why do I have to go to a show? Half an hour driving, half an hour waiting, seeing the show, then half an hour back. And when I get back, I see the show on the Internet. Sometimes it goes too quick sometimes.</p><p>On &#8220;her song&#8221;: “You’re So Vain.” I think in this business, it’s a good song. It’s dedicated to a lot of people.</p><p>On what&#8217;s next: I have a new job now: bartender. That is my dream, and also to open a karaoke.</p><p>[via ]</p> <p> </p>Of Course Carine Roitfeld&#8217;s Fashion Show Will Only Have Black Clothes <p>by 10:18 am, May 16th, 2012</p> <p></p><p>Cannes is upon us! Let the fashion commence!</p><p>We&#8217;ll be doing tons of red carpet coverage for the world&#8217;s most fashionable film festival, but first let&#8217;s discuss what is bringing to the table. The former Vogue Paris editor/current /perennial well-dressed lady is putting on a fashion show at next week&#8217;s amfAR &#8220;Cinema Against AIDS&#8221; gala, and every single piece will be black. But of course!</p><p>According to , the entire collection will be auctioned off and will include pieces from, well, everyone — Alexander Wang, Armani, Balenciaga, Cavalli, Chanel, Christopher Kane, Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton, Pucci, and Versace.</p><p>Très chic, non?</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Check Out Carine Roitfeld&#8217;s All-Black Cannes Fashion Show <p>by 2:16 pm, May 25th, 2012</p> <p>So much news!  hosted her last night, which only featured black dresses.</p><p>, , , and more strutted down the runway in dark styles by the likes of Balenciaga, Chanel, , Anthony Vaccarello, and Versace. The entire collection was auctioned off for €300,000, or nearly $376,000. Whoa.</p><p>Peep the show below. The photos are still rolling in, so keep checking back for updates!</p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Who Was Best Dressed At Carine Roitfeld&#8217;s MAC Fête? <p>by 12:11 pm, October 3rd, 2012</p> <p> really knows how to throw a parrr-tay. Last night, the fêted her with a very fancy fête in Paris, and of course, everyone was dressed to the nines.</p><p>Fashion folk like , , , , and stepped up their A-game in black-tie ensembles at the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild. Dello Russo covered up in a long-sleeved gown and sported a latticed headpiece, while Kloss left nothing to the imagination in a creation.</p><p>Nearly all the party hoppers, even dudes like Rodger Berman, sported Roitfeld-esque smokey eyes, but Carine and her daughter Julia obviously had the best ones. Carine told WWD that she&#8217;s her signature look for about 20 years now.</p><p>While the scene was definitely filled with well-dressed peeps, there were a few who fell short. Take Gaia Repossi, for example, missed the black-tie memo and opted for a sporty ensemble made up of a mesh cape with white sleeves and a very fancy pair of athletic shorts. Event producer Susanne Bartsch also made a (not great) statement in a black bodysuit, patterned tights, and a big pink tulle thing that we&#8217;re going to go ahead and call a body veil.</p><p>See all the looks below, and tell us who you think is best dressed.</p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>Cathy Horyn: Alexander Wang Is Not A Great Designer <p>by 1:31 pm, September 13th, 2010</p> <p> doesn&#8217;t pull punches. Remember the New York Times fashion critic&#8217;s of Snooki? Of course, Horyn&#8217;s critical pen isn&#8217;t just reserved for reality show pseudo-celebs. A disfavorable review of an Armani couture show even got her from his ready-to-wear show a few weeks later.</p><p>And today she skewers none other than our beloved . We loved Wang&#8217;s . Horyn, however, did not. Her first jab goes a little something like this:</p><p>Mr. Wang is not a great designer, though he probably would be happy to accept any laurels that people want to toss him, but he is clearly a shrewd guy.</p><p>Emphasis ours. Ouch. At least she doesn&#8217;t beat around the bush? Oh, but there&#8217;s more! Much more! Horyn thinks Wang&#8217;s clothes are unoriginal and derivative.</p><p>He also must have sensed that fashion’s memory hole was widening in direct proportion to the numbers of young people Googling his name. The designs were cool, but they didn’t have to stand up to much scrutiny — hey, didn’t Marni do those pants last season? — so long as the stuff was widely and easily available &#8230; The collection downloaded the ideas of designers like and Issey Miyake — naturally, without their sense of energy and intuition — and for that reason, despite some cute looks, the show was a little boring.</p><p>Wang did win the for accessories, and was nominated for best womenswear designer. Surely this couldn&#8217;t have been a fluke, right? She also seems to have a problem with the fact that Wang&#8217;s stuff isn&#8217;t crazy expensive (although, does she remember the of summer 2009??).</p><p>Unlike some of his dreamy peers, he decided at the outset to make affordable clothes&#8230; Mr. Wang doesn’t really have courage in the traditional sense of trying something new and difficult, but he does have China. Nearly all of his clothing is now produced there.</p><p>In addition, Horyn says that Wang&#8217;s designs &#8220;conjure up the coldness of a computer screen.&#8221; Looking at his latest collection, with it&#8217;s use of color and draping, we&#8217;d have to respectfully disagree. What do you think? Alexander Wang: fashion hero or hack?</p><p>[Via ]</p> <p> </p>Cathy Horyn Doesn&#8217;t Hate Fashion, She&#8217;s Just Misunderstood <p>by 12:47 pm, October 12th, 2010</p> <p>The fashion industry has a love-hate relationship with . By which we mean to say the fashion industry hates Cathy Horyn.</p><p>And maybe that&#8217;s because the longtime fashion critic for The New York Times is brash and fearless and does not give short shrift to the work of critiquing fashion collections. Her intelligent, eagle-eyed commentary has gotten her banned from runway presentations the world over, and her commentary on society and culture has been read as mean and elitist. But to hear her tell it, she&#8217;s mostly just misunderstood.</p><p>That&#8217;s what The Daily Beast&#8216;s senior editor Jacob Bernstein discovered about Horyn while writing a recent of the critic. Horyn addressed everything from why she Alexander Wang&#8217;s spring collection to what she thinks of &#8220;Project Runway.&#8221; But she started, as most people do these days, with Snooki. Her response to why people got so mad about her of the doyenne of &#8220;The Jersey Shore,&#8221; along with other explanations and musings, excerpted below.</p><p>On her underminey profile of Nicole &#8216;Snooki&#8217; Polizzi:</p><p>&#8220;I wanted to say to people &#8216;read the article,&#8217;&#8221; Horyn says. &#8220;I described her as a silhouette and an icon by virtue of her pouf and her body shape. I&#8217;ve acknowledged her and her impact. But am I going to be tough with her? Yeah. I don&#8217;t think people understood it, honestly, and I don&#8217;t know what they expected to read.&#8221;</p><p>On why she&#8217;s tough as nails:</p><p>&#8220;Amy [Spindler] (former fashion critic for the Times) and I shared the same Midwestern quality, which is that we want people to be better,&#8221; Horyn says. (Spindler died of cancer six years ago). &#8220;We have standards. We want people to be not just good but very good. And I can be tough on people, sometimes too tough, especially with the most creative. I once called one of &#8216;s collections freakish and ugly.&#8221;</p><p>On that whole Christina Hendricks thing:</p><p>&#8220;She&#8217;s a lovely girl,&#8221; Horyn says. &#8220;I should have stepped back and explained what that person meant. It wasn&#8217;t about Christina&#8217;s figure. It&#8217;s about what looks best.&#8221;</p><p>On why she said Alexander Wang is not a great designer:</p><p>&#8220;With Alexander, he&#8217;s a smart kid, I admire the business that he&#8217;s built, but you have to be critical of what he&#8217;s done. You can&#8217;t just say &#8216;oh well, he&#8217;s young and he&#8217;s working hard, he&#8217;s putting a product on the runway.&#8217; I found that show boring. I may not have found other shows boring, but I found that one boring.&#8221;</p><p>On &#8220;Project Runway&#8221;:</p><p>&#8220;I just don&#8217;t really have anything to say about it,&#8221; she says, with a shrug.</p><p>There&#8217;s plenty more where that came from, of course &#8212; we encourage you to read the rest of Bernstein&#8217;s profile here.</p><p>[Via ]</p> <p> </p>And The 2011 CFDA Winners Are&#8230; <p>by 8:32 am, June 7th, 2011</p> <p><br>The Council of Fashion Designers of America celebrated their own last night in a star-studded show hosted (somewhat sporadically) and held at New York City&#8217;s Lincoln Center. And while we&#8217;ve got what (and what everyone else) wore coming up, let&#8217;s start with who took home the honors.</p><p>It&#8217;s worth noting that of the awards with multiple nominations, not a single female won. Granted, the odds . Kudos to Gaga, Pheobe Philo, and Hilary Alexander for holding down the fort, but considering two out of the three of those Brits, what does that say about American female fashion designers? </p><p>The 2011 CFDA Award Winners</p><p>Womenswear Designer of the Year <br>The Nominees: , , and and from Proenza Schouler.<br>The Winner: and from Proenza Schouler</p><p>Menswear Designer of the Year <br>The Nominees: Michael Bastian, Patrik Ervell and Simon Spurr.<br>The Winner: Michael Bastian</p><p>Accessories Designer of the Year<br>The Nominees: , , and and of Proenza Schouler.<br>The Winner: </p><p>Swarovski Award For Emerging Talent in Womenswear<br>The Nominees: , and for The Row, and <br>The Winner: </p><p>Swarovski Award For Emerging Talent in Menswear<br>The Nominees: , and Robert Geller<br>The Winner: Robert Geller</p><p>Swarovski Award For Emerging Talent in Accessories<br>The Nominees: Eddie Borgo,, Alejandro Ingelmo and Pamela Love<br>The Winner: Eddie Borgo</p><p>Fashion Icon Award<br>The Winner: </p><p>Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award <br>The Winner: </p><p>International Award<br>The Winner: </p><p>Media Award In Memory Of Eugenia Sheppard<br>The Winner: </p><p>The Founders Award in Memory of Eleanor Lambert<br>The Winner: </p><p>Board of Director’s Special Tribute Award<br>The Winner: </p> <p> </p>Why Are So Many Of The CFDA Award Nominees So Young? <p>by 9:39 am, March 17th, 2011</p> <p>The nominees for the Council of Fashion Designers of America&#8216;s 2011 awards ceremony are set, and the list is more or less a roster of the coolest kids working in the industry. And when we say kids, we mean kids. Because for the most part, this year&#8217;s nominees are pretty young.</p><p>, 24, is up for the Fashion Icon Award, which won last year at age 55. , 26, is nominated for three awards, more than any other nominee this year. The Lifetime Achievement Award is going to , 47, who joked that it should only be called a &#8220;half lifetime achievement award.&#8221;</p><p>We have the full list of nominees and honorees below &#8212; if you take a look through it, you&#8217;ll certainly notice names you recognize, but few who have been working as living brand names for decades the way past winners of these awards have. of The New York Times was surprised that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen got nods, while &#8220;most of the biggest American designers, including , , and Calvin Klein’s , were shut out.&#8221; The CFDA&#8217;s mission isn&#8217;t to honor young designers, it&#8217;s to honor talented ones. Either the people who run it think these young bucks are more talented than the old masters, or they&#8217;re changing course.</p><p>Womenswear Designer of the Year Nominees: Marc Jacobs, Alexander Wang, and and from Proenza Schouler.</p><p>Menswear Designer of the Year Nominees: Michael Bastian, Patrick Ervell and Simon Spurr.</p><p>Accessories Designer of the Year Nominees: Alexander Wang, , and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler.</p><p>Swarovski Up-And-Coming Talent Award:</p><p>Womenswear: , and and </p><p>Menswear: Alexander Wang, Philip Lim and Robert Geller</p><p>Accessories: Eddie Borgo, , Alejandro Ingelmo and Pamela Love (who&#8217;s already for Topshop).</p><p>There are a few other honorees who will walk away from the ceremony on June 6 with trophies. of Celine will take home the International Award. , fashion director of InStyle magazine, will win the Eleanor Lambert Award. The Eugenia Shepard Award (for fashion journalism) will go to of The Daily Telegraph. And last but not least, the CFDA Board of Directors’ Special Tribute Award goes to photographer .</p><p> [WWD]<br> [On The Runway]</p> <p> </p>CFDA Award Nominees: Simon Spurr, Pamela Love&#8230; And Johnny Depp? <p>by 11:08 am, March 15th, 2012</p> <p>Christmas has come early for some of New York&#8217;s finest designers. The nominees and special honorees for the 2012 CFDA Fashion Awards were announced last night at the studio of CFDA president, .  The annual awards gala will take place on June 4 at Lincoln Center&#8217;s Alice Tully Hall, and this year should be an especially wild party since it marks the CFDA&#8217;s 50th anniversary.</p><p>In addition to the Fashion Awards, the ceremony will also include the Swarovski Awards for emerging talent and a number of honorary awards including the Geoffrey Been Lifetime Achievement Award and, our personal favorite, the Fashion Icon Award. So without further ado, here&#8217;s the ladies and gents who made this year&#8217;s cut:</p><p>Womenswear Designer of the Year nominees: , and for The Row and Proenza Schouler’s and .</p><p>Menswear Designer of the Year nominees: , and .</p><p>Accessories Designer of the Year nominees: , and  and for Proenza Schouler.</p><p>Swarovski Award for Emerging Talent in Womenswear nominees: , Chris Peters and Shane Gabier for Creatures of the Wind and Suno’s Max Osterweis and Erin Beatty.</p><p>Swarovksi Award for Emerging Talent in Menswear nominees: Antonio Azzuolo, Todd Snyder and </p><p>Swarovski Award for Emerging Talent in Accessories: , and Irene Neuwirth. </p><p>Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award: <br></p><p>International Award: </p><p>The Founders Award, in honor of Eleanor Lambert: ,</p><p>Media Award, in honor of Eugenia Sheppard: and Garance Doré.</p><p>Fashion Icon Award: Johnny Depp<br></p><p>Seth Meyers from Saturday Night Live&#8217;s &#8220;Weekend Update&#8221; will serve as the evening&#8217;s master of ceremonies. Check out the last year&#8217;s CFDA Fashion Awards winners and nominees .</p> <p> </p>And The 2012 CFDA Award Winners Are&#8230; <p>by 10:25 pm, June 4th, 2012</p> <p></p><p>The CFDA Awards are the fashion world&#8217;s version of the Oscars, which means there are winners and losers and lots of red carpet action. You can see all the amazing (and not-so-amazing) looks , but first you should familiarize yourself with the night&#8217;s victors.</p><p>First-time Womenswear Designer of the Year nominees Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen took home the night&#8217;s most coveted award for their work for The Row, edging out Marc Jacobs and the Proenza Schouler boys. (Which, wow.) The night&#8217;s other big winners were Billy Reid for menswear and Reed Krakoff for accessories. Joseph Altuzarra, Phillip Lim, and Tabitha Simmons all snagged Swarovski Awards for Emerging Talent.</p><p>Considering last year&#8217;s was seriously lacking in female designers, we&#8217;re pumped to see the Olsens and Simmons take home Trovas. As was previously reported, John Waters both Rei Kawakubo&#8216;s International Award and Johnny Depp&#8216;s Fashion Icon Award.</p><p>Check out the full list of winners (and nominees) below — and remember, the ceremony will be tomorrow at noon!</p><p>&#8212;</p><p>Womenswear Designer of the Year<br>The Nominees: , and of The Row, and of Proenza Schouler<br>The Winner:  and  of The Row</p><p>Menswear Designer of the Year<br>The Nominees: , , <br>The Winner: </p><p>Accessories Designer of the Year<br>The Nominees: , ,  and of Proenza Schouler<br>The Winner: </p><p>Swarovski Award for Emerging Talent in Womenswear<br>The Nominees: , Chris Peters and Shane Gabier of Creatures of the Wind, Max Osterweis and Erin Beatty of Suno<br>The Winner: </p><p>Swarovksi Award for Emerging Talent in Menswear<br>The Nominees: Antonio Azzuolo, Todd Snyderm, <br>The Winner: </p><p>Swarovski Award for Emerging Talent in Accessories<br>The Nominees: , , Irene Neuwirth<br>The Winner: </p><p>Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award: </p><p>International Award: </p><p>Founders Award, in honor of Eleanor Lambert: </p><p>Media Award, in honor of Eugenia Sheppard: and Garance Doré</p><p>Fashion Icon Award: Johnny Depp</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Marc Jacobs Took Off His Shirt For This Year&#8217;s CFDA Journal <p>by 12:40 pm, May 27th, 2011</p> <p>Oh how we love the CFDA Journal, the publication released every year for the organization&#8217;s Fashion Awards. Over the years, we&#8217;ve seen the journal feature wearing bunny ears, models wearing Marc Jacobs masks, and this year, Marc Jacobs wearing nothing at all.</p><p>The designer, who will receive this year&#8217;s Lifetime Achievement Award, stripped down to his birthday suit for the 2011 edition of the catalog, shot by Inez and Vinoodh. The magazine&#8217;s design director Trey Laird Women&#8217;s Wear Daily that Inez tried to make everyone naked, and that Jacobs was only too glad to oblige. (And of course he was. Have you seen for Bang?</p><p>Jacobs appears alongside nominees , and of Proenza Schouler, and whose photos look a lot like the same one that appeared in the of V Magazine.</p><p>Take a look at a few of the photos from the catalog below.</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>Fashion Folks Turn It Out For CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards <p>by 11:04 am, November 15th, 2011</p> <p>Last night&#8217;s CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards emerging talent like and — it was also an opportunity for fashion&#8217;s cool kids to show off their best duds.</p><p>Some of the styling choices were not at all surprising — Amanda Seyfried in Prabal Gurung, Zoe Kravitz in Alexander Wang — while others made us do a double take ( in Christopher Kane! in Marni!). Highlights included in glasses and a chest-bearing blazer, Olivia Wilde in a cutout Cushnie et Ochs dress, and Chloe Moretz in a billowy printed frock.</p><p>And let&#8217;s not forget the men! The dudes were on point last night. Waris Ahluwalia paired one of with pink suede lace-ups! wore dark jeans, a teal shirt and coordinating tie, a silk embroidered blazer, and maroon velvet loafers! There was also a whole lot of blue, courtesy of , , and . All in all, well done!</p><p>Check out the fashionable guests below. Which looks do you love?</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Style Stars Celebrate Billy Reid At Vogue CFDA Awards <p>by 1:26 pm, November 16th, 2010</p> <p>Last night some of the world&#8217;s most fashionable (and forward-thinking) people gathered at this year&#8217;s CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards. The awards are awesome because they recognize and reward new talent — past winners have included , the Proenza Schouler boys and . This year Billy Reid took home the night&#8217;s  (and $300,000).</p><p>The fund was created seven years ago to nurture emerging talent through a mentorship program and cash prizes. Runners-up Eddie Borgo and each took home $100,000. The night&#8217;s keynote speaker was none other than , and what we would have given to hear him speak! CFDA president and Vogue editor were on hand, as were a fair share of fashion&#8217;s elite (plus the cast of Gossip Girl, naturally).</p><p>Take a peek below at who wore what and who brought who to the awards!</p><p><br> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> </p> <p> </p>Celebrating Chanel&#8217;s New Book With Karl &#038; All Our Other Crushes <p>by 11:55 am, June 8th, 2012</p> <p></p><p>Wednesday night was a night of crushes.</p><p>You see, this was the night Chanel feted Karl Lagerfeld and Carine Roitfeld&#8216;s upcoming with a swanky exhibit opening in New York City. I spent the first part of the evening fawning over halftone images featuring the likes of 113 friends of the house, including Anna Wintour, Kanye West, and Elle Fanning. I sipped champagne and enjoyed hors d&#8217;oeuvres with caviar (favorite) and beets (not so favorite — I&#8217;m on this one). And then I came face-to-face with Pharrell Williams: thus began the night of crushes.</p><p>Pharrell is a longtime crush of mine, which makes sense given he&#8217;s a musician who skateboards and is also really into science. (High school fantasy come true, basically.) I tried to play it very cool as I lurked, waiting to interview him, but he caught on to the lurkage and called me and my partner-in-crime out. &#8220;Hey, ladies,&#8221; he said with a grin.</p><p>He told me he only had time for one question, as he was already late to another event, so I asked him what his little black jacket — that item that he wears everywhere — was. He thought about this for what seemed like an eternity. &#8220;Beautiful girls. I love wearing beautiful girls,&#8221; he finally answers. Blushing, I asked who his favorite beautiful girl was. &#8220;She can just lay naked in your arms and hug your neck, and you can just wear her. Right? I just tried to give you the most colorful answer right there.&#8221; You succeeded, I tell him, still blushing. &#8220;Can you imagine it?&#8221; he asked as he was whisked away by his flack. Blush on blush on blush.</p><p>I was pretty sure this encounter couldn&#8217;t be topped, but I should have known better. Not only are Chanel events impeccably produced, the guest lists are typically insane. Crush on crush on crush.</p><p>My next chat was with an editor crush, Paper&#8216;s Mickey Boardman. The nicest man in fashion told me his must-have item is &#8220;anything with sequins&#8221;. Why? &#8220;Because it turns a housewife look into something special.&#8221; And since this was Karl&#8217;s party, I had to know if the editor had ever met the designer. &#8220;I have, and I&#8217;m obsessed and amazed. But I&#8217;m only using Karl to get to his , who I think is so hot and sexy. I&#8217;m obsessed with him and think he&#8217;s completely amazing. And Karl is amazing, and just Chanel in general is amazing. Hello, we&#8217;re at a Chanel party! Doesn&#8217;t it feel so glamourous?&#8221; Indeed.</p><p>I did another lap and saw all sorts of fabulous people — models, designers, actors, and more — checking out the exhibit. Zoe Kravitz made the rounds with Lisa Bonet, while Olivier Theyskens chatted with friends. Lily Collins had a gaggle of people around her, as did Joan Smalls. I peeped Karolina Kurkova and Linda Evangelista, but missed Alber Elbaz, much to my chagrin. Jessica Paré was there, too.</p><p>Then I spotted teenage model crush Lindsey Wixson. She looked flawless. When a friend came over to greet her, he hesitated to kiss her on the cheek, for fear of messing up her makeup. &#8220;I&#8217;m not wearing makeup!&#8221; she replied. But of course. When I asked if I could interview her, she bashfully told me I was the third person to request such a thing. But of course!</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s great working with Karl,&#8221; she told me. &#8220;You know what he wants when he&#8217;s in front of his lens. He knows exactly what he wants from you and he&#8217;s very direct.&#8221;</p><p>Before exiting the main exhibition area, I eyed the most popular guest of all: , the adorable toddler son of Karl fave Brad Kroenig. Hudson was photographed for the book and showed up to the opening in a custom LBJ. It was almost too cute to handle.</p><p>After gawking at the 3-year-old, I entered the makeshift lobby space, hoping to compose myself after all that stimulation. And then Carine waltzed in. And then Karl. I couldn&#8217;t get particularly close to the designer, thanks to his massive entourage, but alas, it was magical, as all Karl sightings are. Theophilus London was standing behind me, taking it all in. He would later give a performance at the private dinner that was thrown in the LBJ&#8217;s honor.</p><p>I saw Penn Badgley as I walked towards the exit. Dan Humphrey = TV crush! When I tried to talk to him, with his arms around Kravitz, he told me he had done all his interviews for the night. Whatever, Dan is just the poor man&#8217;s Seth Cohen.</p><p>Okay, my work here is done, I thought. I was, of course, wrong. Standing near the door, looking gorgeous and smoking a cigarette in the most glamourous of ways was grownup model crush Crystal Renn. She complimented my (head-to-toe H&amp;M) outfit, and I melted. She was in Helmut Lang, which she told me she adores along with Rick Owens — and Chanel. And like everyone else at the party, she had some stories about Karl.</p><p>&#8220;I walked into his incredible studio, and there were 250,000 books, he says. Can you imagine?&#8221; she gushed, eyes glowing. &#8220;And can you imagine where the other books are in the other areas of his house or whatever? A collection like that, yes, I would like to have that for my own.&#8221;</p><p>Us, too! And just when I thought I was actually done for the evening, I ended up right in front of Alexander Wang: designer crush. He seemed flattered when I told him my LBJ was a coveted pair of balloon shorts he designed years ago.</p><p>Wang appears in the book and exhibit, and said working with Karl was a delight: &#8221;He was so easy and so professional. He got me in and out in 10 minutes! It was like two days before my show, and I was in and out of fittings.&#8221; And who does he want to collaborate with? &#8220;James Jebbia of Supreme. I think he&#8217;s done amazing things at Supreme, and really created something anyone can respect.&#8221; And then we bonded about the cute skaters outside the Supreme store in Soho. Told you it was a night of crushes.</p><p>The Little Black Jacket: Chanel&#8217;s Classic Revisited exhibit is open to the public today through June 15 at 18 Wooster St. in New York.</p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>Bonus! Here&#8217;s a little video from the night:</p><p><p><p><p><p></p> <p> </p>Chelsea&#8217;s Wedding Dress, Tavi Top NYT&#8217;s Fashion Moments List <p>by 4:00 pm, December 31st, 2010</p> <p>As part of the media&#8217;s annual year-end love affair with listicles (current company included), and of the New York Times offered up their top ten fashion moments of the 2010 calendar year. And while both lists were filled with fitting (and somewhat predictable) pics &#8212; the death of and&#8216;s resignation come to mind &#8212; they both opened with surprising nods to pop culture and the changing face of the industry as a whole.</p><p>:</p><p>Looking back at what truly resonated with audiences outside of the fashion elite, it is tough to think of anything more substantial than the hullabaloo that took place this summer over a single dress — one that hardly anyone had a chance to get a good look at. That, of course, was the white strapless beaded wedding gown worn by Chelsea Clinton at a top-secret ceremony in Rhinebeck, N.Y., on July 31. As it happened, it was a dress by Vera Wang, seen by the public in only a handful of official portraits released by the Clinton family. The dress had some silvery belt thing at the waist and a very tight fitted bodice, and what looked like a rushing waterfall of tulle below the waist. To no small degree of dissatisfaction among the fashion press, Ms. Clinton’s gown was not destined to be hugely influential in the tradition of bridal gowns worn by glamorous members of prominent political or royal families (i.e., Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Princess Diana, Ivanka Trump). But frankly, she could have worn burlap and remained at the top of this list, since half the fun was in all the anticipation and speculation. You can only imagine what 2011 has in store for Kate Middleton.</p><p>: </p><p>I wouldn’t have picked Dior’s January couture collection as a major fashion moment (John Galliano punched an out-of-date ticket for the Gibson Girl), but the scene illustrated the tension between the weird and the wonderful that exists in fashion. Dior held the show in the house, so everything was creamy with intimacy — just what editors love as they plop down next to friends — but it soon registered that Tavi Gevinson, the 13-year-old blogger, was in the front row. Some of the editors really hit her with looks. At the Armani show that night, the stares were openly hostile. It was obvious the older Italian ladies didn’t care to see a child in their midst. And Tavi wore a big bow-shaped hat that pointedly emphasized her juvenile stature. The fact is half the people were still in the dark about what was happening. Blogs? Strange ruminations from a girl’s bedroom in Chicago? They were still politely applauding satin ball gowns that Charles James would have whipped up in his sleep at the Chelsea Hotel.</p><p>They&#8217;re both worth a read, but Horyn&#8217;s makes for a particularly biting and nuanced take on the year that was.</p><p> [NYT]<br> [NYT]</p><p>Related:</p><p><br><br><br></p> <p> </p>FLASH FASHION: Derek Lam Embraces Minimalism <p>by 3:31 pm, September 12th, 2010</p> <p>A few days ago we met and were all, &#8220;.&#8221; Besides being incredibly talented, he is also super personable and really smart. As such, it didn&#8217;t surprise us that the thoughtful designer excerpted a New Yorker article about minimalism to explain the inspiration for his — you guessed it — minimalist collection.</p><p>V-necks and angles pervaded, with neutral tones and even a bit of denim infusing a mostly black and white palate. Elegant long gowns and careful tailoring kept the aesthetic clean and fresh. Word on the street is many show-goers were too hungover from last night&#8217;s Alexander Wang party to fully appreciate Lam&#8217;s show, which is a shame, because (like Lam himself) it was really quite smart.</p><p><br> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> </p> <p> </p>WATCH: DvF Defends Women And Waists Around The World <p>by 1:40 pm, September 7th, 2010</p> <p><br>No one needs to tell us that designs some of the most flattering clothing out there &#8212; but it&#8217;s still amazing to see how staunchly she sticks to her &#8220;It Must Look Good!&#8221; guns. Full Frontal Fashion &#8212; the geniuses behind Sundance Channel&#8217;s &#8220;The Day Before&#8221; series &#8212; has released some of this season&#8217;s episodes. And while it&#8217;s always fun to watch count out his models and wax poetic on his inspiration, it&#8217;s von Furstenberg&#8217;s tirade against the boyfriend blazer that has us swooning.</p><p>In the first video, von Furstenberg rails against the idea that one of her looks needs a &#8220;boyfriend blazer&#8221; to toughen it up. </p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a boring boyfriend!&#8221; she says. &#8220;I like the concept, but it&#8217;s not flattering. It makes her thick.&#8221; And when the employee argues that they need one because &#8220;it&#8217;s a fashion statement,&#8221; von Furstenberg responds flatly, &#8220;I don&#8217;t care about fashion. I care about women.&#8221; </p><p>Snap.</p><p>WATCH:</p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p></p><p>In the second video, von Furstenberg continues to expound on her pro-female manifesto. </p><p>&#8220;When a women wakes up and opens her closet, my clothes are her friends&#8230; And that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m so particular.&#8221;</p><p>And as someone who has woken up, opened her closet, and thought every item was an enemy out to get her, von Furstenberg&#8217;s particularity is right on the money.</p><p>WATCH:</p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p></p><p>More videos .</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Super Sexy DJ Diplo Models For Alexander Wang <p>by 3:32 pm, February 2nd, 2011</p> <p>When we saw the (or are they ?) for T by Alexander Wang, we totally freaked out — and it wasn&#8217;t because we&#8217;re with the young designer. No, it&#8217;s because they star Diplo.</p><p>For the uninitiated, Diplo is something of a hometown hero in Philly (a place this blogger spent four very formative years). You might know the DJ from his work with ex-girlfriend MIA (whose spot he blew up in that underminey Times ), or maybe from his Major Lazer . He&#8217;s super cute, super cool and super talented. So yeah, totally crushworthy and in keeping with the downtown Wang aesthetic.</p><p>Check out the ads (which also feature model Ashley Smith), and watch Style.com&#8216;s with Wang below!<br></p><p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <br></p><p></p> <p> </p>Fashion Awards Honor Emerging Talent: Who Made The Cut? <p>by 4:28 pm, January 3rd, 2012</p> <p></p><p>Awards season is upon us! While there are plenty of entertainment award shows coming up (Golden Globes! Oscars! Grammys!), there are also quite a few fashion awards to be given out. Today both the finalists for Fashion Group International&#8217;s Rising Star awards and the winners of the Ecco Domani Fashion Fund awards for emerging designers were announced.</p><p>The are each given $25,000 to be used towards producing collections for New York Fashion Week. This year&#8217;s winners are Correll Correll, Eighteenth, Haus Alkire, and Sunhee for womenswear, Tim Coppens for menswear, Dezso by Sara Baltrán for accessories, and Titania Inglis for sustainable design. Past winners have included the likes of Alexander Wang, Proenza Schouler, and Rodarte.</p><p>While the Ecco Domani awards are decided upon by an impressive panel of judges that includes the likes of Sally Singer and Kim Hastreiter, the are voted on by the group&#8217;s 1200 members. Last year cast their votes, so hopefully turnout will be a little higher this time around. In any event, here are the nominees:</p><p>Women’s ready-to-wear:<br>Wes Gordon<br>Nary Manivong and Alexandria Hilfiger of Nahm<br>Elene Cassis<br>Joel Diaz and Christina LaPens of Jolibe<br>Norman Ambrose<br>Nara Paz of Nara Paz Design Internationale<br>Misha Nonoo of Nonoo<br>Stacy Lomman of Stacy Lomman: New York<br>Steven McDermott of Stevie Mac New York</p><p>Men’s apparel:<br>Simon Spurr<br>Rob Magness of Grown &amp; Sewn<br>Ian Velardi<br>Luis M. Fernandez of Number: Lab</p><p>Accessories:<br>Deborah Sawath of Thale Blanc<br>Ron Donovan<br>Katherine Kim of Roman &amp; Sunstone<br>Michelle Vale<br>Blythe Harris of Stella &amp; Dot<br>Serra Turker of Misela Inc.<br>Adriana Castro, and Michelle Watson of Mimi &amp; Lu.</p><p>Fine jewelry:<br>Jessica Kagan Cushman of Jessica Kagan Cushman Studio<br>Wendy Brandes<br>Torrubia &amp; Torrubia sisters Yolanda Torrubia and Amaia Torrubia.</p><p>Retail:<br>Randi Jacobson of Realm<br>Tom Wilscam of Hommage Atelier by Julien Farel<br>Vasken Demirjian of Vasken Demirjian Salon.</p><p>Corporate fragrance:<br>Remi Pulverail of Givaudan Fragrances<br>Donna Ramanauskas of Robertet Fragrances<br>Celine Barel of International Flavors &amp; Fragrances Inc.<br>Sue Saadat of Nars Cosmetics</p><p>Fragrance entrepreneur:<br>Kelly Van Gogh of Kelly Van Gogh Hair Colour Cosmetics<br>David Moltz of D.S. &amp; Durga<br>Kaya Sorhaindo of Six Scents Parfums<br>Worker B’s Michael Sedlacek and Liesa Helfen</p><p>Home/interior design:<br>Tamara Eaton of Tamara Eaton Design<br>Joe Manus of Shiner International<br>Coco of Cococozy</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Anna Wintour Corrals 22 Designers Into Campaigning For Obama <p>by 11:01 am, January 9th, 2012</p> <p></p><p>Fashion&#8217;s heaviest hitters are throwing their collective weight behind Barack Obama&#8216;s reelection campaign, and they&#8217;re being led by none other than .</p><p>Wintour has been a vocal supporter of Obama, hosting of for the president. This latest effort is called Runway to Win, and is a sequel to 2008&#8242;s . Vogue has helped round up 22 designers — including, , , , and — to design items to benefit the Obama Victory Fund. Expect to see Obama-branded tees, bags, and more go on sale on Thursday. In addition, Wintour will host a Runway to Win fundraising event in February, which could very well coincide with Fashion Week.</p><p>Of course, this project is not without controversy. LVMH execs didn&#8217;t want its brands to participate, for fear of losing Republican customers. According to , Marc Jacobs defied LVMH&#8217;s wishes after getting pressured by Vogue and Wintour. Conversely, LVMH-owned declined to participate, even though it took part in Runway to Change. It should be noted that executives and employees of fashion brands contributed nearly twice as much money to Obama&#8217;s campaign as they did to John McCain&#8217;s campaign during the 2008 presidential election.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>NYFW Invites Get Lost In The Mail? You Won&#8217;t Miss A Thing <p>by 10:28 am, September 9th, 2010</p> <p>Fashion Week is finally here, and if our calendars, heart rates, and the fact that the is currently taking an hour to load are any indication, this one is going to be a doozy. But for those of you not in New York or not going to the shows &#8212; both which are also known as &#8220;the majority&#8221; &#8212; you don&#8217;t have to feel left out. Not only will we be, posting, and publishing as much coverage as our WiFi will allow, but a huge portion of designers and sites have arranged to livestream the shows. So many that even the New York Times about it!</p><p>But we&#8217;ve taken what the Times did and ran with it. Here&#8217;s a list of every designer &#8212; organized alphabetically &#8212; whose show you&#8217;ll be able to find online, plus a few more resources thrown in. All times are EST.</p><p>We&#8217;ll be continually updating this list, so let us know if we&#8217;re missing any at tips@styleite.com.</p><p>A<br>ADAM, Saturday, September 11th, 2PM, at .<br>, Saturday, September 11th, 5PM, at .<br>, Wednesday, September 15th, 6PM, at .<br> Altazurra, Saturday, September 11th, 8PM, at .</p><p>B<br> Badgley Mischka, Tuesday, September 14th, 10AM, at .<br>BCBG Max Azria, Friday, September 10th, 10am, at .<br>, Monday, September 13th, 6PM, at .<br>Backstage at Betsey Johnson, Monday, September 13th, 6PM, at.<br>Buckler, Friday, September 10th, 1PM, at .</p><p>C<br>Calvin Klein, Thursday, September 16th, 3PM, at .<br>, Monday, September 13th, 11AM, at <br>, Sunday, September 12th, 5PM, at .<br>, Monday, September 13th, 10AM, at .<br>, Thursday, September 9th, 2PM, at .<br>Concept Korea, Thursday, September 9th, 7PM, at .<br>, Saturday, September 11th, 4PM, at .</p><p>D<br> New York, Monday, September 13th, 2PM, at <br>DKNY, Sunday, September 12th, 1PM, at .</p><p>I<br>, Thursday, September 16th, 12PM, at.</p><p>J<br>Jenny Packham, Monday, September 13th, 9AM, at .</p><p>M<br>, Monday, September 13th, 8PM, .<br> Marc by Marc Jacobs, Wednesday, September 14th, 10AM, at .<br>, Wednesday, September 15th, 10AM, at .<br>Marchesa, Wednesday, September 15th, 4PM, at .<br>Milly By , Wednesday, September 15th, 3PM, at .</p><p>N<br>, Thursday, September 16th, 7PM, at .<br>, Wednesday, September 15th, 11AM, at .<br>, Tuesday, September 14th, 8PM, at .<br>, Friday, September 10th, 5PM, at .</p><p>O<br>Odd Molly, Wednesday, September 15th, 5PM, at .<br>, Thursday, September 16th, 5PM, at , .</p><p>P<br>Perry Ellis, Monday, September 13th, 7PM, at .<br>, Friday, September 10, 9:15AM at .<br>3.1 , Wednesday, September 15th, 2PM, at .<br>Ports 1961, Friday, September 10th, 3PM, at .<br>, Saturday, September 11th, 1PM, at <br> Proenza Schouler, Wednesday, September 15th, 8PM, at .</p><p>R<br>, Sunday, September 12th, 2PM, at .<br>Richie Rich, Thursday, September 9th, 9PM, at .<br>Rosa Cha, Tuesday, September 14th, 1PM, at .</p><p>S<br>Simon Spurr, Sunday, September 12th, 11AM, at .</p><p>T<br>, Sunday, September 14th, 8PM, at .<br>, Monday, September 13th, 1PM, at </p><p>V<br>, Tuesday, September 14th, 11AM, at .<br>, Saturday, September 11th, 3PM, at.</p> <p> </p>EXCLUSIVE: Fashion Stars Pose With Their Musical Muses For W <p>by 11:22 am, June 20th, 2011</p> <p></p><p></p><p>The theme of W&#8216;s July issue is music and style, and while we loved the mag&#8217;s on Beyoncé, our favorite spread involves 10 designers and their stylish musical muses.</p><p>The Max Vadukul-shot are both intimate and glamorous, and the pairings are almost too much to handle. These are some of our favorite people! ? Check. ? Check. There&#8217;s even in a bathtub! And did we mention Yoko Ono and the Proenza Schouler boys? So. So. Good.</p><p>Also so good? What these fashion-music friends have to say about each other. For example, Karl on Janelle: &#8220;We liked each other from the first second on. Not just because of our style, but also the name: Janelle rhymes with Chanel, no?&#8221; And Diplo on Wang: &#8220;Before, I&#8217;d talk to girls about my music and they&#8217;d say, &#8216;Yeah, that&#8217;s cool.&#8217; Now I tell them I&#8217;m in the Alex Wang ads, and they want to have my children.&#8221; Oh, and there&#8217;s even an by Deborah Harry.</p><p>Check out the photos below (the rest can be found , by the way). Which is your favorite?</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>Go to W Magazine&#8217;s for access to more exclusive videos of top designers and their musical muses.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>THE GOODS: Gap Gets Back On Track With Soft, Flattering Tees <p>by 6:24 pm, February 6th, 2012</p> <p>Gap has been a for quite some time now, but it appears as though they&#8217;re mounting a comeback.</p><p>Having of Patrick Robertson, it looks like Gap has given up on the fashion-conscious look the once proclaimed &#8220;either girly and pretty or androgynous in an Oliver Twist goes to a Nirvana concert sort of way&#8221;. Bring back we say! If they can&#8217;t keep up with trendy J.Crew, why not beat American Apparel at it&#8217;s own game? Make us the best T-shirts ever! And so they have.</p><p>We haven&#8217;t gotten a chance to try out Gap&#8217;s new line, but it reminds us a whole lot of the awesome collection (or even our beloved ). The cuts seem flattering, the fabric (jersey, pima cotton, and a hint of cashmere) looks soft, and the colors are nice. The price point is also quite lovely  — the tees retail from $24 to $68.</p><p></p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>The Glee Cast Will Help You Shop During Fashion&#8217;s Night Out <p>by 2:48 pm, August 1st, 2011</p> <p>The third annual Fashion&#8217;s Night Out will involve its usual bevy of models, designers, and celebrities, but this time stars of the hit show Glee will be there to help you shop. Cast members including Lea Michele, Diana Agron, Corey Monteith, Chris Colfer, and Darren Criss have been selected as spokespeople to appear in stores from New York to Los Angeles.</p><p>The brainchild of Anna Wintour, the Sept. 8 initiative is a global retail event in which participating stores offer special products, discounts, and extended hours. This year, e-commerce sites such as Net-a-Porter and Shopbop will make their debut alongside well-established brands (last year&#8217;s list boasted Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, and Gucci, among others).</p><p>According to Page Six, Bee Shaffer in the collaboration. The Vogue editor&#8217;s daughter, who is an intern at Glee creator Ryan Murphy&#8217;s production company, came up with the idea to involve the show.</p><p>Judging by previous years&#8217; antics, we wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if the cast got swept up in the excitement. Perhaps they&#8217;ll even burst into song (like Sarah Jessica Parker, Bette Midler, and Oscar de la Renta) or dance (with Alexander Wang and his supermodel posse in the windows of his store). Hopefully there won&#8217;t be any crazy burglaries, as in the case of .</p><p>What is for sure is that there will be plenty of entertainment, whether it&#8217;s sartorial shenanigans or celebrity sightings. If you&#8217;re a fun-loving fashionista, this is an extravaganza you won&#8217;t want to miss.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Behind The Scenes Of Bazaar With Altuzarra, Alex Wang, &#038; Terry Richardson <p>by 9:57 am, September 9th, 2012</p> <p>Harper&#8217;s Bazaar is bringing social media to print in a new editorial called &#8220;I&#8217;ll Tumblr For Ya&#8221;.</p><p>The magazine&#8217;s October issue will include the -lensed editorial, which is all inspired by social blogging site Tumblr and features designers and tumbling, in the gymnastic sense. Clever, no? The magazine will be revealing more behind-the-scenes images of the shoot throughout Fashion Week on its own (how fitting) and will launch the full editorial as well as a video on the 14th, but for now, we have the first few photos in the gallery below. Enjoy!</p><p>******</p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>[]</p>In Which We Welcome Heidi Klum To The Blogosphere <p>by 12:55 pm, May 30th, 2011</p> <p>Because needs competition, supermodel launched her very own fashion and with AOL last week. But instead of the sleek, black and white Internet home of a fashion expert we expected, Klum&#8217;s website caters to people looking for tips on how to manage their kids, careers, wardrobes and exercise routines. Klum&#8217;s crack squad of experts in various fields will help her disseminate advice on everything from home design to health and wellness.</p><p>And when you think about it, it&#8217;s a really smart idea for Klum to broaden her brand from fashion and fitness to the whole lifestyle shebang. Alongside pictures of what Klum wears every day ( it&#8217;s an dress with nude pumps) readers find promises of what&#8217;s to come: posts about relationships and parenting and everything else that could make a busy person&#8217;s hectic, modern life run a little smoother. Is it original? Not quite. But Klum&#8217;s already so much of a brand in her own right that name recognition alone might prompt people to ask, &#8220;What would Heidi do?&#8221; What better place to put the answers to that question than her own website?</p><p>It hasn&#8217;t been up and running for very long, but we&#8217;d bet that Klum will soon have a huge digital fanbase.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>How To Get The Most Out Of New York Fashion Week With Styleite <p>by Styleite Staff 6:40 pm, February 8th, 2012</p> <p></p><p>Fashion Week is here, friends! We have all sorts of exciting plans that involve Alexander Wang, Oscar de la Renta, and even an S&amp;M dog fashion show, and we want to make sure you get to join in the fun.</p><p>The fall 2012 shows officially start tomorrow and continue through next Thursday — and there are lots and lots of them! And parties, too! So, how can you get the most out of the Week of Fashion?</p><p>1. Follow us on for up-to-the-minute show and party updates. The account will be chock full of NYFW goodness, and you can also follow our individual accounts (, , and ) for even more coverage.</p><p>2. Follow us on for extra pictures and behind-the-scenes content. Like things. Reblog things. .</p><p>3. Check out all the livestreamed shows for the comfort of your own home and/or office (we won&#8217;t tell your boss). will be streaming 19 shows including Calvin Klein, DKNY, and Betsey Johnson. KCD will roll out its site with Prabal Gurung&#8216;s at 11:30 on Feb. 15. And last but not least, Made will be streaming shows from the likes of Proenza Schouler, Peter Som, and more over at the and via an interactive app.</p> <p> </p>WATCH: Iris Apfel Shows Off Her Singing Rabbit Doll In New Documentary <p>by 1:38 pm, August 30th, 2012</p> <p>The trailer for &#8216;s !</p><p>In addition to designing , , , and , and thinking about , Apfel is the star of a new documentary by Albert Maysles. We just watched the trailer, and our hearts are exploding.</p><p>In the clip, the 91-year-old style icon (she just celebrated her birthday yesterday!) doles out words of wisdom to students (&#8220;I think style is all about attitude.&#8221;), poses on the red carpet with and Alexis Bittar, approves jewelry designs, and gives us a peek inside her home. She has a singing rabbit doll! </p><p>Watch it right here:</p><p></p> <p> </p>Is The Asian Models Trend Just A Trend? <p>by 12:47 pm, January 26th, 2011</p> <p>It&#8217;s been a really good few days for Asian fashion models. First Louis Vuitton Taiwanese-Canadian actor Godfrey Gao for its spring campaign, then a gorgeous young Filipina named Danica Magpantay the Ford Supermodel of the Year competition. And earlier today, showed his for Givenchy with a group comprised of entirely Asian models.</p><p>Sadly, this doesn&#8217;t say that the tide of change is washing over the all-white landscape of the modeling industry. It says that modeling, like fashion, is powerfully susceptible to a good trend.</p><p>For months now fashion magazines have been featuring Asian models as though they were the only ones they could hire. First there was a in Vogue featuring Asian models exclusively, in response to the of Asian-American designers like , and . But it&#8217;s 2011. That it has taken so long for this title and titles like it to feature Asian models is a little disheartening. </p><p>And despite the fact that Asian models are en vogue, they&#8217;re still not really in Vogue.There has still never been an Asian model &#8212; or an Asian woman, for that matter, on the cover of the American glossy. Unless you count the from December 1917. (And you shouldn&#8217;t.)</p><p>Even more telling? Magpantay&#8217;s runners up in the were both white as snow. One was from Poland, and the other was from Lithuania.</p><p>Don&#8217;t get us wrong: any additional modicum of melanin in fashion is definitely a good thing. What we&#8217;re most concerned about is that this time next year, designers and casting agents will have fallen back into the same pattern of throwing out an runway show.</p><p>But for now, congratulations to the beautiful Asian women (and men) who finally getting their due in the fashion industry. You deserve the limelight. We&#8217;re just hoping that now you&#8217;re there, you stay there.</p><p><br>Givency&#8217;s Spring 2011 Couture collection.</p><p> [Ford Models Blog]<br> [The Cut]<br> [Vogue]</p> <p> </p>Why Isn&#8217;t James Franco Wearing A Suit On GQ&#8217;s New Cover? <p>by 4:40 pm, November 16th, 2010</p> <p>GQ&#8216;s annual Men of the Year always features famous guys who are given different monikers of awesomeness. This year, James Franco shines as the magazine&#8217;s Leading Man. And we certainly can&#8217;t say he doesn&#8217;t deserve it, especially given all the hard work he&#8217;s done (and the photos of him in we spotted in October).</p><p>But what gives us pause is the clothing &#8212; or relative lack thereof &#8212; that Franco is wearing in his cover shot. Unlike the other three formally dressed male cover stars (and Scarlett Johannson in , who we&#8217;ll get to later), Franco assumes a rather casual pose in a rumpled red t-shirt from Armani Exchange and nothing else.</p><p>And while there&#8217;s nothing wrong with rumpled red t-shirts from Armani Exchange, the era of GQ has generally meant that guys who got covers had to suit up. With the exception of Clint Eastwood&#8216;s cover last December and this November&#8217;s cover with , we can&#8217;t remember a single GQ cover guy in recent history who wasn&#8217;t at least wearing a tie, and Franco was wearing both a coat and a tie when he covered the book in September 2008. (It&#8217;s worth mentioning that women on the cover of the magazine generally wear very little.)</p><p>But maybe Franco&#8217;s t-shirt is a good thing &#8212; maybe in some weird way Jim Moore and are trying to tell us that gentlemen should be as comfortable in a suit as they are in their favorite t-shirt.</p><p>Or maybe Franco&#8217;s just a badass and refused to wear a blazer. Check out the looks below (including the unfortunately annointed Babe of the Year Scarlett Johannson) and let us know where Franco&#8217;s shot stacks up with the rest.</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>[Photos via ] </p> <p> </p>Jam Of The Day: Justin Bieber v. Azealia Banks <p>by 4:22 pm, March 26th, 2012</p> <p>This morning we had a serious case of the Mondays, and then we were gifted with not one but TWO nuggets of pop near-perfection. LET US DISCUSS.</p><p>First up is&#8216;s latest, &#8220;Fuck Up The Fun&#8221;, which a friend of ours described as &#8220;laughably awesome&#8221;. The drums! The rapid-fire rhymes! Also, it was produced by / Diplo. Here, listen:</p><p></p><p>And then there&#8217;s Justin Bieber channeling that other Justin in the Timberlake-infused &#8220;Boyfriend&#8221;. The lyrics are questionable (Swag swag swag, on you / Chillin&#8217; by the fire while we eatin’ fondue), but the chorus is like crack. For context, it was produced by the less crushworthy Mike Posner:</p><p><p><p><p></p><p>So, which is better? Banks beats Bieber in pretty much everything ever, but we just can&#8217;t get &#8220;Boyfriend&#8221; out of our heads. Let&#8217;s just call it a draw.</p> <p> </p>Kanye Chose New York Fashion Week Over The Grammys <p>by 1:48 pm, February 14th, 2011</p> <p>Fashion Week has officially taken over our lives, and it looks like it&#8217;s taken over the life of our favorite , too. Kanye was spotted around the tents and assorted other fashionable locales this weekend, but there is one place he wasn&#8217;t: the Grammys.</p><p>But what about his super amazing album? The one that had that ? How did that not get nominated? Well, it wasn&#8217;t eligible for this year&#8217;s Grammys because it was released in November, and the for the 2010 awards is September (dumb, we agree). So it wasn&#8217;t that Kanye was snubbing the awards because they snubbed him. (In fact, &#8220;Power&#8221; was nominated for Best Rap Solo Performance since it was released in July.)</p><p>Though it&#8217;s odd he missed out on what many consider music&#8217;s biggest night, maybe the scales have finally tipped in the favor of fashion? It , after all! Kanye sat front row at the Alexander Wang and Band of Outsiders shows on Saturday, which seems pretty in tune with his cool dude aesthetic. Our very own EIC ran into Yeezy on — they apparently just missed each other at Tory Burch.</p><p>But Kanye is no stranger to Fashion Week. Among the shows he attended last season were Phillip Lim (who outfitted his &#8220;Runaway&#8221; ) and Jeremy Scott. Let&#8217;s hope he makes some repeat appearances, since we also have tickets to Scott&#8217;s show on Wednesday. Anyway, the way we see it, fashion FTW!<br></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: First Impressions Of Kanye&#8217;s Paris Fashion Show <p>by 7:43 pm, October 1st, 2011</p> <p>Kanye West&#8216;s runway in Paris is still warm from the parade of models who came down wearing his freshman effort at a serious fashion line. But the critics have started to speak up, and, unfortunately for him, most of their words are cold.</p><p></p><p>On its face, Dw by Kanye West (or KW by Kanye West, depending on which wire service you&#8217;re asking) is a collection of clothing trying to say something new. From a critical perspective, however, the clothes made up an overreaching attempt at artistry that failed where no collection dares fail: it didn&#8217;t fit, it wasn&#8217;t practical, it wasn&#8217;t easy to wear.</p><p> of The Wall Street Journal that it was a good thing West &#8220;has a solid day job.&#8221; of The New York Times must have felt simiarly. She &#8220;Next season Kanye should get a tailor so clothes might fit. Models swimming in some looks.&#8221;</p><p></p><p>Initially we thought the response was perhaps a little harsh for a first collection, but then we remembered another famous fashion person, Carine Roitfeld, telling us that West knows so much about fashion he could teach it. Maybe that&#8217;s why so many designers and fashion-famous people sat in the front row at this show: , , and , , and all turned up. We don&#8217;t know if they were disappointed, but we were a little underwhelmed. This collection wasn&#8217;t bad, but it wasn&#8217;t the knockout line of clothes we&#8217;d been expecting from all the hype and the drama and buildup that surrounded it.</p><p>So what went awry? Well, for starters some of the materials seemed out of place. There was more fur and ribbed leather and knitwear than you could shake a stick at, none of which seems all that desirable in springtime. Then again, West&#8217;s slashed dresses seemed airy enough to allow a few cool breezes to reach the skin &#8212; though we should point out those same slashes called to mind a cartoon mummy coming unwrapped.</p><p></p><p>The accessories, too, seemed a touch overwrought &#8212; West paired a relatively simple knit dress with a fur backpack so large it looked like the model wearing it might fall onto her back from its weight. Then there were the shoes, some of which were so strappy they might have been used as whips. Others looked like the sleeves of cable knit sweaters found a final resting place at the wearer&#8217;s ankles. [Author's note: I'm actually a little into those shoes. Sue me.]</p><p>But don&#8217;t fret, there are a few bright spots: Kanye showed pants! So many pairs of pants, and interesting, sparkly ones at that. And it certainly felt different than the other shows we&#8217;ve seen so far during Paris Fashion Week. And perhaps with time, that difference will become a distinct point of view and an ability to dress women&#8217;s bodies in substance and in style.</p><p>Take a look at a few pieces of the collection, below.</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>Kanye West&#8217;s Shoes Are Going To Be As Sick As His Runway Guestlist <p>by 5:29 pm, September 30th, 2011</p> <p><br>Because in our world there is no such thing as too much Kanye West news, we&#8217;ve got even more details about his upcoming collection which is scheduled to bow in Paris on Saturday night. Most sensationally: the absolutely insane guestlist. Most fashion-y: the high profile designer he&#8217;s got working on his shoes.</p><p>, among those expected to attend are Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Ciara, , , , Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Szhor,, Azzedine Alaia, , , Silvia Fendi,, and and .</p><p></p><p>Did you catch all that? Because, wow. You don&#8217;t usually see that much designer weight thrown around the front row. As for the sure to be fabulous footwear, wasn&#8217;t just teasing when he he was maybe working on a collection with West. Please excuse our seriously rusty translation of Vogue Paris&#8217; , here&#8217;s the jist:</p><p>After collaborating on a collection of sneakers with Louis Vuitton, Kanye West will present his first ready-to-wear collection on October 1 at 9:30PM. If you are one of the lucky few able to attend, you may have already heard that the American rapper has called on Giuseppe Zanotti to create the shoes for his show. Like Robert Clergerie for Carven or Rupert Sanderson at Maxime Simoëns, the Italian cobbler has created four exclusive designs for Kanye West. Further details on his inspiration or model lineup have yet to be revealed. </p><p></p><p>Honestly, even if West&#8217;s collection on Saturday is an outright disaster (which, for the record, we highly doubt it will be; have you seen ?), he should congratulate himself on having the most buzzy show of the season. And in fashion, that&#8217;s nothing to shake a stick at. </p><p>[ via ,.]</p> <p> </p>PHOTO: The Kardashian Holiday Kard Is Full Of Fashion <p>by 12:59 pm, December 16th, 2010</p> <p>This is news to us, but apparently the Kardashians release a seriously styled, over-the-top, and, honestly, pretty darn airbrushed Christmas Card every year. Well, this year&#8217;s is here and while it&#8217;s certainly in the vein of past years &#8212; seriously styled, over-the-top, and pretty darn airbrushed &#8212; we can safely say that the fashion in this one takes the cake. There&#8217;s McQueen, a bespoke suit for a one-year-old, and lots and lots of vintage.</p><p>The credits, :</p><p>Kim is wearing an Emilio Pucci dress and vintage earrings.</p><p>Khloe is wearing a Monique Lhuillier gown, Monica Rose belt and a Heather Belle bracelet.</p><p>Kylie is wearing a black and black/nude strapless gown by Lee Klabin, Vera Wang necklace and bracelet and Sermoneta gloves.</p><p>Kourtney is wearing an Alexander McQueen tuxedo, Dolce &#038; Gabbana shirt, Christian Louboutin shoes and vintage earrings.</p><p>Kris is wearing a Pamela Roland gown and vintage earrings.</p><p>Mason is wearing a custom Astor &#038; Black suit, Ralph Lauren shirt, Pucci pocket square and Ralph Lauren shoes.</p><p>Kendall is wearing an Ina Soltani dress, a Nicholson black cropped jacket, Christian Louboutin shoes and vintage earrings.</p><p>Rob is wearing an Ermenegildo Zegna suit.</p><p>Bruce is wearing an Armani suit.</p><p>Lamar and Scott are wearing their own suits.</p><p>This is the card and &#8212; while we have you &#8212; we figured we may as well take a walk down the Kardashian Christmas memory lane. We managed to dig up seven cards from year&#8217;s past, but couldn&#8217;t figure out all the dates. Let&#8217;s just call them vintage. Enjoy!</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Kate Middleton Wore A Coat Dress For Her First Solo Appearance <p>by 6:14 pm, February 8th, 2012</p> <p>Whelp, Kate Middleton and getting back into the groove of life as a working royal. How she manages to stay so calm and well-rested is beyond us, but she showed up to an art exhibit opening on Wednesday looking as fresh as a daisy. A daisy wearing a coat dress, we mean.</p><p>For the opening of a at London&#8217;s National Portrait Gallery, the duchess donned a gray coat dress from Jesire, a now-defunct British brand we hadn&#8217;t heard of until today. As far as we can tell, it used to sell pretty clothes with a classic bent at affordable (like, Macy&#8217;s affordable, not &#8220;&#8220;) prices. Of course to class it up a bit, Her Royal Highness paired the dress with simple black pumps, a bracelet festooned with diamonds and her signature loose curls.</p><p>Anyway, Kate&#8217;s back in action. Long live the queen! Take a look at her supremely cute ensemble below.</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>Kelly Cutrone&#8217;s Clothing Line Started With A Shouting Match <p>by 11:47 am, March 8th, 2011</p> <p>Some people spend years trying to start their own clothing line. Others meet wealthy, influential strangers on the street and start yelling at each other. That&#8217;s how fashion PR guru and fashion investor (and ex-husband of ) Chris Burch started their new clothing line, The Electric Love Army.</p><p>Or at least that&#8217;s the story they WWD. Cutrone, her business partner Robyn Berkely and Burch sat down with the newspaper to talk about everything from the women who inspire the line, who they&#8217;re making it for, where it will be sold and what they hope to accomplish with it.</p><p>Burch, who is the chairman of , the eponymous label designed by his ex-wife, and Cutrone, who runs public relations firm People&#8217;s Revolution, teamed up after a chance meeting in New York&#8217;s SoHo neighborhood. They started yelling at each other about whether or not the building &#8216;s new store is in was up for rent (Burch was in front of the building, Cutrone was seated at a nearby cafe), and in a matter of minutes they were talking about the business of fashion. </p><p>At this point, Burch has invested $5 million into the company, which will produce &#8220;sexy, fun and affordable&#8221; clothing for young women that should be available early next year. It&#8217;s inspired by women like Joan Jett, Cher, Katy Perry and Debbie Harry &#8212; Cutrone wants to use these &#8220;strong and iconic&#8221; women to make her customers feel empowered. The clothing is all priced between $30 and $300, with $77 as the mean price. In an attempt to appeal to socially conscious women, none of the garments will use leather.</p><p>Cutrone and Berkley are making smart choices there &#8212; in their role shepherding 20 to 30 brands a year into the light of the press, they say they&#8217;ve observed a lot of business and taken notes on what they could have done better. It&#8217;s well-priced, it&#8217;s already got great cachet by virtue of Cutrone&#8217;s situation, and it&#8217;s probably going to get better press than most clothing launches. With the possible exception of the Katy Perry reference, we&#8217;re excited. </p><p> [WWD]</p> <p> </p>Opening Ceremony Founders Are Kenzo&#8217;s New Creative Directors <p>by 11:07 am, July 12th, 2011</p> <p>Opening Ceremony is one of the coolest companies around, and its owners Humberto Leon and Carol Lim are . The two have a lot whole on their collective plate, but they&#8217;re poised to get even busier as the new creative directors of Kenzo.</p><p>LVMH-owned Kenzo is , and bringing Leon and Lim on board makes a lot of sense. In its &#8217;70s heyday, the brand mixed Japanese and European influences for a playful, eclectic effect. This sounds right up their alley! Of course our question is this: how will the dynamic duo have the time? They have quite a few balls in the air in regards to OC — two stores in New York, one in LA,  one in Tokyo, shops in the Beijing and Hong Kong Lane Crawford outposts, an online store, in-house collaborations, and a private label collection that is sold in 300 stores around the globe. Whew.</p><p>Kenzo will focus on growing business in Asia and reentering the American market. They already have a large presence in Europe that includes boutiques (there are 100 stores worldwide) and a healthy wholesale business. The brand sees itself aligned with contemporary brands (read: Alexander Wang, Rag &amp; Bone), and will price accordingly; dresses will range from a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars.</p><p>Leon and Lim aren&#8217;t designers (they&#8217;re, for all intents and purposes, super sick merchants), so they&#8217;ll be assembling a design team to work under them while they split their time between Paris and New York. Their debut collection will be shown in October and roll out to stores next spring. They will also be responsible for overseeing a store design overhaul.</p><p>Suffice to say, we&#8217;re extremely excited to see what these two cook up. If anyone can resuscitate the brand, it&#8217;s them.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>The Night We Watched Lady Gaga Get Tattooed In A Giant Perfume Bottle <p>by 6:25 pm, September 14th, 2012</p> <p><br>For all the intense pressure, heated arguments, and hot young things we&#8217;ve seen over the past eight days, we kind of expected New York Fashion Week to go out with a bang. Instead, it went out with a night spent watching get tattooed inside a giant bottle of her new perfume, &#8220;Fame.&#8221;</p><p>The party was a &#8220;black tie masquerade&#8221; held in the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum, but it was not quite the Eyes Wide Shut bacchanal that description might suggest. Not that the ingredients weren&#8217;t there: guests were greeted by a line of shirtless, harness-wearing sentinels, after which we were offered jalapeño margaritas served in smoking goblets, and invited to gawk at the oversized egg that was the focal point of the room. Partygoers like (in bejeweled devil horns) and Yoko Ono (in a tall top hat) got into the spirit of the evening and abided by the invitation&#8217;s instructions to wear a &#8220;mask, hat, tiara, crown, or lobster.&#8221; Even queens of debauchery Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan were allegedly in the house, though they spent the night tucked away from the crowd on one of the museum&#8217;s upper floors.</p><p>Alas, the evening wasn&#8217;t quite as wild as you might think. Following a screening of &#8216;s promotional short for the fragrance, Gaga appeared in the life-sized &#8220;Fame&#8221; bottle (&#8220;the world&#8217;s first black eau de parfum&#8220;) and remained there, ostensibly sleeping, for an hour as people were invited to come up and grab her hand to shake her awake. When she finally did rouse herself, it was for precisely 15 minutes of David Bowie&#8216;s &#8220;Fame,&#8221; after which she re-entered the egg with a team of hair and makeup artists to touch up that head of hers. Once that was done, Gaga called in a tattoo artist and got a cherub inked on the back of her head. Oh, and did we mention all of this was being live-streamed on a giant screen for all to see?</p><p>The response was mixed. Many onlookers bandied about Marina Abramovic comparisons, however, while some gave the performance rave reviews, others felt mostly bewildered. Although, to be fair, bewilderment is pretty much a common thread through all performance art pieces we&#8217;ve ever witnessed. In any case, the subdued scene did give us the chance to mingle with some of the fashion folk in attendance, including the very handsome and a fresh-off-the-runway Jessica Stam. At first we thought Theyskens might have just exhausted his creative energy working on his latest Theory collection, since his mask was basically just the invitation with holes cut for his eyes and nose, but it turns out he had a slightly more legitimate excuse: &#8220;I did not know that, in English, ‘masquerade’ means a party wearing masks,&#8221; the designer explained. &#8220;In French it means something else, like to make a big, theatric performance. It’s very different.&#8221; But, being a resourceful kind of guy, he made do with what was on hand. &#8220;I saw at the entrance a lot of people with masks and I felt too much out of the club so I quickly made this.&#8221; It was pretty cute, actually. Definitely cuter than &#8216;s executioner mask at least (which he swapped for one of the surgical variety inside the party).</p><p>Stam, on the other hand, was one of the party&#8217;s most elegant attendees, in the the wispy Marchesa gown she wore on the runway earlier that day, paired with Lorraine Schwartz jewels and an intricate headpiece, all of which she said took &#8220;pretty much all day.&#8221; And though she admitted to being somewhat underwhelmed at first, the model came around to the unusual entertainment. “You walk in and you’re like, ‘This is what I cam all the way up to 88th street for? And got all dressed up?&#8217; But then the performance starts and the music kicks in and it’s great.”</p> <p> </p>Lady Gaga Slams Cathy Horyn In New V Magazine Column <p>by 1:49 pm, September 1st, 2011</p> <p>We understand that is obsessed with fashion, but her for V Magazine, in which she basically tries to get back at New York Times fashion critic for , largely misses the point of fashion criticism is all about.</p><p>The Mother Monster sets out on a misguided and vague attempt to suggest that when critics, who aren&#8217;t necessarily even experts in what they&#8217;re criticizing, become predictable, their criticism isn&#8217;t useful anymore. And then she posits that Horyn&#8217;s criticism, which has been filling newspapers, magazines and websites across the country and the world for literally longer than Gaga has been alive, is predictably negative &#8212; always negative, in fact. And how much good can someone snarkily making fun of all the clothes ever produced ever be good for the industry?</p><p>Gaga asks a lot of questions, chief among them, &#8220;When does the critique or review become insult and not insight?&#8221; She hails the writing of , the 15-year-old blogger who is launching her own magazine soon, as &#8220;the future of journalism.&#8221; Hory, however, is too frequently dismissive to actually do the job. &#8220;It’s much more challenging to reckon with and analyze a work,&#8221; Gaga says. &#8220;It requires research, but maybe no one does their research anymore.&#8221; And then, Gaga asks what Horyn can do to separate herself from the online pack of people who post comments about fashion on Facebook and Twitter.</p><p>And that&#8217;s the thing. Cathy Horyn is already separate from the pack. She&#8217;s the reason the pack exists &#8212; people who don&#8217;t know the first thing about fashion want to be just like her. And while Horyn&#8217;s reviews have their , they&#8217;re written from a a critical perspective that no other working journalist has today. The hard line she draws between good fashion and bad is the reason she&#8217;s so admired &#8212; and so vilified. Every season, Cathy Horyn scares the pants off designers and forces them to do work. And it doesn&#8217;t take a fashion genius to figure that out.</p><p>So what is Gaga after, exactly?</p><p>Where my argument leads is to the perspective space of art, which is subjective and not ultimately rooted in mathematics or physics. Is it not even more critical for fashion and art critics to be profusely informed not only in art history but in the subliminal? The public operates with the assumption that critics are experts in their respective fields. But are they? Does every critic have the soul to really receive a work in the transcendental sense? The out-of-body experience of art?</p><p>Oh, OK. We get it. Gaga is just sensitive because she&#8217;s caught up in the idea that everything she puts on her back is art. Well, let us just say this: Cathy Horyn is a critic of fashion, and does a bang up job of it. And while extends to the artistry that goes into producing clothing, it is not overly concerned with other people&#8217;s definitions of the space fashion falls into. That is to say, just because you think Giorgio Armani&#8217;s couture collection is worthy of being displayed in the Uffizi Gallery, doesn&#8217;t mean she does. And we don&#8217;t expect her to apologize for that. </p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>WATCH: Lady Gaga Will Open The VMAs In Black And White <p>by 10:33 am, August 19th, 2011</p> <p><br>Back in 2009, made her inaugural appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards, where she arrived with Kermit the Frog as her date and closed the show in a red lace ensemble and bleeding from one eyeball. This year, the mother monster is scheduled to open the August 28th awards, which means undoubtedly that we are in for a strange, sartorially inspired treat. Behold: the promo.</p><p>WATCH: </p><p>Gaga is nominated for four VMAs, including Best Female Video and Best Video With a Message for &#8220;Born This Way,&#8221; as well as Best Art Direction and Best Choreography for &#8220;Judas,&#8221; which makes us think her opening set may be more of a medley than a single performance. Earlier this week, MTV released some slightly jazzier (and shorter) promos for fashion&#8217;s favorite popstar.</p><p></p><p></p><p>And if you, like us, still harbor the totally irrational hope that fellow performer Britney Spears will one day return to her pre breakdown glory, you can watch her promo below in which the VMA veteran wears a pair of black leather spats:</p><p></p> <p> </p>THE GOODS: Leslie Fremar For Fruit Of The Loom Is Soft &#038; Stylish <p>by 11:02 am, July 1st, 2011</p> <p></p><p></p><p>We see a lot of cool product in the course of doing our job (which, we’ve said before, involves a lot of shopping). So it only made sense to us that we should share it with our readers. Welcome to , a section where we share the best of what we’ve seen, so you can know what to look for when you head out to shop.</p><p>There are few things better than a really good t-shirt. Our tee preferences span the high (Alexander Wang, $76) and low (Hanes, $2.50), but we&#8217;re always in search of that elusive combination of style and value — and it doesn&#8217;t hurt if the tee is deliciously soft. Well, our search may be over. Leslie Fremar&#8216;s Fruit of the Loom collection is all that and more.</p><p>Fremar is a stylist by trade (and her clients include red carpet heavyweights Reese Witherspoon and Charlize Theron), so she knows a thing or two about what looks good. Her three-piece capsule collection is something to behold, full of super soft, slightly sheer, and extra long cotton must-haves. The silhouettes include a tee, a tank, and a racerback tank; they come in black, white, and gray. Our favorite design feature? The chic seam down the back. And they&#8217;re affordable! Each piece costs $18, but $40 will snag you three (!).</p><p>We were able to chat with Leslie about her collection:</p><p>How did your collaboration with Fruit of the Loom come about?<br> I approached Fruit of the Loom with an idea to make affordable t-shirts, and I didn&#8217;t want them to feel commercial. I have spent a lot of money on t-shirt in the past, and they are very hard to take care of. I want a low maintenance t-shirt that still looks great.</p><p>Did you see there was something missing in the market?<br> I know the market is saturated with t-shirts, but I had a very hard time finding something really affordable. I love basics — I wear them every day — so the t-shirt and tank idea made sense with my personal aesthetic.</p><p>Do you have any style tips for how to beat the heat this summer?<br> I feel bad for the boys in this weather! A girl can throw on a thin cotton dress layered with a tank top and a cute pair of sandals, and look chic and pulled together.</p><p>Leslie Fremar for Fruit of the Loom is sold exclusively at .</p><p>And just for kicks, here&#8217;s Reese in one of Leslie&#8217;s tanks:</p><p></p> <p> </p>Liberty Ross Makes First Runway Appearance Since Husband&#8217;s Affair <p>by 10:56 am, September 9th, 2012</p> <p>Runway model Liberty Ross caused quite a stir when she was spotted walking in Alexander Wang&#8216;s show last night, and not just because she looked out-of-this-world. The 33-year-old Brit is married to director Rupert Sanders, who  with Kristen Stewart back in July, and this was her first runway gig since the scandal.</p><p>Ross walked down the runway in an all white hoodie and dress combo. She was also seen at the Lawless premiere in Hollywood a few weeks ago wearing Balmain. (KStew made her first official red carpet appearance just a few days ago, and we have to admit, she in Zuhair Murad couture.) While a spouse&#8217;s infidelity is a huge emotional blow, we&#8217;re glad to see Ross out and about and working, and we hope she isn&#8217;t feeling. Good for her for jumping back in the game!</p><p>******</p><p></p> <p> </p>Black, White, And Bloody: Last Night&#8217;s V Magazine Ball <p>by 4:07 pm, September 15th, 2011</p> <p>Walking into the Boom Boom Room last night at New York City&#8217;s Standard Hotel to celebrate V magazine&#8217;s , we didn&#8217;t know a soul. And so we grabbed a glass of Veuve Cliquot, found a small space against a wall to hover, and started people watching. Little did we know that by the end of the night, someone would be bleeding, Lindsay Lohan would be fighting with photographers, and Courtney Love would be staring us straight in the face, open-mouthed and hanging on to our every word. </p><p>But at the start of the night, the vibe was celebratory, with Magnum ice cream bars being handed out on silver trays and congratulating on his on his (our words, not hers) collection, declaring, &#8220;You&#8217;re, like, not an up and coming designer anymore. You&#8217;re the real deal.&#8221; Prabal, for his part, looked like nothing so much as a dashing &#8217;50s inspired greaser in black shorts, a white tee (with sleeves rolled up), and perfectly coiffed hair. All he was missing was a box of cigarettes.</p><p>Later, we passed and a tipsy-ish coming down the stairs from the roof. &#8220;Tie your shoelace,&#8221; someone called out to him. &#8220;You&#8217;re going to fall!&#8221; Blasberg, to his credit, continued bravely on. Someone else complimented Kloss on her million-dollar walk and she responded over her shoulder, &#8220;You&#8217;ll see it at Ralph tomorrow!&#8221; </p><p>Another glass of champagne later and we&#8217;d worked up the nerve to confess our love to. &#8220;We own one of those cashmere instarsia knits you designed as your first collection. We&#8217;ve worn it so much we&#8217;ve had it patched twice,&#8221; we gushed and smiled somewhat expectantly. Wang bobbed his head along to the music. &#8220;That&#8217;s great! Thank you!&#8221; And then danced off. Everyone, it would appear, was drunker than us.</p><p>We paused for a Twitter check, only to discover Lohan had apparently just a full drink at a who &#8220;dared to snap her pic.&#8221; A few minutes later, we&#8217;d enjoy a moment of eerie intuitiveness with Brad Goreski who, after telling us that the roof deck of the club had gone from an area of calm respite to high energy dance party, proclaimed, &#8220;This party can turn on a dime.&#8221; And then a man ran through the crowd with blood dripping from hands. </p><p>&#8220;She&#8217;s bleeding!&#8221; someone cried, as the first man grabbed cloth napkins from the bar. Amidst the chaos, we watched Lohan (with her mother Dina) immediately move her group to another part of the bar while staff tended to the blood-covered shoulder of a curly-haired brunette sitting next to their now abandoned table.</p><p>&#8220;What&#8217;s going on?&#8221; Courtney Love asked us. And as we told her, her eyes got progressively larger and her jaw dropped progressively lower. &#8220;We gotta go,&#8221; she announced, grabbing her friend by the arm. &#8220;I&#8217;m outskies!&#8221; she called over her shoulder as she skedaddled to the exit. </p><p>And then the lights came on, the music stopped, and we all followed suit.</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>Photos courtesy of Billy Farrell Agency.</p> <p> </p>Vogue Italia Editor Franca Sozzani Reveals Plans For Africa Issue This Summer <p>by 9:13 am, February 13th, 2012</p> <p>You&#8217;d better plan on having your controversy pants pulled out of storage and dry cleaned before spring gets here. told us Sunday afternoon at &#8216;s fall runway presentation that she&#8217;s currently working on another Africa-themed issue for L&#8217;Uomo Vogue that will be on newsstands in May or June. </p><p></p><p>Sozzani (who had been chatting with Bravo head honcho Andy Cohen in the front row before we got to her) told us that more than simply being about Black people, this issue &#8220;about Africa, but about people who are from Africa. In a positive way. In a very positive way.&#8221; </p><p>The magazine has dedicated an entire issue to the people of Africa before &#8212; back in November 2008, she followed her controversy-making Black issue of Vogue Italia with the first African-themed L&#8217;Uomo Vogue. We are, of course, excited to see how this issue will be different from the last one, which, as , featured everyone from Matt Damon to Michelle Obama &#8220;all expressing their affection for and their personal connection to Africa.&#8221;</p><p>While she declined to give us specifics about the issue (which, fair, since it&#8217;s months away from being done), Sozzani did say that it will go beyond designers and models who were born or have roots in Africa.</p><p>&#8220;It will be about the presidents, it will be about the people. But in a very positive way,&#8221; Sozzani reiterated. &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to say in a glamourous way, but I wanted to show the best side, but only the good side. There are a lot of talents, a lot of talented people in art, in music, in cinema and everywhere. So I really wanted to push that side.&#8221;</p><p>Whether she&#8217;ll get any push back for focusing on the lighter, friendlier side of Africa at a time when parts of the continent are still reeling from and remains to be seen.</p> <p> </p>Leandra Medine Owns A $3,000 Pair Of Christian Louboutins <p>by 3:16 pm, August 13th, 2012</p> <p>Leandra Medine has , and an even more lust-worthy shoe collection. In an interview with Footwear News, the Man Repeller opens her shoe closet to the world.</p><p>Medine has over 100 pairs of fancy footwear from the likes of , Proenza Schouler, , Charlotte Olympia, and . And while her tastes typically run the more expensive gamut (see aforementioned brands), Supergas (which cost around $50 a pair). </p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a weird relationship. Ultimately, shoes are just a really fun mode of escapism for a woman. The higher the heel, the more fantasy is put into the shoe. The thing that is great about shoes is that you don&#8217;t have to be a certain size for them to look good. They always fit you. There&#8217;s something about expensive footwear that makes a woman feel so special in a way that an expensive dress just doesn&#8217;t. My mom always said,&#8217;Invest your money in shoes and handbags, and you can improvise the rest with meager means.&#8217;&#8221;</p><p>The blogger also hates leopard print shoes, and admires Alexa Chung&#8216;s &#8220;toddler dressing&#8221; style.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Marc Jacobs Might Not Be Taking Over At Dior After All <p>by 10:15 am, November 11th, 2011</p> <p>After months of speculating and hinting heavily that designer would be taking the helm at Dior, the rumor mill says his previously inevitable appointment to the head of the French fashion house is looking a lot less likely.</p><p></p><p>Women&#8217;s Wear Daily that talks between Jacobs and , who owns both Dior and luxury conglomerate LVMH, where Jacobs currently has an eponymous label and designs for Louis Vuitton, have gone cold &#8212; interesting when you consider that just three weeks ago, sources said talks to install Jacobs at Dior were </p><p>Now, sources say Jacobs&#8217; demands and other complications caused the negotiations to go south. For example, one of Jacobs&#8217; requests was that his design team at Louis Vuitton come with him to Dior, a move that would make countless people&#8217;s jobs redundant. It would also leave Vuitton, which is LVMH&#8217;s biggest moneymaker, without a single creative employee. (And we&#8217;re sure Jacobs&#8217; didn&#8217;t help matters, either.)</p><p></p><p>To make things worse, it&#8217;s also thought that Celine designer , who was the frontrunner to replace Jacobs at Vuitton when he made the move to Dior, doesn&#8217;t want his job. She&#8217;s only been at the helm of Celine since 2008, and she is said to want to continue to build on the success she&#8217;s had there so far.</p><p>So who else is being considered for the job? The same names that have been mentioned before: , and have been approached, and so has &#8212; but Tisci is apparently more interested in staying at Givenchy than he is in moving to another house.</p><p></p><p>Big-name designers like , , Lanvin&#8216;s , Alexander McQueen&#8216;s and Balenciaga&#8216;s were asked about the job shortly after was fired for making anti-Semitic remarks, but all of them turned the job down. </p><p>Now the search is focused on any designer, young or old, &#8220;with a strong affinity and respect for the brand’s glamorous DNA, and a vision for taking it forward in the post-Galliano era,&#8221; WWD reports.</p><p></p><p>But fret not, Jacobs fans. It&#8217;s not impossible that Arnault and Dior will circle back to a future with Jacobs. As we&#8217;ve asked before, what other available designer working today has what it takes to run that place? Jacobs is the total package, and even if Dior is still one of the most profitable luxury houses in the world, it can&#8217;t afford to have a second-stringer running the show.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Marc Jacobs Doesn&#8217;t Care That Justin Bieber&#8217;s Perfume Looks Like His <p>by 11:47 am, June 1st, 2011</p> <p>At next week&#8217;s CFDA Awards, will take the podium to receive the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award. (And, yes, he&#8217;s only 48. A deserving 48, but 48 nonetheless.) Women&#8217;s Wear Daily&#8216;s Bridget Foley sat down with the prolific designer for a , and while you really should read the whole thing, we&#8217;ve parsed our favorite parts just for you.</p><p>On the new class of fashion designers:</p><p>B.F.: The younger designers —whom do you think is good?<br>M.J.: I think Alexander Wang is really good.</p><p>B.F.: What do you like about his work?<br>M.J.: I don’t know it really well but I know people wear it and I hear people talk about it all the time and I’ve seen pictures. It looks well-formed and well-thought-out. And Jack and Lazaro [of Proenza Schouler], I think they’re really mature in what they’re doing. I’m not going into whether I like it personally, that’s not what I’m talking about because we all have different taste. The clothes I like are Prada so that’s that, or Comme. But as young American designers, they seem to be really good. There are probably others that I’m sure are really good but I’m not paying that much attention.</p><p>Prada is his favorite:</p><p>B.F.: Where do you fit in fashion history?<br>M.J.: I don’t know. I guess many years will have to pass and we’ll have to look back and see what the social contribution is….I think the greatest contributors to fashion are women. Chanel, Vionnet. I think Vivienne Westwood; I think Miuccia Prada; Schiaparelli, Rei Kawakubo.</p><p>B.F.: Would you pick one of them out of the group?<br>M.J.: The one that I probably feel the most strongly about is Miuccia, because of the aesthetic and the mood. There’s something so shocking and so tender about it, and it’s also very real. I mean, I’m sitting here in a banana print shirt from Prada [with a Comme des Garçons kilt.] In the way that Ralph Lauren has created a world that’s affluent, I think Miuccia Prada created an aesthetic that, to me, is so rife with references to other great works. And I never think that’s problematic because it’s always filtered through her very specific aesthetic. There’s an eccentricity but there’s also a chic old world sophistication, but it’s so new. It’s young but never vulgar. There’s a sex appeal that’s kind of naïve. It’s all the things I love.</p><p>He doesn&#8217;t really care about that familiar-looking :</p><p>B.F.: About fragrance branding, have you seen the Justin Bieber fragrance bottle?<br>M.J.: Yes.</p><p>B.F.: Does it remind you of anything?<br>M.J.: Yep, yep. We just had a conversation about it. Coty said, “Do we sue them?” and I said, “You know what? Let everyone else say what they want.” I received Google [Alerts] about people saying it was derivative. We’re not going to do anything about it.</p><p>B.F.: That bottle is very similar to your Lola.<br>M.J.: But you know, I look around the room and I look at the work we’ve done and a quote I always bastardize but I really believe in, is something Chanel said: “He who insists on his own creativity has no memory.”</p><p>Jacobs also has thoughts on journalists (&#8220;I think their opinions should be based on history and what they see, not what they feel, how long they’ve been waiting or whether it’s raining or it’s snowing or whatever.&#8221;), social media (&#8220;I don’t need to talk to like schoolteachers from New Jersey about what was valid and what was invalid and what was derivative and what was referencing.&#8221;), and growing up (&#8220;We’re all in this because we love fashion and part of that love for fashion is being unapologetic.&#8221;). So many thoughts!</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Margaret Thatcher Gets A Spread In Harper&#8217;s Bazaar <p>by 4:38 pm, August 9th, 2011</p> <p>Margaret Thatcher has made a comeback in pop culture in a big way as of late, first with her biopic, The Iron Lady, starring Academy-Award winner, Meryl Streep, and then with her iconic, black Asprey handbag, which recently at a Christie&#8217;s auction for about $40,000.</p><p>Now, Harper&#8217;s Bazaar is cashing in on Thatcher-mania with a -shot editorial featuring bombshell Georgia May Jagger. Below are some of Jagger and Richardson&#8217;s takes on Thatcher&#8217;s most legendary moments, and be sure to check out the rest of the shots at .</p><p>P.S. Designer makes a cameo in the spread!</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>[Via ]</p> <p> </p>Michael Jordan Is Engaged To Longtime Model Girlfriend <p>by 11:34 am, December 30th, 2011</p> <p>Congratulations are in order for your favorite 90s basketball player: Over the holidays, Michael Jordan asked his longtime model girlfriend Yvette Prieto to marry him, and she said yes!</p><p>Page Six that like the rest of America&#8217;s recently engaged couples, Jordan and Prieto got engaged on Christmas Day. No word yet on when the two plan to actually tie the knot &#8212; or what the engagement ring looks like &#8212; but they&#8217;ve been dating for years now, so we&#8217;re sure whenever it happens it&#8217;ll be a lovely event.</p><p>Jordan, of course, is known for his long stint with the Chicago Bulls and his extensive work with Nike (and that awful half-animated movie with the Looney Tunes), but Prieto is kinda famous in her own right. She&#8217;s apparently modeled for and was seen at the tents in September.</p><p>The 32-year-old model an the 48-year-old sports mogul have been dating since 2008 and living together in Florida since 2009. And we hope their marriage goes better than Jordan&#8217;s marriage to his first wife, Juanita Vanoy. The two divorced in 2006 after having three kids and 17-years together &#8212; and Vanoy got a huge . We hate to squash the romance out of this happy news, but maybe this time Jordan will have his legal team put together a prenup.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Michelle Obama Wears Doodle Print Alexander Wang <p>by 11:22 am, June 29th, 2011</p> <p>In case there was anyone left in the world who might question Michelle Obama&#8217;s fashion cred, the first lady a pair of jeans while in Botswana last week. More importantly, though, these weren&#8217;t just any old A. Wang jeans, these were a pair of from his acclaimed Spring 2011 collection.</p><p>To whit: when working on the collection last year, Wang had his interns sit down around a piece of paper for ten minutes and told them to just doodle — with no specific direction in mind. The result was the print that walked his runway last September &#8212; and then found its way into Michelle Obama&#8217;s closet.</p><p>The Doodle Print Jeans (that&#8217;s really their name) are . And while that&#8217;s a little steep for our tastes, Michelle makes a good point: if you&#8217;re gonna paint a mural in a pair of $334 jeans, then doodle print is the way to go. </p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>[via .]</p> <p> </p>Runway Shopping Site Moda Operandi: The E-Commerce Future? <p>by Christina Ohly Evans 3:00 pm, February 12th, 2011</p> <p>It&#8217;s almost here. The moment you (okay, those of you who got an invite) have all been waiting for. The much-anticipated launch of Moda Operandi, the exclusive from Vogue&#8216;s Lauren Santo Domingo and CEO Aslaug Magnusdottir (former head of merchandising at Gilt Noir), is just around the corner. This luxe shopping site will offer its members the chance to flash-shop the runway shows of such primo designers as Calvin Klein, Proenza Schouler and Derek Lam just 48 hours after their presentations. The fashion-obsessed can then place their orders for any of the pieces in the collection (not just the items that buyers like), pay 50% of the cost up front and — voila! — four months later, the items arrive on their doorsteps. The possibilities for scoring Balenciaga whilst in one&#8217;s bathrobe are endless.</p><p>Moda Operandi will also have a seasoned personal shopper on hand who knows the collections inside and out. You&#8217;ll never be caught without that perfect frock for a house party in Marrakesh ever again! In addition, MO will keep track of the fabulous pieces you&#8217;ve bought in past seasons, so they can be paired with the separates and accessories du jour.</p><p>The jury&#8217;s still out on whether full-on &#8220;pretail&#8221; (as Santo Domingo has termed it) is the next wave in online shopping, but MO will certainly close the gap between the time an item goes from the runway to the closet rack. It will also give designers a clear insight into what&#8217;s hot (and what&#8217;s not) for the coming season.</p><p>Amidst all of the Fashion Week madness, Magnusdottir and Santo Domingo (recently &#8220;the next Mrs. Astor&#8221; by Town &amp; Country) graciously took time to share their thoughts on the site&#8217;s first shows, shoes and the future of online fashion.</p><p>Styleite: How were the first two shows — Alexander Wang and Carolina Herrera — selected?<br> LSD: We chose designers that generate the most excitement during Fashion Week. As you can see, we have a great mix of emerging and established designers out there, but what they all have in common is that they are the best of the best.<br> AM: We are starting with New York-based designers. By starting with Alexander Wang and then featuring Carolina Herrera the next day, we immediately give our members a flavor of the breadth of designers we will be featuring on the site.</p><p>Styleite: Which designer are you most excited about, or which one is most unexpected?<br>LSD: I am excited about all of them. I&#8217;m really excited about our shoe selection&#8230;Giambatista Valli and Narcisco Rodriguez are both launching runway shoe collections. And then there are the new designers like Nicholas Kirkwood and Charlotte Olympia who are the most innovative shoe designers in the world. All the front-row editors are wearing them.<br>AM: The designers have all been hand selected by our team so I am thrilled about each and every one of them. In particular, I am excited to introduce our members to some very talented emerging designers including Prabal Gurung, Thakoon and Waris Ahluwalia of House of Waris.</p><p>Styleite: Which designer do you hope to get on board for the future?<br>LSD: We are constantly adding new designers.<br>AM: There are many wonderful designer brands that we hope to add to MO.</p><p>Styleite: What additional features will Moda Operandi offer in version 2.0?<br>LSD: In addition to our editorial content, we hope to add new, insider videos that we will shoot in the off-season. In addition, we are going to add new tools to organize one&#8217;s wardrobe. Think Cher in the movie Clueless.<br>AM: On our website we plan to offer a virtual closet where members can see all of the items they have ordered on the site. Members can use the virtual closet to organize their wardrobe, and they can even seek the assistance of our personal stylists to help with this. We will also be launching smartphone and tablet apps later this year.</p><p>Styleite: How do accessories, shoes and bags fit in?<br> LSD: They fit perfectly! Who doesn&#8217;t love to order shoes online?<br>AM: In many cases, we will be featuring shoes, bags and accessories as part of the runway looks of the ready-to-wear designers we are working with. Additionally, we are working with a number of designers that specialize in designing shoes and/or accessories. Many of these designers will be featured in between the four main ready-to-wear collections each year so that there is always something new on the site.</p><p>Styleite: Where is online luxury retail headed?<br>LSD: All luxury brands are going to have to embrace the internet. It&#8217;s just a question of how they do it. Moda Operandi is a great place for these venerable brands to go online, interact with an elite customer, but maintain their exclusivity.<br>AM: Online retail is becoming increasingly important to the luxury fashion landscape. As technology improves, the online shopping experience will become even easier and more enjoyable than it is today, giving consumers more options than ever. MO is proud to be part of this luxury retail revolution.</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Models Planking For Dis Magazine <p>by 12:32 pm, August 2nd, 2011</p> <p>Have we talked about planking yet? As our friends at Geekosystem in May, the practice of laying stiff as a board in a random place is totally a trend &#8212; and what group of people knows more about trends than fashion models? Not one. Which is why photographer David Toro of models participating in the worldwide phenomenon that planking has become for Dis Magazine.</p><p>We&#8217;ve included a few of the photos below for your afternoon amusement, in which the models plank wearing Missoni, Marios Schwab and lots of Alexander Wang. While we&#8217;re not so sure we would lay down on the street in front of a motorcycle wearing Yohji Yamamoto, we do love the story, even if it is slightly gimmicky. Take a look and tell us what you think.</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>[ via ]</p> <p> </p>Liveblogging The MTV Music Video Awards Red Carpet! <p>by 1:58 pm, September 12th, 2010</p> <p>As much as we love Fashion Week, it&#8217;s always nice to take a break from an industry that takes itself very seriously, sartorially speaking, to one that, well, doesn&#8217;t. While some people may be out at and celebrating supermodels, we&#8217;ll be at home on our couches watching the MTV Video Music Awards.</p><p>And while we&#8217;re sure the show itself will be chockablock with surprises &#8212; Lindsay Lohan has a and Taylor Swift may or may not be about last year&#8217;s KanyeGate &#8212; the VMA red carpet will always have a special place in our hearts.</p><p>How many times will change? Will Taylor Momsen wear pants? How much mancleavage will Russell Brand have on display? We&#8217;ll have answers to all that, and more! So check back here at 8PM EST. We&#8217;ll be waiting!</p><p></p> <p> </p>Natalie Portman Goes Hiking With The Mulleavy Sisters <p>by 4:05 pm, December 15th, 2010</p> <p>Natalie Portman is Vogue&#8216;s , and in the we learn some things about the Black Swan star. Our favorite quote? This one:</p><p>&#8220;In New York, I have probably 50 people that I’m very close to — so there’s constant interaction, but I don’t really see anyone regularly because it’s 50 people, whereas in Los Angeles I have five friends, and I see them every day. It’s the first time I’ve had really close girlfriends. Kate and Laura Mulleavy have schedules that are similar to mine, so we can go for a hike at noon, or to the museum in the middle of the day.&#8221;</p><p>There are four things this teaches us:</p><p>1. Natalie is way more popular in New York than she is in LA.</p><p>2. She&#8217;s apparently always been a guy&#8217;s girl and not a girl&#8217;s girl.</p><p>3. In keeping with her Harvard pedigree, the brainy actress goes to museums.</p><p>4. SHE HIKES WITH RODARTE.</p><p>It&#8217;s not like we don&#8217;t go spinning with the Proenza Schouler boys or do bikram yoga with . We just had no clue that Natalie had super awesome fashion exercise activity buddies, too. Natalie, welcome to the club! Let&#8217;s all go to Pilates with !</p><p>And as a bonus, here is the video from her Vogue cover shoot:</p><p><p><p><p><p></p> <p> </p>Don&#8217;t Forget About The Parties: NYFW&#8217;s Fiercest Fetes <p>by 9:33 am, February 16th, 2011</p> <p>New York Fashion Week is a bit past the midway point and while some blowouts are still too fresh to be covered &#8212; V Man, Post, BLK DNM, and all hosted dueling bashes last night and we&#8217;re still waking up &#8212; some of the best have come and gone.<br></p><p>&#8216;s celebration at the Mondorian Hotel SoHo&#8217;s Mister H on Saturday was a Belevedere soaked good time. took the night off from J.Crew to get down on the dance floor while Prabal stripped down to a very deep-v neck to air kiss and pose with bff&#8217;s like Barbara Bush and Amanda Hearst.</p><p>A few blocks north and several hundred feet up and held forth over the Purple Magazine dinner and party in honor of Zac&#8217;s Z-Spoke collection. A blanketed Jared Leto roamed the Boom Boom Room while Kanye West sat ensconced in the inky black of Le Bain and Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen booth hopped the perimeter of the party. Guests who arrived late were greeted with insurmountable crowds and made their way to the other event going on: a somehow even more mobbed scene around the corner at The Jane Hotel where Dossier Journal and United Bamboo were throwing a party. Kristen Dunst sailed in, everyone else stood outside in a gridlock. </p><p></p><p> had a slightly more spacious event on Valentine&#8217;s Day with E! Fashion Police Officer Kelly Osborne back in NYC to fete his Theory collection while actress Diane Kruger attended the Gotham Magazine cover party in her honor at the Paramount Hotel. and half sister Annabelle Dexter-Jones threw parties on back to back nights to celebrate their runway show and collaboration with Illesteva respectively. </p><p>Images via and .</p> <p> </p>Don&#8217;t Forget About The Parties: Fashion Week&#8217;s Final Fêtes <p>by 5:44 pm, February 20th, 2011</p> <p>Fashion Week has moved on to London and that&#8217;s probably a good thing considering how exhausting we found the ten day marathon of parties, shows and presentations. The of the week was good but the best after-parties happened as the show schedule was winding down. Kanye came out for V Man, SoHo House hosted a party for an iPad app and a new Guess flagship opened. </p><p></p><p>The V Man release party at the yet-to-be-opened Mondrian SoHo went hard as a&#8230;well, you know. Kanye West was in the building with Keri Hilson and most of the fashionable world. Drag queen Lady Bunny spun while , Julia Restoin Roitfeld, , , Brad Goreski and 300 of their closest friends surved the go-go dancers and grabbed money that rained from the sky at 1am.<br><br></p><p>Before raving downtown, most of the party goers had gone a bit uptown for drinks at the SoHo House to celebrate Alex Dellal (brother of model and boyfriend of Princess Charlotte Casiraghi) and Post, his new iPad app. No royalty was spotted but the crowd of several hundred fashion types didn&#8217;t seem to mind as they drank champagne and compared notes on the front rows, model spills and street style at the tents.</p><p>Images via Billy Farrell Agency and Marisa McGrody</p> <p> </p>Joe Zee Is Just As Obsessed With The Man Repeller As You Are <p>by 12:55 pm, September 11th, 2011</p> <p><br>Personal style bloggers are a dime a dozen these days &#8212; which isn&#8217;t at all a bad thing! &#8212; but sometimes the gets a little, well, old. And that&#8217;s why bloggers like Leandra Medine, aka , are so refreshing. We love her style, but more importantly, we love how effing funny she is! And we&#8217;re not alone. Mid-way through interviewing her front row at yesterday, came bounding up to profess his (and his assistant&#8217;s) love.</p><p>It all went a little something like this:</p><p>We were chatting with Medine about her fave shows (, Thakoon, Rag &amp; Bone, ), her dream shows (, , duh), and whether or not she&#8217;s found herself star struck by any fashion week celebs, when out of nowhere, appeared, beaming, over our shoulder.</p><p>Joe Zee: Are you Leandra?! Ohmygod! Stand up for one second! Hi! My assistant lives for you.<br>Man Repeller: I love your assistant then!<br>JZ: She dresses great. She walks into the office like, &#8220;I&#8217;m very Man Repeller today!&#8221;<br>MR: Maybe she&#8217;s my alter ego!<br>JZ: Maybe! She is obsessed with you! Well, thank you!!!</p><p>At which point he bounded off &#8212; have you ever seen Joe Zee in action? He really does bound. &#8212; and we continued our conversation. It turns out she&#8217;d just sat next to Taylor Tomasi Hill at Doo Ri and was still reeling.</p><p>Um, I cut my hair because of her! I adore her! I saw Kate Lamphear a couple times today, which is always really exciting. I guess it&#8217;s not so much starstruck as it is editor struck. They&#8217;re celebrities in my eyes! Like, Taylor gave me a little smirk, like, &#8216;I got you.&#8217; It was amazing.</p><p>At which point it was only natural to ask if she&#8217;d ever had any outfit regrets.</p><p>Not really anything Man Repeller-related, because it&#8217;s just fashion. You should take risks, because why not! But, like, today I walked out in these wool blend palazzo pants and I&#8217;ve been boiling the entire day. It&#8217;s like, great, it&#8217;s really hot right now. And someone suggested I stick ice packs on my legs. Because the pants are big enough, obviously.</p><p>Considering how it&#8217;s been inside the tents, she might be on to something. We knew palazzo pants had to be good for something.</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Whitney, Selita &#038; Emmy Turn It Out For New Year&#8217;s <p>by 1:25 pm, January 2nd, 2011</p> <p>Whatever you did for New Year&#8217;s Eve, it probably wasn&#8217;t as star-studded or super swanky as the Marquee bash at The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas. The guest list included Blake Lively, Alexander Wang and Beyoncé. Jay-Z and Kanye performed. Rihanna was there. We, sadly, were not.</p><p>Let&#8217;s take a peak at some of the best looks from the night — who do you think looked best?<br></p><p><br><br><br><br></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: What Beyoncé, Marc Jacobs, And DVF Designed For Obama <p>by 12:24 pm, January 13th, 2012</p> <p>Just this week we learned that Vogue editor in chief had convinced a total of 22 designers to create custom clothing for President Barack Obama&#8217;s fundraising efforts. The items were quietly posted on the site yesterday and are now available for pre-order. Some of them are cooler than others (and some are distinctly not cool), but at least one of them was designed by new mom Beyoncé!</p><p>Check out our favorites below and then see the rest . And keep in mind, there are about 10 designers (including ) whose pieces haven&#8217;t been posted yet. We&#8217;ll let you know as soon as they are.</p><p>Now here&#8217;s hoping we get to see Michelle Obama wearing &#8216;s sleeveless tee paired with Thakoon&#8216;s scarf and &#8216;s bag. It&#8217;s a photo-op just begging to happen.</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>[]</p> <p> </p>On Being Small: An Essay Of Petite Proportions <p>by 2:00 pm, October 8th, 2010</p> <p>People come in all shapes and sizes. I am a little person. Not like a kind of little person, but a little person nonetheless. As a fully grown adult, I just meet the 5-foot mark, and my feet are a measly size 5. And this makes indulging my inner fashionista really, really difficult. So excuse me while I rant.</p><p>First, full disclosure: I like being little. I can maneuver well in crowds, people let me stand in front of them at concerts and I&#8217;m never taller than my date. But when it comes to finding things that fit me, I find my options to be annoyingly limited. Why? Because high-end designers and mass retailers alike simply don&#8217;t design with petite women in mind. Well, they don&#8217;t ever really design with people who aren&#8217;t fairly tall (or fairly thin, for that matter) in mind. This is a problem.</p><p>Dresses that are supposed to hit mid-thigh can fall below my knees, and jeans are at least three inches too long (I just need my 28-inch inseam, people!). As such, I have spent a fair amount of time and money getting my clothes altered. Hems are taken up, pants are shortened, strap lengths are adjusted. But a lot of the time this really messes with a piece&#8217;s proportions.</p><p>But what about petite lines, you ask? Or even kids&#8217; clothes? Surely those must be good alternatives! To which I say: again, it&#8217;s a problem of proportion. Petite lines are few and far between, and some of the best ones (like J. Crew&#8216;s) can only be bought online. Tops in petite sizes are often (ironically) cut too short, though they fit well around. And kids&#8217; sizes? The worst. Women (even really small women) have curves. 8-year-olds do not. Occasionally I&#8217;ll find a great piece (like the Stella McCartney for GapKids), but mostly the clothes just look awkward and ill-fitting.</p><p>An anecdote: last summer I went to the Alexander Wang sample sale. I hate sample sales. The venues lack air conditioning, the people lack dignity and the racks lack extra smalls. I ended up finding a dress that I loved that cost a couple hundred dollars less than it should have, and despite its less-than-perfect fit, I snatched it up. After I got home I realized that the alterations would be harder than I anticipated due to the construction of the dress. Should I get the straps shortened and lose the low neckline that actually laid well? Or should I take up the hem, thus screwing with the length of the bottom printed fabric panel that makes the dress so special? Sigh.</p><p>Kids&#8217; sneakers, however, are awesome. Not only are they cheaper than real people sneakers, they come in . But sometimes you need to wear shoes that don&#8217;t look like they belong on a (really badass) playground. Well, that&#8217;s a different story. Some brands don&#8217;t even make size 5! (F-Troupe, I&#8217;m looking at you!) And if they do, chances are stores stock very few small pairs. Worse yet, some size 5s run big, rendering their existence totally moot for mini-hoofed chicks.</p><p>So what&#8217;s a girl to do? Well, I&#8217;m still trying to figure that out. Maybe it&#8217;s good that I can&#8217;t fit into every (not so) little thing my heart desires — it certainly lowers my credit card bills and makes justifying those pieces that actually do fit so much easier. But still, would it really be that hard to cater to non-average-sized customers every once in a while?</p> <p> </p>Oscar De La Renta Calls Cathy Horyn A &#8216;Stale 3-Day-Old Hamburger&#8217; <p>by 1:37 pm, September 14th, 2012</p> <p>Just when we thought that was over and behind us, a verbal feud has broken out between designer and New York Times writer . While the most recent development occurred just this morning, it seems like this was a year in the making.</p><p>The bad blood might have started last year when Horyn left the designer off her in New York, while younger brands like and were mentioned. De la Renta then gave Women&#8217;s Wear Daily :</p><p>“It bothers me because I love my industry, and I love fashion. I think fashion is something of beauty and it really makes me mad when someone writes about fashion in a bitter way.”</p><p>Fast forward to this season. De la Renta showed his  earlier this week, and Horyn gave it .</p><p>&#8220;Mr. de la Renta is far more a hot dog than an éminence grise of American fashion. He opened his lively show on Tuesday with a red latex pencil skirt, a sleek ivory wool pantsuit and dairymaid lace. The models’ hair was streaked with war paint, and midway along, after bead-quivering jackets and neon-bright skirts, he sent out white lace with black pencil-like scribbles. It was wonderfully cantankerous, a good bit of window-dressing for the gooey stuff that followed.&#8221;</p><p>This morning, de la Renta fired back with an open letter to the writer in WWD. Here&#8217;s a photo:</p><p></p><p>Hot dog? Old hamburger? Surely these fashion folk are more eloquent than that. It&#8217;s also worth noting that Horyn included , , and in the same write-up, and comparatively, her thoughts on de la Renta were far nicer than those on Kors.</p><p>Back at Lincoln Center, the notes for the Michael Kors show said, “Bold shades of sun, palm and sky.” Make that yellow, green and blue. No amount of spin could improve this flat collection of double-face shifts, preppy stripes and optical checks.</p><p>While we really have no idea what Horyn meant by her comment, Fashionista that she could have been aiming at Nicole Phelps from Style.com. of de la Renta&#8217;s collection (which is also quite mixed), she began with: &#8220;Oscar de la Renta is New York fashion&#8217;s éminence grise.&#8221;</p><p>Now we&#8217;re just waiting on Horyn&#8217;s retort. May we recommend a nice &#8220;undercooked chicken&#8221; reference or a play on &#8220;crème fraîche&#8221;?</p><p>UPDATE: Horyn has responded via email to , explaining that she was employing the term&#8217;s &#8217;50s, surf-culture slang connotation, meaning to surf &#8220;for flash rather than function.&#8221;:</p><p>&#8220;I used the term in a professional context, as someone showing off his tricks, like a surfer. I thought an ad was a little over-the-top.&#8221;</p><p>No kidding. It took us about five minutes to Google that particular meaning, and it&#8217;s a little baffling that someone of de la Renta&#8217;s stature and knowledge of the industry would take Horyn&#8217;s comment as a personal jab.</p> <p> </p>Oscar De La Renta&#8217;s Kids Show Was The Cutest Thing We&#8217;ve Seen All Week <p>by 2:45 pm, September 13th, 2012</p> <p>Ok, that the glow-in-the-dark dresses at were the highlight of our , but &#8216;s first-ever kid&#8217;s show definitely gave those show-stopping specimens a run for their money.</p><p>First off, you have never seen a happier-looking front row. Usually it&#8217;s all sunglasses and studied nonchalance (and sometimes to bolt out afterwards), but not so when there are adorable tots walking down the runway! The stylish, uptown attendees were all smiles as a bevy of kids toddled, walked, and scooted (yes, scooted!) their way across the designer&#8217;s 42nd street showroom. Then there were the clothes: for Oscar ladies-in-training, the designer offered up teensy party frocks bedecked with bows, ikat sundresses, and a tutu or two. For the boys, there were crisp button-up shirts, cuffed shorts, and brightly-colored sweaters draped around the shoulders. The Jitney may be in the off-season now, but these munchkins were all set for a jaunt to the Hamptons.</p><p>Check out the gallery below to see a coterie of kids better dressed than you are:</p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>Our Fashion News Editor Says Goodbye To Styleite <p>by 12:57 pm, March 3rd, 2012</p> <p>When our fearless leader Verena hired me to work at Styleite, she told me she wanted me on the team because I was &#8220;in fashion, but not of fashion.&#8221; Almost two years later, on my final day with the site, I think I finally understand what she meant.</p><p>Styleite&#8217;s has been to do something for everyone &#8212; from those who are obsessed with glossy editorials and women&#8217;s rights to others who think between fighting fashion companies are the most interesting things in the world. That&#8217;s what attracted me to apply to be an intern here, and that&#8217;s why I so readily volunteered for tasks like from &#8216;s house when President Obama went to a fundraising dinner there in 2010, to squishing myself into the photographer&#8217;s pit during last September&#8217;s Diesel Black Gold show after a hurried (and exhilarating) with former French Vogue editrix .</p><p>Those kinds of opportunities are unparalleled &#8212; but so is the freedom this site has given me to say meaningful things about the fashion industry and the world. When other sites started calling &#8216;s $300+ tank tops &#8220;affordable&#8221;, I was given a long leash to . When , I ranted right along with the rest of the Internet until they changed it back. And when Nivea had the audacity to , I got more than a little angry &#8212; and my indignation turned into one of our most liked and commented posts.</p><p>Being in fashion and not of fashion means being able to see past all the pretty fabrics and beautiful people involved in this industry and into the heart of how what they create impacts our world. And while we aren&#8217;t exactly developing an alternative to fossil fuels behind the scenes during Fashion Week, we can create just as much change as politicians and scientists and humanitarians. One need look no further than designer and model &#8216;s efforts to rebuild Haiti, or &#8216;s continuing efforts to empower women with her brand&#8217;s message and expert tailoring, for proof of that. (I like to think that my Black History Month series, which you can read , fits somewhere in the same vein.)</p><p>That&#8217;s the side of fashion that I love, and that&#8217;s what working with Verena and Julia has given me the license to discover. As sad as I am to leave them, I take solace knowing that they&#8217;re going to keep fighting the good fight after I&#8217;m gone. It also helps that I&#8217;m leaving to be an editor at Fashionologie, a site we&#8217;ve always admired for its dedication to the same hard-core fashion enthusiasts who read Styleite, too.</p><p>But no matter where I am, I will always be thankful to this place for fostering my talent, for teaching me how the Internet works and, most importantly, for giving people like me a voice in the fashion world.</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: The Very Best Looks From The Parsons Student Fashion Show <p>by 5:29 pm, May 2nd, 2012</p> <p>&#8220;This isn&#8217;t med school. We&#8217;re not saving lives, but have you ever tried to make the shirt you&#8217;re wearing? It&#8217;s really hard!&#8221; This is what Carly Cushnie told her family when they asked why she worked around the clock during her undergraduate years at Parsons.</p><p>Cushnie relayed this story yesterday, when she and her design partner (and fellow Parsons alum) Michelle Ochs hosted the packed runway show where 39 seniors presented their thesis collections.</p><p>Parsons shows are exciting for many reasons, chief among them the chance that you&#8217;ll see the very first collection from the next Marc Jacobs (Parsons &#8217;84) or Proenza Schouler. (In a bit of fun fashion lore, Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough received special permission from Tim Gunn — who was the head of Parsons&#8217;s fashion department at the time — to do their thesis as a pair in 2002. Julie Gilhart, Barneys&#8216;s then-fashion director, bought the entire collection for the store.)</p><p>Cushnie and Ochs are the latest star pupils to emerge from the school; since graduating in 2007, their label Cushnie et Ochs has made some serious waves in the fashion world. &#8220;This is where our story began,&#8221; Ochs told the crowd. Fitting, as just a few minutes before Parsons fashion dean Simon Collins half-joked: &#8220;You never leave Parsons.&#8221;</p><p>The presentation started at a very prompt 10 minutes past its call time, and was split into two halves. Children&#8217;s clothing was shown alongside women&#8217;s and menswear, and the pint-sized models drew the most applause from the enthusiastic audience. For the finale of the first half, a jubilant remix of Fun.&#8216;s &#8220;We Are Young&#8221; cleverly played while the child models walked hand-in-hand with the (only slightly) older models.</p><p>Each student showed a handful of looks; standouts included Giuliana Raggiani&#8216;s colorful children&#8217;s knits, Christy Jeehyun Lee&#8216;s print-heavy menswear, and Jin Kay&#8216;s all-black women&#8217;s collection. These three took home Designer of the Year awards in their respective categories. Reed Krakoff, Mickey Boardman, Steven Kolb, and Vivienne Tam were among the industry professionals who evaluated the students&#8217; work.</p><p>Other highlights were Logan Samuelson&#8216;s sleek and simple pieces that recalled those of Alexander Wang (a Parsons dropout), Tanni Xu&#8216;s eccentric and mismatched patterns, and Bach Mai&#8216;s voluminous pieces paired with dramatic thigh-high gladiator heels.</p><p>Was there a Marc among them? Our guess is this isn&#8217;t the last we&#8217;ll be hearing from these almost-graduates.</p><p>Check out 10 of our favorite looks below:</p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>Did Rachel Zoe Copy One Of Her Designs? <p>by 5:55 pm, January 11th, 2011</p> <p></p><p>We know, we know: this is our third -focused story of the day. This morning, the star stylist-cum-designer debuted her new contemporary line with an exclusive article in WWD, followed by a at a Manhattan loft. While the early buzz on the line was generally positive, a from Jane Keltner DeValle &#8211; Teen Vogue&#8217;s Fashion News Director &#8212; reveals that Zoe appears to have taken some very literal inspiration from a shoot she styled for the mag in 2007.</p><p>The image (above) features a white and black sequined dress from Zoe&#8217;s collection next to a page from the October 2007 issue of Teen Vogue in which Zoe styled then-intern Elena Fishman as a “paparazzi darling.” , the fashion credit for the shoot cites vintage store What Goes Around Comes Around as the source of the dress. Refinery29 spoke to Fishman who the dress is vintage and one that Zoe bought herself and even wore after the shoot. &#8220;It was a vintage piece that Rachel bought,&#8221; Fishman explained. &#8220;She originally got it at What Comes Around Goes Around and wore it to the Marc Jacob&#8217;s after-party that Fashion Week.&#8221; </p><p>Many designers draw on vintage clothing for inspiration (see , &#8216;s prints), and &#8216; collections for TopShop were designed based almost entirely on her closet. Zoe told WWD that she envisioned her new line hanging next to the likes of , which suggests she&#8217;d like to be taken seriously as a designer. How does this news affect your impression of Zoe and her collection?</p><p>We reached out to Zoe&#8217;s camp for comment earlier today, but have yet to hear back. We&#8217;ll keep you posted!</p><p>Related:</p><p> [Fashionista]<br> [Twitter]<br> [Fashionologie]<br> [R29]</p><p>Earlier:</p><p> [Styleite]</p> <p> </p>Rachel Zoe Debuts New Line, Reveals Baby&#8217;s Gender! <p>by 10:24 am, January 11th, 2011</p> <p><br>WWD with Zoe in the midst of filming the fourth season of her hit Bravo show &#8220;The Rachel Zoe Project,&#8221; while the stylist-turned-star-turned-designer was putting the finishing touches on her new contemporary collection. Not to be confused with her insanely successful and , Zoe&#8217;s new line considers and the competition, and will be priced at $250 for a day dress to $700 for a full tuxedo.</p><p>The collection, on which she partnered with Fung &#038; Li, is purposeful departure from her QVC collection and what most would consider her signature style. Zoe told WWD, “I’d imagine everybody is expecting something from me that’s kind of a Seventies, uberboho-glam kind of thing, and, you know, very accessorized. And it’s not.” </p><p>Though the publication described her belly as something that &#8220;could pass for a big lunch,&#8221; is seven months pregnant with what is now officially a baby boy.</p><p>[Zoe] initiates the [pregnancy] conversation during a phone interview last week, though she stops short of divulging if it’s a boy or a girl. Either something changed over the weekend or she is terrible at keeping secrets, because the pronouns fly on Monday. “It all depends on his arrival,” she says patting her stomach. Not five minutes later Berman swoops down, kisses her belly and declares, “It’s a little boy.” A boy! Who will she dress up in her archive of vintage Lanvin? </p><p>Good question! We suspect we can find some takers. </p><p>Anyway! More important than the collection and her big baby reveal was the debut of beloved new replacement. According to WWD, the new Brad comes in the form of a &#8220;leggy brunette&#8221; named Mandana. Sounds like a perfect fit.</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> [WWD]</p> <p> </p>Richard Chai Saw Me In My Underwear, And Other Shopping Tales <p>by 4:04 pm, March 29th, 2011</p> <p>Have you ever shopped at a store when the designer&#8217;s there? Because this is a thing I have done! A few times! And while it&#8217;s kind of cool, it&#8217;s also so awkward.</p><p>The first time it happened to me, I was caught totally off-guard. I had popped into the Crangi Family Project on a lazy afternoon in hopes of securing myself a . I asked the sales associate if there were any smalls in stock, and she said they didn&#8217;t exist. I told her that I had seen both small and large options on their website. She finally found me the small cuff, but even that was too big (I have wrists).</p><p>At this point, a dude who I at first pegged as part of the visual team (having interned in a visual merchandising department for two summers, I was familiar with the cuffed jeans/cool boots/eccentric facial hair/smattering of tats look) came out from behind a curtain carrying a ladder. Ignoring this, the saleslady asked me if I was into any of the other pieces, and we chatted a bit about the collection. Have I mentioned the store is the size of a closet? Because it is. Anyway, the bearded guy offered to squeeze the bracelet smaller, so I handed it to him. And it hit me — this is Philip Crangi. Shit. The bracelet still didn&#8217;t fit even after Philip&#8217;s impressive squeezing job, and I left empty handed and slightly embarrassed.</p><p>A few months later I attended a preview of &#8216;s sample sale at the Soho Grand because my job is awesome like that. I assumed I would check out the offerings, tweet details to Styleite&#8217;s followers, and do a little shopping of my own. Of course, the first person I saw when I arrived was Richard himself. The preview was intimate, which meant Richard was hanging out with some of his impossibly cool-looking friends while a few other lucky guests (myself included) perused the racks. I should have interviewed him right then and there, but I was so flustered and he was hanging out with his pals, so I decided to check out the clothes first.</p><p>I&#8217;m a fairly discreet shopper, but I was paranoid Richard would be ultra-perceptive, knowing if I was dismissing a design or scoffing at a price in my head. Crazy, I know, whatever. It was oddly stressful. After finding a few great pieces, I asked a girl who was working the sale where the dressing rooms were. In true sample sale form, there were none. I found a secluded corner of the room and scurried behind a rack to try on a few dresses, a couple tops and a skirt. But then a group of people crowded near the rack! Richard was one of them. So, yes, I&#8217;m pretty sure Richard Chai saw me in my underwear. My face remained flushed for the remainder of the evening.</p><p>Last week, this whole &#8220;shopping with the designer there&#8221; thing happened yet again. This time I was prepared. But it wasn&#8217;t because this had now happened to me twice before, it was because I was covering a shopping event at &#8216;s store with . The details were explicit: come shop with Alex at his boutique. Important note: I love his stuff. A lot. His balloon shorts are a staple of my wardrobe, my favorite t-shirt bears his tag, and I bring my Millie satchel everywhere.</p><p>But I just couldn&#8217;t get myself to shop at the event. This is partly because most of my best A-Wang finds came to me via sample sales and The Outnet. This is partly because I felt so weird knowing he could be watching my every move! Of course, he wouldn&#8217;t have batted a lash. He was too busy chatting with model types, taking interviews, and playing with his . But still! I felt awkward just thinking about it! Instead, I admired all of the pretty things and sipped champagne. No purchases for me.</p><p>So, yes, this is a thing I&#8217;ve thought about a lot recently. Is this type of situation as awkward for designers as it is for customers? I tried to put myself in their shoes. The closest equivalent I can think of is someone reading something I wrote right in front of me. This has happened to me before! And it&#8217;s so awkward! But it&#8217;s also kind of cool. Actually, it&#8217;s really cool. But that doesn&#8217;t mean I want Richard Chai to see me in my underwear ever again.</p> <p> </p>Another Reason To Love Robyn? She&#8217;s Addicted To Alexander Wang <p>by 4:06 pm, December 12th, 2011</p> <p>We love Robyn. We love Alexander Wang. Robyn loves Alexander Wang. Does this mean she&#8217;d love us?</p><p>The pop diva performed on Saturday Night Live, showing off her pipes and her sick moves. She also wore . First of all, she wore an amazing Alexander Wang sweater in the promos. We must . It&#8217;s the greatest:</p><p><p><p></p><p>And then on the actual show she sang &#8220;Call Your Girlfriend&#8221; in a shiny maroon Alexander Wang jacket, a Calvin Klein corset, and Black Milk stained glass leggings. Also, the girl has custom platform Timberland boots:</p><p><p><p></p><p>In a variation on a theme, she wore a crazy A-Wang belt vest (?!), Black Milk map leggings, and those same insane shoes for &#8220;Dancing On My Own&#8221;:</p><p><p><p></p><p>Cool duds or coolest duds? Check out all the looks in the slideshow below:</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>[via ]</p> <p> </p>Alexander Wang&#8217;s New President Means Business <p>by 2:08 pm, November 30th, 2010</p> <p>It&#8217;s not like we needed any proof that was going to be a fashion titan one day, but that&#8217;s exactly what we got this morning when we heard that the designer just hired a new president.</p><p>Rodrigo Bazan, the new guy at Alexander Wang, used to be the vice president and general manager of Europe, the Middle East and India for International. That a guy with such heavy responsibilities at such a gigantic global company is packing up all his stuff to move across the Atlantic for a new job is telling of the promise that new job holds. Which is exactly what Wang told WWD.</p><p>“At this point, we have reached a level of growth that now requires a certain leadership to guide us through this next phase,” said Wang. “Rodrigo brings a new perspective in the market with his strong business and finance background coupled with a cunning creative side.</p><p>If the &#8220;next phase&#8221; is anything like what industry minders have projected for Wang the wunderkind, Bazan could be expected to help the company blow up into a global presence. Its corporate structure has never even had a president before, and mostly relied on the talents of Dennis and Aimie Wang, Alexander&#8217;s brother and sister-in-law, to run the financials. (They get to keep their jobs, by the way.)</p><p>Bazan will start his new job on Dec. 5. Alexander Wang&#8217;s World Domination Tour will be underway by the 6th.</p><p>[WWD (Subscription Required)]</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Saint Laurent&#8217;s Show Draws France&#8217;s First Lady, Cathy Horyn&#8217;s Wrath <p>by 12:56 pm, October 2nd, 2012</p> <p>He the name of the house, the atelier to Los Angeles, the branding, and yesterday showed his first collection for Saint Laurent (hold the Yves, please). </p><p>As you might expect, it was one of the hottest tickets of Paris Fashion Week (along with Dior , natch), and the front row was populated not only with the usual industry heavyweights, but also with France&#8217;s First Lady Valerie Trierweiler, who took her seat next to Anna Wintour. Plenty of big name designers were also in the house: , , , Peter Dundas, , , and were joined by musicians Jamie Hince (with wife by his side) and Daft Punk, and, from Slimane&#8217;s other chosen field, photographers , , and . Rounding out the pack were newly-minted Jessica Chastain, and Yves&#8217; longtime consorts Pierre Berge and Betty Catroux.</p><p>The show, which Slimane dedicated to Bergé, harkened back to the 1966, when Saint Laurent Rive Gauche boutique opened on Paris&#8217; left bank, marking the first time a French couturier put their skills towards a complete ready-to-wear line. The influence of the period is clear from the first look, with its floppy, wide-brimmed hat shading a skinny tuxedo suit, a signature of both Yves and Dior Homme-era Hedi. And, even 50 years later, Catroux could not have missed the suede lace-up, safari-style pieces that mimicked the she wore to the Rive Gauche opening. The house has also been known for its celebration of bohemia, a theme that snaked through the Spring 2013 collection in sheer, trailing hems, voluminous sleeves, and fringed capes that swung as the models sashayed down the runway. </p><p>But while most critics lauded the invocation of the past, the New York Times&#8216; Slimane&#8217;s &#8220;frozen vision of a bohemian chick at the Chateau Marmont,&#8221; asserting that it &#8220;lacked a new fashion spirit&#8221; and likening it to the vintage-chic look put forward by various designers and stylists in the past few years (*cough* Rachel Zoe *cough*). While unabashed fans of this look ourselves, we do see Horyn&#8217;s point &#8212; even more so when it comes to the lack of professionalism exhibited by Slimane by denying her an invite to the show in the first place. As she explains:</p><p>I was not invited. Despite positive reviews of his early YSL and Dior collections, as well as a profile, Mr. Slimane objected bitterly to a review I wrote in 2004 — not about him but Raf Simons. Essentially I wrote that without Mr. Simons’s template of slim tailoring and street casting, there would not have been a Hedi Slimane — just as there would never have been a Raf Simons without Helmut Lang. Fashion develops a bit like a genetic line. Anyway, Mr. Slimane insisted that he was the first to show the skinny suit. It was a silly debate. Who cares? As time went on, he also felt (as best as I can tell) that I gave preference to Mr. Simons in my coverage of the men’s shows. If I gave him attention, it was because his work and my reporting into the key early part of his career merited it. I haven’t spoken to Mr. Slimane in five years.</p><p>This seems like an awfully long time to hold a grudge, and how else to explain an invite denied to one of the industry&#8217;s most prominent critics? Even plans to have a front row seat waiting , and she called him We&#8217;ve reached out to the house for comment and will update when we hear back &#8212; but in the meantime, perhaps it&#8217;s time for the enfant terrible to grow up a little?</p><p>Check out the pictures from the collection below:</p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Sarah Jessica Parker Pairs Her Evening Gown With A Blazer <p>by 10:25 am, July 12th, 2011</p> <p>While Emma Watson was busy basking in the bronze glow of her , Sarah Jessica Parker took in the New York premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two in a geometric print gown from &#8216;s Resort 2012 collection less than a month after it walked down the runway.</p><p>Parker paired the dress with a midnight blue blazer from Ferragamo&#8217;s equally new as well as an olive green crocodile bucket bag which puts . Also, we love a summertime blazer.</p><p></p><p><br><br><br></p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>Introducing The World&#8217;s Most Sexist Pair Of Pants <p>by 1:51 pm, March 7th, 2012</p> <p>And the continues! The latest controversy to come across our desk involves an exceptionally sexist pair of pants.</p><p>It all started when the Daily Telegraph&#8216;s Digital Media Editor Emma Barnett found a pair of her boyfriend&#8217;s pants while she was cleaning her house. The pants&#8217; large white tag caught her eye, and a closer look caused her to of its washing instructions on Monday:</p><p></p><p></p><p>In a , Barnett picked apart the tag&#8217;s sexist message, writing: &#8220;Even the language — ‘Your Woman’ — presupposed some kind of Neanderthal mentality from my boyfriend, an unwilling shopper after some affordable chinos — preferably not lined with sexist imperatives.&#8221; The pants come from British discount brand Madhouse. She reached out to the company, who were slow to reply, though they  that they had no clue the tag read as such. This seems pretty unlikely — someone at Madhouse had to have given the text the okay.</p><p>Barnett&#8217;s thoughts on the matter echo our own:</p><p>If the comment had been remotely funny — I would have been the first to laugh and shrug it off — as it really wouldn’t have bothered me enough to photograph it, tweet it, and then write about it. But it was the lack of any implied humor and the horrible surprise of such an incongruous message hidden away inside some trousers, that left me just plain stunned.</p><p>What do you think? Are the pants funny or offensive?</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>Shopping Alexander Wang at 2AM: Our New M’O <p>by Christina Ohly 4:01 pm, February 17th, 2011</p> <p><br>In case you were wondering what’s like to shop for the hottest looks of New York Fashion Week at all hours of the day and night, we’re here to tell you… it’s fairly freakin’ fabulous thanks to the launch of web site, . The brainchild of Vogue Contributing Editor, Lauren Santo Domingo, and CEO Aslaug Magnusdottir (formerly of Gilt Noir), M’O has officially arrived. The site went live on Wednesday with ’s Fall 2011 collection taking center screen, and we’ve got to say, this site is pretty addictive.</p><p>Starting with the media darling and GQ/CFDA menswear-award-winning Wang made perfect sense (fabulous on top of more fabulous) and the 39 looks from his runway do not disappoint on the small screen. After logging into the members-only site, we were able to browse everything from a shiny poncho with exposed zipper ($895) to a long sleeve button front draped tunic ($625), to drain pipe jeans and a (relatively affordable) collared tuxedo tank ($435.00).</p><p>But it was the ($9,800) in pale pink mink that had us at hello. This two pocket fur jacket with a notch collar and simple buttons is a little slice of Heaven –- and it could be ours for just $4,900 down! The site clearly lays out everything from estimated delivery date (in this case, September 1 – October 1, 2011), to payment instructions (trop cher; 50% up front, the balance upon delivery 6 months later). There is no detailed size guide, so we shot off a quick email to their personal shopper for guidance. Consider this feature customer service for the couture crowd. Within minutes we received word back about this particular coat, its’ boxy fit and broad shoulders, and how we might consider sizing down in this piece. Lovely, courteous, prompt… we could get used to this form of retail very quickly.</p><p>At any rate, we fought the urge to purchase this gorgeous piece of outerwear if only because we wondered what would actually happen if we laid the Am Ex down on it? Instant card and/or computer explosion? A call from fraud alert? Maybe next time. The interaction with the kind and knowledgeable stylist, however, made the whole process fun and assured us that we were in very good, very fashionable hands.</p><p>Other site features include a tight but handy breakdown of a garment’s finer points including “Details” such as lining, finishes, and place of manufacture. “Fit” gives a basic “true to size” rundown (again, a size 0 is a size 0 is a size 0), and the “Stylist” tab basically tells you how to wear the garment (in the case of the beloved mink coat, paired with “distressed menswear-inspired denim”). But you would’ve thought of that on your own…</p><p>Perhaps best of all, M’O allows you to see the looks up close –- we’re talking right down to the fibers -– and also to see garments in motion for a clearer sense of drape and fit. This is a good thing as not all items may be returned and you want to know what you’re getting into at these price points. Some items such as apparel and footwear may be returned for store credit, while others such as accessories, handbags, lingerie and swimwear, vintage items, and wallets may not.</p><p>And while there were bugs and the odd typo on Day 1 –- hey, it’s a start up and even they are (thankfully) human -– we hear that the kinks are being worked out in time for the (starts today), Thakoon, and shows that will be posted later this week. February and March look to be packed with trunk shows –- Proenza Schouler, , , and -– plus beefed up editorial content. We look forward to hearing what the creative M’O team has to say.</p> <p> </p>Simon Doonan Reveals His Must-Have Decorating Item <p>by 7:04 pm, October 30th, 2011</p> <p>Give a window, a cause and enough chicken wire and he can turn nearly any storefront into a retail wonderland. That&#8217;s exactly what happened when Pay Pal (yes, Pay Pal) asked the fashion expert and creative ambassador at large of Barney&#8217;s to design windows for its new brick-and-mortar showroom in New York City.</p><p></p><p>Pay Pal, the service that makes it easy to pay for things on eBay or donate to Occupy Wall Street over the Internet, has set up a real, live store to demonstrate how its features can be used in the traditional retail space &#8212; stores like Barney&#8217;s where Doonan has worked since he was a teenager. The company will use its space at 174 Hudson Street to pitch retailers on ushering in the future of shopping: things like letting customers use the phone and pin numbers associated with their Pay Pal accounts to make electronic purchases &#8212; handy if you ever happen to misplace your wallet and need to buy something fast.</p><p>Doonan&#8217;s job was to make the store look as festive as anything on Fifth Avenue during the holidays, and he delivered. He clad the windows in miles of ribbon and chiffon in Pay Pal&#8217;s signature blue, and bought box after box of wooden artist&#8217;s models in varying sizes to represent &#8220;the hundred million people that use Pay Pal,&#8221; Doonan said. &#8220;I think we bought a hundred million of these for the installation.&#8221;</p><p></p><p>So if a hundred million people are buying things online through Pay Pal, does that mean traditional retailers &#8212; who see less and less foot traffic every day &#8212; have to worry about keeping their doors open? Doonan says no, so long as they don&#8217;t resist change.</p><p>&#8220;I think this is a period where we as retailers have to be incredibly nimble. All bets are off,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I remember five years ago, someone said to me, &#8216;Maybe one day people will shop on their phones,&#8217; and I said &#8216;That&#8217;s insane.&#8217; And now it&#8217;s quite normal.&#8221;</p><p>But his windows in the space are anything but &#8212; just as retailers have to be nimble to get business, Doonan says his windows have to be a little out there to get people&#8217;s attention.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m always looking for an unconventional way to do holiday. So here&#8217;s a wreath, which is essentially conventional, but what can you do with a wreath that makes it unconventional?&#8221; he said, standing outside of the store looking at the windows. &#8220;You don&#8217;t have to deviate from the iconography. You can do sleighs, you can do wreaths, you can do garlands, but how can you do them differently? You can do that at home. You can make yourself a wreath but make it out of old tin cans and reflective things, found objects, things that are readily available. At Barney&#8217;s we&#8217;ve made reindeer out of old Coke cans.&#8221; </p><p>It&#8217;s that kind of thinking that&#8217;s kept successful retail operations alive, Doonan says.</p><p>&#8220;You have to get involved, otherwise you do end up like Whistler&#8217;s Mother, sitting there knitting and watching it all unfurl and having less and less of an understanding of it.&#8221;</p> <p> </p>Srsly&#8217;s New Video Perfectly Captures Our Fashion Week Experience <p>by 11:55 am, September 11th, 2012</p> <p><br>We know complaining about fashion week engenders only the tiniest of tiny violins, but while and watching make it all worthwhile, this really is how we spend most of our days.</p><p>(For more on the ladies behind SRSLY, check out some of their past videos , , and &#8212; and our interview with them .)</p><p>WATCH:</p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p><p></p><p>&#8220;Clipboards&#8221; is part of a series of three videos SRSLY has filmed exclusively for Glamour. To watch the first video in the series, &#8220;Models Everywhere,&#8221; which includes a cameo from Sessilee Lopez, . The third video will debut tomorrow.</p><p>[]</p> <p> </p>StyleDish: The Shiba Inu Puppy Cam Is Back! <p>by 4:51 pm, April 22nd, 2011</p> <p></p><p>We have been doing nothing but writing about fashion all day, and while there&#8217;s really nothing more that we enjoy than that, we also really love puppies. In honor of the return or the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam on UStream, we&#8217;ve made that the main course of today&#8217;s . But please also enjoy the dulcet tones of &#8216;s voice, &#8216;s home collection and the best Easter Eggs known to man.</p><p> [USTREAM]</p><p> [Vanity Fair]</p><p> [The Gloss]</p><p> [The Cut]</p><p> [The Hairpin]</p><p> [StyleCaster]</p> <p></p>StyleDish: Daria Morgendorffer&#8217;s Greatest Retail Regret <p>by 5:27 pm, August 8th, 2011</p> <p><br>Today in Things That Makes Us Insanely Jealous, the ladies over at Racked interviewed reclusive high school icon Daria Morgendorffer about her shopping habits and her greatest retail regret. That should pretty much be enough for you but just in case, we&#8217;ve also got more news about that maybe-happening SATC prequel and a new project for and. </p><p> [Racked]</p><p> [Jezebel]</p><p> [Andrej Pejic Page Tumblr]</p><p> [The Gloss]</p><p> [Refinery 29]</p><p> [Polyvore]</p><p>And while we have you: is there anything more awesome than free music? Diesel is giving away a 15-track sampler featuring Matt and Kim, Ra Ra Riot, Tokyo Police Club, Thao and Mirah, and The Pains of Being Pure At Heart will be available via a download card that Diesel stores nationwide. The card is free, no purchase is necessary. </p> <p></p>StyleDish: Downton Abbey, Alexander Wang, &#038; Other Favorite Things <p>by 5:13 pm, January 8th, 2012</p> <p></p><p>Today&#8217;s involves many things we love, including but not limited to Matthew Crawley and Alexander Wang sweaters.</p><p> [Gawker]</p><p> [HuffPost Style]</p><p> [The Jane Dough]</p><p> [StyleCaster]</p><p> [The Cut]</p><p> [Refinery29]</p> <p></p>StyleDish: Go Behind The Scenes Of Beth Ditto&#8217;s Beauty Shoot With MAC <p>by 5:37 pm, May 30th, 2012</p> <p></p><p>And the are pretty cool!</p><p> [Fashionista]</p><p> [Art Info]</p><p> [NYT]</p><p> [HuffPost Black Voices]</p><p> [Dazed and Confused]</p><p> [The Cut]</p> <p></p>StyleDish: Guess Who Owns The Row&#8217;s Fancy Backpack? <p>by 5:33 pm, May 15th, 2012</p> <p></p><p></p><p>She has a dreamy fiancé, too.</p><p> [The Gloss]</p><p> [Teen Vogue]</p><p> [MTV Style]</p><p> [The Cut]</p><p> [BuzzFeed Shift]</p><p> [High Snobette]</p> <p></p>StyleDish: Buy A Cute Shirt From An Adorable Kid, Help Japan! <p>by 6:14 pm, March 25th, 2011</p> <p>Because we love , today&#8217;s &#8216; is dedicated to Solange Knowles adorable son, who designed his very own t-shirt to benefit Japan. And if that wasn&#8217;t enough, we&#8217;ve got ELLE&#8216;s ultimate trend shopping guide, an editorial debate over the appeal of Sasha Grey, and Dita von Teese&#8217;s line of cardigans. Click, click, click away!</p><p> [Refinery29]</p><p> [ELLE]</p><p> [The Gloss]</p><p> [People StyleWatch]</p><p> [The Awl]</p><p> [Racked NY]</p> <p></p>StyleDish: Pregnancé Pics, Y&#8217;All! <p>by 6:39 pm, September 19th, 2011</p> <p></p><p>In today&#8217;s , the pregnancé makes its London Fashion Week debut, CFDA darlings make ugly t-shirts for Starbucks, and George Clooney makes us melt.</p><p> [HuffPost Style]</p><p> [Fashionista]</p><p> [Racked]</p><p> [The Cut]</p><p> [Refinery29]</p><p> [Jezebel]</p> <p></p>StyleDish: This Kid Is So Not Feeling Fashion Week <p>by 6:17 pm, September 11th, 2011</p> <p>Today&#8217;s involves a little boy who isn&#8217;t into Fashion Week, a behind-the-scenes look at Alexander Wang, and a guide to sweatpants. Ugh, do we miss sweatpants.</p><p></p><p> [Refinery29]</p><p> [Fashionista]</p><p> [The Cut]</p><p> [Racked]</p><p> [Beauty High]</p><p> [StyleList]</p> <p></p>StyleDish: Alexander Wang&#8217;s Niece Continues To Rule Fashion World <p>by 3:32 pm, September 18th, 2011</p> <p>Aila Wang! Seth Cohen! Aila Wang! Seth Cohen! There is just so much goodness in today&#8217;s . We even threw a few Missoni for Target horror stories in there just for kicks. Eat up!</p><p></p><p> [Stylelist]</p><p> [Go Fug Yourself]</p><p> [Racked]</p><p> [The Gloss]</p><p> [StyleCaster]</p><p> [Fashionista]</p> <p></p>StyleDish: In Which Tavi Gevinson Channels Nicki Minaj <p>by 5:43 pm, September 21st, 2011</p> <p></p><p>So our friend at Refinery29 kidnapped teen blogging phenomenon and forced her to perform rap on camera. Actually that&#8217;s not true &#8212; Gevinson willingly climbed into the back of the site&#8217;s Fash Cab and did Nicki Minaj&#8216;s part of Kanye West&#8216;s song Monster. Oh yes. Yes she did. Also in today&#8217;s , the best jeans to carry your iPad in and how to try on clothes without ever actually touching them.</p><p> [The Gloss]</p><p> [Fashionista]</p><p> [The Cut]</p><p> [Refinery29]</p><p> [Buzzfeed]</p><p> [The New York Times]</p> <p></p>StyleDish: This Is What NYFW Was Like In The &#8217;80s and &#8217;90s <p>by 5:08 pm, September 9th, 2012</p> <p><br>How we miss the supermodels of yesteryear!</p> <p></p>StyleDish: We Want All Schiaparelli Everything, Please <p>by 5:26 pm, April 27th, 2012</p> <p></p><p>Seriously, buy us everything. Please.</p><p> [The Moment]</p><p> [WWD]</p><p> [Nickelson Wooster]</p><p> [BuzzFeed Shift]</p><p> [The Cut]</p><p> [Refinery29]</p> <p></p>StyleDish: Illustrated Rumors About Anna Wintour <p>by 6:08 pm, February 17th, 2011</p> <p></p><p>In today&#8217;s , hilarious drawings that stoke the fire on some of our favorite rumors about , an adorable photo from designer &#8216;s childhood, and on why modeling is a &#8220;sh*tty career.&#8221;</p><p> [The Cut]</p><p> [The Hairpin]</p><p> [The Huffington Post]</p><p> [Fashionista]</p><p> [StyleCaster]</p><p> [The Gloss]</p> <p></p>StyleDish: How Cute Is Alexander Wang&#8217;s (Supposed) Niece? <p>by 5:28 pm, February 24th, 2011</p> <p></p><p>Because it&#8217;s never too early to start learning about (and wearing) amazing high-fashion garments, we bring you this adorable photo of a little girl thought to be designer &#8216;s niece. (But even if she&#8217;s not, how dope does she look with that mini Chanel?) Also, where to find a decent painting of and a bracelet that can detect menstrual cycles. Or something.</p><p> [BuzzFeed]</p><p> [The Gloss]</p><p> [StyleCaster]</p><p> [HuffPo Style]</p><p> [The Cut]</p><p> [Refinery29]</p> <p></p>Summer Chic In Sophie Theallet For Nine West <p>by Sponsored Content 3:19 pm, May 16th, 2011</p> <p>For us, summer is all about ease, and one of the great things about &#8216;s collection for Nine West is that all of its elements are easy to wear &#8212; to say nothing of the fact that that mixes in with things we already wear. For a trip to the beach or a casual summer barbecue, there&#8217;s nothing better than a pair of denim cutoffs, like these from , and an oversize t-shirt courtesy of and a pair of from . Finished with Theallet&#8217;s Pila ballerina flats and Emma straw satchel, it&#8217;s the perfect, thrown-together chic look. See, we told you: totally easy.</p><p><br><p></p> <p> </p>Taylor Swift Isn&#8217;t Quite Over The Trauma Of Her Middle School Years <p>by 10:54 am, January 17th, 2012</p> <p>We&#8217;ll read almost any profile of the preternaturally sunny Taylor Swift, and the cover story in the February issue of Vogue is full of some delicious T-Swift nuggets.</p><p>The has Taylor — who we generally only see in princess dresses by the likes of and — visiting fashion&#8217;s edgy young stars during Fashion Week. There&#8217;s a nod to  Rooney Mara, who is with Swift and (&#8220;An editor sitting nearby jokes that the two could be the good witch and the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz.&#8221;). There are appearances by (who delights in her sample sized-figure), (to whom she confides that she wants to bake cookies with ), and Joseph Altuzarra. After all, the cover line does read &#8220;a cool new look for America&#8217;s sweetheart&#8221;.</p><p>She asks if her cursing can be off the record, though she doesn&#8217;t curse of her own volition – just when she&#8217;s quoting the . She grew up on a Christmas tree farm (!), and calls her condo in Nashville “very Alice in Wonderland imaginarium”. She wants to be in a movie! She loves hugs! There really is a whole lot to learn in this piece, including how Jake Gyllenhaal broke her heart and will be the subject of her next album.</p><p>But our favorite part? This:</p><p>“All of my favorite people—people I really trust—none of them were cool in their younger years,” she says. “Because if you know how to be cool in middle school, maybe you have skills you shouldn’t. Maybe you know how to be conniving, like, naturally.” She laughs. “There’s always that seventh-grade girl who looks like she’s 25. And you’re like, How do you do it? How do you do it, Sarah Jaxheimer?” She lets out a comically ear-piercing shriek: “Why is your hair always so shiny?!”</p><p>Congratulations, Sarah Jaxheimer! You are now famous! And very easily ! </p><p>As for the photos, we continue to , but the rest of the -lensed spread has us underwhelmed. Check it all out below:</p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p>[]</p> <p> </p>Miss Piggy To Unveil Muppets x Opening Ceremony Collab On FNO <p>by 12:55 pm, August 23rd, 2011</p> <p>It looks like Miss Piggy&#8217;s fashion career is really taking off. First, the porcine puppet took a as the editrix of Vogue Paris and now she (and her fellow muppets) are collaborating with Opening Ceremony!</p><p>Miss Piggy will be on hand at the Ace Hotel in New York City on to unveil the collection. So far, there&#8217;s no word on what it will actually look like, but we&#8217;ve got our fingers crossed for some Piggy-approved boas and maybe even some stage-ready costume jewelry!</p><p>, that&#8217;s not the only thing the store has planned for their FNO party:</p><p>Other highlights from Opening Ceremony’s Fashion’s Night Out bash include live dance performances outfitted by Alexander Wang, Proenza Schouler, Suno, and Opening Ceremony; a raffle to win a PS1 hosted by the Proenza Schouler boys, a magic show hosted by the Rodarte girls; a Tumblr-sponsored photo booth that will have your pretty mugs uploaded in real time to the brand’s just-unveiled Tumblr, and so, so much more.</p><p>While we second in we&#8217;re so FNOver™ Fashion&#8217;s Night Out, this might be the one party we make it to come hell or high water. (It also helps that it&#8217;s right next to our apartment.) Miss Piggy, FTW!</p> <p> </p>The Zoe Report: Wonder Wand <p>by 11:09 am, September 24th, 2010</p> <p>As many of you may have noticed, I have lately been breaking away from my signature wavy hairstyle—New York Fashion Week found me in and even a formerly unthinkable that I now love. Crazy, right?! While I have had fun changing up my routine, I predict I&#8217;ll be back to rockin&#8217; volume-heavy tresses sooner than expected, thanks to Sultra&#8217;s latest styling tool, the .</p><p>Used backstage at Alexander Wang&#8217;s SS11 show to create texture on the model&#8217;s ultra-cool , this quick heating, multi-functional tool is a new fashion world fave. As a serious fan of Sultra&#8217;s lightning fast , I was not surprised that the takes half the time of a traditional rod curling iron. The ceramic heat mends your locks with infrared rays that protect the hair&#8217;s cuticle while simultaneously creating red carpet-worthy curls and waves. Just wrap strands around the barrel—so easy!—and walk out the door. Your locks will last all day. Bombshell beauty. xoRZ</p><p>Availability: Sultra ($130). For additional retailer information, visit .PHOTOS: The Versace For H&#038;M Men&#8217;s Stuff Is Seizure-iffic! <p>by 12:15 pm, October 20th, 2011</p> <p>Just in case you&#8217;d were finally able to scrub the images of the Versace for H&#038;M men&#8217;s collection out of your eyes, allow us to present it in full! </p><p></p><p>The bidding starts at $17.95 for a pair of boxer briefs printed with Versace&#8217;s aquatic leopard print motif and goes right up to $299 for a pair of gold studded leather pants. In between there are some pretty interesting shirts, featuring full plackets covering the buttons and metallic gold wingtips, for $49.95; scarves and beanies with the house&#8217;s signature greek key print; and $24.95 t-shirts printed with alligators. You&#8217;ll also find a pair of shorts and a t-shirt decorated with studs, which look sort of like what you imagine would happen if was left alone in a summer camp craft room for a few hours. </p><p></p><p>We know we harshed on the men&#8217;s collection the other day, but it&#8217;s not all bad. We&#8217;re already saving up for a one-button tuxedo jacket that calls to mind the one Kanye West wore in My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. And all the pants (even the pink ones!) look like they would fit impeccably well.</p><p>Take a look at the collection below, and tell us what you think in the comments</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Victoria&#8217;s Secret Fashion Show Extravaganza! <p>by 10:15 am, November 11th, 2010</p> <p>Though the show itself won&#8217;t be seen by the general public until November 30th, Victoria&#8217;s Secret held its annual fashion show extravaganza last night and the pictures today are worth a thousand words.</p><p>The show was attended by a remarkably eclectic group of fashion&#8217;s finest, including , , and her daughter Julia, Kate Lanphear, and, of course, the Hiltons. Akon and Katy Perry performed, models maneuvered the boobytrap-ridden runway with half-naked aplomb, and wept dry, silent tears in her cold, dark office at 4 Times Square.<br></p><p>Let&#8217;s take an annotated stroll through the photos. First up: the attendees.</p><p></p><p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <br></p><p><br></p> <p>Pages: 1 </p> <p> </p>PHOTOS: Everything You Need To Know About The Victoria&#8217;s Secret Show <p>by 11:20 am, November 10th, 2011</p> <p>There are fashion shows, and then there are several-million dollar mulitmedia and fashion extravaganzas. And last night&#8217;s Victoria&#8217;s Secret Fashion Show, with it&#8217;s neon wings and supermodels and performances by Kanye West, was most definitely of the latter variety.</p><p>The highly produced annual event went off with several bangs last night in New York City, and by all accounts it was the kind of deeply fabulous affair that you can only pull off if you&#8217;re a deep-pocketed brand like Victoria&#8217;s Secret. Every model from to to walked in the show &#8212; even gained 15 pounds to fill out her wings this year &#8212; and they were egged on at every step by Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, Jay-Z and Maroon 5. (Cutest moment of the night? When Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine serenaded his Victoria&#8217;s Secret Angel girlfriend Anne Vyalitsina coming down the runway.)</p><p>But even the cutest, most highly produced fashion shows are nothing without a great front row, and this one did not disappoint. Designers and were there, as were and Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, Debbie Harry, Cuba Gooding Jr. and the dad from Gossip Girl all showed up to watch.</p><p>And without much further ado, here&#8217;s what they saw. You can see the full show when it airs later this year.</p><p></p> <p>Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.</p> <p> </p>10 Important Things We Learned Last Week: April 10-16 <p>by 12:20 pm, April 17th, 2011</p> <p>1. Lady Gaga wears , believes Alexander McQueen is , and leaked her . Also, a lady to make an outfit for her concert.</p><p>2. America might ban teens from and wearing . France has already banned .</p><p>3. John Galliano got at LAX airport and fired from his , while Bernard Arnault to the controversy.</p><p>4. Details on the royal wedding have been revealed, as has a super detailed . Sarah Burton is the  to design Kate Middleton&#8216;s wedding dress, but she could wear Victoria Beckham to the . Meanwhile, Kate carries her own , resembles a , and inspires women to buy .</p><p>5. Kim Kardashian is upset about her Turkish Cosmo , and happens to wear . Relatedly, Khloe Kardashian has a ridiculous .</p><p>6. Alexander Wang&#8216;s looks exactly how you would expect it to.</p><p>7. Jenna Lyons may Mickey Drexler as CEO of J. Crew, but Fox News is still mad she painted her son&#8217;s pink.</p><p>8. Christian Louboutin is suing yet another company over their , and Coach is suing Joann Fabrics over their .</p><p>9. Jennifer Lopez is People&#8216;s of 2011. We even talked about it !</p><p>10. Jean underpants are a thing that sort of .</p> <p> </p>10 Important Things We Learned This Week: December 11-17 <p>by 12:05 pm, December 18th, 2011</p> <p>1. The Obama family wore  when they met Justin Bieber. They then took a great .</p><p>2. Jimmy Choo makes expensive faux croc , but Hermes makes expensive . In related news, Chanel sells expensive  and Vogue sells an expensive .</p><p>3. Prabal Gurung is designing Sephora&#8216;s , and he wants his own .</p><p>4. Kate and Pippa Middleton on SNL! Also, Robyn tons of Alexander Wang on the show.</p><p>5. Elizabeth Taylor&#8216;s jewelry was auctioned for , with a from Kim Kardashian. The accessories from Lady Gaga&#8216;s Vanity Fair shoot are also going to be . (Tim Gunn .)</p><p>6. Marc Jacobs may be , has weird , and .</p><p>7. Vogue and Meryl Streep is a total kickass feminist. Also, Anna Wintour talked about the Vogue archive .</p><p>8. Rooney Mara&#8216;s style has in the past few years. We&#8217;re okay with it because this week she wore and on the red carpet.</p><p>9. Paris its Fashion Week days, and even more upsettingly, Fashion&#8217;s Night Out is .</p><p>10. Courtney Love is getting for redecorating her townhouse, but she . Unlike Love&#8217;s digs, Agyness Deyn&#8216;s apartment is .</p> <p> </p>10 Important Things We Learned Last Week: July 17-23 <p>by 12:20 pm, July 24th, 2011</p> <p>1. Kate Middleton&#8216;s cost $400,000. The Queen found the &#8220;creepy&#8221;, though it&#8217;s unclear what she thinks about the Disney princess dresses getting a </p><p>2. Karl Lagerfeld&#8216;s Macy&#8217;s collection next month! .</p><p>3. Summer&#8217;s Eve is officially the .</p><p>4. Photoshop made Topshop model Codie Young look and totally an H&amp;M model&#8217;s face.</p><p>5. Alexander Wang&#8216;s reminds us of a whole bunch of things. Also, we would like to have with him and his family.</p><p>6. David and Victoria Beckham&#8216;s daughter Harper is , but the facts surrounding are questionable. Relatedly, her dad is his own fragrance.</p><p>7. Christian Dior promised Christian Louboutin&#8216;s red soles. Valentino did not because he  red-soled shoes decades ago.</p><p>8, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony are continuing with their Kohl&#8217;s despite their divorce, while Gwen Stefani has teamed up to make for Target. And don&#8217;t worry — Lil Wayne is also getting in on the action, but we&#8217;re still Kanye.</p><p>9. Tavi Gevinson fellow teen style queen Hailee Steinfeld at a Miu Miu event. Not to be outdone by the Oscar nominee, Tavi is shopping for a .</p><p>10. Michelle Obama is making her first in the fall, and she&#8217;ll be Chris Benz.</p> <p> </p>10 Important Things We Learned Last Week: March 20-26 <p>by 11:58 am, March 27th, 2011</p> <p>1. Elizabeth Taylor . We rounded up her most notable , as well as some about the icon.</p><p>2. Not only is Anna Wintour&#8216;s WSJ. awesome, so is the accompanying .</p><p>3. Gisele is the face of H&amp;M&#8217;s latest , though the ads may look a bit if you&#8217;re in the Middle East. But no matter where you are, her Vogue Paris is casually stunning.</p><p>4. Kate and William are asking for in lieu of royal wedding gifts. There is now a royal wedding (which seems silly) and a (which looks silly and awesome).</p><p>5. Tom Ford is a .</p><p>6. Andrej Pejic thinks he&#8217;s more than Lea T. Well, we certainly haven&#8217;t seen Lea in a like Andrej&#8217;s for Dazed &amp; Confused.</p><p>7. A mother in San Francisco is administering Botox injections and &#8220;virgin waxes&#8221; to her daughter. We assume this is the type of mother who buys her child a .</p><p>8. Lady Gaga may  minimalist clothes for i-D, but she laments that can&#8217;t see past her &#8220;crazy outfits&#8221;. Relatedly, she encouraged Nicola Formichetti to have a Mugler starring the once-homeless Zombie Boy. (Cathy Horyn has thoughts about his , by the way.)</p><p>9. Rachel Zoe gave birth to a !</p><p>10. Alexander Wang likes to keep it in the family. His first fashion show was at his , and he hopes his adorable niece Aila one day.</p> <p> </p>Why Fashion People Should Stop Using The Word &#8216;Affordable&#8217; <p>by 11:45 am, March 10th, 2011</p> <p>I&#8217;m not what you&#8217;d call a spendthrift, but there&#8217;s nothing that incenses me more than fashion people using the world affordable to describe brands that charge several hundred dollars for the privilege of owning one of their tank tops. </p><p>The concept of affordability in fashion, like Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, is one of those things that shouldn&#8217;t be fungible but is. You have some people who will say that buying a $45 sweater at is affordable, and others who write that dropping $255 on one from is more or less the same thing. What we&#8217;ve noticed is that when talk about what&#8217;s affordable, they often consider about what&#8217;s affordable for them, or for a certain set of people, not necessarily what makes sense for all of their readers. In an ideal world, that&#8217;d be the consideration everyone would make.</p><p>And let&#8217;s be honest here: Most fashion (or rather most clothing that is deemed headline worthy by fashion bloggers and writers) tends to be . You can only get so much news value out of the private label brands at most department stores, because innovation, pretty fabrics and good quality costs money. But while there are a lot of designer brands that make clothing that costs far less than couture or ready-to-wear, the fact that costs less than does not make it affordable.</p><p>No, no. Alexander Wang is still pretty expensive. The $375 tank top I mentioned earlier is Wang&#8217;s top. It&#8217;s a lovely garment made entirely from Mako cotton, a very fine material best decribed as Egyptian cotton on steroids. It&#8217;s semi sheer and dry-clean only. Let me remind you though, in and of itself it this not an entire outfit, just a really pretty piece of one. And yet it costs more than most families of four spend per month on groceries. (It&#8217;s also worth nothing that most Egyptian cotton sheet sets, which require a lot more Egyptian cotton to make than one tank top, cost less than $375.)</p><p>Even really wealthy, have to realize that a garment like that isn&#8217;t something most people can just go out and purchase, which is the standard by which we judge what&#8217;s affordable. This tank top and most of the other things people in fashion like to call affordable don&#8217;t meet that very simple qualification.</p><p>There&#8217;s certainly nothing wrong with spending a lot on your clothes. If you have $260 to drop on a threadbare cardigan from Eileen Fisher, or countless thousands for , that&#8217;s fine. But calling those things affordable makes clothes and shoes that cost less seem cheap, and not only is that insulting, it&#8217;s just not true.</p><p>Just face up to it, fashion people: some of you spend a lot on your fashion. (And we mean .) Admit that to yourselves, your accountants and your readers, and we won&#8217;t have a problem here.</p> <p> </p><p>Despite having lived illegally for years in Massachusetts, Mrs Onyango was unearthed by the US media in 2008 only days before Mr Obama&rsquo;s election, living in public housing. </p><p>The White House said the president was unaware of her illegal status and that the appropriate laws should be followed. </p><p>Although there is no suggestion of favouritism or intervention by the White House, the issue could provide more ammunition to the president&rsquo;s enemies as he struggles to retain the initiative after a year in office. </p><p>Michael Graham, writing in the Boston Herald, said: &ldquo;Why are Boston taxpayers stuck taking care of the aunt of the president of the United States? She&rsquo;s got a millionaire in the family right now, one who also happens to live in public housing, by the way.&rdquo;</p><p>It could also fuel Right-wing conspiracy theories about Obama&rsquo;s exotic family background, including the notion that he was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya, which would make him ineligible to be president. </p><p>The publicity could also affect how Mrs Onyango is treated, both here and back in her homeland, her lawyers said. </p><p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s the aunt of the president of the United States - the most famous man in the world,&rdquo; said Mike Rogers, spokesman for the Ohio law firm defending Mrs Onyango. </p><p>In his memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Mr Obama affectionately referred to &ldquo;Auntie Zeituni&rdquo; and described meeting her in Kenya in 1988. </p><p>Mrs Onyango helped care for the president&rsquo;s half brothers and sister while living with Barack Obama&rsquo;s father in Kenya. </p><p>The President&rsquo;s team responded with an online post on Wednesday, using evidence from various news sources to attack D&rsquo;Souza&rsquo;s work. </p><p>Quoting Bloomberg, the post argued that &ldquo;D'Souza employs &lsquo;pseudo-scholarly leaps of logic&rsquo; to invent an imaginary character who has inherited &lsquo;anti-colonial,&rsquo; &lsquo;Third World&rsquo; views from his father &mdash; whom he last saw when he was 10 years old.&rdquo; </p><p>The post also argued that D'Souza has a previous record of mendacious smear campaigns. </p><p>&ldquo;That his writings and film are based on lies should not come as a surprise to anyone given D'Souza&rsquo;s long history of attempting to add a veneer of intellectual respectability to fringe theories, conspiratorial fear-mongering, and flat-out falsehoods&rdquo;. </p><p>&ldquo;The facts show that 2016: Obama&rsquo;s America is nothing more than an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear the President by giving intellectual cover to the worst in subterranean conspiracy theories and false, partisan attacks&rdquo;, the post added. </p><p>D'Souza has responded in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. He calls the post by the US President's campaign team &ldquo;one of the most bizarre, clumsy and ineffective attacks I have seen in politics,&rdquo; adding &ldquo;there are no errors in the film&rdquo;. </p><p>President Obama, 51, is currently campaigning against Republican Mitt Romney to be re-elected in the 2012 US Presidential Election. </p><p>A UK release of 2016: Obama's America is not currently scheduled. </p><p>The chant, devised by the spiritual civilisation development office of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the ministry of education and the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee (Bocog), was taught to the students in the past two months. Bocog also brought in cheerleaders from the New England Patriots American Football team, to teach US-style razzamatazz to the 600 volunteers who will cheerlead at beach volleyball and basketball events. </p><p>Organised cheering is yet more evidence of Beijing's determination to micro-manage every aspect of the Olympics, although officials do not see it that way. </p><p>"It creates a great atmosphere in the stadium for the athletes and heightens the interaction with the audience," said Wang Hui, Bocog's publicity chief. </p><p>But some Chinese online commentators have wondered whether any chant devised by the CCP, which is better known for dour slogans such as "Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics", can be classified as fun. </p><p>Some foreign fans in Beijing <br>have also been disappointed with the lack of spontaneity in evidence. </p><p>"The opening ceremony was too cold and technical for me," said Alex Nunuef, a lawyer from Brazil. </p><p>Nick Plastow, an operations manager from Harrow, London, said: "It wasn't as good as Sydney and Athens. But the Chinese aren't outwardly gregarious so you expect it to be a bit formal."</p><p>Chinese officialdom is being blamed by some for <br>a subdued atmosphere. National flags larger than 1m by 2m, patriotic banners, musical instruments and babies are banned from venues. Bocog insists its rules are in line with the Olympic charter. But the lack of flexibility reflects Beijing's obsession with hosting a perfect Games, even if it squeezes the life out of them. </p><p>A glimmer of hope for those hoping for an antipodean victory in the Beijing Ashes. Steve Hooker takes the pole vault gold with 5.90m. It probably won't be enough though for the Australians - they may be sitting down, but canoeists Tim Brabants and Lucy Wainwright will be looking to add to the British tally in the canoeing. </p><p>3.10pm Another stunning world record for Bolt </p><p>Party time in Jamaica - they have just obliterated the world record by three tenths of a second in the men's 4x100m relay. Bolt did the second leg, Asafa Powell finished it off with a flying final leg. 37.10 seconds - that was devastatingly quick. </p><p>Trinidad and Tobago took silver, with Japan taking the bronze </p><p>3.06pm Decathlon decider </p><p>As Bryan Clay trots casually home, there's a right royal battle for silver and bronze. In the end, it's Andrei Krauchanka of Belarus and Leonel Suarez of Cuba who clinch the two remaining medals, with Clay's winning margin the biggest since 1972. Daniel Awde finishes 21st, a creditable Olympic debut. </p><p>2.55pm The Price isn't right?</p><p>David Price is having a torrid time against the Italian boxer - oh, and it's all over already, as Roberto Cammarelle lamps Price with a stunning left-hander. The referee has stopped the fight. </p><p>2.51 Feat of Clay </p><p>Bryan Clay has definitely won the decathlon. The American is too far away to be caught after nine events. Britain's Daniel Awde has had an up and down couple of days. If he manages to finish in the top 20, it will be a good achievement. </p><p>2.25 Jeffries is boxed out </p><p>Tony Jeffries from Sunderland has comprehensively lost his semi-final bout to Ireland's Kenny Egan. He'll have to settle for a bronze medal, after being out-pointed 10-3. </p><p>2.12 More relay cock-ups </p><p>Oh dear. We're at it again. A golden opportunity for the British 4x100 girls to get a medal - and they messed up a changeover. Montell Douglas and Emily Freeman were the guilty parties this time. Jamaica also messed up, leaving Russia to claim a gold, with Belgium winning silver. Belgium?! </p><p>2.11pm Blonska's happy demise</p><p>Lyudmila Blonska's demise has provided us with one happy story. Her positive drug test meant Nigerian Blessing Okagbare qualified for the long jump. And she only went and won the bronze. Maurren Higa Maggi of Brazil won with a first-round leap of 7.04m, with silver for Tatyana Lebedeva of Russia, just 1cm behind. </p><p>2pm Dibaba does the double </p><p>Tirunesh Dibaba has done an historic double on the athletics track, taking the 5000m title to go with her 10,000m gold. The Ethiopians are dominating the long-distance events just as the Jamaicans are dominating the sprints. Kenenisa Bekele will look to emulate this tomorrow. </p><p>1.41 It's all over for Johnson</p><p>Jade Johnson's Olympics are over. She did a blatant no jump on her sixth and final attempt in the competition, and obviously does not improve on her current position (seventh). </p><p>1.38 The Daley news </p><p>Tom Daley is improving in the diving. He's in eighth at the moment, and looks in a good position to move through to the final. </p><p>1.29 It's the pits for Kluft </p><p>Poor Carolina Kluft. She may be regretting her decision not to compete in the heptathlon. A mediocre third jump means she will play no further part in the long-jump final, which, following her failure to qualify for the triple-jump final, will mean one highly disappointed Swede. </p><p>Jade Johnson meanwhile remains in the mix after a leap of 6.64m. </p><p>1.22 Relay boys through</p><p>Martyn Rooney and co make sure that Team GB will be in the men's 4x400 relay final. They finished first in their heat - no heart in-the-mouth moments as there were with the women's heat. In fact Rooney even seemed to be doing some showboating at the end. </p><p>1.12 BRITWATCH - silver </p><p>Heather Fell made a brave attempt to catch the leader in the pentathlon, German Lena Schoneborn, but it was just a little bit too far. She still takes silver, however. </p><p>12.55 Cook's loses bout for bronze</p><p>Aaron Cook's bid for Britain's first ever gold medal in the taekwondo has ended in failure. He lost to the Chinese athlete Zhu Guo. </p><p>Away from the Bird's Nest, Argentina have claimed a bronze in the women's hockey, overcoming Germany in the play-off match. </p><p>12.46 Watch out Christine </p><p>My word that was close. The Olympic 400m champion Christine Ohuruogu was just coasting Britain to third place and the 4x400m relay final - then the German athlete almost sneaked though on the inside. That would have just capped our relay woes. </p><p>As it is, we go through to tomorrow's final. </p><p>12.30 Jumping Jade </p><p>Jade Johnson has made her first leap. She looks none too happy as she walks away from the runway but it puts her in fifth place, with 6.97m the target to aim for. </p><p>12.18 And off he goes </p><p>Tom Daley launches himself from the 10m platform. A reasonably solid dive to begin with, although a bit more splash than he would have liked. He starts with a score of 68, with five dives left, which puts him 23rd. Pete Waterfield meanwhile lies in an impressive 5th place </p><p>11.56 Daley dives again </p><p>Tom Daley - remember him? He's going in the preliminary diving competition about now. There are 30 divers, 18 qualify for the semi-finals. Peter Waterfield also is tipped to make it through. </p><p>11.48 Kelly's return </p><p>After a disappointing performance in the heptathlon, Kelly Sotherton has another chance to get her hands on some silverware. She's taking Lee McConnell's place in the 4x400 relay, after the Scottish athlete's withdrawal for injury. </p><p>11.39 Taekwondo controversy</p><p>Strong words were rumbling around the edge of the dojo after Britain's Aaron Cook was beaten as he tried to make the gold medal bout. </p><p>His coach, Nelson Miller believes Italy's Mauro Sarmiento made an attack that should not have counted. </p><p>"I'm not happy because from my point of view it was after the bell," he said. </p><p>The referee didn't want to make the call. It was pointless to have a discussion with them. </p><p>"The referee made a mistake but that was the best performance ever by Aaron Cook. I'm not disappointed." </p><p>11.32 Action ahead at the Bird's Nest </p><p>We're now awaiting today's finals at the Bird's Nest. Jade Johnson begins the long jump in half an hour, while our 4x 400m squads try to restore some credibility for Brits with batons in the heats later this afternoon. </p><p>No gold medal prospects, we're pretty sure today - unless our women sprinters keep hold the baton and the other teams turn up with their butter fingers. </p><p>And the face of athletics Usain Bolt will appear later in the 4x100 - although the Jamaicans apparently are debating which leg he should run. </p><p>11.00 THE NEEDLE </p><p>Ukraine's Lyudmila Blonska has been stripped of her heptathlon silver medal for doping and faces a lifetime ban given it was her second offence. </p><p>American Hyleas Fountain is in line to take the silver, with Russia's Tatiana Chernova moving from fourth to bronze. Kelly Sotherton will be kicking herself. One of those medals should have arguably been hers for the taking but for an improved showing last weekend. </p><p>10.38 Bronze at best for Cook</p><p>It's a valiant effort from Cook but with seconds to go the 6ft 5in frame of the Italian pulls out the stops for a 6-5 victory. Cook can still win a bronze medal but needs to get this narrow loss out of his mind if he is to focus on his third-placed match-up. </p><p>Should he do so he'll become the youngest Brit to medal in Beijing. No pressure. Saying that 14-year-old Tom Daley is still to come in the 10m diving. </p><p>10.35 Is an upset on the cards?</p><p>Cook is punching above his weight and is still in with a shout of causing an upset with one round to go. He's back on level terms at 3-3. </p><p>10.30 Cook update </p><p>It's back to the taekwondo where Aaron Cook's 80kg semi-final contest against Italy's Mauro Sarmientoin is underway. The teenager is 2-1 down after the first round. </p><p>10.20 Setback for GB's 4x400m relay </p><p>Lee McConnell has been forced to withdraw from today's semi-final through injury. The Scot has been suffering with a quad muscle tear sustained whilst competing in the individual event. </p><p>Natasha Danvers, who won bronze in the 400m hurdles is likely to be drafted in as her replacement. Christine Ohuruogu, Donna Fraser and Vicki Barr make up the rest of the team. </p><p>10.05 Reade's bruised pride </p><p>Of some consolation for BMX cyclist Shanaze Reade. X-rays have shown that she has not broken her wrist as a result of that spectacular fall on the final bend. </p><p>09.50 Awde on the up in decatathlon </p><p>Daniel Awde has surged up seven places to 22nd place thanks to a personal best of 4.90m in the pole vault. </p><p>The 20-year-old Londoner has accumulated 6,230pts with just the javelin and 1,500m disciplines left. </p><p>09.30 Cook-ing up a storm </p><p>Teenager Cook is within touching distance of a medal in the taekwondo and faces Italy's Mauro Sarmiento in his 80kg semi-final clash later this morning. </p><p>Sarmiento is unlikely to be as much as a pushover as Vasquez Carvajal in the previous round. The Italian beat tournament favourite and two-times Olympic gold medallist Steven Lopez of the US to make his way to the last four. </p><p>09.15 And another one on the way... </p><p>Britain's Aaron Cook is through to the 80kg taekwondo semi-finals. Not too sure whether this guarantees the 17-year-old a medal. What we do know is that he won his quarter-final contest against Venezuela's Carlos Vasquez Carvajal 5-2. </p><p>09.02 Fell in medal contention </p><p>Britain's Heather Fell is now up to second in the modern pentathlon following another strong display in the 200m freestyle. </p><p>Fell, who was third fastest in the field in 12.77 seconds, has two more events to go in the equestrian and a 3,000m run. </p><p>Team-mate Katy Livingston made a slow start in the shooting and fencing but moved up to 15th in the table after recording her best swim time of the year. </p><p>08.33 Gold for Brabants</p><p>Australia have taken great amusement in Britain's ability to only win gold medals when we're sitting down. We don't care. Tim Brabants has won gold No 18 for Team GB. He led from the start and never looked back. Brabants adds the Olympic gold to his European and world titles. </p><p>08.30 Now for Tim Brabants... </p><p>Britain's kayak king Tim Brabants has got off to a fantastic start in the 1,000m. He's driving through the water in first place as he reaches the halfway mark. </p><p>08.22 DeGale wants emotional finale</p><p>A polite DeGale has put into words what his success means: "The dream is coming true, this is my scene, he's beaten me four times he's strong, his raw strength is horrible. </p><p>"I'm in an Olympic final. I now want to hear the national anthem, I want to cry."</p><p>08.20 DeGale guaranteed silver medal </p><p>It's there. An accomplished performance from DeGale has seen him move into the middleweight final with a 10-3 win. Our man 'Chunky' now is trailing 4-2 in his head-to-head bouts with Sutherland who has the consolation of a bronze medal. </p><p>08.17 Just two more minutes...</p><p>'Chunky' DeGale, who is known as the joker in Team GB's pack, has surged into an 8-2 lead. He's now just two minutes from becoming the first Briton in 40 years to reach the Olympic middleweight final. </p><p>08.14 DeGale edges in front</p><p>Some good footwork sees DeGale move 3-1 up after round two. The Briton only needs to maintain his focus for the next two rounds and he'll book his place in Sunday's final. </p><p>08.07 Round one - honours even </p><p>There's nothing between DeGale and Sutherland as expected. It's one-apiece heading into round two. </p><p>07.55 DeGale v Sutherland </p><p>We're minutes away from the start of the middleweight semi-final where James 'Chunky' DeGale gears up to take on his Irish rival. Sutherland will have the psychological edge having won four of their last five bouts but form often goes out the window when it matters most. DeGale knows that more than most after defeating 2004 Olympic welter champion Bakhtiyar Artayev from Kazakhstan in the quarters. </p><p>07.25 Fredericks hits out at Rogge in Bolt 'row' </p><p>Four-time Olympic silver medallist Frankie Fredericks has told IOC president Jacques Rogge to let Usain Bolt celebrate his success any way he pleases. </p><p>Rogge urged the Jamaican superstar to show more respect for his rivals following his 100m final showboating antics - comments that haven't gone down well with Fredericks. </p><p>"It's not like a thing you have planned or you have rehearsed. Usain is such a relaxed guy. That's his way of expressing himself, to say I've done something that nobody else has done. </p><p>"We cannot tell a guy who's run 9.69 seconds how he needs to react." </p><p>06.58 Coming up today... </p><p>British boxer James DeGale could soften the blow of missing out on a BMX medal when his middleweight semi-final against Ireland's Darren Sutherland gets underway in an hour's time. </p><p>DeGale is one of three Brits in the ring today. David Price and Tony Jeffries will contest their respective super-heavyweight and light-heavyweight bouts from midday. </p><p>Kayak king Tim Brabants will be gunning for glory in the men's 1000 metres final from 08.30 and watch out for Jade Johnson in the long jump from 12.30. </p><p>Oh and nearly forgot, Tom Daley will make his individual diving debut in the 10m preliminaries from 11.00. </p><p>06.35 BRITWATCH</p><p>Heather Fell lies in fourth place in the modern pentathalon after a strong showing in the fencing. Fell, who was placed sixth after the shooting earlier this morning, won 20 of her duels with 15 defeats to take her up to 2036 points. </p><p>Team-mate Katy Livingston is in 20th place as the athletes gear up for the next leg of the competition the 200m freestyle swim. </p><p>Decathlete Daniel Awde, meanwhile, is down to 29th place after seven events. He did move up to 24th after finishing second in his heat for the 110m hurdles, but a below-par discus throw of 37.12m pushed him back five places. </p><p>06.20 McDonalds-loving Cook can still serve up a medal </p><p>Britain's Aaron Cook has eased through to the 80kg taekwondo quarter-finals. But it's clear from his post-clash interview that he's a man who's easily pleased. </p><p>The 17-year-old said: "It's beyond your wildest dreams. It's free McDonalds 24 hours. The food hall is amazing and you just see so many famous people. It's a great experience. It's been a long wait but I'm loving it now."</p><p>06.15 USA win beach volleyball</p><p>World champions Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser have beaen Brazil to win the beach volleyball making it two out of two for the United States who also won the women's event. </p><p>06.10 Sexing up table tennis</p><p>Fifa president Sepp Blatter's comments that women footballers should wear skirts a few years back were given short shrift by those in the game. But the table tennis fraternity have not back handed suggestions that female paddlers could change their attire for future events. </p><p>As first revealed by Telegraph writer Andrew Baker in his earlier this week, an official from the governing body has suggested female competitors should wear skirts during matches to make their game more stylish in an attempt to pull in the crowds. </p><p>Wang Chen of the US gives the idea a thumbs up. "Some players are already wearing skirts, I think it's a good idea, the game (already) looks more beautiful than before. </p><p>"I think women should wear dresses like tennis players. I think our outfits are so boring, not sexy." </p><p>06.00 Will Bolt strike for a third time?</p><p>After yesterday's botched baton hand-offs in the men's 4x100m the highlight of today's final will be whether Jamaica's Usain Bolt will make it a hat-trick of golds. </p><p>With Olympic holders GB and the US out of the running, Jamaica are hotly tipped to win gold in the absence of the two heavyweights. </p><p>The relays are among seven gold medals on offer at the Bird's Nest. </p><p>05.45 Italy deny Russia and Australia </p><p>Alex Schwazer of Italy won the men's 50km walk here to deny Russia their 17th gold medal which would have seen them move alongside GB in the medal standings. </p><p>The 23-year-old two-time world medallist broke the 20 year-old Olympic record as he timed 3 hours 37 minutes and nine seconds to take gold ahead of 20km bronze medalist Jared Tallent of Australia, who had a personal best of 3hr 39:27, while Russian No 1 Denis Nizhegorodov won the bronze in 3hr 40.14. </p><p>05.30 Aussies have the upper hand</p><p>Australia are still some way off leap-frogging us in the medal standings. Just for the record they only have 11 golds to our 17. But the women's hockey team have the edge over Team GB. </p><p>Britain suffered a 2-0 defeat in the fifth-place play-off which continues their winless streak against their rivals. They have not beaten the Hockeyroos since 2000 and have won only four times in 34 meetings. </p><p>Still, at least GB's sixth-place finish is their best Olympic placing since Atlanta in 1996 when they were fourth. </p><p>05.15 China's boxer Zhang handed walkover into final</p><p>Britain's boxer David Price will meet China's Zhang Zhilei in the super-heavyweight final if he overcomes his semi-final clash with Italy's Roberto Cammarelle later today. </p><p>Zhang has received a walkover into Sunday's final as Ukraine's Vyacheslav Glazkov has pulled out of his semi-final bout because of an elbow injury. </p><p>05.05 Gutsy Shanaze Reade loses out in push for glory</p><p>For the second day running another Brit tipped for the top spot has fallen short on the big stage. Phillips Idowu's silver medal in the triple jump was put down to a few reasons - not least for it being unlucky day 13 of the championships. Well it's day 14 and the luck is yet to change as Team GB seek their 18th gold of the Games. </p><p>Pre-race favourite in the BMX women's final, Shanaze Reade, failed to finish on the podium after spectacularly crashing out in her bid for gold medal glory. </p><p>It says everything about the drive for success which epitimises Britain's cycling team but it is of small consolation for the 19-year-old world champion who leaves Beijing without a medal to her name. </p><p>In true British fashion, Reade gave it her all - even coming away from her crash with a suspected broken hand and a damaged shoulder to add to her previous aches and pains from an spectacular crash in his first semi-final run. </p><p> (Spain, Mexico) Dir: Alejandro Gonz&aacute;lez I&ntilde;&aacute;rritu; Starring: Javier Bardem, Maricel Alvarez, Diaryatou Daff. Rating: * * </p><p>"Another laborious stretch of designer depression from Alejandro Gonz&aacute;lez I&ntilde;&aacute;rritu, the director of 21 Grams and Babel." </p><p></p><p></p><p> (FR/IT) Dir: Abbas Kiarostami; Stars: Juliette Binoche, William Shimell; Rating: * * * </p><p>"The film unfurls at a laboured pace but it may be suggestive of a relationship gradually losing its bloom. Abbas Kiorastami keeps the audience guessing."</p><p></p><p></p><p> (US) Dir: Doug Liman; starring: Naomi Watts, Sean Penn. Rating: * * * </p><p>"The story, especially at this point in time, seems a little slight to merit feature-length treatment, and the emphasis on an ailing marriage in the final third of the film renders it more rather than less trad."</p><p></p><p></p><p> (THAILAND) Dir: Apichatpong Weerasethakul; starring: Thanapat Saisaymar, Natthakarn Aphaiwonk. Rating: * * * * *</p><p>"A film about what it means to take care of others, and of the importance of caring and of being cared for... To watch it is to feel many things &ndash; balmed, seduced, amused, mystified."</p><p></p><p></p><p> (UK) Dir: Ken Loach; Starring: Marc Womack. Rating: * * *</p><p>"With a trauma-stricken cast of characters, Loach is essentially bringing the War In Iraq home."</p><p></p><p></p><p> (FRANCE) Dir: Mathieu Amalric; Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Anne Beno&icirc;t, Julie Ferrier, Julie Atlas Muz, Damien Odoul. Rating: * * * * </p><p>"A risqu&eacute; comedy featuring a troupe of burlesque dancers lost in the French provinces. Funny, intelligent, sad-eyed - just like Mathieu Amalric himself."</p><p></p><p></p><p> (CHINA) Dir: Wang Xiaoshuai; Starring: Fan Bingbing, Qin Hao, Wang Xueqi. Rating: * * * * </p><p>"A slow-burning gem with melancholic textures."</p><p></p><p>UN CERTAIN REGARD:</p><p> (USA) Dir: Derek Cianfrance; starring: Michelle Williams, Ryan Gosling. Rating: * * * *</p><p>"An anguished, acutely observed and at times deeply affecting story about falling in love &mdash; and out of love." </p><p></p><p></p><p> (FRANCE) Dir: Jean-Luc Godard; starring: Patti Smith. Rating: *</p><p>"Coldly isolationist rather than socialistic or independent: its contents are random and its rhetoric is hollow and platitudinous." </p><p></p><p></p><p> (CHINA) Dir: Jia Zhang-ke; documentary. Rating: * * *</p><p>"Playful and sometimes moving, guarded and at times meandering, that revisits the turbulent history of Shanghai, especially in the years following its 'liberation&rsquo; in 1949"</p><p></p><p>OUT OF COMPETITION:</p><p> (FRANCE) Dir: Olivier Assayas; starring: &Eacute;dgar Ram&iacute;rez, Alexander Scheer. Rating: * * * * </p><p>"Made for television, where it will be shown in three parts, this enthralling portrait of the terrorist known as Carlos The Jackal lasts for over five hours and doesn&rsquo;t contain a wasted minute."</p><p></p><p></p><p> Dir: Ridley Scott; Starring: Russell Crowe; Cate Blanchett; Rating: * * </p><p>"A Ridley Scott blood-and-guts adventure with Russell Crowe as the medieval hero. Echoes their great Roman epic Gladiator."</p><p></p><p></p><p>(UK) Dir: Stephen Frears; Starring: Gemma Arterton; Dominic Cooper; Rating: * * * </p><p>"A rural comedy, set in biscuit-tin pretty Dorset, about a young journalist (Gemma Arterton) returning to her childhood home where she breaks hearts and kicks up an emotional storm."</p><p></p><p></p><p> (USA) Dir: Oliver Stone; Starring: Michael Douglas, Shia LaBoeuf, Carey Mulligan. Rating: * *</p><p>"Lacks the punch of the "greed is good" original, era-defining 1987 film Wall Street, but it&rsquo;s a handsomely-shot, smoothly edited vehicle."</p><p></p><p></p><p> (UK) Dir: Woody Allen; Starring: Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas, Lucy Punch; Rating: * * * </p><p>"Easily the best of Woody Allen's recent London-based films."</p><p></p><p>NOT IN OFFICIAL SELECTION:</p><p> (France) Dir: Quentin Dupieux. Starring: Thomas F Duffy. Rating: * *</p><p>"This weird road movie about a homicidal car tyre, by French musician Mr Oizo, is nowhere near as much fun as it sounds." </p><p></p><p> (FRANCE) Dir: Renaud Barret, Florent de la Tullaye; Starring: Leon &lsquo;Ricky&rsquo; Likabu, Roger Landu, Coco Ngambali Yakata. Rating: * * * * </p><p>"A joyous French documentary about a group of seven Congolese musicians, the Staff Benda Bilili, four of whom are paraplegic." </p><p></p><p> (France) Dir: Marc Fitoussi; starring: Isabelle Huppert, Lolita Chammah. Rating: * * *</p><p>"Isabelle Huppert finds another intense, severe screen presence, in lighter mood, playing Babou, a free-spirited mother in northern France, vainly trying to buckle down to society&rsquo;s norms."</p><p></p><p> (USA) Dir: Alistair Banks Griffin; starring: Brady Corbet, David Call, Karen Young. Rating: * </p><p>"A first effort by British-born director Alistair Banks Griffin. A beautifully shot mood piece about two backwoodsmen brothers (Brady Corbet, David Call) in America&rsquo;s Deep South."</p><p></p><p>The total cost to Bill and Hillary Clinton has been estimated at $2 million to $3 million, a fraction of their combined wealth.</p><p>One of the biggest chunks is going toward an air-conditioned marquee with glass walls that was still being erected yesterday in the grounds of Astor Courts in Rhinebeck, a picturesque village two hours' drive north of Manhattan.</p><p>The food bill is expected to come in at $125,000, in part because the non-meat eating bride has insisted on vegan and vegetarian options, though there will be a main course of organic grass-fed beef for those with more hearty appetites such as her father. The dessert wine has been supplied by the serendipitously named Clinton Vineyards.</p><p>The former president, who has promised to do his best not to cry, will give away his only child who will be dressed by Vera Wang, costing an estimated $25,000. It will of course only be used once, unlike the $15,000 porcelain "porta-potties" that guests will be grateful for as they party the night away to a wedding band whose bill is expected to reach $40,000.</p><p>The playlist devised by the young couple seems designed to please all ages and is said to include such hits as Diana Ross's "I'm Coming Out" and ABBA's "Dancing Queen".</p><p>That however is one of Chelsea's few concessions to her parents, who may be the best connected couple in the world but were told from the outset that her big day was not to be turned into a political parade.</p><p>Miss Clinton, now 30, has always guarded her privacy tenaciously. She has been working at a New York hedge fund and recently completed a postgraduate degree in public health, which may be a precursor to joining her father's global health charity.</p><p>She met Mr Mezvinsky, 32, the son of two former Democratic congressmen, in her late teens but only became romantically involved a few years ago.</p><p>The occasion will have the grandeur of a state wedding but in keeping with the wishes of the bride, the details, which only started to seep out in the past few days, have been guarded like state secrets.</p><p>"I am under very strict orders not to talk about it," said Mrs Clinton recently. "The people coming are her friends and people who have been meaningful in her life, as it should be."</p><p>Those will naturally include a number of Hollywood figures and high profile politicians from around the world.</p><p>But some expected big names will not be there, including Oprah Winfrey, who was not invited, and President Barack Obama, who said he appreciated the focus on Chelsea and her friends.</p><p>"It would be tough enough having one president at a wedding," he said. "You don't want two."</p><p></p><p>Asked what qualities attracted him to his bride, he replied: "Well she is a former Miss England, isn't she?" </p><p>He said that while he had not expected to marry at the age of 69, he said of the 36 years between him and Miss Bowness: "It's just an age gap. Our relationship works extremely well." </p><p>His new wife, who reportedly wore a short, blue Alexander Wang dress and Christian Louboutin shoes for the ceremony, told the paper: "We're over the moon. We're very happy." </p><p>She previously said she found Sir Clive to be a "very attractive man". </p><p> "I get cross when he's described as "balding Sir Clive Sinclair"," she said last year following their engagement. "He's actually incredibly attractive to women. You can't tell from the pictures. </p><p> "To outsiders perhaps it looks strange, but none of our friends and family were at all surprised. They said they knew it was always going to happen one day. It's been a natural progression and apart from the attraction between us we're also best friends." </p><p>Last night, a friend of Miss Bowness said: "Angie is absolutely over the moon to have married Sir Clive. And he's thrilled &ndash; he can't stop calling her My Lady." </p><p>Miss Bowness, who has a 12-year-old son from a previous relationship, met Sir Clive in 1996 while she was working as a lapdancer at Stringfellows' club in central London and dated on and off for ten years. </p><p>She now takes the title of Lady Sinclair because of her husband's life peerage. </p><p>Richard Prince has been an emblem of the art boom. Much favoured by hedge-fund managers, his "nurse" paintings soared from less than $100,000 to as much as $6 million in the course of five years. The first "nurse" painting to appear since prices crashed last October was therefore closely watched. Estimated at half the level it might have been a year ago, Country Nurse sold after little competition for &pound;1.7 million ($2.9 million) &ndash; down perhaps, but still a great return on the original price. </p><p>There were several works on offer by Jeff Koons, but his current Serpentine Gallery show was not enough to revive past price levels. At Christie's, a 7ft-tall, stainless-steel cut-out in the shape of a walrus sold for &pound;361,000 &ndash; half the price another from the series made a year ago. A smaller stainless-steel sculpture, Mermaid Troll, sold for &pound;241,500 compared to the &pound;512,800 another from the edition had fetched in 2007. </p><p>The troll was sold at Phillips de Pury &amp; Co, where Charles Saatchi, who constantly recycles his collection, was disposing of more than &pound;1 million of art. One work by Anselm Reyle, a 39-year-old Berliner whose shimmering silver-foil creations had seen massive price increases during the boom, sold for less than half the price similar works had realised last year. Paintings by Zhang Xiaogang and Wang Guangyi, two of the hottest Chinese artists during the boom, were unsold. </p><p>However, there was an upside. A butterfly drawing from the Saatchi collection by the American Mark Grotjahn, whose work is on display at the Gagosian Gallery in London, fetched a record &pound;145,000 for a work on paper by the artist, and a painting by Yue Minjun, which Saatchi acquired three years ago for &pound;249,000, sold for just over &pound;421,000. </p><p>The shake-out is by no means consistent. For Andy Warhol, a bellwether of the market, prices in general have halved, but three works from the esteemed Froelich collection in Germany managed to sell at estimates that might have been set last year. A sculpture by Alexander Calder set a record (in pounds at least) for an indoor sculpture by the artist, selling to London dealer Simon Theobald for &pound;2.6 million. There were also high prices paid for some living artists &ndash; notably the Brazilian Beatriz Milhazes, the Korean Do-Ho Suh, the Portuguese Joana Vasconcelos, and, not least, the Scottish-born Peter Doig, whose Night Playground sold for &pound;3 million, the second-highest price set for the artist. </p><p>And if you can detect a glimmer of a smile in Cattelan's Mini-Me, perhaps it's because its price has doubled in four years, selling for almost half a million pounds.</p><p></p><p>Sicilian Dragon Yugoslav Attack</p><p>1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be3 Bg7 7.f3 0&ndash;0 8.Qd2 Nc6 9.Bc4 Bd7 10.h4 Ne5 11.Bb3 h5 12.0&ndash;0&ndash;0 Rc8 13.Bg5 Rc5 14.Kb1 b5 15.g4 a5 16.gxh5 Nxh5 17.Nd5 Re8 18.Nf4 a4 19.Bd5 Nc4 20.Bxc4 bxc4 21.Nxh5 c3 22.Qe3 Qb6 23.b3 gxh5 24.Bh6 Bf6 25.Bg5 Bg7 26.Bh6 Bf6 27.Rhg1+ Kh7 28.Qf4 axb3 29.axb3 Qa6? (In a key line the queen needs to be attacking the rook on g1 29...Ra5! 30.Bg7 Bxg7 31.Rxg7+ Kxg7 32.Rg1+ Bg4 33.Ne6+ fxe6 34.fxg4 Qxg1+ wins so 29...Ra5! 30.Bg7 Bxg7 31.Qxf7 Rg8 32.Rxg7+ Kxg7 33.Nf5! Bxf5 34.Rxg7+! Rxg7 35.Qxh5+ draws) 30.Bg7!! Bxg7 31.Rxg7+ Kxg7 32.Rg1+ Bg4 33.Ne6+! (33.fxg4 e6 34.gxh5+ Kf8 35.Rf1 Rc7 36.Qh6+ Ke7 37.Qg5+ Kf8= Black escapes) 33...Kg6 (33...fxe6 34.fxg4 Ra8 35.gxh5+ Kh7 36.Qf7+ Kh8 37.Qg7#) 34.fxg4 f6 35.Nxc5 dxc5 36.g5 Qa3 (36...Kf7) 37.gxf6+ Kf7 38.fxe7+ 1-0 Mate follows 38.fxe7+ Kxe7 39.Rg7+ Ke6 40.Qf5+ Kd6 41.Qd5</p><p>The Algerian GM looked overawed against Alexander Morozevich and was four pawns down after sixteen moves.</p><p>AK Razik - A Morozevich</p><p>World Cup Khanty-Mansiysk (1.1)</p><p>Catalan</p><p>1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.g3 dxc4 6.Qa4+ Nfd7 7.Bg2 Nc6 8.Bf4?! Nb6 9.Qb5 0&ndash;0 10.0&ndash;0&ndash;0 a5 11.d5 Nb4 12.Qc5? (12.Nd4 Bd7 13.Qc5) 12...Bxc3 13.bxc3 Nxa2+ 14.Kb1 (14.Kb2 Na4+ wins the queen) 14...Nxc3+ 15.Ka1 Qe8 16.Qa3 Nbxd5 17.Rxd5 Nxd5 18.Bh6 Ra6 19.Rc1 b5 20.Qb2 c3 21.Qb3 b4 22.Bxf8 Kxf8 0&ndash;1</p><p>Players qualify for the World Cup from Zonal tournaments held around the world in the various FIDE zones so this event, with 128 players, gives some relatively unknown players a shot at the world title. The top 10 pairings:</p><p>GM Gelfand (Israel) 1.5-0.5 IM Obodchuk (Russia)</p><p>GM Gashimov (Azerbaijan) 2-0 IM Sarwat, Walaa (Egypt)</p><p>GM Svidler (Russia) 0-2 IM Hebert (Canada)</p><p>GM Morozevich (Russia) 1-0 IM Abdel Razik (Egypt</p><p>GM Radjabov (Azerbaijan) 0-2 IM Ezat (Egypt)</p><p>GM Ivanchuk (Ukraine) 2-0 GM Bezgodov (Russia)</p><p>GM Ponomariov (Ukraine) 1.5-0.5 GM El Gindy (Egypt) </p><p>GM Grischuk (Russia) 1.5- 0.5 IM Sriram (India)</p><p>GM Jakovenko (Russia) 1.5-0.5 GM Rizouk (Algeria)</p><p>GM Wang Yue (China) 2-0 GM Kabanov (Russia)</p>Rivals:<p>The Japanese team are predicted to win a medal in most judo event in 2012, but South Korean Wang Ki-Chun currently tops the world rankings.</p><p>21.09 Greek finance minster Evangelos Venizelos says sixth tranche of bailout will come after a written statement by new Greek government. </p><p>21.01 Juncker adds: </p><p>I do admit that Greece is a unique case, but only when it comes to PSI [private sector involvement]. Ireland and Portugal were supporting the adjustment measures, and without that it would have been awfully difficult.</p><p>20.52 Rehn says that Greek growth outlook is worse than six months ago, adding: </p><p></p><p>I am not the only one who felt that the unilateral referendum announcement was a breach of confidence [by Greece].</p><p>20.48 Back to Junker: </p><p>The idea of using gold holdings has not been discussed on any level. I have no idea why the German media are discussing it. </p><p>He's also calling for antional unity in Ireland and Portugal, too. But not Italy as "it is not under a [EU/IMF] programme". </p><p>20.46 Klaus Regling, chief executive of the European Financial Stability Facility, has put forward two suggestions for the future of the bail-out fund: </p><p></p><p>1) a credit enhancement to primary bonds issued by member states, to increase demand and lower funding cost. </p><p>2) EFSF option two would lead to creation of a Co-Investment Fund to enhance capacity - the CIF would have first loss tranche of CIF investment in a single tranche structure". </p><p>20.41 Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker has said that te EU can "finalise the desbursement of the Greek tranche by phone conference". He adds that there will be no meeting on November 17, but there will be a meeting in late December and the last week in November". </p><p>20.36 Now Rehn is moving on to Italy: </p><p>We are starting a technical mission either tomorrow or Wednesday to closely supervise Italian economy... Tremonti assured us Italy will progress the measures outlined by Italy before October summit"</p><p>20.35 News coming out from the eurozone: European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn has said that Greek party leaders have been asked to sign a letter confirming bail-out commitments. They wants contract, not words. </p><p>It is possible sixth tranche can be disbursed in Nov on the condition that Greek government agrees to October commitments. The Euro wants to support Greece, but Greece is expected to do its part.</p><p>20.33 Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker sees a balanced budget in Italy in 2013. </p><p>20.27 Deutsche Bank AG&rsquo;s Dominic Konstam says Italy may be forced to leave the euro: </p><p>Do they want to go through a very deep recession almost imposed upon them by the failure to resolve this financial crisis? Or are they going to be saying, &lsquo;Look, we could go back to the way we used to be, which is where we had our own currency and were able to run more moderate interest rates and have strong growth.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s the real challenge for Italy.</p><p>20.07 Quick update on the US markets. Dow is up 0.4pc, S&amp;P500 up 0.3pc and Nasdaq up 0.1pc. </p><p>19.57 Guess who's back? Barroso's back! And he will present a report on possible treaty change on December 9. He also wants Greece to stay in the euro. </p><p>Most peope do, or surely the EMU will collapse. </p><p>19.45 Here comes Jos&eacute; Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission - seems everyone want to give their views on the debt crisis today. He believes that "stability bonds" may be a "natural step". </p><p>19.40 Greece's NET TV has said that the new Greek cabinet will be announced on Tuesday. Papandreou and Samaras have settled on a new prime minister. </p><p>19.33 The Eurogroup is to hold a press conference at 9pm GMT, we'll have the latest here. </p><p>19.30 Here is Tremonti looking very sad. Cheer up, I'm sure Roubini didn't mean it! </p><p></p><p>19.28 Nouriel Roubini is tweeting about a run-in with Giulio Tremonti, Italian minister of economy and finance: </p><p> I did Davos in 2007 and was yelled at by Tremonti.</p><p>19.23 Ironically, the ECB's Jurgen Stark (see 18:39) is being quite positive! He expects the euro-area debt crisis to be &ldquo;under control&rdquo; within two years. </p><p>Not sure many people would agree with him. </p><p>19.17 According to Shanghaidaily.com, China's cash-strapped banks may soon get a injection of capital, thanks to fiscal funding not a loosening of government policy. </p><p></p><p>More than 1 trillion yuan (&pound;98bn) of treasury deposits are expected to be allocated by the Ministry of Finance to government departments in November and December, according to a report by China International Capital Co, the country's top investment bank. </p><p>Seems this global economic crisis is, well, global! </p><p>19.07 The US has welcomed a consensus in Greece on adopting new austerity measures and said the next Greek government should swiftly act on fulfilling conditions of an EU bailout. White House spokesman Jay Carney said: </p><p>We welcome the consensus that has been reached in Greece," adding that the incoming government should take steps to live up to commitments on the rescue plan "as quickly as possible". </p><p>19.00 Nouriel Roubini tweeting now: </p><p> With real rates at 4pc and GDP growth at 0pc (better than current data), Italy still needs 5pc of GDP primary surplus to stabilise debt at 120pc. </p><p>Does Italy have a way out of this mess?! </p><p>18.53 PIMCO's co-founder Bill Gross has tweeted about the Italian crisis: </p><p>Italian yields unsustainable at 6pc to 7pc. Deficits will grow no matter how tight fiscal budgets. </p><p>Economist Nouriel Roubini agrees. Berlusconi will be hoping they're both wrong. </p><p>18.49 The Telegraph's Bruno Waterfield: </p><p>George Osborne is attending a dinner of &ldquo;euro outs&rdquo; hosted by the Czechs in Brussels tonight. The Chancellor is building links ahead of a full EU finance ministers meeting tomorrow, where Germany will launch an all-out offensive for a controversial EU &ldquo;financial transaction tax&rdquo;. </p><p>1846 A great blog by Jeremy Warner on how the - judged on its liabilities. </p><p>18.42 Re: 1753 - European ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros has said he had been approached to become a possible candidate to lead Greece's new coalition government. </p><p>There was an exploratory phone call yesterday and no contact since. I did not rule out the possibility of contributing if certain conditions were met.</p><p>18.39 The ECB's Jurgen Stark has said that bigger rescue packages may not be the solution. </p><p></p><p>He's right, they don't deal with the underlying problems, but will anybody tackle them? </p><p>18.33 Investors heading for safe havens US Treasuries and gold - the latter is at $1,790.75, its highest level since late September. </p><p>18.30 Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker doesn't expect EU finance chiefs to decide tonight how to scale up the &euro;440bn bailout fund or approve the next &euro; 8bn installment of Greece&rsquo;s aid package. </p><p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t expect we&rsquo;ll come to any decisions today,&rdquo; Juncker told reporters as he arrived to lead the Brussels meeting. He called talks on using financial engineering to bulk up the rescue fund &ldquo;insanely complicated&rdquo;. </p><p>18.23 The US markets are still in negative territory. Dow is down 0.6pc, S&amp;P500 is down 0.5pc and Nasdaq is down 0.9pc. </p><p>18.10 The Swiss National Bank vice-president Thomas Jordan has said that his country has been 'extremely affected' by the debt crisis. </p><p>17.58 Now to Italy, and the country's parliament will begin the debate on budget vote at 11.30 GMT on Tuesday, followed by Berlusconi facing a budget vote at 2.30 GMT. </p><p></p><p>17.53 Meanwhile, following on from our post at 17.47, Greece's MEGA TV is tipping Nikiforos Diamandourios, a European Ombudsman, to be the next PM. </p><p>17.50 A word from the Telegraph's banking correspondent, Harry Wilson: </p><p>Not sure what pleases me most, that outlook for Peruvian banks is stable or the author of the Moody's report is called Jeanne Del Casino.</p><p>17.49 While Italy is rocketing, Germany's central bank says borrowing costs have reached a new record low as investors flee to German government bonds as a safe haven amid Europe's debt crisis. </p><p>The Bundesbank said in a statement that the latest interest rate for six-month treasury bills dropped to 0.08pc. </p><p>Such low, low prices... </p><p>17.47 According to Reuters, Lucas Papademos, a former deputy head of the European Central Bank, is tipped to emerge as Greek prime minister. </p><p>17.30 Joachim Fels from Morgan Stanley has this to say on the bail-out fund: </p><p>The leveraged EFSF may still turn into a bazooka but so far it looks more like a water pistol.</p><p>17.27 Another video, this time it's those Occupy Wall Street protesters. </p><p><p><p><p><p><p></p></p><p>This man is suspended from the Tappan Zee Bridge. Using a rope ladder and wearing what appeared to be a harness, the man sat above a blue sign that read "Rockland Executive Legislative Cover-Up Retaliation". He caused travel chaos in the area. </p><p>17.14 David Cameron on the eurozone crisis: </p><p></p><p>You tell 'em Dave. </p><p>17.12 Back to Armageddon, the European Financial Stability Facility, the eurozone rescue fund, has raised &euro;3bn via a bond sale, but had to pay more than expected and met modest interest, banking sources told AFP. </p><p>Demand was only slightly more than the &euro;3bn on offer and the effective rate or return paid to buyers of the bonds was 3.59pc, higher than anticipated, the sources said. </p><p>17.10 Away from the collapse of the eurozone, and Hollywood legend Robert De Niro is is in the first major film about his Ponzi scheme. </p><p></p><p>There's a certain likeness... "You hawking to me? You hawking to me?!"</p><p>17.02 Wow! The yield on Italian 10-year bonds rose from 6.37pc to a euro-era high of 6.64pc, before retreating to 6.5pc. </p><p>17.00 The Italian Treasury has just announced it was cancelling its November 10 three-Month BOT auction due to a "lack of specific cash requirements"... </p><p>16.51 All the main Greek opposition parties will be asked for written guarantees and promises to uphold the EU-IMF austerity package that sunk George Papandreou. </p><p>After killing off the Greek referendum, the EU wants to make sure that the fix is well in before national elections expected in next February. Until the promises are signed, sealed and delivered to Brussels the Greeks will not get a penny of a critical &euro;8bn EU-IMF payment, a deadline of December. </p><p>Austrian finance minister Maria Fekter: </p><p>We want a commitment to reforms in writing, from all opposition parties, not to wait for elections first. Once we have this, then we'll release the next tranche.</p><p>16.45 Tough day on the markets... unless you're Italian. </p><p>The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares fell 0.6pc to a provisional close of 974.03 points, having been down almost 2pc in early trade. But Italy's benchmark outperformed, up 1.3pc, clawing back some of Friday's heavy losses. </p><p>Elsewhere, in London, the FTSE 100 fell 0.3pc to 5,510.82; France's CAC closed down 0.64pc at 3,103.60, while in Frankfurt the DAX shed 0.63pc to 5,928.68. </p><p>16.43 The German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has rejected any comparison between Italy and Greece, saying that market jitters over Rome's economic situation did not make sense: </p><p></p><p>I am convinced that Italy is not in a comparable situation. Italy has announced measures that, if they are implemented, are adequate to ensure that the country regains the confidence of markets. The data on the real economy in Italy do no justify this nervousness.</p><p>Is he serious?! </p><p>16.31 Europe has piled more pressure on debt-laden Italy (is that even possible?!). It has urged the country to make good on its vows to euro partners, as borrowing costs for Rome rose to the sort of levels that triggered bailouts for lesser economies. </p><p>Olli Rehn, European Union Economic Affairs Commissioner: </p><p>It is essential now that Italy will stick to its fiscal targets, ensure their implementation and intensify the structural reforms that can boost growth.</p><p>The Finn used a football analogy to try to connect with the Italian public when he said that "it's important that in fiscal policy Italy plays catanaccio", referring to a cynical defensive style intended to give nothing away to the opposition. </p><p>16.25 In comparison, the chart below shows the Irish spread. </p><p></p><p>The circled area shows when 2-year yields started to accelerate at a faster pace than 10-year debt. When this happens it suggest that investors have lost faith that a country can repay its near-term debts, causing the country&rsquo;s credit channels to freeze and eventually forcing them to either default or accept a bailout, like what happened to Ireland. </p><p>16.20 The 10-2-year bond spread has narrowed dramatically in Italy, as stress in its credit markets have grown. </p><p></p><p>If this continues then we could see this spread turn negative as it did for Ireland, Greece and Portugal. </p><p>16.15 The Finnish prime minister, Jyrki Katainen, has said the situation in Italy is 'quite serious'... </p><p>Thanks for the heads-up Katainen... </p><p>16.06 On the UK front, the Bank of England's policymakers meet this week to decide whether to offer further stimulus to the British economy after last month making the surprise decision to increase the Bank's money printing programme by &pound;75bn. </p><p>Simon Ward, Henderson's chief economist, has just put out a note predicting that the Governor, Sir Mervyn King, and the rest of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) could go for more easing on Thursday. His closely-watched model of the decision-making process, the "MPC-ometer", was right last time: </p><p>The model is again at odds with the consensus this month, judging incoming news to be consistent with further MPC easing. This could be in the form of a &pound;25-50 billion rise in the current gilt purchase programme (i.e. to &pound;100-125 billion) although a cut in Bank rate from 0.5% to 0.25% should not be ruled out. </p><p>Not that Mr Ward is an advocate of this course of action himself, commenting: The UK is not currently suffering from a shortage of liquidity so additional QE is unwarranted and carries significant medium-term inflationary risk.</p><p>16.00 It's up to Greece whether it sticks with the euro or not, says Cameron: </p><p>It's an issue that the Greeks have to decide themselves. They've been offered a deal which writes down their debts and enables them to stay in the single currency. </p><p>But he warn eurosceptics: </p><p>Countries leaving a single currency can cause all sorts of knock-on effects... it would have very real consequences for other countries including our own.</p><p>15.46 David Cameron is addressing parliament on the euro talks at the G20 summit. He said: </p><p>It's for the eurozone to support the euro - the G20 withheld specific IMF commitments because we wanted to see more action from the eurozone... The message was clear - sort yourselves out and then we will help, not the other way around. </p><p>The PM says is it essential for security and stability that the IMF has resources and says on three of the 53 countries supported by the IMF are in the eurozone. "Those who oppose increase in IMF..are not acting responsibly," he says. </p><p>Ed Millband accused him of being "complacent" for painting the G20 meeting as a success and "out of touch". </p><p>"Honestly, I don't know who writes this rubbish," replies Cameron, saying under Miliband Britain would be going to the IMF for a bailout. </p><p>15.35 Global markets have firmed amid indications Berlusconi could go. In late afternoon trading, the FTSE 100 was up 0.66pc, Frankfurt's DAX 30 gained 0.25pc and the Paris CAC 40 climbed 0.46pc and Milan's FTSE Mib rose 2.63pc. </p><p>Berlusconi is currently a defendant in three ongoing trials for bribery, tax fraud, abuse of power and paying for sex with a 17-year-old girl. </p><p>15.28 Some images from AP of stallholders and customers at a second-hand market in Rome today, where borrowing rates on Italian debt reached record highs. </p><p></p><p>. </p><p></p><p>The ECB announced this afternoon its purchases of eurozone bonds more than doubled to 9.52bn euros in the past week - taking the total holdings to 183 bn euros since buying began early last year. </p><p>15.01 It is "no wonder" there were significant "political ructions" following agreements made in Brussels last month because countries were being forced to take actions that had been "ducked" for years, Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said today. The DPM told Radio 4: </p><p>In a sense, if you step back for a minute, no wonder that it creates a lot of political ructions because, quite rightly, the effect of this package is to ask countries to get to grips with their debt problems, to show they have got a plan how to do that, and to show they have got a plan to create sustainable long-term growth in their economies. </p><p>That is asking governments to do big things which, arguably, in some cases, they have ducked for a very long time.</p><p>14.54 Evangelos Venizelos, the Greek finance minister, met Olli Rehn, the EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner today following the unity government talks and had a "positive and productive discussion." </p><p>"The subject of talks were the procedures for the timely disbursement of the sixth loan tranche and the start of negotiations on the new (rescue) programme ... and preparations of the new scheme for the private sector's involvement (PSI)," Venizelos' office said in a statement. </p><p></p><p>Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos leaves a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels today.</p><p>14.27 Industrial production in Germany fell by a sharper-than-expected 2.7pc month-on-month in September - an indication growth is sagging in Europe's biggest economy. Economists had forecast a fall of 0.9pc. </p><p>Over Q3, growth was up 1.7pc on the previous three months. </p><p>14.21 Greece must stick to its bailout plan obligations regardless of its domestic turmoil, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble insisted today. He said: </p><p>Whatever will happen, Greece has to stick to what has been agreed. With a new government, with an old government, with new elections or a referendum or not... We can bide time for them but to regain their sustainability, to regain their competitiveness, that has to be delivered by Greece in one way or another.</p><p>He stressed though that eurozone leaders needed to "pay respect to the burden the Greek people have to take. It is not fair what is going on in the Greek society ... but we can't avoid it." </p><p>14.05 It's not just Italy which is getting a hard time today - Bruno Waterfield reports that Portugal, another bail-out recipient, has had a visit from the troika heavy mob, aka the IMF, the ECB and the EU. He tweets: </p><p> Troika officials arrived in Portugal today after govt called for 'understanding' on its plea for austerity terms to be relaxed</p><p>13.50 UK house prices could take a big hit from a worsening eurozone debt crisis. </p><p>Pete Redfern, chief executive of housebuilder Taylor Wimpey, said 10pc could be wiped off house prices should the debt crisis turn into a banking crisis which affects the UK. He said: </p><p> The worse case scenario &hellip; is that a problem in Europe causes a UK banking problem. While the underlying housing market is strong, if there was a withdrawal of banking finance obviously that would be negative.</p><p>13.40 Can Berlusconi hang on to power? Vote below: </p><p></p><p></p><p>13.30 Euro nations must "cede a little bit of authority, budgetary sovereignty" to overcome the crisis, Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director said. </p><p>&ldquo;Critical decisions&rdquo; have been made by the European Union to resolve the crisis,&rsquo;&rsquo; Lagarde said in speech at Moscow&rsquo;s State University of the Ministry of Finance. Ceding some sovereignty is required implement the deal &ldquo;to the benefit of the global economy as a whole.&rdquo; </p><p>She said the IMF may revise down global growth figures, she said. "The economy in general is in a dangerous and uncertain phase. There is clearly a darkening outlook, rising risks.&rdquo; </p><p></p><p>IMF managing director Christine Lagarde with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the Kremlin today.</p><p>13.20 Two remarkable stats from the ' report on the rage and paralysis stalking Athens. </p><p>Greek banks have lost $63.5bn in deposits - 20pc of GNP -, with up to $20.7bn gone in the last two months alone. Greek families are sending their life savings abroad amid fears their banks could collapse. </p><p>As families cut back, the number of uninsured drivers has risen by 500,000 in a quarter to 1.5 million. </p><p>&ldquo;I am impressed that the people have not yet stormed into Parliament and burned the politicians alive &mdash; like a ," said one interviewee. </p><p>13.09 Bruno Waterfield in Brussels reports that t as they realise that hard-won bailout fund may not be big enough. </p><p>Eurogroup finance ministers will hold an emergency meeting on 17 Nov amid problems with the eurozone's bailout fund the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). </p><p>After this evening&rsquo;s meeting, the next finance ministerial had been on 29 Nov but there are growing concerns that the EFSF is not going to be big enough. </p><p>There are big problems with &ldquo;putting the flesh on the bones&rdquo; of the 27 Oct deal to leverage the EFSF to &euro;1trillion as well as awful realisation that the fund needs to be two or three times larger. </p><p>A plan to leverage &euro;250 billion of the EFSF to supply first loss insurance of 20-25pc on Italian and Spanish bonds is now &ldquo;not looking big enough&rdquo; amid some, as yet unspecified, technical problems. </p><p>You can read here. </p><p>13.00 This graph shows just how keen markets are to wave goodbye to Berlusconi. Italy&rsquo;s benchmark share index, the FTSE MIB, surged this morning on the rumours that he was about to resign - before dropping back as he denied the chatter. But the index is still about 2pc up, suggesting people are not convinced by the official line. </p><p></p><p>Stat of the day: Silvio Berlusconi has survived 51 confidence votes in the Italian Parliament. </p><p>12.50 Goodbye G-Pap, hello L-Pap?</p><p>The likely interim prime minister of Greece is likely to be Lucas Papademos, a former European Central Bank vice-president, according to the head of Greece's nationalist party LAOS. </p><p></p><p>George Papandreou and Lucas Papademos</p><p>"I thought I could say 'Habemus Papademos' on my way out but we don't have it yet," said George Karatzaferis during a televised exchange with Greece's president Carolos Papoulias, using a Latin phrase for the election of the Pope. </p><p>"It's being hatched," responded Papoulias. </p><p>Papademos, 64, is a highly respected economist with a good reputation internationally, says AFP. He was for many years the right-hand man of former European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet. </p><p>12.45 The BBC's Robert Peston offers a few figures to put the rise in Italy's bond yields into context: </p><p> For those of you asking, UK pays 0.5% for 1-year money, compared with 4.7% for Spain &amp; unsustainable 6.3% for Italy</p><p>12.39 Yields on ten-year US Treasury notes declined to 2.03pc this morning as concerns over the safety of Italian debt made American bonds a relative safe heaven. </p><p>&ldquo;Attention is turning from Greece to Italy,&rdquo; said Eric Wand, a fixed-income strategist at Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets in London. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s driving safe-haven flows into Treasuries and bunds."</p><p>The US Treasury will sell $32 billion of three-year notes tomorrow, $24 billion of 10-year notes on Wednesday and $16 billion of 30-year bonds on Thursday. </p><p>12.25 Here's Berlusconi's Facebook page, on which he tells his 327,594 fans: "The rumours of my resignation are groundless."</p><p></p><p>So far 272 people have 'liked' the status update. There is, it should be noted, no 'dislike' button. </p><p>12.13 Bookmakers are now offering odds of 7/2 that the euro will cease to be a currency by the end of 2012. It's 9/4 that Greece will no longer be in the Euro (meaning a &pound;50 stake will give a payout of &pound;162.50). </p><p>12.10 Morgan Stanley's Graham Secker has cut European equities to underweight - for four reasons: </p><p>1. The policy response not yet sufficient. "QE from the ECB would be the key positive game changer for stocks in our opinion," he writes. </p><p>2. Economic growth deteriorating. "Key economic indicators suggest that the Euro-zone economy is slowing with the prospect of additional austerity and bank deleveraging to come."</p><p>3. Corporate margins are falling. "Corporate profits are coming under increasing pressure from deteriorating margins."</p><p>4. Market timing indicators now less constructive - "We have seen a meaningful rise in our key market timing indicators and, although not particularly high, they are no longer in &lsquo;buy&rsquo; territory."</p><p>12.07 Regular followers of this blog will remember that on Friday, outgoing Greek PM George Papandreou said he was not resigning - and yet by Sunday evening, he had stepped down. </p><p>Not to say the Italy will follow that exact pattern of course... </p><p>12.05 Reports are now coming through from Italian news agencies that rumours of Silvio Berlusconi's resignation are "unfounded". And shares are losing their gains again... </p><p>12.00 Silvio Berlusconi's head is the price of a rescur for Italy, according to Channel 4 News's economics editor Faisal Islam. He tweets: </p><p>: I said it a fortnight ago. EFSF = End For Silvio's Fiefdom. Germany will not create Italy sized bazooka for use by Berlusconi.</p><p>11.55 European shares have clawed back some ground since reports that Silvio Berlusconi will resign came to light. </p><p>The FTSE 100 is off 0.5pc at 5,501 points, while the CAC is now trading down just 0.1pc in Paris and the German DAX is up 0.1pc. The MIB, the Italian index, is up 2.7pc in Milan. </p><p>That compares to losses of 2pc or more on the major European indices earlier in the day. </p><p>11.50 Bruno Waterfield, the Telegraph's Brussels correspondent, says doom and gloom abounds in the corridors of EU power, as officials realise countries should have agreed to bolder action in the latetst bail-out plan, agreed on October 27. </p><p>He tweets: </p><p> pessimism abounds as euro struggles to get bailout fund up to &euro;1tr while realising it really did need &euro;2tr (says gloomy official</p><p>11.42 Bankruptcy is "no longer an abstract word" for France, Prime Minister Francois Fillon has warned, following Britain with plans to cut public spending. </p><p>Mr Fillon has announced "savings" of 100 billion euros to wipe out the budget deficit by 2016. He said the country's "financial, economic and social sovereignty" required "prolonged collective efforts and even some sacrifices."</p><p>Updated: Fillon says government salaries will be frozen under a "strict balancing of public finances and called on businesses in the CAC 40, the Paris blue chip share index, to do the same, saying some executive pay is "frankly indecent". </p><p>After being elected in 2007, Sarkozy awarded himself a pay rise of 170pc to 19,000 euros a month. </p><p>11.37 Silvio Berlusconi is meeting family members in Milan to discuss whether or not he should resign. </p><p>Mr. Berlusconi will meet his children and Fedele Confalonieri, chairman of Mediaset, Italy's largest television broadcaster, which is controlled by the Berlusconi family, the Wall Street Journal reports. </p><p>He is considering going to Parliament for a critical budget vote tomorrow, which could confirm he no longer commands a majority. </p><p>Louise Armistead tweets: </p><p> Berlusconi reportedly considering resignation. WSJ says he's "meeting with family members" to discuss. Perhaps cabinet is out to lunch.</p><p>11.23 Recession in the Eurozone looks "ever more likely" in Q4 after sharp falls in Eurozone retail sales in September, according to Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight. </p><p>Sales were down 0.7pc month-on-month in September, and down 1.5pc year-on-year. Eurozone GDP growth is forecast at 0.2pc quarter on quarter in Q3 but contraction appears more likely than ever for Q4. Consumer confidence is at a 26-month low in October, while Eurozone unemployment rose 188,000 in September to record highs. </p><p>Retail sales are down 3.7pc on last month in Portugal and 1.7pc in Spain. There's no data for Greece or Italy. </p><p>"This reinforces fears that the Eurozone is headed for contraction in the fourth quarter and recession is looming," says IHS.</p><p>11.18 The Italian FTSE Mib is up 2.18pc on the rumours Berlusconi is to quit. </p><p>Meanwhile, the ECB has bought "limited amounts" of 3 to 10 year sovereign bonds, two traders have told Reuters. </p><p>11.05 Silvio Berlusconi may step down within &ldquo;hours,&rdquo; according to an article written by former minister Giuliano Ferrara in the online edition of Il Foglio, news agency Ansa reported. &ldquo;Some people say it could be minutes,&rdquo; Ferrara wrote. </p><p>Blogger and Westminster troublemaker has proposed a knees-up tonight at Battersea pizzeria . </p><p>10.55 Berlusconi to go?</p><p>, deputy editor-in-chief of Libero newspaper which has close ties to the Italian PM, has tweeted that Berlusconi is to resign tonight or tomorrow morning following a summit of the ruluing Il Popolo della Liberta party. He will announce his resignation by asking Parliament to approve a new financial stability law. </p><p>10.41 Conspiracy theories abound this morning, with speculation that the ECB is letting Italian yields soar to put pressure on Berlusconi to go. </p><p>Analysts at Citi note that the collapse of the government in Rome would be viewed as a positive development in the sovereign debt crisis. They write: </p><p>Whilst the political uncertainty is not welcomed by the markets, a Reuters&rsquo; survey of 10 fund managers showed that bond prices would recover and the yield spread over German bonds would fall by a full percentage point if Mr Berlusconi&rsquo;s government should fall.</p><p>And getting rid of Silvio would certainly be cheaper for the ECB than buying up massive amounts of Italian debt. </p><p></p><p>A demonstrator at an anti-Berlusconi rally staged by the Italian Democratic party in Rome on Saturday holds a toilet seat with the slogan 'expired.'</p><p>10.36 Another bit of news that has focused markets' attention on Italy. Yves Mersch, a member of the European Central Bank&rsquo;s governing council, gave an interview to the Italian newspaper La Stampa over the weekend in which he warned that the central bank discusses &ldquo;all the time&rdquo; the possibility of stopping its purchases of Italian government debt if it thinks Rome is not delivering its promised austerity reforms. </p><p>"If we observe that our interventions are undermined by a lack of efforts by national governments then we have to pose ourselves the problem of the incentive effect," he said. </p><p>In other words, the ECB is holding a gun to Berlusconi&rsquo;s head. </p><p>10.22 And here is why everyone&rsquo;s focused on Rome - Italian bond yields are soaring away. </p><p></p><p>The yield &ndash; the implied interest rate investors charge to hold the debt &ndash; on Italy&rsquo;s 10-year government bonds is at stratospheric levels, passing even the August highs which pushed the European Central Bank to step in and start buying up the debt. </p><p>Italy is the eurozone's third-largest economy and has debts worth 120pc of its national income. </p><p>10.18 This is George Papandreou, outgoing Greek leader, being whisked from the presidential palace in his German Mercedes after last night's unity talks with with President Karolos Papoulias and Conservative leader Antonis Samaras in Athens. </p><p>He looks pretty relieved that it's all over. </p><p></p><p>10.00 We don't yet who the new Greek prime minister will be but market analysts are firmly focused on the next big thing - Italy. </p><p>Kathleen Brooks, research director at FOREX.com, summarises the problem in a note: </p><p>Italy has taken over from Greece as the headline grabber this morning after its 10-year bond yield surged above 6.5% and is currently running into some resistance just above 6.6%. This is considered bailout territory. Italy is the world&rsquo;s third largest debtor and the Eurozone&rsquo;s third largest economy. </p><p>Italy faces a major Parliamentary debate tomorrow to pass a raft of austerity measures, which is also being considered a vote of confidence in Berlusconi. The result of this vote will be crucial for risky assets, a no vote could see Italian bond yields surge and the euro and other risky assets plummet. </p><p>Jeremy Warner blogs: </p><p>There's a vicious circle at work, whereby more austerity equals less demand, equals negative growth, equals an even bigger debt burden. Unlike Britain, there is no monetary policy and devaluation to counter the economically debilitating effect of the fiscal squeeze. With growing lack of competitiveness, Italy is in the wrong currency.</p><p>09.30 The FTSE 100 was down 1.6pc, or 87.06 points, to 5,440 by 9am. The threat of eurozone debt contagion saw investors shedding banks and miners - Barclays is down 3.7pc, RBS is down 3.5pc and Lloyds is down 4.5pc. </p><p>09.15 Italian stocks have fallen on opening 1.54pc, with some leading bank shares down between 3 and 5pc. The FTSE Mib Index stands at 15,109 points. </p><p>09.09 In the Wall Street Journal, Simon Nixon writes: </p><p>The significance of Ms. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy's Cannes declaration is immense. At a stroke, they have introduced foreign-exchange risk into a sovereign-debt market still grappling with the realization that euro-zone government bonds contain unexpected credit risk. Worse, throughout the crisis, the two leaders said they will do whatever it takes to save the euro. </p><p>Yet the assurances they've given haven't been worth the paper they were written on: First, there were to be no sovereign defaults; then the first Greek haircut was a "unique situation;" the second Greek haircut followed 12 weeks later; now euro-zone exits are possible. No wonder the markets won't lend and China won't invest in Europe's bailout funds. Nothing these leaders say any longer carries any credibility.</p><p>09.05 The formation of a unity government has been met with jubilation and relief by the Greek press. </p><p>"Finally!" wrote pro-government newspaper, summing up a sense of relief throughout Greece. Praising what it called an "historic day", the paper said it was "the first major step to save the country," AFP reports. </p><p>Greece's political leaders have "laid the foundation stones for a coalition government while the eyes of the entire world were trained on the country," added the daily. </p><p>09.00 the FT's political correspondent, tweets: </p><p>Italian bond yields hit devilish high of 6.66 per cent ....be alarmed, very alarmed</p><p>08.42 Benedict Brogan reports cabinet members Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Patterson are to see Cameron today to </p><p>Danny Alexander told Jeremy Vine yesterday that the UK contribution to the IMF could go up to &pound;40bn (admittedly notional, contingent liabilities rather than hard cash). The mood on the Tory benches is hostile and resentful. They sense that Mr Cameron is willing to sink more UK cash into propping up the EU edifice. He does not get credit for protecting Britain's negotiating position when the new treaty is in play by coming to the aid of his cross-channel colleagues. </p><p>The PM was in the thick of it in Cannes, but he is now back in the UK, and has to persuade his troops that getting the wallet out is necessary, and not just so Greeks can keep driving around in expensive German cars. </p><p>There is some sign of a silver lining, however: research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research suggests than if the single currency survives the debt crisis. James Kirkup, deputy political editor, reports: </p><p>CEBR economists suggest that the demise of the euro would &ldquo;not be anything like the disaster that has been argued&rdquo;. </p><p>Freed from the constraints of the single currency, strong countries such as Germany would see their currencies gain in price in relation to the pound, boosting British exports. The economists also predict that break-up would free many eurozone members from the deficit-cutting austerity policies that threaten to subdue their growth for years. </p><p>&ldquo;If it breaks up the immediate pain is much more intense, but then there is a more stable basis and we would expect that within about 30 months growth will actually be faster than if the eurozone survives in its current form,&rdquo; CEBR said. After five years, Britain would be &ldquo;at least as well off if the euro breaks up as it would be under the alternative scenario of holding it together&rdquo;. </p><p>The CEBR view is at odds with the view of many City analysts, who predict catastrophic economic harm if the single currency falls apart.</p><p>08.39 The Greek stock market opens up more than 2pc after the deal to form a unity government. </p><p>08.35 Roger Bootle writes in today's paper that the </p><p>Now the cat is out of the bag. In future phases of this crisis, it will be impossible to pretend that the euro is necessarily forever &ndash; all for one and one for all. The seventeen musketeers may not stick together after all. This is dynamite. The monetary union may behave more like a fixed exchange rate bloc, where the markets incessantly look for signs that one or more members might leave and therefore market rates of interest embody a devaluation risk.</p><p>08.30 The European Central Bank said financial institutions in the eurozone increased their overnight deposits with it to the highest level in more than 16 months, (Bloomberg reports). </p><p>Banks parked &euro;288bn with the Frankfurt-based ECB on November 4, up from &euro;275bn on the previous day. That&rsquo;s the most since June 30, 2010. Banks also borrowed &euro;1.24bn at the marginal rate of 2.25pc, down from &euro;1.28bn euros a day earlier. </p><p>08.15 Eurozone finance ministers are meeting in Brussels this afternoon, and it is Italy that is likely to dominate the agenda, City Editor Richard Fletcher writes in his </p><p>With the yield on Italy's benchmark 10-year bonds rising to 6.39pc on Friday Italy's finance minister Giulio Tremonti, will have to explain how Rome plans to implement a list of reforms, including public asset sales, changes to employment laws and pension reform.</p><p>Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes today: the . </p><p>Italy&rsquo;s travails have little to do with the parallel drama in Greece. This is not contagion in any meaningful sense. The country is suddenly under fire for the very simple reason that its economy is plunging back into deep recession, the predicable outcome of the EU&rsquo;s 1930s fiscal and monetary contraction policies. </p><p>The implications of a eurozone double-dip are dreadful for Italy, already grappling with a chronic loss of 40pc in labour competitiveness against Germany and a 70pc collapse in foreign direct investment since 2007. </p><p>A report by Italian consultants REF Ricerche warns that Italy will remain trapped in recession through 2012 and 2013. The slump itself is causing fiscal slippage, not lack of budget rigour. &ldquo;What is sapping the credibility of Italy&rsquo;s public accounts over the medium term is lack of growth prospects,&rdquo; it said. </p><p>Italian 10-year borrowing rates rose this morning to a record 6.5pc on the bond market </p><p>08.00 London markets are now open for the day and have fallen, following Asian markets lower. </p><p>The FTSE 100 was down 0.65pc at 5,490 points shortly after opening. </p><p>07.45 After the fanfare of which by general consensus was a big disappointment - the Financial Times is reporting there could be another summit before Christmas. </p><p>Last week's meeting in Cannes ended on Friday with no decisions taken to expand the size of the eurozone bail-out fund, either by involving the International Monetary Fund or by expanding the role of the European Central Bank. </p><p>The FT says this morning that a deal failed because Germany's central bank vetoed one element of a proposed rescue package. </p><p>The plan under discussion involved IMF nations paying more into the fund, and an increase in liquidity which eurozone nations could have used to expand the bail-out fund. </p><p>If the Bundesbank can be persuaded to back this plan, then a meeting of G20 finance minsters could be called either this month or next, the newspaper said. </p><p>The G20 is not due to meet again until February, which many leaders regard as too far away when markets are so uncertain. </p><p></p><p>07.40 Many papers this morning have focused on political change in Greece. </p><p>The Telegraph: </p><p>The Times (&pound;): </p><p>The Financial Times (&pound;): </p><p>The Guardian: </p><p>07.37 The second event which could move investor sentiment on Europe today is the meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels later today. </p><p>Greece's finance minster, Evangelos Venizelos, who has been at loggerheads with Mr Papandreou, will attend the meeting. </p><p>07.35 The main piece of eurozone news today are that Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou agreed late last night to step down, as a condition of the opposition party agreein to form a national unity government, which will focus on pushing through austerity measures and ensuring Greece does not default on its loans. </p><p>Elections are now expected to be held in February. </p><p></p><p>07.30 Overnight, Asian markets have started the week lower, as they remain unsure whether Greece will be able to work itself out of its debt crisis . </p><p>Japan's Nikkei index fell 0.3pc to 8,776.25, Australia's S&amp;P/ASX 200 was 0.2pc and Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 0.2pc. </p><p>Global stock markets have been rattled for the past week over uncertainty surrounding Greece. Investors worry that a default by Athens on its debts could cripple European banks and cause fiscal strain on much larger European countries like Italy. </p><p>Over the weekend, Prime Minister George Papandreou and conservative opposition head Antonis Samaras agreed to form an interim government whose main task would be to ensure implementation of the austerity program. </p><p>Mr Papandreou will also stand down as a condition of the agreement. </p><p>Jackson Wong, vice president at Tanrich Securities in Hong Kong, said: </p><p>Italy worries are a current topic as well. Things can change quickly in Europe. Investors need to keep that in mind. </p><p>Interest rates on Italy's 10-year bonds reached a euro-era high of over 6pc last week, which Mr Wong said "is worrisome." </p><p>Italy's borrowing costs to service its enormous public debt have been rising since the summer. While central bank chief Ignazio Visco insists Italy can survive with rates of up to 8pc, the extra cost of borrowing could put the country on the kind of downward spiral that decimated Greece's balance sheet. </p><p>On Wall Street on Friday, stocks fell on concerns that Greece might not go through with a plan hammered out by European leaders that requires Greece to implement harsh austerity measures in exchange for billions of euros in financial assistance. </p><p>The Dow Jones fell 0.5pc to close the week at 11,983.24. The S&amp;P 500 index fell 0.6 percent to 1,253.23. The Nasdaq composite shed 0.4 percent to 2,686.15. </p><p>07.20 Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage of the continuing global debt crisis. Log on throughout the day for the latest news and views. </p><p>Read all our latest news on the , or take an in-depth look at events over the past month. </p><p></p><p>&ldquo;Kagawa was involved in most of the possession tonight. He was man of the match and deserved it. He took his goal well, although it took a deflection, but he has settled in well and is going to be a very good player for us.&rdquo;</p><p>Kagawa is likely to be joined by Wayne Rooney, Nani, Ashley Young, Phil Jones, Patrice Evra and Danny Welbeck when he next plays for United, against Valerenga in Oslo on Aug 5. </p><p>The six Euro 2012 players return for pre-season training at Carrington on Thursday and Ferguson insists that they all need to play in the forthcoming warm-up games in order to be fit for the opener at on Aug 20. </p><p>He said: &ldquo;The players who start training on Thursday will certainly be involved in the games in Norway, Sweden and Hannover.&rdquo;</p><p>Nemanja Vidic, still to play since returning to training following a cruciate ligament injury, and Jonny Evans both upped their training programme at the start of this week. However, Evans, who underwent summer foot surgery, is unlikely to figure in Scandinavia. </p><p>Whether United add to their squad before the Valerenga game is yet to become clear. Despite claims by Moura&rsquo;s agent that United&rsquo;s move for the Sao Paulo youngster is off, Ferguson insisted that the club remained in the hunt for their targets. </p><p>&ldquo;We have been trying all summer to add to the squad, having already brought in Nick Powell and Kagawa,&rdquo; Ferguson said. </p><p>The United manager, meanwhile, played down concerns over Powell after withdrawing the &pound;4&thinsp;million summer signing from Crewe at half-time following a dangerous challenge by Shanghai midfielder, Shouting Wang. </p><p>Powell&rsquo;s left knee bore the brunt of Wang&rsquo;s studs, but Ferguson admitted that the youngster was substituted as a precaution. </p><p>&ldquo;I thought Powell did well,&rdquo; Ferguson said. &ldquo;It was his first game for us at 18 years-old, but he got a bad tackle, a sore one, and he felt it a bit, so we took him off.&rdquo;</p><p>United had expected to face Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka in Shanghai, but coach Sergio Batista said: &ldquo;We have an important game on Saturday, so it was decided that those who will start that match would not play against United, plus Didier is also still being troubled by a back problem.&rdquo; </p>Evgeny Lebedev deplores Russian oligarchs who "came in from the wild." Evgeny Lebedev, the 29-year-old Russian philanthropist, boyfriend of Joely Richardson and close friend of Andy Wong, Robert Hanson and Kevin Spacey, has purchased with his father Alexander a new boutique hotel in Umbria &ndash; he already oversees the eight bedroom Palazzo Terranova &ndash; which he says will open in two years. He is taking an interest in every detail of the hotel's decor.<p>Now, hugely powerful and lusting again after the elixir of perpetual life, he's heading for the Himalayas in the company of rebel Chinese soldiers who hope he will unify their divided nation. Only the O'Connells, aided by the svelte tomb guardian Lin (Isabella Leong) and their louche, wisecracking pal Jonathan Carnahan (John Hannah), can save humanity.</p> <p>The film is either very timely or very canny in its release date. With the world's eyes on Beijing and the Olympics, the producers have managed to hustle as many elements of Chinese culture and history as possible into the story: feng shui, kung fu, mystical ancient knowledge, the Great Wall, terracotta armies, even noodle soup. I'm only surprised the producers didn't try to rope in Jingjing the panda for a cameo.</p> <p>Most, if not all, of this is utterly cheesy. The George Romero-like exception is the terrific scene, in conception if not entirely in execution, of Emperor Han's dead victims rising in skeletal form and attacking his battalions. They shuffle and scamper, rickety and smeared with maggots and earth, tottering but righteous representatives of a nation's brutalised consciousness: it's a striking image.</p> <p>The film is as relentlessly paced as you might expect from director Rob Cohen, whose previous movies include xXx and The Fast and the Furious. Working from a screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, he piles on the car chases, explosions, avalanches and chopsocky face-offs with gleeful, more-is-better relish.</p> <p> The results are noisy and silly - yaks throwing up inside a chopper; Jonathan yelling, "Die, you mummy bastards, die!" They're also violent; I was surprised by the scene in which Rick, hopeless at flyfishing, manages to land a hook in his own neck. Elsewhere, there are shots of (clay) horses being decapitated, and one of the Emperor with his face on fire that had me wincing. The Mummy should be about thrills, not gruesome wounds.</p> <p>As Rick, Fraser still looks absurdly young, barely older than his teenage son. He has pronounced pectorals, wears attractive sweaters, and seems more like a brother than a husband to his wife. He also looks a little bored, as if he knows the franchise is running out of steam.</p> <p>Not so Bello. Making the most of her chance to play against anguished type, she clings as if for life to her fruity accent, and exults in wielding weaponry and kicking tyrannical ass. She seems to be having almost as much fun as a delightfully hammy John Hannah, who knows it won't be every film in which he gets to cry, "There's a mummy on the loose!" with a straight face.</p> <p>It's not hard to pick holes in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Great actors such as Yeoh and Wong deserve more screen time, and poor ones - such as Luke Ford - far less. The dialogue could have been written by a 10-year-old. The plot is so laughable that one barely bats an eyelid when a gang of abominable snowmen pop up from nowhere to grimace and lunge.</p> <p>In fact, I can think of almost nothing good to say about the film, except that I enjoyed it immensely. It has a garish, deranged energy and a toothsome, knockabout humour that recalls Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids movies, and certainly outstrips and outcharms the last Indiana Jones outing.</p> Death Defying Acts <p> <br>PG cert, 96 min</p> <p>Death Defying Acts, directed by Gillian Armstrong, who also made Little Women (1994) and Oscar and Lucinda (1997), is a what-if historical drama set in 1920s Edinburgh. A frizzy-haired Guy Pearce plays the escapologist Harry Houdini, who, having been haunted by the death of his mother for years, has offered a reward for anyone able to tell him her final words.</p> <p>Among the crooks and money-grubbers who roll up to claim the money are Mary McGarvie (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her young daughter Benji (Saoirse Ronan), who live in a graveyard and perform in music halls as a double act in which they dress up as an Egyptian dancer and a blacked-up Aladdin. Soon, much to the dismay of Houdini's manager (Timothy Spall), the illusionist finds himself falling for the woman who's out to rip him off. Or is she also falling for him?</p> <p>Written by Tony Grisoni and Brian Ward, the film is constantly pulling in two separate directions. As a love story, it doesn't work: there's not enough spark or glow between Pearce and Zeta-Jones. It's far more effective as a slippery, feinting battle of wits between two crafty illusionists.</p> <p>Death Defying Acts looks gorgeous, too much so at times, making effective use of the Scottish capital's Gothic back streets. It confirms Ronan as one of the most beguiling young actresses around. And while less magical than The Prestige, it's perfectly charming matin&eacute;e fare.</p><p>Victoria Beckham</p><p>SPICE GIRL TURNED FASHION DESIGNER </p><p>Leading the way, as ever, is WAG Queen Bee &shy;Victoria Beckham. After an unwise attempt to relaunch her singing career she made the sensible decision to play to her strengths and mutate from clothes horse to clothes designer and style adviser. Her book was published in 2007 in hardback and in a handbag edition. </p><p>No surprise there. The real revelation is that it's actually rather good. "This book isn't my attempt to tell you what or what not to do. It's just to share some of what I've learned," she says. This includes advice on must-have purchases, dressing for special occasions and accessorising. Victoria takes it all as seriously as you'd expect from a woman who wouldn't even be parted from her high heels to pitch the opening ball at an LA Dodgers baseball game. "I've never been one of those people who tries to make a statement by looking really scruffy," she says. "There is no question that the price to pay for high heels is a painful one." </p><p>The success of Victoria's fashion label DVB gives her even more credibility as a style adviser. True, these aren't clothes for everyday women, but fashionistas who once scoffed are now snapping up her elegant and ladylike frocks despite (or maybe because of) their four-figure price tags. </p><p>Beckham has become something of a fixture at Vogue, both on the cover and on the fashion pages. Her recent second catwalk collection garnered widespread acclaim and another glossy fashion bible, Harper's Bazaar, recently hosted a glittering dinner in her honour, attended by fashion industry A-listers including Natalie Massenet, who has just sold her share of Net-a-Porter for &pound;50million, and Joan Bernstein of the Browns boutiques. </p><p><br><br>Cheryl Cole </p><p>POP STARLET TO VOGUE COVER GIRL </p><p>The nation's sweetheart. Mrs Beckham's former prot&eacute;g&eacute;e Cheryl Cole had secured herself the title of Nation's Perfectly Groomed Sweetheart even before the recent announcement of her split from philandering husband Ashley. Her life in the media began as a pop starlet with band Girls Aloud, and she shot to A-list stardom as a judge on The X Factor before forging a successful solo singing career. When it comes to style advice, Cheryl is more of a do-as-I-say, not what-I-do kind of girl. There was a brief furore when it emerged that her bouffant mane relied as much on hair extensions as the bodifying shampoo she was promoting for L'Or&eacute;al. </p><p>But by and large the Pocket Princess can do no wrong. She's bagged a deal with Transworld for her first book, amid reports of a &pound;5million bidding war, as well as contracts with Kit Kat and Coke Zero. Rival fashion houses, including Cavalli, are also rumoured to be wooing her with their cheque books. She even has her own section on the Vogue website devoted to her choice of frocks (from Jean-Paul Gaultier to Alexander Wang) called "Cheryl Cole's X Factor Style". </p><p>Cheryl is yet to write a style guide but she does occasionally offer up advice (albeit via an unattributed source online): "As long as your hair's looking good and you've got a nice amount of make-up on&hellip; you've just got to throw your man on the bed and hop on."</p><p>Coleen Rooney</p><p>FROM GIRL NEXT DOOR TO STYLE ICON </p><p>Once pilloried as a vacuous professional shopper with what Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman described as an "an ill-advised passion for the colour pink", Coleen wasn't always a glamour-puss. "Juicy Couture trackies are always my favourite lounging outfits. I know they are not the most flattering things, but I'm not too fussed," she writes. Since then she has spruced up her act and amassed a huge personal fortune (reportedly over &pound;8 million). This has come from a varied portfolio of interests, including campaigns for Nike and George at Asda, the ITV series Coleen's Real Women and even an exercise DVD. </p><p>Apparently she only got &pound;2 million for her publishing deal with HarperCollins, but factor in her make-up and perfume line (available from Argos), and she should be able to afford her own Herm&egrave;s Birkin bags for quite some time to come. "If I had to choose between bags and shoes (although I hope I never do) I'd say that big bags are my big thing," she says. </p><p>Her fashion and style guide, Coleen's Real Style, mischievously nicknamed "Chuckle at a Chav" in advance of publication, turns out to be refreshingly down-to-earth. She acknowledges her passion for designer clobber, but also loves to shop for clutch bags in Accessorize and adores Topshop ("Who doesn't?"). She has cleverly carved a career as a professional girl next door. Her detractors have found themselves checkmated. </p><p><br><br>TIPS FROM THE WAGERATI</p><p> WHAT'S HOT </p><p>WHAT'S NOT </p><p> "I think that you, much more than me, need Wayne Rooney. He is the golden boy of English football, so don't kill him." <br> Eriksson parts with words of wisdom. </p> <p> "I certainly didn't call him a terrorist &ndash; I am ignorant, I don't even know what an Islamic terrorist is." <br> Italy's Marco Materrazi responds to claims over what sparked Zinedine Zidane's butt in the World Cup final. </p> <p> ASHES </p> <p>"That first ball gave everyone on our team a lift." <br> Australia captain Ricky Ponting on that notorious opening ball in Brisbane. </p> <p>"They'll all be going home with depression."<br> Former Australian bowler Jeff Thomson after Marcus Trescothick returned home from the tour. </p> <p>"I have never experienced such a sense of loss after a cricket match and I hope I never feel that bad ever again." <br> England captain Andrew Flintoff after his side's humiliating defeat at Adelaide. </p> <p>"I think the Ashes are now back where they belong." <br> Australia fast bowler Glenn McGrath after they defeated England in Perth. </p> <p> "I just close my eyes and wang it down anyway, so there's not much planning there." <br> England's Matthew Hoggard gives a telling insight after the team's bowling plans for the fourth Test were leaked to the media. </p> <p>"When we find out who it was we'll be stringing them up by their ding-dang-doos and chopping them off." <br> Hoggard again. </p> <p> RYDER CUP </p> <p>"People have been asking me what the Irish &ndash; in one word &ndash; will bring to the Ryder Cup. Alcohol. And if I could just add something to that &ndash; plenty of it!" <br> Paul McGinley prepares himself for a party. </p> <p> "I'll never forget the reception I was given on the first tee &mdash; Lee Westwood, Phil Mickelson and Chris DiMarco giving me hugs too. It was a very, very special moment, very touching." <br> Darren Clarke, whose wife had recently died from cancer, after an emotional first day at the K Club. </p> <p> "Can I just give this team a bit of deodorant, a quick clean, a fresh shirt and take them over to America with me now?" <br> The next European captain, Nick Faldo, to Ian Woosnam. </p> <p> THE REST </p> <p>"The strain on my groin from years of bashing balls around needed to be changed." <br> Jonny Wilkinson on why he changed his kicking technique. </p> <p> "No, I was having a s**t." <br> Kimi Raikkonen when asked &ndash; live on TV &ndash; whether he'd seen Michael Schumacher's farewell ceremony before the Brazilian GP. </p> <p>"For the avoidance of doubt, Schumacher is a cheating bastard,"<br> ITV co-commentator Martin Brundle on the German's antics in strategically stopping his car during qualifying at Monaco. </p> <p>"I called him 'Mopey Murray' back at the French Open and Wimbledon. Just whining and moping. He still whines but he's sort of more positive about it." <br> US Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe on Murray. </p> <p>"They are always trying to get me into something I couldn't get one boob in, let alone my arse." <br> Badminton's Gail Emms, Olympic silver medallist, struggles with sponsors' demands. </p> <p> FOOTBALL </p> <p>"These days, our opponents are quaking in their boots when they look at our line-up."<br> France defender William Gallas, the day before they were beaten 1-0 by Scotland. </p> <p>"I not only like to have the TV and light on to help me sleep, but also a vacuum cleaner. Failing that, a fan or a hairdryer will do. I've ruined so many hairdryers by letting them burn out. So far I haven't set fire to anywhere." <br> A disturbing insight into the world of Wayne Rooney. </p> <p>"I thought 'that's a sweet connection, I never even felt it touch my foot'. And then I've looked round and it's in the back of the net." <br> England goalkeeper Paul Robinson on that own-goal howler in Croatia. </p> <p>"People just looked lost. Too many players looked like fish on trees." <br> Former England striker Paul Merson on the defeat. </p> <p>"The worst thing about playing Chelsea is having to listen to Mourinho afterwards." <br> Barcelona defender Edmilson speaks for the people. </p> <p>"There was one point when Puskas cut back inside Billy Wright and took him so far out of the game he had to pay three and six to get back into the ground!" <br> Sir Alex Ferguson pays tribute to Hungarian legend Ferenc Puskas, who died this year. </p> <p>"Football's a difficult business and aren't they prima donnas?" <br> The Queen passes comment while bestowing a knighthood on Premier League chairman Sir David Richards. </p> <p>"I expected abuse, but I also got a hamburger. And about &pound;4.50 in change." <br> Manchester United defender Gary Neville enjoys another trip to Anfield. </p> <p>"The FA have opened a real can of worms, except there are no worms in it." <br> Football agent Eric Hall on the bungs inquiry. </p> <p>"It's 60-40 against him being fit, but he's got half a chance." <br> A classic from Glenn Hoddle, then Wolves manager. </p> <p>"Before the match my daughter said: 'Beenie the horse wants to sit next to you on the touchline.' It's difficult to tell a seven-year-old: 'This is the Premiership, I'm known as Psycho and I'm a hard man.'" <br> Stuart Pearce, Manchester City manager. </p> <p>"You're forever blowing doubles." <br> Liverpool fans to their Chelsea counterparts at the final whistle of their FA Cup semi-final. </p> <p>"Sometimes I dive, sometimes I stand. But I don't care about this. In football you can't stay up all the time." <br> Chelsea striker Didier Drogba. </p> <p>"I couldn't be more chuffed if I were a badger at the start of the mating season." <br> An Ian Holloway special, after his QPR side defeated Cardiff. </p> <p> "I've just been to the Vatican in Rome. I loved that Pristine Chapel." <br> The legendary Sir Bobby Robson, friend of quotes compilers everywhere. </p><p>John Pink and Rick Peacock took silver in the 49er skiff class, while Paul Campbell-James and Mark Asquith, who won gold in Melbourne had a disappointing end to their regatta, finishing in fourth place.</p><p>The introduction of women's match racing in the 2012 Games has shifted the focus on the performances of British team Lucy Macgregor, Annie Lush and Ally Martin who put in an excellent display in Miami by winning all but three of their preliminary matches to qualify them for the knockout stages.</p><p>Macgregor, currently ranked fifth in the women's world match racing rankings, missed out to world number four Lotte Meldgaard Pedersen in the semi-final, but clinched bronze over Genevieve Tulloch's team in the Petit-Final.</p><p>John Robertson, Hannah Stodel and stand-in crew Alex Wang-Hansen were back in winning form following their disappointments in Qingdao with a resounding win in the Sonar class.</p><p>They counted all top three finishes from their 12 races to claim victory by nine points over American team Paul Callahan, Roger Cleworth and Tom Brown.</p><p>"After the disappointment of Qingdao, it's good to get back into winning form again," said Robertson.</p><p>The next event in the ISAF Sailing World Cup is the Princess Sofia Trophy (4-10 April) in Palma Majorca with the series reaching its climax at the Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy in September.</p><p></p><p>Henin-Hardenne romped through the next two games to set up a final today with Anastasia Myskina, who beat Svetlana Kuznetsova, her fellow Russian, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4.</p> <p>The semi-final quartet have Australian, US and French Open titles between them, but no Wimbledon crown. If Henin-Hardenne continues in yesterday's form she will soon put that right.</p> Men's draw (1) Roger Federer (Swi) (1) v Richard Gasquet (Fra) (2) Robin Soderling (Swe) v Tim Henman (Gbr) (3) Nicolas Mahut (Fra) v Jurgen Melzer (Aut) (4) Jiri Novak (Cze) v Kristof Vliegen (Bel) (30) (5) Tommy Haas (Ger) (19) v Jiri Vanek (Cze) (6) Carlos Berlocq (Arg) v Richard Bloomfield (Gbr) (7) Wayne Arthurs (Aus) v Fabrice Santoro (Fra) (8) Jan Hernych (Cze) v Tomas Berdych (Cze) (13) (9) Tommy Robredo (Spa) (11) v Simon Greul (Ger) (10) Paul Goldstein (USA) v Novak Djokovic (Ser) (11) Potito Starace (Ita) v Mikhail Youzhny (Rus) (12) Igor Kunitsyn (Rus) v Gael Monfils (Fra) (21) (13) Paradorn Srichaphan (Tha) (29) v Agustin Calleri (Arg) (14) Ivo Karlovic (Cro) v Stanislas Wawrinka (Swi) (15) Davide Sanguinetti (Ita) v Kevin Kim (USA) (16) Nicolas Almagro (Spa) v Mario Ancic (Cro) (7) (17) David Nalbandian (Arg) (4) v Wesley Moodie (Rsa) (18) Albert Portas (Spa) v Arnaud Clement (Fra) (19) Benjamin Becker (Ger) v Juan Ignacio Chela (Arg) (20) Vincent Spadea (USA) v Fernando Verdasco (Spa) (28) (21) Juan Carlos Ferrero (Spa) (24) v Fernando Vicente (Spa) (22) Roko Karanusic (Cro) v Rainer Schuettler (Ger) (23) Xavier Malisse (Bel) v Benedikt Dorsch (Ger) (24) Frank Dancevic (Can) v Radek Stepanek (Cze) (14) (25) Thomas Johansson (Swe) (12) v Jonas Bjorkman (Swe) (26) Florent Serra (Fra) v Lukas Dlouhy (Cze) (27) Stefano Galvani (Ita) v Alexander Waske (Ger) (28) Daniele Bracciali (Ita) v Dominik Hrbaty (Svk) (20) (29) Paul-Henri Mathieu (Fra) (32) v Mark Philippoussis (Aus) (30) Max Mirnyi (Blr) v Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo (Spa) (31) Oliver Marach (Aut) v Yeu-Tzuoo Wang (Tpe) (32) Kristian Pless (Den) v James Blake (USA) (8) (33) Lleyton Hewitt (Aus) (6) v Filippo Volandri (Ita) (34) Flavio Saretta (Bra) v Hyung Taik Lee (Kor) (35) Albert Montanes (Spa) v Tomas Zib (Cze) (36) Gilles Muller (Lux) v Olivier Rochus (Bel) (26) (37) David Ferrer (Spa) (23) v Simon Stadler (Ger) (38) Ivo Minar (Cze) v Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (Spa) (39) Greg Rusedski (Gbr) v Marat Safin (Rus) (40) Luis Horna (Per) v Fernando Gonzalez (Chi) (41) Sebastien Grosjean (Fra) (15) v Gilles Simon (Fra) (42) Jamie Delgado (Gbr) v Michael Berrer (Ger) (43) Marcel Granollers-Pujol (Spa) v Andrei Pavel (Rom) (44) Alan Mackin (Gbr) v Marcos Baghdatis (Cyp) (18) (45) Nicolas Massu (Chi) (31) v Andrew Murray (Gbr) (46) Bjorn Phau (Ger) v Julien Benneteau (Fra) (47) Robin Vik (Cze) v Florian Mayer (Ger) (48) Janko Tipsarevic (Ser) v Andy Roddick (USA) (3) (49) Ivan Ljubicic (Cro) (5) v Feliciano Lopez (Spa) (50) Justin Gimelstob (USA) v Christophe Rochus (Bel) (51) Alessio Di Mauro (Ita) v Alberto Martin (Spa) (52) Danai Udomchoke (Tha) v Dmitry Tursunov (Rus) (27) (53) Jarkko Nieminen (Fin) (22) v Marcos Daniel (Bra) (54) Dick Norman (Bel) v Martin Lee (Gbr) (55) Razvan Sabau (Rom) v Phillip Kohlschreiber (Ger) (56) Alejandro Falla (Col) v Nikolay Davydenko (Rus) (9) (57) Gaston Gaudio (Arg) (16) v Jean-Christophe Faurel (Fra) (58) Alexander Peya (Aut) v Irakli Labadze (Geo) (59) Melle Van Gemerden (Ned) v Joshua Goodall (Gbr) (60) Mardy Fish (USA) v Robby Ginepri (USA) (61) Andre Agassi (USA) (25) v Boris Pashanski (Ser) (62) Andreas Seppi (Ita) v Jamie Baker (Gbr) (63) Yen-Hsun Lu (Tpe) v Robert Kendrick (USA) (64) Alex Bogdanovic (Gbr) v Rafael Nadal (Spa) (2) Women's draw (1) Amelie Mauresmo (Fra) (1) v Ivana Abramovic (Cro) (2) Michaella Krajicek (Ned) v Samantha Stosur (Aus) (3) Jarmila Gajdosova (Svk) v Nicole Pratt (Aus) (4) Mariana Diaz-Oliva (Arg) v Tatiana Golovin (Fra) (29) (5) Ana Ivanovic (Ser) (19) v Emmanuelle Gagliardi (Swi) (6) Marta Domachowska (Pol) v Sarah Borwell (Gbr) (7) Mashona Washington (USA) v Julia Schruff (Ger) (8) Jill Craybas (USA) v Dinara Safina (Rus) (14) (9) Anastasia Myskina (Rus) (9) v Cara Black (Zim) (10) Martina Muller (Ger) v Kaia Kanepi (Est) (11) Clarisa Fernandez (Arg) v Conchita Martinez-Granados (Spa) (12) Su-Wei Hsieh (Tpe) v Anabel Medina Garrigues (Spa) (23) (13) Jelena Jankovic (Ser) (26) v Lourdes Dominguez Lino (Spa) (14) Julia Vakulenko (Ukr) v Vania King (USA) (15) Lisa Raymond (USA) v Yaroslava Shvedova (Rus) (16) Bethanie Mattek (USA) v Venus Williams (USA) (6) (17) Maria Sharapova (Rus) (4) v Anna Smashnova (Isr) (18) Ashley Harkleroad (USA) v Jelena Kostanic (Cro) (19) Laura Pous Tio (Spa) v Melinda Czink (Hun) (20) Amy Frazier (USA) v Mara Santangelo (Ita) (32) (21) Shahar Peer (Isr) v Yuliana Fedak (Ukr) (22) Eleni Daniilidou (Gre) v Shuai Peng (Chn) (23) Maret Ani (Est) v Laura Granville (USA) (24) Sandra Kloesol (Ger) v Flavia Pennetta (Ita) (16) (25) Francesca Schiavone (Ita) (11) v Melanie South (Gbr) (26) Shenay Perry (USA) v Kristina Barrois (Ger) (27) Anastassia Rodionova (Rus) v Emilie Loit (Fra) (28) Sybille Bammer (Aut) v Nathalie Dechy (Fra) (22) (29) Elena Likhovtseva (Rus) (25) v Stephanie Foretz (Fra) (30) Tian Tian Sun (Chn) v Nathalie Vierin (Ita) (31) Meghann Shaughnessy (USA) v Katerina Bondarenko (Ukr) (32) Sania Mirza (Ind) v Elena Dementieva (Rus) (7) (33) Patty Schnyder (Swi) (8) v Antonella Serra-Zanetti (Ita) (34) Anastasia Yakimova (Blr) v Severine Bremond (Fra) (35) Hana Sromova (Cze) v Virginia Ruano Pascual (Spa) (36) Emma Laine (Fin) v Gisela Dulko (Arg) (31) (37) Ai Sugiyama (Jpn) (18) v Naomi Cavaday (Gbr) (38) Vera Dushevina (Rus) v Akiko Morigami (Jpn) (39) Tathiana Garbin (Ita) v Katie O'Brien (Gbr) (40) Olga Savchuk (Ukr) v Martina Hingis (Swi) (12) (41) Daniela Hantuchova (Svk) (15) v Maria Elena Camerin (Ita) (42) Kirsten Flipkens (Bel) v Jamea Jackson (USA) (43) Alicia Molik (Aus) v Yung-Jan Chan (Tpe) (44) Martina Sucha (Svk) v Katarina Srebotnik (Slo) (45) Anna Chakvetadze (Rus) (30) v Zi Yan (Chn) (46) Maria Antonia Sanchez-Lorenzo (Spa) v Elena Vesnina (Rus) (47) Aiko Nakamura (Jpn) v Ekaterina Bychkova (Rus) (48) Meng Yuan (Chn) v Justine Henin-Hardenne (Bel) (3) (49) Svetlana Kuznetsova (Rus) (5) v Romina Oprandi (Swi) (50) Kveta Peschke (Cze) v Kristina Brandi (Pur) (51) Melien Tu (USA) v Vassilissa Bardina (Rus) (52) Virginie Razzano (Fra) v Na Li (Chn) (27) (53) Marion Bartoli (Fra) (24) v Camille Pin (Fra) (54) Karolina Sprem (Cro) v Anne Keothavong (Gbr) (55) Ivana Lisjak (Cro) v Katerina Bondarenko (Ukr) (56) Klara Koukalova (Cze) v Nicole Vaidisova (Cze) (10) (57) Anna-Lena Groenefeld (Ger) (13) v Tzvetana Pironkova (Bul) (58) Agnieska Radwanska (Pol) v Victoria Azarenka (Blr) (59) Catalina Castano (Col) v Tamarine Tanasugarn (Tha) (60) Shinobu Asagoe (Jpn) v Maria Kirilenko (Rus) (17) (61) Sofia Arvidsson (Swe) (28) v Eva Birnerova (Cze) (62) Jie Zheng (Chn) v Iveta Benesova (Cze) (63) Viktoria Kutuzova (Ukr) v Lilia Osterloh (USA) (64) Vera Zvonareva (Rus) v Kim Clijsters (Bel) (2)<p></p><p>This members-only website sells big-name fashion, homeware and beauty products for up to 70pc off. </p><p>Sales this month have included Cath Kidston, Le Creuset, Aquascutum, Converse and Jimmy Choo. </p><p>You can sign up free of charge and access up to 20 live sales at a time. Never miss a sale by downloading the Brandalley app for your iPhone or following the site on Twitter @brandalley. </p><p>Refer a friend and earn &pound;10 when they make a purchase. Estimated delivery times vary between two and 28 days. </p><p></p><p>Set up by the founder of cult shopping website Asos.com, Achica.com is a luxury lifestyle site that sells homeware and fashion for up to 70pc off. </p><p>Sales this month have included Alfresco, Nigella Lawson, YSL and Missoni. </p><p>Membership is free and members receive regular emails to let them know about forthcoming sales and promotions. </p><p>Follow the site on Twitter @Achica. Invite your friends to join and receive a &pound;5 voucher when they make their first purchase. For an exclusive offer for Telegraph readers see main section. </p><p></p><p>Cocosa is an invitation-only website where each week different designers offer up to 80pc off clothing and accessories. </p><p>Sales this month have included Nicole Farhi, Halston Heritage, Zac Posen and Calvin Klein. </p><p>It's free to join, but you do need an invitation from a friend who is already a member &ndash; your friend will get a &pound;15 voucher when you make your first purchase. </p><p>If you don't know anyone who has signed up, you can join the waiting list on the website, but it will only take a few days for your account to be activated. You can get a sneak peak of what's on offer if you follow the retailer on Twitter @cocosa. </p><p>Delivery can range from two to three working days to as much as 21-28 days. </p><p></p><p>According to Secret Sales, a designer lifestyle is more attainable than you might think. This websites offers discounts of up to 70pc off fashion, beauty and homeware products. </p><p>Fashion sales this month have included Moschino, Hugo Boss, Marc by Marc Jacobs and Guess. </p><p>You only need to register your email to join and will receive daily emails alerts to keep you up to date on sales and promotions. Orders normally take around 10 days to be delivered. </p><p></p><p>Brought to you by the company behind Net-a-porter.com, the Outnet sells big designer names, but at a fraction of the price. Recent sales have included Donna Karan, Alexander Wang and Calvin Klein. </p><p>Sign up to the site for free and get email alerts about the sales. </p><p>Start by using Philips Lumea for around 4-5 sessions on your legs, underarms and bikini line. After the first treatment, you should notice some hair beginning to fall out. If you continue to treat the area every 2-4 weeks, the hair will grow back thinner and could eventually disappear completely. This will leave you with permanently silky smooth hair-free skin so you can dare to bare whenever you feel like it. </p><p>When optimum hair loss has been achieved, create a high shine look on your legs by mixing Palmers Coco Butter and a pea-sized amount of Vitamin E oil to create a luscious lengthening effect. This will help to moisturise your skin (especially in the summer heat), and replenish any dry skin cells, making your legs look shinier and longer than a catwalk model&rsquo;s. </p><p>All that&rsquo;s left to do now is throw on your outfit and strut you stuff with confidence, whether you&rsquo;re in Paris, New York or your home town. </p><p></p><p>Philips Lumea is available from , and for &pound;399. Visit for more information. </p>Evgeny Zimin of Russia, Sharath Gayakwad of India, Rudy Garcia-Tolson of USA and Jiachao Wang of China look on after competing in the Men's 100m Butterfly S8 HeatsPicture: ALEX BROADWAY/SWPIX.COM<p>However to perfect this overall look we must first need to set aside the outfit and pay direct attention to personal preening. Keeping legs bronzed with a clear sheen is not as easy as it seems, and to pull off this look you'll need to pay direct attention to the leg follicles, underarm hair and bikini area to boot. </p><p>You can start by waxing leg hair, but for less red patches, quicker timing and more sheen I would advise something more subtle such as the Philips Lumea which can again be used in all three areas. The Lumea - which looks like a kitsch mini portable hairdryer - covers all skin tones ranging from white to dark brown, and hair colours (from dark blonde to black). It's IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) treatment gently blasts the follicles at the root quickly and safely, drying out moisture so that the hairs start to come back thinner and smaller and eventually stop altogether. </p><p>The Lumea does require and works best around a ten-week treatment (on legs) but then you are really hair-free forever and will be just in time for your spring/summer look - stress (and hair) free. </p><p>For a finishing result to your legs and to achieve a high shine look for less then why not opt for Palmers Coco Butter and a pea sized amount of Vitamin E oil to create a luscious lengthening effect. This will help moisturise your skin (especially in the summer heat) and replenish any dry skin cells providing you with a lengthening effect on legs that are shinier and longer than catwalk model. </p><p>Philips Lumea available online at Boots and Amazon.co.uk for &pound;399. </p><p>For more information on the Philips Lumea visit </p><p></p><p>Links to products </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The 38 year-old narrowly missed 12ft birdie putts on the 16th and par-three island green 17th to all but end his bid for golf's magic number. However, he finished strongly by holing a similar length putt for birdie at the 477-yard 18th. </p><p>Westwood's headline efforts were a boost to organisers who were hit by the withdrawal of U.S. Open champion Rory McIlroy because of a viral illness last week. </p><p>First round scores in the Asian Tour Thailand Golf Championship, Amata Spring CC course, Thailand (Thai unless stated, par 72): </p><p>60 Lee Westwood (Eng) </p><p>65 John Daly (USA) </p><p>68 Gregory Bourdy (Fra), Thaworn Wiratchant </p><p>69 Chien-Soon Lu (Tpe), Charl Schwartzel (Rsa), Michael Thompson (USA), Kodai Ichihara (Jpn), Antonio Lascuna (Phi), Adam Groom (Aus), Jbe Kruger (Rsa), Scott Hend (Aus), Chris Rodgers (Eng), Simon Dyson (Eng), Kwanchai Tannin </p><p>70 Panuwat Muenlek, Gaganjeet Bhullar (Ind), Seuk-Hyun Baek (Kor), Miles Tunnicliff (Eng), Tommy Fleetwood (Eng), Ryo Ishikawa (Jpn), Thongchai Jaidee, Ter-Chang Wang (Tpe), Zhiqun Lam (Sin), Sung Lee (Kor), Tim Stewart (Aus) </p><p>71 Hyun-Bin Park (Kor), Keith Horne (Rsa), Joong-Kyung Mo (Kor), Jeev Milkha Singh (Ind), Prayad Marksaeng, Sattaya Supupramai, Thanyakon Khrongpha, Ross Bain (Sco), Alex Cejka (Ger), Charley Hoffman (USA), Tetsuji Hiratsuka (Jpn), Darren Clarke (NIrl), Atthaphon Prathummanee, Guido Van Der Valk (Ned) </p><p>72 Tanatchant Puaktes, Rick Gibson (Can), Chih Bing Lam (Sin), Rikard Karlberg (Swe), Inn-Choon Hwang (Kor), Pelle Edberg (Swe), Mars Pucay (Phi), Kenichi Kuboya (Jpn), Marcus Both (Aus), Mark Brown (Nzl), Rahil Gangjee (Ind), Prom Meesawat, Chinnarat Phadungsil, Scott Barr (Aus), Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Thorbjorn Olesen (Den), Frankie Minoza (Phi) </p><p>73 Jonathan Moore (USA), Mardan Mamat (Sin), Daisuke Kataoka (Jpn), Kyung-Tae Kim (Kor), Jyoti Randhawa (Ind), Kunal Bhasin (Aus), Zaw Moe (Myn), Damien Mcgrane (Irl), Daisuke Maruyama (Jpn), Oliver Fisher (Eng), Tony Carolan (Aus), Chawalit Plaphol, Lian-Wei Zhang (Chn), Kalle Samooja (Fin), Michael Tran (Vie) </p><p>74 Wen-Hong Lin (Tpe), Quincy Quek (Sin), Chapchai Nirat, Shiv Kapur (Ind), Miguel Tabuena (Phi), Unho Park (Aus), S.S.P. Chowrasia (Ind), Ben Leong (Mal), Pavit Tangkamolprasert, Wei-Chih Lu (Tpe) </p><p>75 Gerry Norquist (USA), Wen-Tang Lin (Tpe), Namchok Tantipokhakul, Berry Henson (USA), Digvijay Singh (Ind), Hyung-Sung Kim (Kor), Romain Wattel (Fra), Panupol Pittayarat, Il-Hwan Park (Kor), Shaaban Hussin (Mal), Iain Steel (Mal), Stephen Dodd (Eng), Darren Beck (Aus), Niall Turner (Irl), Michio Matsumura (Jpn), Joonas Granberg (Fin) </p><p>76 Simon Yates (Sco), Ben Fox (USA), Elmer Salvador (Phi), Sergio Garcia (Spa), Somkiat Srisanga, Sukree Othman (Mal), Annop Tangkamolprasert, Juvic Pagunsan (Phi), Peter Karmis (Rsa), Angelo Que (Phi), Thammanoon Sriroj </p><p>77 Hirotaro Naito (Jpn), Hiroshi Iwata (Jpn), Shingo Katayama (Jpn), Piya Swangarunporn, Simon Griffiths (Eng), Himmat Rai (Ind), Akinori Tani (Jpn) </p><p>78 Yih-Shin Chan (Tpe), Pariya Junhasavasdikul, Chiragh Kumar (Ind), Soren Hansen (Den), Pattaraphol Khanthacha, Daniel Denison (Eng) </p><p>79 S. Siva Chandhran (Mal), Danny Chia (Mal), Michael Stewart (Sco) </p><p>80 Thitiphun Chuayprakong, John Parry (Eng), Udorn Duangdecha </p><p>82 Gavin Flint (Aus) </p><p>83 David Gleeson (Aus)</p><p>The researchers will communicate with the outside world via Internet, delayed and occasionally disrupted to imitate the effects of space travel. They will eat canned food similar to that currently offered on the International Space Station and take a shower once every 10 days - mimicking space conditions. The crew will have two days off in a week, except when emergencies are simulated.</p><p>The ESA said the crew will also regularly play video games as part of the agency's project to develop personalised software to interact with crews on future space missions.</p><p>French crewmember Romain Charles said the experiments will keep the team busy in isolation.</p><p>"It's not a jail, it's a program, an experiment," he said. "It will be hard I'm sure, but we have a target to stay here 520 days and we will achieve it."</p><p>Both Charles, 31, and Italian-Colombian Diego Urbina, 27, are engineers by training. China's Wang Yue, 26, is an employee at China's space training centre.</p><p>The 38-year old Russian captain, Alexey Sitev, has worked at the Russian cosmonaut training centre and the two other Russians, Sukhrob Kamolov, 32 and Alexander Smoleyevsky, 33 are doctors.</p><p>The Interfax news agency quoted the project's chief as saying that the European crewmembers will earn the equivalent of about $97,000 for their participation in the experiment; he declined to cite a figure for Wang.</p><p>A similar experiment in 1999-2000 at the same Moscow institute went awry when a Canadian woman complained of being forcibly kissed by a Russian team captain and said that two Russian crew members had a fist fight that left blood splattered on the walls.</p><p>Russian officials downplayed the incidents, attributing it to cultural gaps and stress.</p><p> </p><p> Joan Almon, coordinator, US Alliance for Childhood </p> <p> Angela Anning, Emeritus Professor of early childhood education, University of Leeds </p> <p> Professor Martin Ashley, Department of Education, Edgehill University </p> <p> Paul Atkinson, chair of the Guild of Psychotherapists </p> <p> Liz Attenborough, manager, Talk to Your Baby Campaign, National Literacy Trust </p> <p> Simon Baddeley Inlogov, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham </p> <p> Reg Bailey, Chief Executive, Mother&rsquo;s Union </p> <p> Sally Barnes, writer and consultant on early years education </p> <p> Ros Bayley, author and early years specialist </p> <p> Dr Teresa Belton, University of East Anglia </p> <p> John C. Beyer, director of Mediawatch UK </p> <p> Steve Biddulph, author of books on parenthood, family life and social change </p> <p> Marguerite Hunter Blair, chief executive, Play Scotland </p> <p> Arthur C. Bohart, professor emeritus in psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills </p> <p> Professor Liz Bondi, Dept Geography and Co-Director of Counselling Studies, University of Edinburgh </p> <p> Paul Bonel, head of playwork unit, skills active </p> <p> Mary Bousted, general secretary, Association of Teachers and Lecturers </p> <p> Rev David Brazier, author: Who Loves Dies Well </p> <p> Tim Brighouse, visiting professor, Institute of Education </p> <p> Pat Broadhead, Professor of Playful Learning, Leeds Metropolitan University </p> <p> Mick Brookes, general secretary, National Association of Head Teachers </p> <p> Professor Greg Brooks, University of Sheffield </p> <p> Terry Brown, consultant in PSHE </p> <p> Hannah Browne, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist </p> <p> Dr Christopher Houghton Budd, Centre for Associative Economics, Canterbury </p> <p> Brenda M. Carey, early years teacher and trainer (25 years), education consultant </p> <p> Michael A. Carey, former primary headteacher (22 years) </p> <p> Fiona Carnie, Centre for Educational Innovation, School of Education, University of Sussex </p> <p> Theresa Casey, author and chair of International Play Association (Scotland) </p> <p> Rosalind Charlesworth, professor emeritus, Weber State University, Ogden, UT </p> <p> Jean Clark, Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy </p> <p> Michael Clark, chief executive, Make Time For Children </p> <p> Christopher Clouder, Alliance for Childhood </p> <p> Anne Cooke, chartered clinical psychologist, Canterbury Christ Church University </p> <p> Paul Cooper, author, Give Us Back Our Game, and UK editor of Soccer Coaching International </p> <p> Alex Coren, department for continuing education, University of Oxford </p> <p> Mary Crowley, CEO, ParentingUK </p> <p> Professor Ian Cunningham, South Downs Learning Centre </p> <p> Jill Curtis, www.familyonwards.co.uk </p> <p> Bibiane D&rsquo;anjou, University of Montreal, Qu&eacute;bec </p> <p> Sheila Dainton, former policy adviser for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), Human Scale Education </p> <p> Professor Tricia David, Emeritus Professor of Education, Canterbury Christchurch University College </p> <p> Lydia Davies, CEO, Children&rsquo;s Country Holiday Fund </p> <p> Mike Davies, Principal, Bishops Park College, Clacton on Sea </p> <p> Juliana Dellinger-Bavolek, Co-founder of Nurturing Families, South Carolina, USA </p> <p> Galina Dolya, Key to Learning </p> <p> Dr John Dunford, General Secretary, Association of School and College Leaders </p> <p> Bertrand Dupuis, Psycho-educator, Montreal Children&rsquo;s Hospital, Canada </p> <p> Barry and Winnie Durdant-Hollamby, Publishers, life and family coaches, author of The Male Agenda </p> <p> Margaret Edgington, Early Years specialist, consultant and author </p> <p> Susan Elkin, Educational journalist and Chair of Educational Writers Group, Society of Authors </p> <p> Professor David Elkind, Dept Child Development, Tufts University, author of The Hurried Child </p> <p> Michele Elliot Director, Kidscape </p> <p> Crystal L. Elliott Program Director, Hug-a-Book, an early literacy initiative of Family Focus, Inc. </p> <p> Professor Julian Elliott, Department of Education, University of Durham </p> <p> Mia Elms&auml;tter, co-founder of the Massage in Schools Programme, Sweden </p> <p> Ricky Emanuel, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and Head of Child Psychotherapy, Royal Free Hospital </p> <p> Donna R. Erickson, Author, columnist and host of TV series Donna's Day </p> <p> Don Feasey, Author and psychoanalytic psychotherapist, Manchester </p> <p> Nancy Feldman, Hunter College School of Social Work, New York </p> <p> Professor Colin Feltham, Sheffield Hallam University </p> <p> Kim Sabo Flores, CEO - Kim Sabo Consulting, Brooklyn, New York </p> <p> Tom Franklin, Chief Executive, &lsquo;Living Streets&rsquo; </p> <p> Ghislaine Freedman, Educational Kinesiologist, London </p> <p> Dr Marilyn Fryer, C.Psychol. The Creativity Centre Ltd. </p> <p> Professor Philip Gammage, Universities of Nottingham and South Australia </p> <p> Natalie Ganpatsingh, Director, Creatrix in the Community </p> <p> Anna Garrett, Founder, Promoting Parenting </p> <p> Jan Georgeson, University of Gloucestershire </p> <p> Jennifer Gidley, Educational psychologist, Centre for Children and Young People, Southern Cross University, NSW, Australia </p> <p> Melanie Gill, child forensic psychologist, Commonsense Associates </p> <p> Tim Gill, Director, Rethinking Childhood and author of No Fear: growing up in a risk averse society </p> <p> Christopher Gilmore, Atma-Dovetales Educational </p> <p> Sally Goddard Blythe, Director, The Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology (INPP) </p> <p> Sally Goldsworthy, Director, Discover </p> <p> Lavinia Gomez, psychotherapist and author </p> <p> Diana Goodey, educational author </p> <p> Professor Anne Graham, Head, School of Education, Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia </p> <p> Rob Grant, School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia </p> <p> Mike Greenaway, Director, Play Wales </p> <p> Baroness Greenfield, Director of the Royal Institution </p> <p> Andy Griffith, Director, Motivated and Loving It </p> <p> Dr Natasha Grist, University of East Anglia </p> <p> Andrea Halewood, Chartered Counselling Psychologist, Roehampton University </p> <p> Gary Hampson, Philosopher, Centre for Children and Young People, Southern Cross University, NSW, Australia </p> <p> Birgitta Haraldson, Principal Clinical Psychologist (children and autism) </p> <p> Robert Hart, Analytical Psychologist </p> <p> Tobin Hart, Professor and Interim Chair, Department of Psychology, University of West Georgia at Carrollton </p> <p> Martin Harvey, Educational Consultant </p> <p> Colin and Jacqui Hawkins, children&rsquo;s authors </p> <p> Susan Hay, Director, Bright Horizons Foundation for Children </p> <p> Alan R. Heath, UK &amp; Eire Trainer of The Listening Program&reg; Director, Learning Solutions </p> <p> John Heron, Co-director, South Pacific Centre for Human Inquiry, Auckland, New Zealand </p> <p> Sylvie H&eacute;tu, international trainer, International Association of Infant Massage, Montreal </p> <p> Patrick Holford, Visiting Professor, University of Teeside, CEO of the Food for the Brain Foundation </p> <p> Wendy Holdstock, nursery teacher, South Devon Steiner School </p> <p> Lois Holzman, East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy, NYC </p> <p> Grethe Hooper Hansen, former head of S.E.A.L., educational consultant </p> <p> Dr Richard House, Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, Roehampton University; Norwich Steiner School </p> <p> Eileen Housley, former nursery school head teacher and specialist teacher of profoundly deaf children </p> <p> Dan Hughes, Psychologist and author, USA </p> <p> Dr Frances Hutchinson, economist </p> <p> Dr Barry Hymer, Educational Consultant and Director, still thinking uk Ltd </p> <p> Oliver James, psychologist and author of Britain on the Couch, They F*** You Up, and Affluenza </p> <p> Sally Jenkinson, Educational Consultant, author of The Genius of Play </p> <p> Julie Jennings, Chair of the Early Childhood Forum and RNIB National Development Officer: Early Years </p> <p> Monika Jephcott, President of Play Therapy International and Chief Executive, Academy of Play and Child Psychotherapy </p> <p> Jane Johnston, Reader in Education, Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln </p> <p> Rita Jordan, Professor of Autism Studies, University of Birmingham </p> <p> Dr H.L. Kaila, Professor &amp; Head (Psychology), S.N.D.T. Women&rsquo;s University, Mumbai, India </p> <p> Dr John D. Kaye, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Adelaide </p> <p> Dr Paul Kelly, Senior Clinical Psychologist SUZANNE KEYS young person&rsquo;s counsellor, co-editor of Person-Centred Approaches to Working with Children and Young People </p> <p> Adrian King, Health Education Consultant </p> <p> Richard Klein, Lacanian psychoanalyst </p> <p> Edgar Klugman, Professor Emeritus, Wheelock College, Boston, MA; Co-Founder, Playing for Keeps </p> <p> Hugh L&rsquo;estrange, former Directors of SEAL (Society for Effective Affective Learning) </p> <p> Juanna Ladaga, Class 5-7-6 Teacher, The St Michael Steiner School, London </p> <p> Martin Large, publisher, author of Set Free Childhood </p> <p> Dr Peter A. Lawrence, University of Cambridge </p> <p> Professor Arnold A. Lazarus, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA </p> <p> Dr Penelope Leach, author, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues, Birkbeck College, London </p> <p> Dr John Lees, University of Greenwich </p> <p> Joan Lessen-Firestone, Director, Early Childhood Oakland Schools, Waterford, </p> <p> Mi Mary Leue, founder, Albany Free School, New York </p> <p> Dora Lievow, Co-Founder, The Community School, Camden, Maine </p> <p> Anna Lines, Chair, Full Time Mothers </p> <p> Maxine Linnell, psychotherapist and Editor, Self and Society </p> <p> Dr Roger Litten, Chair, Association for Lacanian Psychoanalysis in the UK P </p> <p> Rofessor Del Loewenthal, Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, Roehampton University </p> <p> David Lorimery, Programme Director, Scientific and Medical Network and Executive Vice President, Wrekin Trust </p> <p> Dr Bill Lucas, Director, Talent Foundation </p> <p> Matt Lundquist, Psychotherapist and Director, The Social Therapy Group, NYC </p> <p> Donald E. Lytle, Professor of Kinesiology, California State University, Chico, CA, USA </p> <p> Dr Buffy Mcclelland, The Oxford Brain Gym </p> <p> Neil McClelland, OBE, Former Chief Executive, National Literacy Trust </p> <p> Dr Christine Macintyre, Hon. Fellow, University of Edinburgh, author of Enhancing Learning through Play </p> <p> Dr John McKendrick, Glasgow Caledonian University </p> <p> Paul Maloney, Counselling Psychologist </p> <p> Caroline Mann, Educational Consultant, trainer and coach </p> <p> Melian Mansfield, in individual capacity (Chair of London Play) </p> <p> Dr Peter Martin, Principal Lecturer in Counselling Psychology, Roehampton University </p> <p> Philip Martyn, co general secretary, Anthroposophical Society of Great Britain </p> <p> Mildred Masheder, writer on childhood, author of Positive Parenting </p> <p> Dr Brien Masters, Director, London Waldorf Teacher Training Seminar </p> <p> Patrice Maynard, Leader of Outreach and Development, Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA) ED MAYO CEO, National Consumer Council and author of Shopping Generation </p> <p> Dr Roland Meighan, educational publisher and author of Comparing Learning Systems </p> <p> Trevor Mepham, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth </p> <p> Bel Mooney, Author and journalist </p> <p> Michael Morpurgo, author and former Children&rsquo;s Laureate </p> <p> Jenny Mosley, author and Educational Consultant </p> <p> Janet Moyles, emeritus professor (Education) at Anglia Ruskin University </p> <p> Dr Valerie Munt, Honorary Visiting Scholar, History Department, Flinders University, Adelaide </p> <p> William Murtha, Director, Global Visionaries Project </p> <p> Lucy Musgrave, General Public Agency, London Dr Agnes Nairn Affiliate Professor of Marketing EM-Lyon Business School </p> <p> Martin Narey, CEO of Barnardos UK </p> <p> Dr Ute Navidi, Director, London Play </p> <p> Onnie Neugebauer, Editor, Exchange magazine, Redmond, Washington F </p> <p> Red Newman, East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy, New York City </p> <p> Janni Nicol, Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship </p> <p> Vincent Nolan, Hon.Sec., Synectics Education Initiative </p> <p> Susan Norman, former Director of SEAL (Society for Effective Affective Learning) </p> <p> James Nottingham, Director of Raising Aspirations In Society (RAIS) </p> <p> Jacqueline O&rsquo;Loughlan, Playboard, Northern Ireland </p> <p> Peggy O&rsquo;Mara, Editor and Publisher, Mothering magazine </p> <p> Professor Tim O&rsquo;Riordan, University of East Anglia, Norwich </p> <p> Jenny Oberon, Educational Consultant </p> <p> Michel Odent Md and Lynne Oldfield, Director, London Waldorf Early Childhood Training Course </p> <p> Susan J. Oliver, Executive Director, Playing for Keeps, Chicago, IL </p> <p> Susie Orbach, psychoanalyst, writer and visiting Professor at the London School of Economics </p> <p> Will Ord, education consultant and former chair of </p> <p> Sapere Jayne Osgood, Senior Research Fellow, London Metropolitan University </p> <p> Alice Oswald, author and poet </p> <p> Lyelle L. Palmer, Professor Emeritus, College of Education, Winona State University, Winona, </p> <p> Mn Sue Palmer, educational consultant, author of Toxic Childhood and Detoxing Childhood </p> <p> Sue Palmer, Head of School of Film, Television and Drama, Leeds Metropolitan University </p> <p> Sue Palmer, headteacher, Farley Open-Air Nursery School </p> <p> Michael Par&eacute;, M.D., Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychology, Tyndale University College, Toronto </p> <p> Rod Parker-Reesy, Coordinator of Early Childhood Studies,University of Plymouth </p> <p> Philip Parkin, General Secretary, Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) </p> <p> Pia Parry, Subject Leader, Childhood Studies, University of Chichester </p> <p> Michael M. Patte, Play Scholar, Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, PA, USA </p> <p> Joseph Chilton Pearce, author on child development, Faber, Virginia </p> <p> Dr Lindsay Peer, CBE Professor Helen Penn, University of East London </p> <p> Professor Michael A. Peters, University of Illinois </p> <p> Professor Pat Petrie, Institute of Education, London </p> <p> Dr Gervase Phinn, Visiting Professor of Education, Teesside University; President, School Library Association </p> <p> David Pilgrim, Research Professor of Mental Health Policy, University of Central Lancashire </p> <p> Chris Ponsford, Development Director, What About The Children? </p> <p> Sir Jonathan Porritt, environmental campaigner </p> <p> Linda Pound, Early Years Consultant </p> <p> Dr Sacha Powell, Senior Research Fellow, Dept Educational Research, Canterbury Christ Church University </p> <p> James W. Prescott, Institute of Humanistic Science, Lewes, Denver </p> <p> Dr Gillian Proctor, Author, Centre for Citizenship and Mental Health, Bradford University </p> <p> Philip Pullman Author Anna Raeburn, Broadcaster and agony aunt </p> <p> Tom Raines, Editor, New View magazine </p> <p> Patricia Ranken, for and on behalf of Montessori Education (UK) </p> <p> Oliver Rathbone, Managing Director, Karnac Books </p> <p> John Rayment, Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin University </p> <p> Bob Reitemeier, Chief Executive of The Children&rsquo;s Society </p> <p> Diane Rich, Director, Rich Learning Opportunities, Co-ordinator of the &lsquo;What Matters to Children&rsquo; team </p> <p> Professor Colin Richards, Emeritus Professor, University of Cumbria </p> <p> Dr Alex Richardson, Mansfield College, Oxford; author of They Are What We Feed Them </p> <p> Denise Roberts, editor of My Child magazine </p> <p> Veronika Robinson, Editor of The Mother magazine and author </p> <p> Dr Sue Rogers, Institute of Education, University of London </p> <p> Dr Dorothy Rowe, psychologist and writer </p> <p> Professor Andrew Samuels, University of Essex </p> <p> Pete Sanders, counsellor (retired), author and publisher </p> <p> Robert Sardello, Director, The School of Spiritual Psychology, North Carolina, USA </p> <p> Eugene Schwartz, M.A., Educational Consultant, USA, author of The Millennial Child </p> <p> Dr LawrencE Schweinhart, President, High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, USA </p> <p> Sally Schweizer, Early Years Consultant, author of Well I Wonder and Under the Sky (forthcoming) </p> <p> Jon Thoreau Scott, Secretary/Treasurer, Friends of the Modern School </p> <p> Wendy Scott, former early years adviser to the Department for Education and Skills </p> <p> Professor Roger Scruton, writer and philosopher, Institute for the Psychological Sciences, Arlington VA </p> <p> Peter Sharp, CertEdPsych, CPsychol, Director of Learning, Mouchel Parkman </p> <p> Dr Aric Sigman, writer, broadcaster and author of Remotely Controlled </p> <p> Steve Sinnott, General Secretary, National Union of Teachers </p> <p> David Smart, Educational consultant, London </p> <p> Tim Smit Chief Executive, The Eden Project </p> <p> Professor Peter K. Smith, Head, Unit for School and Family Studies, Goldsmiths College, London </p> <p> Pippa Smith, co-founder of Media March UK </p> <p> Professor Ernesto Spinelli, psychotherapist and Counselling Psychologist, Regent&rsquo;s College, London </p> <p> Dr Pat Spungin, founder www.raisingkids.co.uk </p> <p> Henderikus J. Stam, Professor of Psychology, University of Calgary; Editor, Theory &amp; Psychology </p> <p> Professor Paul Standish, Institute of Education, University of London </p> <p> Elizabeth Steinthal, Head Teacher of &lsquo;Educare&rsquo; Small School, London </p> <p> Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown, Director of Health Sciences Research Institute, University of Warwick </p> <p> Alison Stopp, head of a Gainsborough Children&rsquo;s Centre </p> <p> Peter Stopp ,Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln </p> <p> Dr Tom Strong, Division of Applied Psychology, University of Calgary </p> <p> Miranda Suit, co-founder of Media March UK </p> <p> Margot Sunderland,Director of Education and Training, Centre for Child Mental Health, London, author of The Science of Parenting </p> <p> Miles Tandy, Education Adviser, Warwickshire </p> <p> Jill Taplin, kindergarten teacher, Rudolf Steiner School of South Devon and SWSF </p> <p> Mary Tasker, Chair, Human Scale Education </p> <p> Jeff Thomas, Research and Continuing Education Director, Academy of Play and Child Psychotherapy </p> <p> Professor Philip Thomas, Institute for Philosophy, Diversity and Mental Health, University of Central Lancashire </p> <p> Professor Brian Thorne (emeritus), University of East Anglia and the College of Teachers </p> <p> Professor Sami Timimi, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Trust and Lincoln University </p> <p> Dr Rona Tutt, OBE , SEN Consultant, Speaker and Writer </p> <p> Ivan Tyrrell, Principal, MindFields College, Co-author of Human Givens </p> <p> Adrian Voce, Director, Play England </p> <p> Dr Glenda Walsh, Stranmillis University College, Queen&rsquo;s University Belfast </p> <p> Tracey Walshaw, Therapist and play therapy trainer, co-editor of Person-Centred Approaches to Working with Children and Young People </p> <p> Chris Waterman, Executive Director of the Association of Directors of Children&rsquo;s Services (ADCS) </p> <p> Susan Weber, Sophia&rsquo;s Hearth Family Center, Keene, NH, USA </p> <p> Kali Wendorf, Editor / publisher, Kindred Magazine, Byron Bay, NSW, Australia </p> <p> Dr Linden West, Reader in Education, Canterbury Christ Church University </p> <p> Dr David Whitebread, Senior Lecturer in Psychology &amp; Education, University of Cambridge </p> <p> Professor John Whitelegg, Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York </p> <p> Hilary Wilce, columnist and author of Help Your Child Succeed at School </p> <p> Bryonie Williams, Early Years Co-ordinator, Matchborough First School </p> <p> Zoe Williams, Organiser, Compass campaign against the Commercialisation of Childhood </p> <p> Gary Wilson, author and consultant in boys&rsquo; achievement </p> <p> CAtherine J. Wong,, M.S., Editor, Organic Family Magazine </p> <p> Sarah Woodhouse, Chief Executive, &lsquo;Right from the Start&rsquo; </p> <p> Simon Wrigley, Past chair of NATE (National Association for the Teaching of English), 2003-2006 </p> <p> Terry Wrigley, Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh; Editor of Improving Schools, </p> <p> David Yearly, Head of Play Safety, Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents </p> <p> Deirdre Youngs, Prenatal, Birth and Family Therapist Facilitator, Teacher and Writer [271] </p><p>Margaret Thatcher understood that Britain, having few natural resources, can prosper only by hard work and innovation. In the City, she recognised a golden goose. It is unfortunate that today's senior politicians, having little or no direct experience of the wealth creation process, are now threatening the life of an even fatter and shinier bird.</p> <p> Tom Sackville, London SW4 </p> <p>Sir - My business as a house-hunter, along with thousands of others, relies heavily on non-doms. Now is the time for Alistair Darling to reconsider his proposed and ill-judged legislation.</p> <p>When the non-doms flee to Geneva, as they will, you may rest assured there will be more blood on the carpet than the combined incompetence of Norman Lamont and John Major ever produced.</p> <p> Nicholas Beaumont, London SW11 </p> <p>Sir - With all due respect to Viscount Caldecote's view (Letters, February 14) that returning emigrants should be asked to settle all the taxes that they avoided while away, and his comparison with the American system, it is worth pointing out that Americans never lose their franchise, even as they are taxed on worldwide income wherever they reside.</p> <p>Long-term British expatriates, on the other hand, lose their right to vote. That is why the Americans fought for independence. Taxation without representation, and all that.</p> <p>Long-term expatriates do pay tax in their countries of residence, and more often than not there is a double taxation agreement with Britain that applies.</p> <p>Finally, a British citizen can spend his entire life outside Britain and yet never lose his natural domicile. Which being the case, his estate can be plundered by the Exchequer for 40 per cent of its value - which could be construed as a post-mortem settlement of fiscal scores, could it not?</p> <p> Michael Deman, Cairo </p> <p>Sir - Iain Martin (Comment, February 14) draws a parallel between Alistair Darling and Norman Lamont.</p> <p>Interestingly, they went to the same school. One wonders if they had the same maths master.</p> <p> Robin Bryer, Yeovil, Somerset </p> <p>Headmasters' behaviour</p> <p>Sir - I was saddened by your report (February 13) of a Wellington pupil biting an opponent in a rugby match against Marlborough.</p> <p>Dr Anthony Seldon's remarks about rugby matches between his school and Marlborough constitute something of an own goal. Marlborough is not newly co-educational - it first took girls in 1969. If, as Dr Seldon alleges, this led to Marlborough fielding an uncompetitive XV, it is strange that previous headmasters of Wellington have never commented publicly on this. I question Dr Seldon's apparent suggestion that episodes where opponents in school rugby matches bite each other "happen all the time". Perhaps he could provide some evidence for this outside his own school?</p> <p>On the bright side, it is pleasing to note that Nicholas Sampson, the headmaster of Marlborough, emerges with dignity from this sorry affair.</p> <p> Jimmy James, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire </p> <p>Sir - Your report that some public schoolboys might be tending towards cannibalism as one of the rituals of the rugby field is alarming. Of even more concern is the tribal tonsure affected by one (or perhaps both) of the headmasters.</p> <p>Can anyone throw anthropological light on this matter? It needs looking into. There is a PhD in this for someone.</p> <p> Albert Cartmell, Rissington, Gloucestershire </p> <p>Commenting on sharia</p> <p>Sir - Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has neither led nor joined the criticisms of the Archbishop of Canterbury (report, February 13). The interview that the Cardinal gave to The Sunday Telegraph, in which he said that "when people come into this country they have to obey the laws of the land", was given before the Archbishop of Canterbury's interview and speech last Thursday.</p> <p>Since then, the Cardinal has given a number of interviews in which he has indicated that the Archbishop of Canterbury has clarified his position that he was not calling for a parallel legal system. The Cardinal has also stated that he believes the Archbishop of Canterbury has raised important issues about how the law in this country, binding on all, might take account of religious belief and issues of conscience.</p> <p> Alexander DesForges, Press secretary to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, London SW1 </p> <p>Culture in schools</p> <p>Sir - With education in decline, can we really afford to take children out of the classroom for a fifth of their time each week (report, February 13)? We in effect have one day a week devoted to sport, another day devoted to culture; cooking lessons will take another hour a week.</p> <p>Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, and Ed Balls, the Children's Secretary, need to go back to school and learn some maths as well as geography. Taking rural children into the culture centres will take at least an hour each way. Many have that long a journey every day to get to school.</p> <p>This is just another of this Government's ill-thought-out schemes.</p> <p> Ruth Thompson, Malvern, Worcestershire </p> <p>Sir - Five hours of culture per week? Which five hours might those be taken from - maths and English periods?</p> <p> Felicity Foulis Brown, Bramley, Hampshire </p> <p>Sir - Instead of spending &pound;15 per pupil annually on nebulous cultural activities, would it not be better to provide adequate textbooks in schools?</p> <p>Then, for example, pupils could study Shakespeare direct from the text and be examined on their own appreciation of his work, rather than through the restrictive templates of multiple-choice questionnaires.</p> <p> Christopher Cook, Amsterdam </p> <p>Stifling the arts</p> <p>Sir - Simon Heffer ("Gordon Brown proposes cultural Stalinisation", Comment, February 13) is right to reach for his revolver.</p> <p>As a trustee of a 200-year-old library that is at present contemplating a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund, I am alarmed to be told that failure is assured unless we agree to comply with a list of demands. Although the language in which these are expressed is jargon-laden and nebulous, the general thrust towards so-called "diversity issues" is unmistakable.</p> <p>It is particularly disturbing to realise that the people behind this agenda, which includes a demand for "improvements to access for &hellip; educationally challenged people", obviously have not the faintest grasp of the essential purpose of a venerable learned society.</p> <p>Fortunately, as an independent body, we are free to reject Greeks bearing gifts. Most other libraries, galleries, theatrical venues and concert halls no longer enjoy this freedom. Nor, indeed, do their artists and staff.</p> <p> Richard Sharp, Glanton, Northumberland </p> <p>A true local character</p> <p>Sir - How lovely it was to see the letter about Oliver Meek (February 13). I grew up about 50 yards from his shop and remember him very well - I have a log basket made long ago by him.</p> <p>He was one of Swaffham's real characters, not the ridiculous ones featured on television in Kingdom, and his shop is much missed.</p> <p> June Godding, Lambourn, Berkshire </p> <p>Tall people suffer too</p> <p>Sir - Regarding height prejudice (Letters, February 14), could I assure readers that tall people suffer just as much as short people, who apparently design all theatre seats and who always get the leg-room seats on aircraft.</p> <p> Paul Wakeling, Harpenden, Hertfordshire </p> <p>Start planning a coronation for modern Britain</p> <p>Sir - There can be no harm, 55 years since the last one, in planning the next coronation. After all that time, the world has changed a lot and such a ceremony would need to reflect that.</p> <p>Records indicating that the 1761 Coronation was disturbed by the congregation tucking in to snacks, mid-service, are matched by the fact that many an aged dowager in 1953 consumed sandwiches and drank hot tea to keep them going.</p> <p>The make-up of the congregation in 1953 was pretty stuffy. Noble blood did more to secure a seat than any amount of good works. That archaic mistake should not be allowed to be repeated.</p> <p>The planning for the next coronation should eschew the usual hordes of royal hangers-on and focus on a ceremony that reflects the reality of modern Britain. Furthermore, the wife (Camilla) of he-who-will-be-King should be recognised in her new role - Queen.</p> <p> Peter Wong, Hong Kong </p> <p>Fuel suppliers make empty promises</p> <p>Sir - I have just received communication from British Gas in which I am enticed to cut up to one third off my energy bill by returning to them a questionnaire which they will then analyse to allow their "agents and charity partners" to contact me for market-research purposes. The saving will come from my use of the two energy-saving light bulbs they will send me in return for spending a few minutes completing the questionnaire, which includes having to declare the height of each storey and the estimated average floor area per storey.</p> <p>Apparently, using these two energy-saving bulbs can save me as much as &pound;7 a year, but I must take advantage of this offer before February 22.</p> <p>I may be mathematically challenged, but I am struggling to see how this generous offer is going to make much impact on my electricity bill, now running at about &pound;200 per month, up from half that a decade ago. But I should be interested to hear of anyone for whom a saving of &pound;7 a year represents a saving of 33 per cent of their bill.</p> <p>Maybe they are already carrying their two bulbs in relays around the home, leaving an array of dark empty sockets behind as they pass.</p> <p> Roger le Clercq, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire </p> <p>Sir - The Governor of the Bank of England is warning us that inflation might reach three per cent.</p> <p>Could he tell us which food and fuel, both vehicle and domestic, suppliers he uses? Not to mention the tax regime to which he is subject. I, for one, would like to enjoy such low costs.</p> <p> Robert Fletcher, Broadstone, Dorset </p> <p> </p> <p> </p><p>Form: Liverpool DWWWLL Sunderland: LWLWLW </p><p>Tale of the game</p><p>Both sides have enjoyed very active summers, with Liverpool making four major signings and Sunderland adding nine new men to their ranks. </p><p>Kenny Dalglish has spent big this sumer in an effort to push Liverpool back into the top four, including the &pound;16 million addition of former Sunderland midfielder Jordan Henderson. He has also managed to recruit Charlie Adam from Blackpool and Stewart Downing from Aston Villa in a &pound;20 million deal, thus strengthening his midfield options. </p><p>Henderson says he is looking forward to facing his former club. "It's a big game but I've just got to treat it like any other one," he said. ""All of my family and friends are Sunderland supporters and will all want them to win but I'm a Liverpool player now and I'm looking forward to playing for them."</p><p>Striker Luis Suarez could play despite only returning to training on Monday. </p><p>The Uruguay international's involvement in winning the Copa America prevented him from featuring in the club's pre-season but manager Kenny Dalglish will consider him for selection. </p><p>New signings Stewart Downing, Charlie Adam, Jordan Henderson and Alexander Doni are all in the squad - the club is awaiting the completion of a deal for Newcastle left-back Jose Enrique - but captain Steven Gerrard and defender Martin Skrtel are both out and full-back Glen Johnson (hamstring) faces a late fitness test. </p><p>Steve Bruce has had a busy summer, and has managed to bring in Connor Wickham, Craig Gardner, Wes Brown, John O'Shea, Ahmed Elmohamady, Wong-Don Ji , David Vaughan, Sebastian Larsson and Keiren Westwood. </p><p>Craig Gordon is out as he recovers from a knee injury, while O'Shea and Lee Cattermole are also in doubt. </p><p>Last season: Sunderland 0 Liverpool 2, Liverpool 2 Sunderland 2 </p><p>Stat: In 10 Premier League meetings between these teams, Liverpool are unbeaten, winning five, drawing five, scoring 14 goals and conceding just four.</p><p>Betting tip: Liverpool have been rejuvenated by Dalglish and, after adding to their squad, should have too much for a new-look Sunderland. Stick some money on the hosts for a 2-0 win at 8-1. </p><p>Official biographies of senior members of the Royal Family are traditionally published after their deaths to spare embarrassment to the subjects of the book, and their family and friends. However, Lord Snowdon, now 78, has preferred to tell his remarkable story publicly during his own lifetime.</p><p>"I am now happy for people to know about my life and I want to put the record straight on some things," he told me recently at his stylish west London home, where some of the best-known photographs of his half-century-long career adorn many walls. He revealed that he had met Anne de Courcy, the book's author, on numerous occasions and had allowed her access to his letters and papers. While remaining loyal to the memory of Princess Margaret, he also encouraged his own friends and friends of the Princess to talk freely to Ms de Courcy.</p><p>Lord Snowdon seems to have agreed that there should be no "no-go areas": he has been willing to talk about his troubled marriage, his bitter rift with one of Princess Margaret's closest friends and other controversial areas of his occasionally bizarre life.</p><p>For many, the book's greatest interest will be in Lord Snowdon's tangled &ndash; and at times tragic &ndash; love life. The book claims that he fathered an illegitimate child just months before marrying Princess Margaret, in May 1960. Polly Fry, a member of the Fry chocolate dynasty, was born on May 28, 1960, when Lord Snowdon and the Queen's younger sister were on the third week of their honeymoon. However, it was only in 2004 &ndash; when Lord Snowdon was 74 &ndash; that he apparently went along with her request to have a DNA test.</p><p>Polly Fry is understood to have become troubled by persistent rumours that Lord Snowdon &ndash; not Jeremy Fry &ndash; was her biological father. "When you reach a certain stage in your life, you just want to know&hellip;" she once said. Sure enough, the DNA tests &ndash; using two saliva samples &ndash; are said to have revealed that Miss Fry, now Polly Higson, had been fathered by Princess Margaret's former husband. Today Mrs Higson is 48, a married mother of five and lives in rural Somerset.</p><p>Yesterday, she confirmed the claims in the new book, but insisted that she did not want to say anything more. "It's all rather unnerving," she told me. Shortly before his first marriage, Lord Snowdon used to visit the Frys regularly at their home, Widcombe Manor, Bath. </p><p>The book claims that Miss Fry was conceived during a weekend when alcohol and "poppers" &ndash; amyl nitrite stimulants &ndash; had been in ready supply. "It was a pretty good free-for-all there," said one friend, of an intimate relationship between two allegedly bisexual men and one sexually liberated wife.</p><p>In a further twist, the book details how Jeremy Fry, who is now dead, had even been due to be best man at Lord Snowdon's wedding to Princess Margaret, but he stood down late in the day due to an alleged illness. In fact, although by this time it was not known who had fathered Mrs Fry's unborn child, Mr Fry had been convicted of a "minor" homosexual offence and fined &pound;2.</p><p>It was apparently felt that if this &ndash; not the bizarre love triangle &ndash; emerged it would cause scandal at the royal wedding. Lord Snowdon then even briefly considered having Jeremy Thorpe, later to be the leader of the Liberal Party, as his best man but a cloud over the politician's sexuality ruled him out, too.</p><p>Quite how many lovers &ndash; both female and, possibly, male &ndash; Lord Snowdon has had will never be known. He certainly mixed freely in gay circles, although he once said: "I didn't fall in love with boys, but a few men have been in love with me."</p><p>In discussions with the author, Lord Snowdon has, however, been much happier to admit some of his female conquests. The book identifies Jacqui Chan, a former model and dancer, as his first real love.</p><p>As the then Antony Armstrong-Jones, he pursued a passionate relationship with Miss Chan, the stunning subject of some of his early photographs, and their love affair continued until shortly before he became engaged to Princess Margaret in February 1960. One well-known picture, taken by Lord Snowdon, shows Miss Chan turning the heads of three servicemen as she walks through Venice in 1956.</p><p>Lord Snowdon, who loved mixing in showbusiness circles, dated Miss Chan, who was Trinidadian born but of Chinese extraction, while she was working in the West End production of The World of Suzie Wong.</p><p>The book will also scrutinise the 20-year relationship that Lord Snowdon pursued with his mistress Ann Hills. It ended in tragedy when she committed suicide on New Year's Eve, 1996: she had been lonely over Christmas and had telephoned her lover to explain her unhappiness. The 55-year-old journalist died from a drugs overdose after writing a "letter of apology" to the love of her life. </p><p>She also instructed that Lord Snowdon's intimate gift to her &ndash; a jewelled 19th-century brooch that had once belonged to his mother &ndash; should be returned to him. Lord Snowdon has said that her death was "very sad, terrible, awful".</p><p>It is understood that Ms de Courcy details Hills' despair that she and Lord Snowdon were never properly a couple, but the author does not blame him for Ms Hills's suicide. Ms Hills, like her lover, boasted a strong libido: in 1977 she is said to have knocked on Lord Snowdon's door and said: "I am a journalist and want to do a story about you. But I also want to have an affair with you."</p><p>Lord Snowdon had lusted after and become captivated by Ms Hills to almost the same degree that he had been attracted many years earlier by Princess Margaret's beauty and sense of fun. After their wedding, however, neither Lord Snowdon nor the Princess was faithful. They both pursued several affairs before divorcing in 1978, having had two children &ndash; Viscount Linley and Lady Sarah Chatto.</p><p>One of Lord Snowdon's most passionate extramarital affairs in the late 1960s was with Lady Jacqueline Rufus-Isaacs, the daughter of the 3rd Marquess of Reading and one of the most vivacious party-goers of her generation. But, as with many of his lovers, when the relationship ended they parted on good terms and she has always been discreet about their affair.</p><p>After Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret separated in 1976, he pursued and later married, Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, the former wife of a film director. The couple married in December 1978 and had one child, Lady Frances Armstrong-Jones.</p><p>However, Lord Snowdon was again unfaithful and they divorced in 2000 &ndash; after it emerged that he had fathered a son, Jasper, out of wedlock, with Melanie Cable-Alexander, a journalist. She now lives in Somerset and Lord Snowdon has had little direct involvement with his illegitimate son.</p><p>Today Lord Snowdon is frail and has to use a wheelchair or sticks because of a recurrence of his childhood polio. Many of his former lovers, including Ms Cable-Alexander, are also believed to have spoken to the author. Lord Snowdon has, however, not been given copy approval and so the biography will not be fully "authorised".</p><p>Princess Margaret died in 2002, aged 71, at the start of her sister's Golden Jubilee year. Some friends believe she married Lord Snowdon on the "rebound" from her ill-fated relationship with Group Captain Peter Townsend. Princess Margaret enjoyed several extra-marital affairs, notably a lengthy relationship with Roddy Llewellyn, a landscape gardener 18 years her junior. </p><p>Their romance had started in Mustique, the Caribbean island then owned by Lord Glenconner, and that was always a bone of contention between Lord Snowdon and his first wife.</p><p>According to the new book, Lord Glenconner &ndash; the former Hon Colin Tennant &ndash; had been dismissive of Princess Margaret's plans to marry a commoner. When Tony Armstrong-Jones visited Lord Glenconner's London home, the peer even made the photographer use the servants' entrance. Furthermore, when Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret married, Lord Glenconner gave a spacious building plot on Mustique as a wedding present, but he insisted it was a gift only for the bride, not the groom.</p><p>As a result of the snub, Lord Snowdon spent only a single night on Mustique and called it "Mustake". He was even less complimentary about Lord Glenconner throughout his first marriage, referring to him as "s**t".</p><p>The new biography is, however, not only crammed with tales of fast living, romantic tragedies and bitter feuds. It also takes a sympathetic look at the troubled childhood of the young Tony Armstrong-Jones, the son of Ronnie Armstrong-Jones, a barrister, and his wife Anne, the daughter of the wealthy banker Leonard Messel. The incompatible couple divorced when Tony was five and he had an uneasy relationship with his aloof but glamorous mother, who referred to him as her "ugly son".</p><p>As a young man, who had been educated at Eton and Cambridge, Armstrong-Jones initially intended to be an architect before switching career to become a photographer. Now, for more than 50 years, he has taken photographs of the Royal Family at work and play, including memorable images of his former wife and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. </p><p>Only last year, he was chosen to take the official portrait of the Queen and Prince Philip for the Royal Mail's Diamond Wedding Anniversary pack of stamps.</p><p>Lord Snowdon, say his friends, remains on good terms with the royal couple: he is said to appreciate the way Prince Philip welcomed him when he first joined the Royal Family and to admire the Queen's professionalism.</p><p>Ms de Courcy's book will also highlight Lord Snowdon's tireless charity work on behalf of the disabled and the disadvantaged.</p><p>Lord Snowdon seems untroubled by the impact of the new biography or what it might say about him. "I wouldn't dream of reading it. I am not remotely interested in the book," he said. </p><p>Two and a half years later and this is a different, as Carey would say, 'moment'. We're in New York, in a photo-studio complex in west Manhattan where a group of us are perched in a row in an L-shaped office having a 'listening session' for Carey's new album, the spectacularly titled 'E=MC2' ('Emancipation equals Mariah Carey to the second power'), a vibrant, r&amp;b club-pop record lyrically obsessed with love, heart-break and sex.</p> <p>At the album's close, a Carey official issues instructions for our forthcoming interview. 'So we're here to talk about the music,' he says, crushingly. 'Mariah is a big celebrity and we understand personal questions will come up. But if there's anything too personal the interview will be wrapped up. And these interviews are being recorded.'</p> <p>Suddenly, the lyric sheets we were handed earlier, which we've used for our album-listening notes, are being brusquely confiscated because they must not 'leave the building'. Cue a number of journalists, mid-handover, furiously scribbling over any less than rapturous remarks...</p> <p>In 2005, no one expected Carey's 10th studio album, the cool r&amp;b comeback collection 'The Emancipation of Mimi', to be the biggest-selling album of the year worldwide (10 million copies sold), taking her career total to well over 160 million. In pure success terms, her status is undeniable: 17 American Number 1 singles, six more than Madonna, one less than Elvis. Last year Forbes magazine estimated her worth to be around $225 million.</p> <p>In 2001, , buried under the rubble of the trifling, contrived 'Glitter' album (and 'Glitter' movie); its global failure caused . As her supernova waned, the critics inevitably cheered. Carey had been the undisputed titan of the drearily billowing ballad since her debut in 1990, a yodelling cartoon calamity whose gift is a voice like a dolphin's. To her fans, though, Carey has single-handedly redefined what it means to be a female singer. She's now the single greatest influence on the Pop Idol/American Idol generation bar none. Today she cites her 2001 meltdown as her 'breakthrough', leaving her 'creatively free' to all but abandon the showboat balladeering for knowingly sultry, stylised r&amp;b. Her latest single, Touch My Body - with a sexual-fantasy concept video part Beyonc&eacute;, part Benny Hill - sends herself up as a coquettish, breathy saucestrel.</p> <p>'Did you say saucestrel?' she blinks. 'Is that a bad word? It's like, saucy? Oh, leave it to the Brits to make a demented moment! Well we're not taking ourselves that seriously. It's not [po-faced] "touch my body, I'm so amaaaazing". In the video we have a unicorn, so let's face it, we're taking, as you guys say, the piss.'</p> <p>It's half past midnight and we're sitting in the dark, in a vast, white, 13th-floor photo studio with the lights switched off. In the corner, Carey sits on a chaise-longue, casual in jeans and sleeveless vest, legs to one side, beneath enormous windows where tea-lights on windowsills and the thrusting skyscrapers of moonlit Manhattan provide low-key, high-glam illumination. She's been working since midday (photos/interviews) despite working 'til eight this morning (album mastering) and is therefore amiably woozy, sipping white wine and prone to dreamy, melancholic reflections. She rummages, suddenly, at the back of her skinny-fit jeans.</p> <p>'What's this in my pants?' she wonders, snapping off a stray string. 'This would be my jean trousers tag!' - hands over tag - 'To prove to you that it is a size 27...'</p> <p>And so I find myself pocketing Carey's new jeans tag: 'Miss Sixty, Size 27 (UK size 6) Radio Trousers 30in L, $239'. Her much-admired new physique has come from 'hard work with Patricia', her personal trainer, after she'd gotten, she insists, 'too bulky. Now, I'm down to my 11th grade size and it feels good and yet it doesn't feel good because I can't eat what I want'. She reverted to her famed Morsel Diet, replacing some meals with bowls of low-carb nibbles, 'so there's been some olive/almond moments.'</p> <p>In the past two years she's simultaneously worked harder at everything else: a global tour, the new album, launched her 'M' beauty product range and appeared in two new films, the road-trip drama Tennessee playing a waitress/aspiring singer, and playing herself in the Adam Sandler comedy You Don't Mess with the Zohan. Queries as to what drives her these days elicit a scarily earnest and bewildering response - something about 'not letting the bad times overpower what the goodness is'. Her campy tomfoolery is perhaps compromised tonight by the evident sleep-deprivation - or perhaps the official foot-long record label microphone pointing directly at her head.</p> <p>'It's been tough for me to embrace who I am as a human being,' she eventually decides. 'Just from feeling like an outsider a lot of the times. So, to not be redundant, I just decided to let me be me. And that's a big place, you know?'</p> <p>Carey describes her life as 'a friggin' mini-series'. She was a mixed-race kid whose mother was disowned by her family for marrying a black man. Their all-white, hate-fuelled Long Island neighbours poisoned the family dog and set fire to their car. Alison, Carey's older sister by 10 years, who had a baby aged 15, became heavily involved in drugs, turned to prostitution, contracted HIV (and still lives in New York - Mariah is 'legally' forbidden to talk about her).</p> <p>Her parents divorced when Carey was three, and she was raised in 'a shack' by her mother, Patricia, an Irish-American opera singer. The family moved house 13 times, and Carey developed a profound fear of poverty, the insecure mind-set of an 'outcast freak' and the blazing conviction that her always-astonishing voice could save her life. Aged 18, as a waitress, beauty school dropout and fledgling singer/songwriter with a demo-tape, she met Tommy Mottola at a party. Mottola was the chairman of Sony Music Entertainment, and 20 years her senior. After a four-year courtship they were married in 1993, with Robert De Niro among the guests.</p> <p>'He was in it,' smiles Carey. 'There were a lotta people there.'</p> <p>Barbra Streisand, I believe.</p> <p>'Yes, she was,' she nods, 'and I've seen her since and it's been all good. Y'know... I was really young. When I got in the relationship I was very very young. And inexperienced.'</p> <p>They lived a life of absurd extravagance in a 12-bedroom mansion with a ballroom, firing range, two swimming pools and a helicopter pad while Carey made albums for Sony. 'That company,' she says, 'made a billion dollars from the raggedy girl he met at that party.' Tommy was a deeply controlling husband who left Carey feeling confined to the house (where she obsessively over-decorated). He aggressively dictated every aspect of her career, from the soul-less music to her sexless clothes to her holographic public persona, taught as she was 'to say as little as possible, don't be yourself'. Her new album contains a song specifically detailing her escape from Mottola, called Side Effects. 'You were scared that I'd become much more/Than you could handle,' she lilts. 'Shining like a chandelier/That decorated every room inside this private Hell that we built.'</p> <p>Since her divorce in 1998 she's kept a stringent privacy over her relationships but reportedly dated the Latino singer Luis Miguel, music executive Mark Sudack, acerbic rapper Eminem and baseball player Derek Jeter. In 2005, however, when questioned about Eminem she gave an uncharacteristically full response. 'Please!' she roared. 'I never had any type of sexual relationship with that man. I can count the number of people I've had sex with on less than the fingers on one hand.'</p> <p>You haven't had many boyfriends and you've never been promiscuous, I say. Why is that?</p> <p>'You're right and I'm still not. Because... maybe if I had been a promiscuous person I'd feel even less able to be, um, forgiving of myself. Because... there were examples of ways I didn't wanna be that I saw when I was growing up. And that made me feel really vulnerable. And I still do. And I hate that I still do. But I do.'</p> <p>She's talking about her big sister, the person she also credits with her lifelong aversion to drugs - 'I just saw too much of it as a child'. She also finds it almost impossible to trust men, not least because of our rapacious kiss-and-tell showbiz culture, mobile phones and cameras everywhere. (This is a lyrical theme of Touch My Body - post anything private on YouTube, she sings, 'and I will hunt you down'.) 'We live in a world of extremely high technology,' she nods, 'it is so difficult and so hard for me to trust people.' In 2005, she said she wasn't sure she'd ever been in love. Is this still the case?</p> <p>'But have you?' she replies. 'Have you been totally in love? See, I can answer that I've been infatuated. With me it's like, well, do I love this person? They say they love me, why can't I accept that? I can't accept it because I've had a difficult time feeling worthy of being loved. [Directly into tape-recorder] I can't accept it because I've had a difficult time feeling worthy of being loved.'</p> <p>Do you still feel that?</p> <p>'No, I feel like I'm worthy of being loved but because I felt like I wasn't worthy of being loved for so many years I've put myself in situations that are maybe not the best situations for me,' she says, obliquely. 'And I need to find a way to fully grow out of that. 'Cos you know what? There's so many people I don't wanna emulate. It shouldn't take people to be freakin' 60 years old 'til they feel like "I finally found the person I'm supposed to be with".</p> <p>'Most people get caught up, they have their babies and they raise their kids and then they're not with those people any more because they never really had anything in common to begin with, but the kids. And that's what I was always scared of. You know, it's been tough for me to say: "OK, I'm allowed to be happy." To be working at this pace. To be successful. And also to believe that I'm in love and this person isn't just with me for the moment. Whoever it is [in the future], I hope that that person is genuine. No matter what, it's always about a genuine person.'</p> <p>This month, Carey will be 38. She lives in the TriBeCa area of New York, in a three-tiered apartment co-designed by herself and Mario Buatta, the billionaire's favourite and so-called 'Prince of Chintz'. The apartment's visual (indeed emotional) themes are mermaids, butterflies and Marilyn Monroe, her 'humungous' 'Marilyn bathroom' featuring pale limestone walls, a gold ceiling, pink and beige satin drapes, recessed lighting and two steps up to the bath. Her dark-green marble kitchen, meanwhile, hosts its own chaise-longue. 'Because I like to recline when I eat,' she smiles. 'If you can lay down, why would you sit up?' The last time she used the subway was perhaps 1992, and as for the bus... 'I hate the bus!' she cackles. 'I've already been on the bus, I don't need to go back on the bus.' </p> <p>With her unimaginable wealth comes negligible guilt: she feels only 'grateful' for 'God's majesty and his gift of creativity'. There's evidence in her apartment of her claim to be 'eternally 12' (or possibly a great deal younger); pink 'Hello Kitty' guitar, pink CD player, 'Hello Kitty' slippers, the 'Bambi' pyjamas she sleeps in.</p> <p>How would she feel about being 40? Even though it's a good couple of years away...</p> <p>'And a good couple of years away is how it's gonna stay!' she mock-wails, 'because I am eternally 12.'</p> <p>But you're not 12, Mariah. At almost-38, isn't it time to want to be a grown-up? 'No,' she says. 'Because when I was a kid I said to myself, "I'm never gonna forget what it feels like to be this age." I try to stay in touch with the me that has never left me. The inner child that is me.'</p> <p>The funny thing is, when you were actually 12, you were, as you've said, a 'hideous mess'. You were emotionally berserk, had barely a stitch to wear, accidentally shaved your eyebrows off and dyed your hair orange. 'Yeah. I had orange hair.'</p> <p>So let's go for straightforward cod-psychology here: a huge part of her life is all about trying to replace the real Mariah at 12 with a fantasy Mariah at 12, for ever.</p> <p>'Well I think you are very close to something that's pretty accurate,' she says. 'But you know, I wouldn't say it's anything that consciously done. "Eternally 12" was a phrase that just happened from always going on roller-coasters and hanging out with friends at Disney World and really feeling like, y'know... free.'</p> <p>It seems she's very simply part of the greatest tradition in showbiz history: filling the enormous hole in your soul with the love of the enormous crowd.</p> <p>'I think it is a kind of tradition,' she says. 'Another female, she's not a singer, she's a very famous actress and I'll protect her privacy, but she said to me: "You know, Mariah, I think we just have to go through things a little bit more than other people do. Because we're given this thing, this gift." And I think she's right. But I think when you're given a musical gift, it's almost on another level because people feel music deeper than most things they feel. And that's my testimony as a human being who's gotten through some of the worst times. A song like Side Effects goes out to somebody who needs to feel cleansed of an abusive relationship. They're gonna hear it and hopefully be healed. I remember singing songs at the top of my lungs, growing up, because I needed to. Y'know? It's healing.'</p> <p>And with this momentous soliloquy of scorching luvvie-ness, Carey's man twitches and announces our time is up.</p> <p>I hope Jack, by now, has flown, alone, in a private jet.</p> <p>'Of course he has!' she hollers. 'Jack lives on a private jet...'</p> <p>She leans back on the chaise-longue, onto a black pillow. 'Dah-ling,' says the incorrigible Ms Carey, with a final waft of toasted marshmallow, 'you know how I like to lie down...'</p> <p> Long notes, long gowns: Mariah Carey by numbers </p> <p> 165m Total record sales worldwide. Carey is the second-bestselling female artist of all time - behind only Celine Dion (175 million).</p> <p> 0 The number of singers in the world who can hold a note higher than Carey, according to The Guinness Book of Records. A dolphin is the only mammal capable of producing a higher one.</p> <p> 1 The number that Carey finished in a 2003 MTV chart of the 'Greatest Voices in Music'.</p> <p> 25,000 The cost, in dollars, of the Vera Wang gown worn by Carey at her wedding to music mogul Tommy Mottola in 1993. Its 27ft train needed six bridesmaids to lift it.</p> <p> 17 The number of American Number 1 hits she has had. Only The Beatles (20) and Elvis Presley (18) have managed more.</p> <p> 6 The number of kittens Carey reportedly demands, as company in her dressing-room before a gig.</p> <p> 2000 The alleged daily wage, in pounds sterling, of Carey's 'lighting consultant'. (He ensures the lightbulbs, wherever she visits, are of the requisite colour, shape and brightness.)</p> <p> 105,000,000 The total outlay, in pounds, by EMI Records on Carey in one nine-month period: &pound;70 million to sign her up, on a five-album contract, in April 2001; and &pound;35 million to terminate that contract, one album in, in January 2002.</p> <p> Alastair Smart </p><p>The total cost of the ceremonies was around &pound;3 million. Between them they attracted all the stars of the beautiful game: Hello!, OK! and Cheryl Cole, the pop singer wife of the Chelsea defender Ashley.</p> <p>All the traditions were observed. The Terry wedding saw vast canvas screens erected to protect what was rumoured to be a &pound;1 million deal with OK!</p> <p>Such secrecy led to conflicting rumours: was Lionel Richie singing, or had John and Toni opted to be serenaded by the Liverpudlian girl group Atomic Kitten?</p> <p>Outside Manchester Cathedral hundreds had gathered in the hope of catching a glimpse of one of their heroes. Mark Marsden, 30, a bricklayer from Oldham, for example, was not interested in the bride. "I can't say I know her name," he said. "Her dress? I'm not interested in her dress. I just want to see some United players."</p> <p>Lawrence Hughes, 71, a retired accountant from Radcliffe, near Bury, took it in his stride. "Excited? Not really," he smiled. "The wife and I were going through anyway to do some shopping so we thought we might as well stop and watch. We'll probably go to Marks later."</p> <p>The crowd raised a cheer as the guests arrived, the men mostly in grey suits, the younger women in shimmering dresses and fake tan. The congested wedding fixture list was, of course, caused by the training timetables of the husbands rather than any competitiveness among the WAGs. Coleen and Wayne were rumoured to be trying, with the help of a helicopter, to attend all the weddings.</p> <p>Perhaps most meticulous in her preparation was Curran. She already has a reputation for being able to out-tangerine any of her rivals in the tan stakes. She had been to Paris for a dress fitting, and was now said to be preparing to unveil a "sophisticated hairstyle" for her big day in Berkshire.</p> <p> </p> <p>Commentators failed to agree on whether her dress was the work of Dior or the Lebanese designer Elie Saab, whose trademark is to bespeckle his dresses with diamonds. Curran had also subjected herself to microdermabrasion facials (a procedure in which the dead outermost surface of the skin is removed by light abrasion: who says WAGs don't do science?).</p> <p>John Terry had managed to get in ahead of the others, but his rumoured budget has been restricted to "nearly" &pound;1 million. He had hired the ancestral family home of Sir Winston Churchill.</p> <p>Neville, by contrast, had avoided any second-hand homes. He was having his reception in his 12-bedroom mansion at Bradshaw, near Bolton, which is so new that he is said to have employed 200 workmen to work around the clock to get it ready for the reception. Guests were expected to wear red, white and black, Manchester United's colours. As the newlywed Nevilles emerged from the cathedral, two bridesmaids showered them with handfuls of confetti and white rose petals while the cameras clicked.</p> <p>Neville managed to stretch his budget to a full &pound;1 million pounds and apparently went for something "regal and restrained".</p> <p>The Carrick wedding in Leicestershire, meanwhile, was having to compete with the Staple-ford Steam Rally, featuring Britain's largest military railway and assorted steam traction engines, 100 yards away. As the sun set last night on orange skin and expensive dresses, one thing was certain: the WAGs had had their day.</p> <p> Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 931 2921 or email </p><p>Founded in 1908, located across the Charles River from the main Harvard campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Alumni include George W. Bush, Michael Bloomberg and Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JP Morgan Chase.</p><p>4. Columbia Business School</p><p>Established in 1916 in New York City. Alumni include Warren Buffett, Alexander Haig and Wolfgang Bernhard, the chairman of Volkswagen.</p><p>5. Insead</p><p>Founded in 1957, has a campus in Fontainebleau and Singapore. Alumni include Lindsay Owen-Jones, the chairman of L'Or&eacute;al, Helen Alexander, the chief executive of The Economist Group and Philip Hampton the chairman of J Sainsbury. </p><p>=6. Stanford University Graduate School of Business</p><p>Established in 1925 in California. Faculty contains three Nobel Prize winners. Alumni include Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Sir Howard Davies, the director of the London School of Economics and John F. Kennedy (who dropped out).</p><p>=6. IE Business School, Madrid</p><p>Founded in 1973. Alumni include Richard Alden, the chief executive of ONO and vice-president of Cable Europe, Claudio Aguirre, a former chairman and chief executive of Merrill Lynch and Magda Salarich, the chief executive of Santander Consumer Finance.</p><p>8. China Europe International Business School</p><p>Established in 1994 in Shanghai. The first exclusively Asian-based school to reach the top ten. </p><p>9. MIT Sloan School</p><p>Founded 1914 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Executive programme shaped by Alfred P. Sloan Jr, a former chairman of General Motors. Alumni include Kofi Annan, Benjamin Netanyahu and Magdalena Barreiro, a former finance minister of Ecuador.</p><p>10. New York University Stern School</p><p>Established 1900 in Greenwich Village. Students are nicknamed "Sternies." Alumni include Friedrich Hayek, Alan Greenspan and Niall Ferguson. </p><p>Reports have alleged that Mr Heywood, 41, was an &ldquo;agent of influence&rdquo; who passed information to MI6 but was not on its payroll. Such agents are widely used by government intelligence agencies and can be the hardest to detect. </p><p>His relationship with Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai, a powerful and wealthy political couple, would have been of interest to anyone in the Government. </p><p>According to the Chinese authorities, that association cost Mr Heywood his life. It named Mrs Gu as a suspect in his murder and stripped Mr Bo of all his party positions as Mr Heyood&rsquo;s death sparked China&rsquo;s biggest political scandal for decades.</p><p>A close childhood friend earlier told The Daily Telegraph of private suspicions that Mr Heywood was a spy, while the businessman&rsquo;s appearance, always immaculately dressed and often in cream linen, did nothing to dispel such notions. </p><p>Friends and associates said the Old Harrovian cultivated an image redolent of Graham Greene novels or James Bond films, driving a Jaguar with the numbers 007 included on the number plate and a Union Jack bumper sticker. </p><p>He also prepared periodic reports for Hakluyt, a corporate intelligence firm that was founded by former MI6 officers and which prides itself on discretion. The company said he had not been working for the company at the time of his death.</p><p>The cause of death was initially given as heart attack or alternatively over-consumption of alcohol. His body was cremated with his family&rsquo;s approval on Nov 18. </p><p>In his letter, Mr Hague insisted that the Foreign Office had acted swiftly once it was told by the Americans that Wang Lijun, the police chief in Chongqing, had implicated Mrs Gu in the Briton&rsquo;s death. </p><p>&ldquo;We acted to seek an investigation as soon as we judged that concerns about the circumstances of Mr Heywood&rsquo;s death justified it and we are pleased that the Chinese are now investigating,&rdquo; Mr Hague said. </p><p>Mr Heywood had known Mr Bo and his wife for about ten years, and helped their son Bo Guagua, whom he had taught English, win a place at Harrow before studying at Oxford.</p><p>The Israeli leader met early on Wednesday with Barack Obama, the US president, as Washington makes a bold bid to resume direct Israeli-Palestinian talks for the first time in two years.</p><p>Mr Netanyahu, Mr Abbas as well as Jordan&rsquo;s King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were due to take part in a White House dinner hosted by Mr Obama, who was also meeting the regional power brokers for one-to-one sessions. Tony Blair, the Quarter diplomatic representative, was also due to have dinner.</p><p>Mr Netanyahu did not specifically refer to the establishment of a Palestinian state, however, he acknowledged the Palestinians&rsquo; claim to the land.</p><p>&ldquo;The Jewish people are not strangers in our homeland, the land of our forefathers. But we recognise that another people share this land with us.</p><p>&ldquo;And I came here today to find a historic compromise that will enable both peoples to live in peace, security and dignity,&rdquo; he said.</p><p>The White House said the day of intense presidential engagement was meant to build trust ahead of direct US-engineered Israel-Palestinian talks due to be hosted by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday.</p><p>"I think it was very important that at the beginning of the second set I got that momentum and broke early on," Bogdanovic said, "because after the first set I was obviously a little bit disappointed."</p> <p>Henman believes he is capable of causing an upset when he and Murray resume their rivalry for the third time this season. Murray has beaten Henman in Toronto and , but the 31-year-old is hoping to make it third-time lucky in Bangkok.</p> <p>The 19-year-old Scot is blossoming under new coach Brad Gilbert and began the week ranked 16th in the world. Henman is now in 59th place, but insists that if everything clicks he can beat the confident teenager.</p> <p>"I think I know what I need to do in order to make life tough for him," he said.</p> <p>Marcos Baghdatis has withdrawn from the event after injuring his shoulder during practice. His absence could be costly, as he is locked in competition for a place in the season-ending Masters Cup, and will now lose ground to rivals such as David Nalbandian and James Blake.</p><p>Dr Andrew Cubie, CBE. Formerly Chair of the Court, Napier University. For public service in Scotland. (Edinburgh) </p><p>Peter John Bellett Dixon. Formerly chairman, Housing Corporation. For services to the Housing Sector. (London, N1) </p><p>Professor Neil James Douglas. President, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. For services to Medicine. (Edinburgh) </p><p>Robert Paul Edwards. Headteacher, Garforth Community College, Leeds. For services to local and national Education. (Doncaster, South Yorkshire) </p><p>Christopher Andrew Hoy, MBE. Cyclist. For services to Sport. (Salford, Lancashire) </p><p>David Charles Jones, CBE. For services to Business and to Charity. (Ilkley, West Yorkshire) </p><p>Kenneth Lloyd Jones, QPM. Chief Constable and president, Association of chief Police Officers. For services to the Police. (Axbridge, Somerset) </p><p>Nigel Graham Knowles. Chief executive and managing Partner for Europe and Asia, DLA Piper International LLP. For services to the Legal Profession. (London, SW6) </p><p>David Thomas Rowell Lewis. For services to the Legal Profession and to the City of London Corporation. (Oxfordshire) </p><p>John Robert Madejski, OBE. For charitable services. (Reading, Berkshire) </p><p>Neil Stuart McKay, CB. Chief executive, East of England Strategic Health Authority. For services to the NHS. (London) </p><p>His Honour Judge Goolam Hoosen Kader Meeran. Formerly president, Employment Tribunal (England and Wales). For services to the Administration of Justice. (London, SW15) </p><p>Nicholas Wyndham Partridge, OBE. Chief executive, Terrence Higgins Trust. For services to Healthcare. (London, SE15) </p><p>John Christopher Powell. Chairman, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. For services to the Advertising Industry. (London, W6) </p><p>Terence David John Pratchett, OBE. Author. For services to Literature. (Salisbury, Wiltshire) </p><p>Bernard Francisco Ribeiro, CBE. Formerly president, Royal College of Surgeons. For services to Medicine. (Alresford, Hampshire) </p><p>Professor Martin John Taylor, FRS. Professor in Pure Mathematics, University of Manchester. For services to Science. (Stockport, Cheshire) </p><p>Dr Mark Jeremy Walport. Director, Wellcome Trust. For services to Medical Research. (London, SW15) </p><p></p><p>KCB </p><p>Nicholas MacPherson. Permanent secretary, HM Treasury. (London) </p><p>Jonathan Phillips. Permanent secretary, Northern Ireland Office. (London, SW1P) </p><p>CB </p><p>Ms Patricia Margaret Aldred, CBE. Director-General, Deputy head, Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat, Cabinet Office. (London, SW1A) </p><p>John Stephen Pitt-Brooke. Director-General Secretariat, Land Forces, Ministry of Defence. For public and voluntary service. (Salisbury, Wiltshire) </p><p>Derek William Jones. Formerly Senior director, Welsh Assembly Government. (Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan) </p><p>David John Pearson. Deputy Treasury Solicitor, Treasury Solicitor's Department. (Harrow, Middlesex) </p><p>David James Smith. Commercial director, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Surrey) </p><p>Ralph Edwin Tabberer. Director-General for Schools, Department for Children, Schools and Families. (Farnham, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>KCVO </p><p>Peregrine Andrew Morny Cavendish The Duke of Devonshire, CBE. Her Majesty's Representative at Ascot. </p><p>Rear Admiral Jeremy Michael De Halpert, CB. Deputy Master, Trinity House. </p><p>The Rt Hon Raymond Arthur Clanaboy The Lord O'Neill, TD. Formerly Lord-Lieutenant of County Antrim. </p><p>Sir John Charles Buchanan Riddell, Bt, CVO. Lord-Lieutenant of Northumberland. </p><p>CVO </p><p>Miss Elizabeth Faith Currer Buchanan, LVO. Formerly private secretary to The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall. </p><p>Maj Gen David Leslie Burden, CB, CBE. Formerly Receiver General and Chapter Clerk, Westminster Abbey. </p><p>Paul Robert Virgo Clarke. Chief executive and Clerk of the Council, Duchy of Lancaster. </p><p>Sir Thomas Farmer, CBE. Chairman, Board of Trustees, The Duke of Edinburgh's Award. </p><p>Stuart Gordon Mole, OBE. Director, The Royal Commonwealth Society. </p><p>Mrs Phyllida Katharine Stewart-Roberts, OBE. Formerly Lord-Lieutenant of East Sussex. </p><p>Michael John Stevens, LVO. Deputy Treasurer to The Queen and director of Finance, Royal Household. </p><p>Hugh Rowland Wyatt. Formerly Lord-Lieutenant of West Sussex. </p><p>LVO </p><p>Mrs Ailsa Jane Anderson. Deputy Press secretary to The Queen and head of News. </p><p>Peter McEuan Ashby. Helicopter Pilot, The Queen's Helicopter Flight. </p><p>Dr Khaled Omar Azzam. Director, The Prince's School of Traditional Arts. </p><p>George Hassall, MVO. Director, Royal and Diplomatic Affairs, Jaguar Land Rover. </p><p>Thomas George Stewart McCaw, MVO. Formerly Land Steward, Eastern District, Duchy of Cornwall. </p><p>Miss Charlette Helen Robinson, MVO. Administrator, Privy Purse and Treasurer's Office. </p><p>MVO </p><p>Edward George Bedding. Senior Painter and Decorator, Royal Household. </p><p>Miss Tracy Caroline Emms. Executive assistant to the Defence Services secretary. </p><p>Michael John Field. Framing and Exhibition Conservator, Royal Collection. </p><p>Michael David Flynn. The Duke of Edinburgh's Coachman. </p><p>Miss Diana Rosemary Hawkins. Formerly secretary to the Ladies in Waiting to The Queen. </p><p>Chief Inspector John Anthony Hourihan. Metropolitan Police. For services to Royalty Protection. </p><p>Mrs Joan Mary Hughes. Entries secretary, Royal Windsor Horse Show. </p><p>Roger Langley Judd. Formerly assistant Organist, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. </p><p>Keith Thomas Lawler. Senior Painter and Decorator, Royal Household. </p><p>Miss Rachel Louise Loryman. Secretary, The Duke of York's Household. </p><p>Mrs Eva Grazyna Zielinska-Millar. Senior Photographer, Royal Collection. </p><p>Mrs Katrina Mary Munro. Head of Design, Royal Collection Enterprises Ltd. </p><p>Miss Diane Stanton. Lieutenancy Officer, Somerset County Council. </p><p></p><p>RVM Gold </p><p>Adrian Osborne, RVM. Electrician, Sandringham Estate. </p><p>RVM Silver </p><p>Sgt John Matthew Attwell (Silver). Formerly Orderly to The Duke of York. </p><p>Constable Malcolm Brownlee. Metropolitan Police. For services to Royalty Protection. </p><p>Dennis Michael Burge. Heating Engineer, Hampton Court Palace, Historic Royal Palaces. </p><p>Sgt Gregory John Gillham. Metropolitan Police. For services to Royalty Protection. </p><p>Andrew Paul Godfrey. Fruit Farm Worker, Sandringham Estate. </p><p>Kenneth Pritchard Jones. Head Groundsman, Crown Estate, Windsor. </p><p>David Francis Long. Proprietor, Water and Gas Services. </p><p>Mrs Margaret Mary Mountstevens. Formerly Daily Lady, Frogmore House. </p><p>John Daniel Powell. Yeoman Bed Goer, The Queen's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard. </p><p>Keith Sanderson. Chauffeur, Royal Household. </p><p>Roderick Clive Truelove. Yeoman Clerk, Her Majesty's Tower of London. </p><p>Mrs Flora Wehlau. Formerly Household Attendant, Government House, Canberra.</p><p></p><p>DBE </p><p>Ms Jennifer Gita Abramsky, CBE. Formerly Group director, BBC Audio and Music. For services to Broadcasting. (London, NW5) </p><p>Professor Sally Claire Davies. Director of Research and Development, Department of Health. For services to Medicine. (London, N1) </p><p>Mrs Elizabeth Fradd. For services to Nursing. (Nottinghamshire) </p><p>Professor Wendy Hall, CBE. Professor of Computer Science, University of Southampton. For services to Science and Technology. (Romsey, Hampshire) </p><p>Ms Anne Elizabeth (Mrs Cook) Owers, CBE. Her Majesty's chief inspector of Prisons. For services to the Criminal Justice System. (London, SW8) </p><p>Ms Rosalind Joy Savill, CBE. Director, The Wallace Collection. For services to the Arts. (London, W1U) </p><p>CBE </p><p>Charles Benedict Ainslie, OBE. Sailor. For services to Sport. (Helston, Cornwall) </p><p>James Felton Somers Hervey-Bathurst. Formerly president, Historic Houses Association. For services to Heritage. (Ledbury, Herefordshire) </p><p>Nicholas John Bowd. Head of Scottish Procurement Directorate, Scottish Executive. (Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire) </p><p>Mrs Isabelle Boyd. Headteacher, Cardinal Newman High School, Bellshill, North Lanarkshire. For services to Education. (Hamilton, South Lanarkshire) </p><p>David John Brailsford, MBE. Performance director, British Cycling. For services to Sport. (Ilkestone, Derbyshire) </p><p>Professor Tina Bruce. Visiting Professor of Early Childhood Studies, Roehampton University. For services to Early Years Education. (Richmond, Surrey) </p><p>Alistair Buchanan. Chief executive, Office of Gas and Electricity Markets. For public service. (London, SW1P) </p><p>Earl Cameron. Actor. For services to Drama. (Kenilworth, Warwickshire) </p><p>Douglas Caster. Chief executive, Ultra Electronics Holdings plc. For services to the Defence Industry. (Wokingham, Berkshire) </p><p>Michael Chance. Opera singer. For services to Music. (London, SW15) </p><p>Thomas Alastair Clark. For services to Central Banking. (Richmond, Surrey) </p><p>Dr Kathleen Louise Costeloe. Professor of Paediatrics. For services to Medicine in London. (London, SW11) </p><p>John Coughlan. Director of Children's Services, Hampshire County Council. For services to Local Government. (Romsey, Hampshire) </p><p>Mrs Shirley Cramer. Formerly National Council Member, Learning and Skills Council and chief executive, Dyslexia Action. For services to Education. (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire) </p><p>Ms Lucy Manuela de Groot. Executive director, Improvement and Development Agency. For services to Local Government. (London, N19) </p><p>Professor Colin Dennis. For services to the Agri-food Industry. (Warwickshire) </p><p>David Keith Dingle. Chief executive Officer, Carnival UK. For services to the Shipping Industry. (Hildenborough, Kent) </p><p>Ben Paul Oakley Dyson. Director of Primary Care, Department of Health. (London, SW2) </p><p>Professor Leslie Colin Ebdon. Vice-Chancellor, University of Bedfordshire. For services to local and national Higher Education. (Hitchin, Hertfordshire) </p><p>Keith Elliott. Principal, City of Bristol College. For services to Further Education. (Bristol) </p><p>Richard John Hugo Fleck. Chairman, Auditing Practices Board. For services to Business and to the Legal Profession. (Horsham, West Sussex) </p><p>David George Flory. Director-General, NHS Finance, Performance and Operations, Department of Health. (Durham) </p><p>John Christopher Freeman. Director, Children's Services, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council. For services to Local Government. (Kingswinford, West Midlands) </p><p>Professor Duncan Ian Dunbar Gallie. Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford. For services to Social Science. (Leamington Spa, Warwickshire) </p><p>Mrs Judith Valerie Gibson. Director of Contact Centres, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne and Wear) </p><p>Professor Lesley Anne Glover. Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland. For services to Environmental Science. (By Inverurie, Aberdeenshire) </p><p>Bryan Mark Gray, MBE. Chairman, North West Regional Development Agency. For services to Business and to the community in the North West. (Wigan, Lancashire) </p><p>Wynne Philip Morgan Griffiths. Chief executive, Young's Seafood Limited. For services to the Food Industry. (Lincolnshire) </p><p>Professor Ian Halliday. Chief executive, Scottish Universities Physics Alliance and president, European Science Foundation. For services to Science. (Edinburgh) </p><p>Dr Patricia Anne Hamilton. President, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. For services to Medicine. (London, SW18) </p><p>Mrs Sue Hammerson, OBE. For charitable services. (London, W1B) </p><p>Hugh Christopher Emlyn Harris. Founder, London First Global Network. For voluntary service to Community Relations in the City of London. (Sevenoaks, Kent) </p><p>Charles Donald Hendry, QFSM. Chief Fire Officer, Kent Fire and Rescue Service. For services to Local Government. (Doddington, Kent) </p><p>Robert David Holden. Chief executive Officer, London and Continental Railways Ltd. For services to the Rail Industry. (Hertfordshire) </p><p>William Andrew Myers Holroyd, OBE. Formerly president, Law Society. For services to the Administration of Justice. (Liverpool, Merseyside) </p><p>Dr Owain Arwel Hughes, OBE. Conductor. For services to Music and to Charity. (Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex) </p><p>Jeremy Robin Powis Hyde. HM Deputy chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service. (Oxted, Surrey) </p><p>Dr John Gordon Jenkins. Consultant Paediatrician, Waveney and Antrim Hospitals. For services to Medicine in Northern Ireland. (Ballymena, Antrim) </p><p>Peter Jones. For services to Business, Entrepreneurship and to Young People. (Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire) </p><p>James Juffs. Chief Operating Officer, Debt Management Office, HM Treasury. For public and voluntary service. (Essex) </p><p>His Honour Judge Geoffrey Harvey Kamil. Circuit Judge. For services to the Administration of Justice. (Leeds, West Yorkshire) </p><p>Tarun Kapur. Executive Headteacher, Ashton-on-Mersey and Broadoak Schools, Trafford. For services to Education. (Warrington, Cheshire) </p><p>William James Gregory Keegan. For services to Financial Journalism. (London, N1) </p><p>Professor Thomas Burton Loram Kirkwood. Professor of Medicine and director, Institute for Ageing and Health, Newcastle University. For services to Medical Science. (Northumberland) </p><p>Malcolm Lowe-Lauri. Formerly chief executive, King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. For services to the NHS. (Peterborough, Cambridgeshire) </p><p>Dr Melanie Lee. Executive vice-president, UCB and Deputy Chair, Cancer Research UK. For services to Medical Science. (London, NW7) </p><p>Ian Leitch. Director of Resources and Governance, Scottish Parliament. (Edinburgh) </p><p>Mrs Linda Lennon. Area director, Her Majesty's Courts Service, Ministry of Justice. (Carshalton, Surrey) </p><p>Professor Henrietta Miriam Ottoline Leyser, FRS. Professor of Plant Developmental Genetics, University of York. For services to Plant Science. (York, North Yorkshire) </p><p>Dr Nigel Francis Lightfoot. Chief Adviser, Health Protection Agency. For services to Public Health. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne and Wear) </p><p>Derek Anthony Ludlow, MBE, DL. Chairman, Ludlow Group of Companies. For services to Business and to the community in Bedfordshire. (Luton, Bedfordshire) </p><p>Mrs Juliet Lyon. Director, Prison Reform Trust. For services to the Welfare of Prisoners. (London, WC1X) </p><p>John MacQuarrie. Formerly Deputy Ombudsman, Office of the Assembly Ombudsman, Northern Ireland. For public and voluntary service. (Carrickfergus, Antrim) </p><p>Clive Andrew Maxwell. For public service. (Beckenham, Kent) </p><p>Daniel Francis McAllister. Area manager, East Midlands Region, HM Prison Service, Ministry of Justice. (Market Harborough, Leicestershire) </p><p>Richard John McCarthy. Director-General of Housing and Planning, Department for Communities and Local Government. (Tunbridge Wells, Kent) </p><p>Colin William McKerracher, QPM. Chief Constable, Grampian Police. For services to the Police. (Aberdeen) </p><p>Francis McLoughlin. Principal, City and Islington College, London. For services to Further Education. (London, N4) </p><p>David George Moorhouse. Chairman, Lloyds Register. For services to the Maritime Industry. (Meopham, Kent) </p><p>Terence Keith Morgan. Chief executive, Tube Lines. For services to Public Transport. (West Midlands) </p><p>Leslie Porter Murray. Chairman, Tidy Northern Ireland and lately chairman, ARENA Network. For services to the Environment. (Killinchy, Down) </p><p>Ms Gillian Mary Newton. Chief executive, Fire Service College, Department for Communities and Local Government. (Market Harborough, Leicestershire) </p><p>Michael William Norgrove. Director of Excise, Stamps and Money Business, HM Revenue and Customs. (Coggleshall, Essex) </p><p>Michael David Parker. Formerly chief executive Officer, British Nuclear Fuels plc. For services to the Energy Industry. (London, SW7) </p><p>Stephen Parker. For public service. (St Albans, Hertfordshire) </p><p>Councillor David Parsons. Leader, Leicestershire County Council and chairman, East Midlands Regional Assembly. For services to Local and Regional Government and to the Voluntary Sector. (Leicester, Leicestershire) </p><p>Nicholas Campbell Paul. Chairman, Advantage West Midlands. For services to Business. (Malvern, Worcestershire) </p><p>David Lee Pearson, OBE. For services to Equestrianism and to Disabled Sport. (Leek, Staffordshire) </p><p>Courtney Pine, OBE. For services to Jazz Music. (Brighton, East Sussex) </p><p>Robert Anthony Plant. Singer and Songwriter. For services to Music. (Bewdley, Worcestershire) </p><p>Paul John Potts. Executive chairman, Press Association. For services to Journalism. (London, SW1V) </p><p>John David Priest. Deputy Strategic Sourcing director, Corporate IT, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Preston, Lancashire) </p><p>David Prince. Formerly chief executive, Standards Board for England. For services to Local Government. (Leicester, Leicestershire) </p><p>Emeritus Professor Martin Charles Raff, FRS. For services to Life Sciences. (London, NW3) </p><p>Professor Anne-Marie Rafferty. Dean, Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery. For services to Healthcare. (London, N1) </p><p>David Evan Roberts, MBE. Swimmer. For services to Disabled Sport. (Pontypridd, Rhondda Cynon Taff) </p><p>Dr Sue Roberts. Formerly National Clinical director for Diabetes. For services to Healthcare. (Hexam, Northumberland) </p><p>Professor Thomas Michael Roberts. Formerly chief executive, Central Science Laboratory, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. (Easingwold, North Yorkshire) </p><p>Dr Michael Gerald Galton Schluter. For charitable services through the Relationships Foundation and the Jubilee Centre in Cambridge. (Cambridgeshire) </p><p>Finlay McMillan Scott. Chief executive, General Medical Council. For public service. (Liverpool, Merseyside) </p><p>Ms Deborah Frances Shackleton. Group chief executive, Riverside Housing Group. For services to the Housing Sector. (Liverpool, Merseyside) </p><p>Professor Isobel Nicol Sharp. Formerly president, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and Partner, Deloitte. For services to the Accountancy Profession. (London, EC4A) </p><p>Charles James Francis Sinclair. Formerly chief executive, Daily Mail and General Trust. For services to the Newspaper Industry. (London, SW19) </p><p>Dr Indarjit Singh, OBE. Director, Network of Sikh Organisations (UK). For services to Inter-Faith and Community Relations. (London, SW19) </p><p>Andrew Michael Slade. For public service. (London) </p><p>Dr Ian McKenzie Smith, OBE. For services to theArts in Scotland. (Montrose, Angus) </p><p>Ms Priscilla Snowball. Chair and chief executive, Abbott Mead Vickers Group. For services to the Advertising Industry. (London, SW13) </p><p>David Whitlock Tanner, OBE. Performance director, GB Rowing Team. For services to Sport. (Middlesex) </p><p>Professor Alexander Allan Templeton. Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Aberdeen. For services to Medicine. (Ellon, Aberdeen) </p><p>Jeremy Jack Thomas. Producer. For services to the Film Industry. (London, W1T) </p><p>Commodore Robert Charles Thornton. Royal Fleet Auxiliary. </p><p>Mrs Rosemary Thorp. For services to Education and to International Development. (Malvern, Worcestershire) </p><p>Robert Upton. Secretary-General, Royal Town Planning Institute. For public service. (Fleet, Hampshire) </p><p>Lady Marina Alandra Vaizey. For services to the Arts. (London, W4) </p><p>John Esmond George Vaux. Formerly Speaker's Counsel, House of Commons. (Weald, Kent) </p><p>Professor Anthony James Venables. Formerly chief Economist, Department for International Development. (Oxfordshire) </p><p>Anthony Watson. Chairman, Strategic Investment Board Limited. For services to Economic Development in Northern Ireland. (Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire) </p><p>Professor Peter Neil Temple Wells. Research Professor and Senior Scientific director, Institute of Medical Engineering and Medical Physics, University of Cardiff. For services to Healthcare Science. (Somerset) </p><p>Bradley Marc Wiggins, OBE. Cyclist. For services to Sport. (Chorley, Lancashire) </p><p>Professor Paul Wilkinson. For public service. (Anstruther, Fife) </p><p>Professor David Charles Woods. Principal Adviser, City Challenge. For services to Education. (Ironbridge, Shropshire) </p><p>James Samuel Younger. Formerly chairman, Electoral Commission. For public service. (London, W12) </p><p></p><p>OBE </p><p>Professor Thomas Alan Acton. Professor of Romani Studies, University of Greenwich. For services to Education. (Brentwood, Essex) </p><p>Miss Rebecca Adlington. Swimmer. For services to Sport. (Mansfield, Nottinghamshire) </p><p>Jonathan Patrick Adair Adnams. Executive chairman, Adnams plc. For services to Corporate Social Responsibility. (Suffolk) </p><p>Gideon Amos. Chief executive, Town and Country Planning Association. For services to Sustainable Development. (London, E9) </p><p>Mrs Elizabeth Antrobus. Headteacher, Henry Cavendish Primary School, Lambeth, London. For services to Education. (London, SW16) </p><p>Professor David Croisdale-Appleby. For public and voluntary service. (Amersham, Buckinghamshire) </p><p>Mrs Catherine Archer. Formerly Executive director, West Yorkshire Police Authority. For services to the Police. (Wakefield, West Yorkshire) </p><p>Mrs Joan Asby, MBE. For services to Community Development in West Wales. (Narberth, Pembrokeshire) </p><p>Professor Deborah Ashby. Professor of Medical Statistics and Clinical Trials, Imperial College, London. For services to Medicine. (Essex) </p><p>Ms Diana Athill. Literary Editor and Author. For services to Literature. (London, NW3) </p><p>Miss Sarah Ayton, MBE. Sailor. For services to Sport. (Weymouth, Dorset) </p><p>David Bailey. Formerly Tax Inspector, HM Revenue and Customs. For public and voluntary service. (Huddersfield, West Yorkshire) </p><p>Martyn Murray Baker. Formerly director of Economic Development, City of London Corporation. For services to Local Government. (London, SW10) </p><p>George Christopher Band. For services to Mountaineering and to Charity. (Hook, Hampshire) </p><p>Dr Alan Barber. For services to the Environment. (Bristol) </p><p>Mrs Lucinda Jane Barnett. Chairman, Magistrates' Association. For services to the Administration of Justice. (South Croydon, Surrey) </p><p>Mrs Victoria Barnsley. Chief executive, HarperCollins UK. For services to the Publishing Industry. (London, W6) </p><p>Keith Leslie Barwell. Formerly chairman, West Northamptonshire Development Corporation. For services to Local Government. (Northampton, Northamptonshire) </p><p>Ms Gillian Rose Beasley. Chief executive, Peterborough City Council. For services to Local Government. (Peterborough, Cambridgeshire) </p><p>David Bell. Senior Programme manager, Somalia, Department for International Development. (Kenya) </p><p>Mrs Catherine Susan Beswick. Head of Healthcare, HM Young Offenders' Institution Huntercombe, Oxfordshire. For services to Healthcare. (Oxfordshire) </p><p>Dr Anita Kumari Bhalla, DL. Editor, Public Space Broadcasting BBC. For services to Broadcasting. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p>Dr Kuldip Kaur Bharj. Senior Lecturer in Midwifery and Lead Midwife for Education, School of Healthcare, Leeds University. For services to Healthcare and to the community in Leeds. (Leeds, West Yorkshire) </p><p>Keith Raymond Blackwell. Principal, Esher Sixth Form College, Surrey. For services to local and national Further Education. (West Wellow, Hampshire) </p><p>Ms Helene Reardon-Bond. Head of Gender Equality Policy, Government Equalities Office. For public and voluntary service. (London, NW5) </p><p>Robert Michael Bowley. Formerly Project Team head of Division, Identity and Passport Service, Home Office. (Rutland) </p><p>Ms Caroline Breakey. For services to Rural and Community Development in Northern Ireland. (Craigavon, Armagh) </p><p>Dr Isabel Bruce. Vice-Chair, University of the West of Scotland. For services to Higher Education in Scotland and Malawi. (Hamilton, South Lanarkshire) </p><p>Professor Anthony Applemore Mornington Bryer. Emeritus Professor of Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham. For services to Scholarship. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p>Nicholas Buckland. For services to Technology and Innovation. (Launceston, Cornwall) </p><p>Ian Kellman Bynoe. Commissioner, Independent Police Complaints Commission. For public service. (Shepton Mallet, Somerset) </p><p>John Michael Caines. For services to Entrepreneurship and to Business in the South West. (Cheltenham, Gloucestershire) </p><p>Mrs Jane Caldwell. Formerly Headteacher, Highfield Community Primary School, Sunderland. For services to Education. (Sunderland, Tyne and Wear) </p><p>Rodney John Calvert. Managing director, Millbrook Proving Ground. For services to the Automotive Industry. (Bedford, Bedfordshire) </p><p>Professor Sara Carter. For services to Women Entrepreneurs. (Stirling) </p><p>Ms Joyce Margaret Catterick. For services to the Citizens' Advice Bureau and to the community in West Yorkshire. (Todmorden, West Yorkshire) </p><p>Adrian Oswald Wynn Cave. For services to the community in Ealing, London. (London, W5) </p><p>Dr James Alan Harvard Cave. General Medical Practitioner, Newbury. For services to Healthcare in Berkshire. (Newbury, Berkshire) </p><p>Professor Martin Cave. Warwick Business School. For public service. (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire) </p><p>Dr Nadia Chambers. Consultant Nurse for Older People, Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust. For services to Healthcare. (Portsmouth, Hampshire) </p><p>Michael Christensen. Formerly Senior Local manager, North West and Midlands, HM Revenue and Customs. (Leamington Spa, Warwickshire) </p><p>Mrs Jean Combes. For services to Phenology. (Ashtead, Surrey) </p><p>Dr Diane Coyle. For services to Economics. (London, W13) </p><p>Nicholas Pury Cust. Joint managing director, Superbreak plc. For services to the Tourist Industry. (York, North Yorkshire) </p><p>Ronald Daniel. For voluntary service to Victims of Crime in Scotland. (Dunfermline, Fife) </p><p>Mrs Cheryl Linda Danson. Chair, England Netball. For services to Sport. (Luton, Bedfordshire) </p><p>Keith James Datchler. For services to Conservation and to Environmental Land Management. (Battle, East Sussex) </p><p>Ms Katherine Ann Davies. Strategic director, Nottinghamshire County Drug and Alcohol Action Team. For services to Disadvantaged People. (Mansfield, Nottinghamshire) </p><p>Dr Stephen Roger Davis. Lecturer in Psychology, University College London. For services to Children with Communication Difficulties. (London, SE12) </p><p>Leslie Dawson. For services to the Energy and Water Industries. (Lowestoft, Suffolk) </p><p>Alan Edward Deighton. Formerly Safety Advice manager, Department for Transport. (London, E1W) </p><p>Kelvyn Derrick. For services to Engineering in the South West and to International Trade. (Bridport, Dorset) </p><p>Uday Kumar Dholakia. For services to Business and to the community in Leicestershire. (Leicester, Leicestershire) </p><p>Dr Rhidian Dowdle. Formerly consultant Physician, Cardiology, Cwm Taff NHS Trust. For services to Medicine. (Vale of Glamorgan) </p><p>Geoffrey Drage. For services to Intellectual Property Rights. (Guildford, Surrey) </p><p>Robert Drew. Headteacher, Gearies Infant School, Redbridge, Essex. For services to Education. (London, E10) </p><p>Miss Ann Irene Duddy. Director of Nursing, Altnagelvin Hospital Trust. For services to Healthcare in Northern Ireland and Overseas. (Portstewart, Londonderry) </p><p>David Alexander Dunkley. Formerly Inspector of Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries for Scotland, Scottish Executive. (Livingston, West Lothian) </p><p>Fergus Early. Founder and Artistic director, Green Candle Dance Company. For services to Dance. (London, N1) </p><p>Councillor Meral Hussein Ece. London Borough of Islington. For services to Local Government. (London, N5) </p><p>Professor Marcial Hernan Echenique. For services to Urban and Regional Planning. (Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire) </p><p>Stephen Kenneth Ellison. Formerly Clerk of the Parliamentary Archives, Houses of Parliament. (East Grinstead, West Sussex) </p><p>Richard Emery. For services to Broadcasting and to Charity. (Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire) </p><p>Ms Carole Eniffer. Policy Adviser, Violent Crime Unit, Crime and Drug Strategy Directorate, Home Office. (London, SW16) </p><p>Duncan Fisher. Chief executive, Fatherhood Institute. For services to Children. (Crickhowell, Powys) </p><p>Professor Alfonso John Forte. For services to Food Safety. (Uxbridge, Middlesex) </p><p>Robert Norman Froud. Service head, Cultural Services, Somerset County Council. For services to Local Government. (Somerset) </p><p>Thomas Alan Fry. Chief executive, South Wales Police Authority. For services to the Police. (Swansea) </p><p>Mrs Elizabeth Gaere. Head, Joint Donor Office, Southern Sudan, Department for International Development. (Bournemouth, Dorset) </p><p>Mrs Jane Mary Gardam. Author. For services to Literature. (Kent) </p><p>Mrs Catherine Gilchrist. Formerly head of Civil Service Pensions, Department of Finance and Personnel, Northern Ireland Executive. For public and voluntary service. (Londonderry) </p><p>Mrs Janet Mary Dowlen-Gilliland. For services to the Soldiers', Sailors' and Airmen's Families Association. (Waldniel, Germany) </p><p>Michael John Glover. Arup Fellow and Technical director and Deputy Project director, Channel Tunnel Rail Link. For services to Engineering. (Sevenoaks, Kent) </p><p>Mrs Kathleen Mary Gooding. Formerly Senior Early Years Inspector, Wolverhampton Local Authority. For services to local and national Early Years Education. (Macclesfield, Cheshire) </p><p>Dr Susan Elizabeth Gregory. Consultant in Dental Public Health, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. For services to Healthcare. (Hitchin, Hertfordshire) </p><p>Mrs Salima Hafejee. Director, Bradford Youth Development Partnership. For services to Community Relations in West Yorkshire. (Bradford, West Yorkshire) </p><p>Mrs Pauline Ann Halliday. For services to Local Government in the City of London. (London, SW19) </p><p>David John Hampson. Principal, Tollbar Business and Enterprise College, North East Lincolnshire. For services to Education. (Louth, Lincolnshire) </p><p>Professor Barry William Hancock. Professor of Oncology, Sheffield University and Sheffield Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. For services to Medicine. (Sheffield, South Yorkshire) </p><p>Roger Harvey. For voluntary service to the community in Halifax, West Yorkshire. (Halifax, West Yorkshire) </p><p>Stuart Henry Haynes. Grade B1, Ministry of Defence. (Woking, Surrey) </p><p>Professor Christopher John Heginbotham. Formerly chief executive, Mental Health Act Commission. For services to Healthcare. (St Albans, Hertfordshire) </p><p>Brig John Hemsley. For voluntary service to the St. John Ambulance Brigade and to the community in Somerset. (Somerset) </p><p>Ms Melanie Henwood. Vice-Chair, General Social Care Council. For services to Social Care. (Towcester, Northamptonshire) </p><p>Dr Alan John Heyes. Formerly Deputy director, International Nuclear Policy and Programmes, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. (Hildenborough, Kent) </p><p>Professor Carole Hillenbrand, FRSE. Formerly head of Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh. For services to Higher Education. (Edinburgh) </p><p>David Hinchliffe. Formerly director, Future of Inspection Project, Ofsted, Department for Children, Schools and Families. (Taunton, Somerset) </p><p>John Alan Holmes, QFSM. Programme director, North East Fire and Rescue Authorities. For services to Local Government. (Horsley, Northumberland) </p><p>Ms Marianne (Mrs Cutts) Hood. Chair, Independent Advisory Beacon Panel. For services to Local Government. (Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire) </p><p>Dr Ursula Howard. Formerly director, National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy. For services to Further Education. (Oxfordshire) </p><p>Christopher Gerard Hughes. For public service. (Luton, Bedfordshire) </p><p>Howard Hughes. For charitable services. (Sevenoaks, Kent) </p><p>Mrs Ellen Hunter. Cycling Pilot Guide. For services to Disabled Sport. (Bodmin, Cornwall) </p><p>Dr Musharraf Hussain. Director, Karimia Institute, Nottingham. For services to Community Relations. (Nottinghamshire) </p><p>Andrew Charles Hutchinson. Executive Principal, Parkside Federation, Cambridgeshire. For services to Education. (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) </p><p>Dr Robert Jackson. Formerly head of Radioactive Substances Division, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. (Bracknell, Berkshire) </p><p>Mrs Ruth Margaret James. Formerly head of People Development, TNT. For services to Skills Training and Investors in People. (Kenilworth, Warwickshire) </p><p>Councillor Ann Marie John. Member, London Borough of Brent. For services to Local Government. (London, NW9) </p><p>Ms Jill Johnstone. Director of Policy, National Consumer Council. For services to Consumers. (Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey) </p><p>Professor Elphin Wynne Jones. Principal, Harper Adams University College. For services to local and national Agricultural Higher Education. (Newport, Shropshire) </p><p>Rhydian James Morgan-Jones. For services to the Horseracing Industry. (Stow on the Wold, Gloucestershire) </p><p>Mrs Susan Elizabeth Jones. Head of Public Libraries Children Services, Hertfordshire County Council. For services to Local Government. (Broxbourne, Hertfordshire) </p><p>Ms (Lucky Dhillon) Lakhbir Kaur. For services to Asian Broadcasting and to the Media. (Hayes, Middlesex) </p><p>Mrs Rosemary Kelly. Chairman, Arts Council of Northern Ireland. For services to the Arts. (Carrickfergus, Antrim) </p><p>Brian Richard Calvert Kemp. For services to International Trade in the South West. (Bristol, Gloucestershire) </p><p>Mrs Jacqui Kennedy. Director of Regulatory Services, Birmingham City Council. For services to Local Government. (Swadlincote, Derbyshire) </p><p>Darren Kenny. Cyclist. For services to Disabled Sport. (Verwood, Dorset) </p><p>Mrs Christine Margaret Kent. Formerly Grade B2, Ministry of Defence. (Salisbury, Wiltshire) </p><p>Mrs Asha Khemka. Principal and chief executive, West Nottinghamshire College. For services to Further Education. (Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire) </p><p>Sascha Kindred. Swimmer. For services to Disabled Sport. (Credenhill, Herefordshire) </p><p>Edward King. Formerly Principal Technical Policy Adviser, Sustainable Buildings Division, Department for Communities and Local Government. For public and voluntary service. (Croydon, Surrey) </p><p>David Kynaston. For services to the Electronics Industry. (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) </p><p>James Anthony Lake, QPM. Formerly chief Constable, Lincolnshire Police. For services to the Police. (London) </p><p>Philip Lane. Chief executive, Paralympics GB. For services to Sport. (Leigh on Sea, Essex) </p><p>Lui On Lee. For voluntary service to the Chinese Community in Forth Valley, Stirlingshire. (Stirling, Stirling and Falkirk) </p><p>Ms Christine Lenehan. Director, Council for Disabled Children. For services to Disability Issues. (Enfield, Middlesex) </p><p>Capt Michael Charles Gordon-Lennox. Chairman, St Dunstan's. For voluntary service to Visually Impaired Ex-Servicemen and Women. (Midhurst, West Sussex) </p><p>Bernard Lewis. For charitable services. (Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire) </p><p>Carl Henry Lis. For services to the community in the Yorkshire Dales. (Carnforth, Lancashire) </p><p>Col Thomas Derek Christopher Lloyd, TD, DL. For services to the West Midland Reserve Forces and Cadets' Association. (Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands) </p><p>John Anthony Lockett. Formerly Principal, Grosvenor Grammar School, Belfast. For services to Education in Northern Ireland. (Lisburn, Antrim) </p><p>John Logan. Principal Scientific Officer, Forensic Science Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Office. (Belfast) </p><p> Dr Paul Gerard Logan. Principal Specialist Inspector, Health and Safety Executive, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Liverpool, Merseyside) </p><p>Dr Andrew John Low. For services to the Defence Industry. (Southampton, Hampshire) </p><p>Ms Val Lowman. Head of Community Development and Sustainability, Bovis Lend. For services to the Construction Industry and to Skills Training. (Twickenham, Middlesex) </p><p>Hector MacKenzie. Formerly head of Patient Focus and International Issues, Health Directorate, Scottish Executive. (Gullane, East Lothian) </p><p>Ms Susan Margaret Graham Matheson. For services to Community Justice and to the Voluntary Sector in Scotland. (Edinburgh) </p><p>Mrs Kerry Ann Maxwell. Chief executive, Whitehaven Community Trust, Cumbria. For services to Young People. (Whitehaven, Cumbria) </p><p>Professor Alan Keith Maynard. Chairman, York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. For services to the NHS. (York, North Yorkshire) </p><p>Brian McCargo, QPM. For services to Sport and to the Special Olympics in Northern Ireland. (Belfast) </p><p>(John Martyn) Iain David McGeachy. Singer and Songwriter. For services to Music. (Belfast) </p><p>Ms Aileen McGlynn, MBE. Cyclist. For services to Disabled Sport. (Glasgow) </p><p>Professor Donna May Mead. Dean, Faculty ofHealth, Sport and Science and Professor of Nursing, University of Glamorgan. For services to Healthcare. (Neath Port Talbot) </p><p>Professor Philip Scott Mellor. Head of Department of Arbovirology, Institute for Animal Health. For services to Science. (Guildford, Surrey) </p><p>David William Midgley. For services to Business and to the community in Tyne and Wear. (Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear) </p><p>Ms Nicola Jane Milican. Artistic director, New Moves International Ltd. For services to Performance Art. (Honiton, Devon) </p><p>Mrs Hannah Miller. For voluntary service to the Welfare of Children. (Sanderstead, Surrey) </p><p>Mrs Janet Miller. For charitable services. (Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands) </p><p>Ms Katrina Jane Mitchell. Theatre director. For services to Drama. (London, W11) </p><p>Dr Sally Sarah Jane Montgomery. For services to the Science Discovery Centre in Northern Ireland. (Castlewellan, Down) </p><p>Mrs Rosaleen Moore. For public service in Northern Ireland. (Newry, Down) </p><p>Paul Morrell. For services to Architecture and to the Built Environment. (London, W14) </p><p>Charles Morrison. Board Member, Scottish Enterprise. For services to Economic Development. (Langbank, Renfrewshire) </p><p>Ms Sara Aye Moung. Head, Police Reward and Employee Relations Section, Police Reform and Resources Directorate, Home Office. (London, SE19) </p><p>Dr Robert Mulvaney. Glaciologist, Physical Sciences Division, British Antarctic Survey. For services to Science. (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) </p><p>Kumar Muthalagappan. Managing director, Pearl Hotels and Restaurants Group. For services to the Hospitality Industry. (Kenilworth, Warwickshire) </p><p>Councillor Terence Frank Neville, JP. Cabinet Member, London Borough of Enfield. For services to Local Government. (London, N21) </p><p>David Robert Newsome. Headteacher, Dyffryn Taf Secondary School, Whitland, Carmarthenshire. For services to Education and to Young People. (Llanelli, Carmarthenshire) </p><p>Robert John Nicholas. Programme manager, Proportionate Dispute Resolution, Her Majesty's Courts Service, Ministry of Justice. (London, SE19) </p><p>Grahame Richard Nix. Chief Operating Officer, Marshall Aerospace. For services to the Defence Industry. (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) </p><p>David St John O'Carroll. John, lately Deputy Branch head, Health and Social Care Regulation, Department of Health. (Leeds, West Yorkshire) </p><p>Mrs Christine Owen. Headteacher, Bartley Green School, Birmingham. For services to Education. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p>Mrs Lynette Isabel Owen. For services to the Publishing Industry and to International Trade. (London, NW1) </p><p>Edward Leslie Hinton Palfrey. Medical director, Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. For services to Healthcare. (Farnham, Surrey) </p><p>Stephen Mackenzie Park. Manager, British Olympic Sailing Team. For services to Sport. (Fareham, Hampshire) </p><p>Peter Parks. Photographer. For services to Natural History and to the Film Industry. (Truro, Cornwall) </p><p>Professor Alan Alexander Paterson. Professor of Law, Strathclyde University. For services to Legal Education and to Law. (Edinburgh) </p><p>Adam Erskine Peat. Formerly Public Services Ombudsman for Wales. (Bridport, Dorset) </p><p>Iain Bryden Percy, MBE. Sailor. For services to Sport. (Winchester, Hampshire) </p><p>Professor Andrew Pettigrew. Formerly Dean, School of Management, University of Bath. For services to local and national Higher Education. (Wiltshire) </p><p>George Andrew Pindar, DL. Chairman, G. A. Pindar and Sons. For services to Business and to the community in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. (Scarborough, North Yorkshire) </p><p>Julian Mark Piper. Formerly director of Extended and Integrated Services, ContinYou. For services to Children and Young People. (Leicestershire) </p><p>Robin Stanley Pitman. Formerly Grade B1, Ministry of Defence. (Oldbury-on-Severn, Bristol) </p><p>William James Poole. For services to Economic Development in Northern Ireland. (Ballynahinch, Down) </p><p>Mrs Elizabeth Brown Porter. Chief Librarian, South Eastern Education and Library Board. For services to Local Government in Northern Ireland. (Ballynahinch, Down) </p><p>Anis Rahman. For voluntary service to Bangladeshi People. (Harrow, Middlesex) </p><p>Professor Andrew Madan Ramroop. Savile Row Tailor. For services to Bespoke Tailoring and Training. (Middlesex) </p><p>Peter James Rankin. Legal Adviser, Belfast Buildings Preservation Trust. For voluntary service to Heritage in Northern Ireland. (Ballynahinch, Down) </p><p>Timothy Robert Reddish, MBE. National Performance director for Disability Swimming. For services to Sport. (Western Boulevard, Nottinghamshire) </p><p>Dennis Rees. Director, Tenant Participation Advisory Service. For services to Social Housing. (Derby, Derbyshire) </p><p>Professor Graham Charles Rees. Professor of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London. For service to Scholarship. (London, E18) </p><p>Dr Randal William Richards. Formerly chief executive, Research Councils UK. For services to Science. (Marlborough, Wiltshire) </p><p>Brig Peter Neil Ralli Stewart-Richardson, MBE. For services to Humanitarian Aid in Afghanistan and to the Army Benevolent Fund in Norfolk. (Fakenham, Norfolk) </p><p>Dr Geoffrey Ridgway. For services to Microbiology. (Moortown Ringwood, Hampshire) </p><p>Ms Fiona Ritchie. Learning Disability Adviser, Healthcare Commission. For services to Vulnerable People. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p>Ms Hilary Riva. Chief executive, British Fashion Council. For services to the Fashion Industry. (Kent) </p><p>Ms Sarah Elizabeth Robinson. Principal and chief executive, Darlington College. For services to Further Education. (Ashbourne, Derbyshire) </p><p>Stephen Rodford. Senior manager A, HM Prison Whitemoor, Cambridgeshire, Ministry of Justice. (Chelmsford, Essex) </p><p>Mrs Jacqueline Ronchetti. Principal private secretary, Crown Prosecution Service. (London, N20) </p><p>Ms Joanne Roney. Chief executive, Wakefield City Council. For services to Local Government. (Sheffield, South Yorkshire) </p><p>Mrs Marilyn Rydstrom. Formerly director-General, People's Dispensary for Sick Animals. For services to Animal Welfare. (Telford, Shropshire) </p><p>Ms Gail Josephine Sackloff. For services to Fashion Exports. (East Twickenham, Middlesex) </p><p>Trevor Kenneth Salmon. City Treasurer, Belfast City Council. For services to Local Government. (Bangor, Down) </p><p>Ms Lucy Elizabeth Sayce. Chief executive, RADAR. For services to Disabled People. (London, SE4) </p><p>Miss Sylvia Diana Scarf. For voluntary service to the Anglican Church and to Guiding in Wales. (Bridgend) </p><p>The Reverend Adam Scott, TD. For public and voluntary service. (London, SE3) </p><p>Thomas Scott. Chairman, Greater Shankill Partnership. For services to the community in Northern Ireland. (Newtownabbey, Antrim) </p><p>Ms Judith Alexandra Anne Serota. For services to the Spitalfields Festival, London. (London, EC2Y) </p><p>Michael Sheen. Actor. For services to Drama. (London, W1R) </p><p>Dr Jonathan Paul Sheffield. Medical director, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust. For service to the NHS. (Sherborne, Dorset) </p><p>Howard Gordon Shelley. Concert Pianist and conductor. For services to Classical Music. (London, N6) </p><p>Mrs Judith Ann Shelley. Formerly Headteacher, Rawmarsh Nursery and Children's Centre, Rotherham. For services to Early Years Education. (Rotherham, South Yorkshire) </p><p>Mrs Diane Edwina Sherwood. Manager, Optimum Business Model, Crown Prosecution Service. (Newport) </p><p>Professor David Mark Shucksmith. Professor of Planning, Newcastle University. For services to Rural Development and to Crofting. (Stocksfield, Northumberland) </p><p>Brian Wentworth Sinnamon. Business manager, Judicial Services Group, Northern Ireland Court Service, Ministry of Justice. For public and voluntary service. (Belfast, Antrim) </p><p>Mrs Judith Sischy. Director, Scottish Council of Independent Schools. For services to Education and to the Voluntary Sector. (Edinburgh) </p><p>David Sleep. Head of Unit, National Strategies Management Team, Schools Directorate, Department for Children, Schools and Families. (West Ewell, Surrey) </p><p>Mrs Susan Gwynneth Smith. Formerly Chair, Local Government Boundary Commission for Wales. For services to Local Government. (Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan) </p><p>Ms Carole Snee. For services to Urban Regeneration in East London. (France) </p><p>Geoff Snow. For services to the Construction Industry and to Apprenticeships in Wales. (Neath, Neath Port Talbot) </p><p>Ms Boni Patricia Sones. For services to Broadcasting and to the Public Relations Industry. (Cambridgeshire) </p><p>Councillor Nicholas Stanton. Leader, London Borough of Southwark. For services to Local Government. (London, SE16) </p><p>Alexander Stephen. Chief executive, Dundee City Council. For services to Local Government. (Dundee) </p><p>Paul Stephenson. For services to Equal Opportunities and to Community Relations in Bristol. (Bristol) </p><p>Neil Laurie Stoddart. Managing director, A. K. Stoddart Ltd. For services to the Meat Industry in Scotland. (Pathhead, Midlothian) </p><p>Mrs Sarah Joanne Storey, MBE. Cyclist. For services to Disabled Sport. (Cheshire) </p><p>Adam Suddaby. Vice-Principal, Leicester College. For services to local and national Further Education. (Leicester, Leicestershire) </p><p>Ben Jeffrey Peter Summerskill. For services to Equality and Diversity. (London, SE11) </p><p>Mrs Michele Sutton. Principal, Bradford College. For services to Further Education and to Community Relations. (Didsbury, Greater Manchester) </p><p>Mrs Elizabeth Anne Taylor. Formerly director, Department for Children Lifelong Learning and Skills, Welsh Assembly Government. For public and voluntary service. (Cardiff) </p><p>Hugh Taylor. Chief executive, Hilmar Hotel Management. For services to the Tourist and Hospitality Industries. (London, N3) </p><p>Ian George Taylor. District manager Glasgow, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. (East Dunbartonshire) </p><p>Thomas Thomson. Formerly chairman, Royal Scottish National Orchestra. For services to Music. (London, NW8) </p><p>Clifford Christoffel Todd. Grade B1, Ministry of Defence. (London) </p><p>Ms Valerie Gladys Vamplew. Deputy Operations director, HM Revenue and Customs. (Cumbria) </p><p>Miss Jennifer Rowan Van Tinteren. Team Leader, Accessibility Solutions Team, Department for Work and Pensions. (Sheffield, South Yorkshire) </p><p>Arnold Roy Vandermeer. For voluntary service to the community in Hertfordshire. (St. Albans, Hertfordshire) </p><p>Ms Sian Caroline Vasey. Director, Ealing Centre for Independent Living. For services to Disabled People. (London, W13) </p><p>Dr Peter Warburton. Director of Sport, University of Durham. For services to Higher Education and to Sport. (Durham, Durham) </p><p>Miss Sarah Kate Webb, MBE. Sailor. For services to Sport. (London, SW13) </p><p>Professor Christopher Welsh. Chief Operating Officer, Sheffield Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. For services to the NHS. (Sheffield, South Yorkshire) </p><p>Mrs Susan West. Formerly Headteacher, Millbrook Primary School, Stalybridge, Cheshire. For services to Education. (Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire) </p><p>Stephen Henry White. Director, Business Strategy, UK Atomic Energy Authority. For services to the Nuclear Industry. (Oxfordshire) </p><p>Councillor Bernard James Whittle. Member, Fylde South, Lancashire County Council. For services to Local Government. (Lancashire) </p><p>Peter Wilding. For public service. (Huddersfield, West Yorkshire) </p><p>Mrs Denise Jennifer Wilkinson. For services to the Voluntary Sector. (London, N10) </p><p>Professor Richard Andrew Williams. Pro-vice Chancellor, University of Leeds. For services to Science and to Engineering. (Harrogate, North Yorkshire) </p><p>Stephen David Williams, MBE. Rower. For services to Sport. (Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire) </p><p>Mrs Karen Winfield. Team Leader, Student Loans Company Strategic Relationship Team, Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. For public and voluntary service. (Welling, Kent) </p><p>Dr Robert James David Winter. Medical director, East of England Strategic Health Authority. For services to the NHS. (Barrington, Cambridgeshire) </p><p>Ms Wendy Wright. Principal, Macclesfield College. For services to Further Education. (Greater Manchester) </p><p>Keith Young. Policy Lead for Adult Critical Care Services, Department of Health. (Lymington, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p>Mrs Pauline Adams. For services to the North East Ambulance Service. (Northumberland) </p><p></p><p>Dr David Francis William Adey. General Medical Practitioner, Southampton. For services to Healthcare. (Southampton, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Barbara Adlington. Higher Executive Officer, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Lincoln, Lincolnshire) </p><p></p><p>Dr Emmanuel Akuffo. Consultant Psychiatrist, Waltham Forest. For services to Medicine. (Purley, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Harold Alderman. Boxing Historian. For services to Sporting Heritage. (Canterbury, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Enam Ali. For services to the Indian and Bangladeshi Restaurant Industry. (Kingswood, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Ishtiaq Ali. For services to the community in Lancashire. (Burnley, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Kathleen Margaret Norah Allen. For voluntary service to People with Disabilities in West Sussex. (Bognor Regis, West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Pauline Allen. For services to the Independent Monitoring Board at HM Prison Ford and to the community in West Sussex. (West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Peter Edwin Allen. For public service. (Wigan, Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Miss Frances Louise Allingham. Clerk and Committee assistant, House of Commons. (London, SW20) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Isabel McKenna Chalmers Anderson. For voluntary service to Music in Ayrshire. (Prestwick, South Ayrshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Jenny Arwas. For charitable services. (London, NW4) </p><p></p><p>Miss Sheila Mary Astbury. For voluntary service to the community in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. (Shrewsbury, Shropshire) </p><p></p><p>Miss Meg Anne Atkinson. For services to the Soldiers' and Airmen's Scripture Reader Association, RAF Lyneham, Wiltshire. (Swindon, Wiltshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Jean Atton. For voluntary service to the Royal British Legion in Leicestershire. (Leicester, Leicestershire) </p><p></p><p>Robert Austin. Founder and director, Formula Schools Design and Technology Competition. For services to Education. (Oxfordshire) </p><p></p><p>John Aves. Formerly Wheelchair Technician, The Duke of Cornwall Spinal Centre. For services to People with Disabilities. (Salisbury, Wiltshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Patricia Susan Hazel Baker. Director, Pyramid Educational Consultants UK. For services to Children and Young People. (Brighton, East Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Ms Joanna Margaret Bancroft. Director of Personnel and Development, Cumbria Constabulary. For services to the Police. (Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria) </p><p></p><p>Clive Anthony Barber. Manager E, HM Prison and Young Offenders' Institution, Reading, Ministry of Justice. (Basingstoke, Berkshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Brenda Barker. For voluntary service to Stowlawn Tenants' and Residents' Association, Bilston, Wolverhampton. (Wolverhampton, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Eric Keith Barkham. For voluntary service to Sport and to the community in Virginia Water, Surrey. (Virginia Water, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Monique Claire Marie Barnes. For voluntary service to the community in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk. (Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Hilary Basterfield. Executive Officer, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. (Chard, Somerset) </p><p></p><p>Kenneth Bates. Formerly chairman, University of the Third Age Nottingham. For voluntary service to Adult Education. (Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Brenda Valerie Beach. Founder, Gateway Club. For services to People with Learning Disabilities in Hertfordshire. (Hatfield, Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Elizabeth Beck. Chair, Lemington Community Association. For voluntary service to the community in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne and Wear) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Pamela Mary Becke. Special Constable, West Mercia Constabulary. For voluntary service to the Police in Bridgnorth, Shropshire. (Bridgnorth, Shropshire) </p><p></p><p>Dr Marlene Anne Behennah. For voluntary service to the community in Mevagissey, Cornwall. (St. Austell, Cornwall) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Dorothy Mary Bell. For services to the Heritage Centre in Bellingham, Northumberland. (Hexham, Northumberland) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Jennifer Bell. Formerly Governor, Harrington Hill Primary School, Hackney, London. For voluntary service to Education. (London, N8) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Shirley Diane Bellis. For voluntary service to the community in North Wales. (Colwyn Bay, Conwy) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Valerie Anne Bennett. For voluntary service to the community in Whatlington, East Sussex. (Battle, East Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Ms Maxine Benson. Director, Everywoman Ltd. For services to Women's Enterprise. (London, SE1) </p><p></p><p>Dr Chitra Bharucha. For services to the Animal Feed Industry. (Marlborough, Wiltshire) </p><p></p><p>Dr Parvin Bhatia. General Medical Practitioner, London Borough of Richmond. For services to Healthcare. (Hampton, Middlesex) </p><p></p><p>Ms Christine Ann Bickerdyke. Prison Officer, HM Prison Wakefield, Ministry of Justice. (Wombwell, South Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Douglas Oliver Birch. For voluntary service to the community in Brownhills, West Midlands. (Walsall, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Patricia Bird. Chair, Hexham Community Association. For voluntary service to the community in Reading, Berkshire. (Reading, Berkshire) </p><p></p><p>Gerald Bishop. Employee Development manager, Cobham plc. For services to the Defence Industry. (Poole, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Mark Bishop. For public service. (London, SW7) </p><p></p><p>Cyril Blackman. For services to the Royal Marines Association. (Plymouth, Devon) </p><p></p><p>Gerald Blacoe. Export manager, Fogarty (Filled Products) Ltd. For services to International Trade and to the community in Lincolnshire. (Lincolnshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Pamela Blofield. For voluntary service to the community in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. (Shrewsbury, Shropshire) </p><p></p><p>Robert Brian Bloomfield. For voluntary service to Rugby Union in Northern Ireland. (Dunmurry, Belfast) </p><p></p><p>Ms Susan Blyth. For services to the Young Men's Christian Association and to the community in Warrington, Cheshire. (Leigh, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Simon Bolam. For services to the Insurance Industry. (Edinburgh) </p><p></p><p>Miss Elisebeth Ann Bold. Executive Officer, Pension, Disability and Carers' Service, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Avon, Bristol) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Elizabeth Anne Bolton. For services to Animal Welfare. (Wooler, Northumberland) </p><p></p><p>Michael John Bolton. Undermaster, Sevenoaks School, Kent. For services to Education. (Sevenoaks, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Stanley Boor. For voluntary service to the community in North Lincolnshire. (Doncaster, South Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Erwin Bottomley. Formerly Deputy Mine manager, National Coal Mining Museum. For services to Heritage. (West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Robert Andrew Boulton. Chief Superintendent, Dorset Police. For services to the Police and to the community in Bournemouth. (Bornemouth, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Ann Bowen. Grade C1, Ministry of Defence. For public service. (London) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Christine Boyle. Managing director, Lawell Asphalt Roofing. For services to Women's Enterprises in Northern Ireland. (Belfast) </p><p></p><p>Dr Jules Timothy Brabants. Canoeist. For services to Sport. (Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>Alec Brader. Formerly Leader, Revesby Summer Playscheme, Boston, Lincolnshire. For services to Young People. (Boston, Lincolnshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Hilda Brailsford. For voluntary service to the community in Ironville, Nottinghamshire. (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Ann Mary Brew. For charitable services. (London, NW2) </p><p></p><p>Thomas David Briggs. For voluntary service to St. John Ambulance and to the community in Cheshire. (Mobberley, Cheshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Margaret Bright. Formerly International Student Support Officer, Sheffield Hallam University. For services to Higher Education. (Sheffield, South Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Mark Bristow. Cyclist. For services to Disabled Sport. (California, USA) </p><p></p><p>Stephen Bristow. Joint Proprietor, Greenwood Forest Park. For services to the Tourist Industry in North Wales. (Conwy) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Isobel Mauveen Brodie. Formerly Deputy Headteacher, Webster's High School, Angus. For services to Education. (Dundee) </p><p></p><p>Dr Timothy Andrew Broome. Formerly head, Target Division, ISIS Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. For services to Science. (Devon) </p><p></p><p>Keith Brough. Special Constable, Lothian and Borders Police. For voluntary service to the Police. (Roxburgh, Ettrick and Lauderdale) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Beryl Brown. Formerly Library manager, Wychwood Library, Oxfordshire. For services to Local Government. (Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Miss Christina Brown. Senior Officer, HM Revenue and Customs. For public and voluntary service. (Ingleby Barwick, Stockton-on-Tees) </p><p></p><p>Christopher Buckland. For voluntary service to the British Red Cross Society in Northern Ireland. (Craigavon, Armagh) </p><p></p><p>Garth Buckle. Business Links Team Co-ordinator, Hounslow Education Business Partnership. For services to Young People in West London. (Hounslow, Middlesex) </p><p></p><p>Michael Bull. Teacher, Whitehall Primary School. For services to Education and to the community in Leicester. (Leicester, Leicestershire) </p><p></p><p>Claude Bullingham. For voluntary service to the community in Whaddon, Cheltenham. (Cheltenham, Gloucestershire) </p><p></p><p>David Charles Bullock. Electronic Workshop Engineer, Institute of Hearing Research, Medical Research Council. For services to Science. (Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Carol Ann Burke. Formerly manager E, HM Prison and Young Offenders' Institution Askham Grange, York, Ministry of Justice. For public and voluntary service. (Wetherby, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Robert Burns. Business Development manager, Lancashire Constabulary. For services to the Police. (Preston, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Terry Elliott Burns. For services to the Trade Union Movement and to the community in Burnley and Lancashire. (Burnley, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Tony Burns. For voluntary service to Amateur Boxing. (London, E2) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Lindsay Marie Burr. For services to Business and to the community in Ryedale, North Yorkshire. (Malton, North Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Simon Burr. Vice-president, Engine Controls, Goodrich Corporation. For services to the Aerospace Industry. (Halesowen, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>James Walter Butler. Sculptor. For services to Art. (Radway, Warwickshire) </p><p></p><p>William Tinsley Cairns. For services to Music in Northern Ireland. (Carrickfergus, Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Helen Calvert. Executive Officer, Child Support Agency, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Cramlington, Northumberland) </p><p></p><p>John Francis Carberry. Regional Development Officer, Royal National Institute for the Deaf. For services to Disabled People in Northern Ireland. (Newtownabbey, Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Miss Amanda Estelle Carter. For voluntary service to the community in Leicester. (Market Harborough, Leicestershire) </p><p></p><p>Professor Ronald Allan Carter. Professor of Modern English Language and director, Humanities and Social Sciences Research Centre, University of Nottingham. For services to local and national Higher Education. (Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Kate Cartwright. For voluntary service to the Yorkshire and East Midlands Lay Observer Panel. (York, North Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Sarah Castro. Community Safety manager, Poplar Housing and Regeneration Community Association. For services to tackling Anti-Social Behaviour in East London. (London, E14) </p><p></p><p>Gordon Blakley Cave. Chair, Royal Victoria Hospital Belfast Liver Support Group. For charitable services to Healthcare. (Bangor, Down) </p><p></p><p>Ms Janice Rosamund Cave. Director of Public Affairs, Royal Society for The Prevention of Accidents. For services to Health and Safety. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Dawn Ellen Chapman. Nurse consultant, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. For services to Breast Cancer Healthcare. (Cambridgeshire) </p><p></p><p>Brian John Chappell. For public service. (Waterlooville, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Sarah Chester. For services to the Arts. (By Kippen, Stirling) </p><p></p><p>Muhammed Irfan Faizi Chishti, Imam. HM Prisons Forest Bank and Buckley Hall. For services to Muslim People. (Rochdale, Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Mamun Rashid Chowdhury. For voluntary service to Asian Community Football in East London. (London, E6) </p><p></p><p>Miss Sophie Margaret Christiansen. Equestrian. For services to Disabled Sport. (Ascot, Berkshire) </p><p></p><p>Edward Clancy. Cyclist. For services to Sport. (Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Irene Clark. For voluntary service to the Royal British Legion in Worcester Park, Surrey. (New Malden, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Michael Clifford. Project manager, Wheelbase Motor Project, Nottingham. For services to Young People. (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>William Clift, JP. For voluntary service to the communities in Castleford and Wakefield, West Yorkshire. (Castleford, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Wendy Clifton. Grade D, Ministry of Defence. (London, NW7) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Lesley Jane Coffin. Head of Secretariat, Network Operations South East, Highways Agency, Department for Transport. (Chichester, West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Dennis Owen Cole. For voluntary service to Music and to the community in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset. (Weston-super-Mare, Somerset) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Katharine Coleman. For services to Glass Engraving. (London, EC2Y) </p><p></p><p>Sydney John Coleman. For voluntary service to St. John Ambulance in Warwickshire. (Tamworth, Staffordshire) </p><p></p><p>Ronald Leslie Coltman. For voluntary service to the Sandford Parks Lido in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. (Cheltenham, Gloucestershire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Eileen Conn. For services to the community in the London Borough of Southwark. (London, SE15) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Nadezda Conway. Non-Executive director, Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals. For services to the NHS and to the community in North London. (Enfield, Middlesex) </p><p></p><p>Miss Nicole Cooke. Cyclist. For services to Sport. (Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan) </p><p></p><p>Dr Albert Roy Cooksey. For voluntary service to the Coniston Mountain Rescue Team in Cumbria. (Broughton-in-Furness, Cumbria) </p><p></p><p>Ms Wendy Cooling. Co-Founder, Bookstart Project. For services to Children's Literacy. (Barnet, Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Laurence John Harris Coombs. For voluntary service to the community in Bath. (Bath, Somerset) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Mary Jenifer Cooper. For voluntary service to International Students in Cambridge. (Cambridgeshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Patricia Astley-Cooper. Curator, Wandsworth Museum. For services to Heritage in South West London. (Richmond, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Peter Daniel Cormack. Formerly Curator, William Morris Gallery. For services to Art and to Heritage. (London, NW9) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Lynette Costello. Co-Founder, Mothers Against Murder and Aggression. For services to Vulnerable People. (Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Judith Cottam. Formerly Nurse consultant (Stoma Care), Bedford Hospital NHS Trust. For services to Healthcare. (Bedfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Alan Cottle. For services to Children and Young People with Special Needs in Surrey. (Godstone, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Bernard James Cotton. Director, Team GB Holding Camp. For services to Sport. (Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Timothy Coulson. For services during the July 2005 London Bombings. (Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Lynda Coulter. Senior Neonatal Nurse, Countess of Chester NHS Foundation Trust. For services to Healthcare. (Chester, Cheshire) </p><p></p><p>Alderman Cecil James Cousley. For services to the Boys' Brigade and to Local Government in Ballymoney, Northern Ireland. (Ballymoney, Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Miss Linda Covey. For voluntary service to the British Red Cross Society in Warwickshire. (Redditch, Worcestershire) </p><p></p><p>Alan Craig. Inspector, International Team, UK Border Agency, Home Office. For public and voluntary service. (Croydon, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Timothy John Craig. For public service. (Lisburn, Down) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Wynne Creasy. Leader, Bexley Clerkship Practice, London Borough of Bexley. For services to Education. (Kent) </p><p></p><p>Professor Jonathan Crego. For public service. (Enfield, Middlesex) </p><p></p><p>George Creighton. For services to Biomedical Research in Northern Ireland. (Lisburn, Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Thomas Creighton. Chairman, Northern Health and Social Services Council. For services to Social Care in Northern Ireland. (Carrickfergus, Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Herbert Thomas Harold Cromack. For voluntary service to Agriculture and to the community in the Isle of Bute. (Rothesay, Argyll and Bute) </p><p></p><p>Collin Crooks. Senior Information Access manager, Department for Children, Schools and Families. For public and voluntary service. (Woodford Green, Essex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Joyce Crossan. For public service. (Gilford, Armagh) </p><p></p><p>Bruce Crowther. For services to Oxfam and to Fairtrade. (Garstang, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Miss Catherine Anne Townsend Storrs Cullis. For services to the Conservation of Ecclesiastical Heritage. (Dorking, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Stanley Michael Cundle. For voluntary service to the Jewish community in Leeds. (Leeds, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Jody Cundy. Cyclist. For services to Disabled Sport. (Swansea) </p><p></p><p>Allan Roy Currall. Chairman of Governors, Kendrick School, Reading. For voluntary service to Education. (Reading, Berkshire) </p><p></p><p>David Niel Curwen. For services to the Environment and to the community in the Cotswolds. (Stroud, Gloucestershire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Martha Marina Dalglish. For services to Breast Cancer Patients in Merseyside. (Southport, Merseyside) </p><p></p><p>Anthony Frederick Dalton. Grade 7, Nationality Management Team, UK Border Agency, Home Office. For public and voluntary service. (Southport, Merseyside) </p><p></p><p>Pradip Kumar Datta. Founder, Wick Surgical Courses. For services to Medical Training. (Caithness, Highland) </p><p></p><p>Professor Jagdish Dave. For services to Education and to Asian People. (Harrow, Middlesex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Marguerite Stella Davies. For voluntary service to the community in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. (Aldeburgh, Suffolk) </p><p></p><p>Terence Davies. Formerly Senior Executive Officer, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Christopher Kevin Davis. For charitable services in Southampton. (Southampton, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Marian Janet Davis. Teacher, Sexey's School. For services to the community in Queen Camel, Somerset. (Yeovil, Somerset) </p><p></p><p>Stephen Michael Deakin. Executive Officer, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. (Warrington, Cheshire) </p><p></p><p>James Frederick Degale. Middleweight Boxer. For services to Sport. (London, NW10) </p><p></p><p>Andrew Dougal Dempster. For voluntary service to Victim Support in Scotland. (Johnstone, Renfrewshire) </p><p></p><p>David Francis De Val. For voluntary service to the community in Chinnor, Oxfordshire. (Chinnor, Oxfordshire) </p><p></p><p>William Alexander Dickson. Consultant, Plastic Surgeon and director, Welsh Burns Centre, Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University NHS Trust. For services to Medicine. (Chepstow, Monmouthshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Leslie Barbara Dillingham. For voluntary service to Equestrian Sport. (London, W9) </p><p></p><p>Ebrahim Dockrat. For services to the community in West Yorkshire. (Batley, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Eiron Hugh Dodd. For voluntary service to Clubs for Young People in Wales. (Porthcawl, Bridgend) </p><p></p><p>Barry James Donovan. For voluntary service to the community in Colchester, Essex. (Colchester, Essex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Maria Donovan. For voluntary service to the community in Greengairs, Lanarkshire. (By Airdrie, North Lanarkshire) </p><p></p><p>Neil Andrew Dossor. Administrative Officer, Customer Contact Team, HM Revenue and Customs. For public and voluntary service. (Rotherham, South Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Councillor Mary Elaine Draycott. For services to Local Government and to the community in Leicester. (Leicestershire) </p><p></p><p>John Drayton. For services to the Quarry Industry and to Geology. (Cambridgeshire) </p><p></p><p>Miss Sophia Drew. For voluntary service to the community in Prestatyn, Denbighshire. (Prestatyn, Denbighshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Anne Patricia Dunham. Equestrian. For services to Disabled Sport. (Broad Hinton, Wiltshire) </p><p></p><p>Robert William Dunn. National Advocacy Officer, National Kidney Federation. For services to Healthcare. (Seaton, Devon) </p><p></p><p>Dr Rosalie Dunn. General Medical Practitioner. For services to the community in Blantyre, Lanarkshire. (Glasgow) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Phyllis Mary Durow. Higher Executive Officer, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Horncastle, Lincolnshire) </p><p></p><p>Anthony Durrant, JP. For services to the Voluntary Sector in the North West. (Stockport, Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Dr Peter Durrant. County Archivist, Berkshire Record Office. For services to Local Government. (Reading, Berkshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Doreen Eastwood. Higher Executive Officer, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. (Nelson, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Dee Edwards. Co-Founder, Mothers Against Murder and Aggression. For services to Vulnerable People. (Caernarfon, Gwynedd) </p><p></p><p>Hugh Mervyn Edwards. For services to Farming in Cumbria. (Cumbria) </p><p></p><p>Terry Edwards. Team GB head Boxing Coach. For services to Sport. (Orpington, Kent) </p><p></p><p>John Patrick Egan. For voluntary service to the community in Woodhouse, Leeds. (Leeds, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Doreen Egarr. For voluntary service to the community in St. Albans, Hertfordshire. (St. Albans, Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Dr The Reverend John Elliston. For voluntary service to Vulnerable and Homeless People in Darlington, County Durham. (Durham) </p><p></p><p>Gerald Samuel Ells. For services to Veterans' Tennis. (London, NW4) </p><p></p><p>Mark Douglas Elson. Grade C1, Ministry of Defence. (Camberley, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Nigel John Embry. Chief executive, Farm Stay UK. For services to the Tourist Industry. (West Byfleet, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Arthur Aubrey Emerson. For voluntary service to Carers' Group, Rethink Sheffield. (Sheffield, South Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Ronald John Eunson. Formerly Chair of Governors, Gosforth Central Middle School and Broadway East First School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. For voluntary service to Education. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne and Wear) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Susan Christabel Eunson. Formerly Governor, Gosforth East Middle School and Gosforth Park First School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. For voluntary service to Education. (Newcastle-upn-Tyne, Tyne and Wear) </p><p></p><p>Professor Rhiannon Evans. National director, Action on Access and lately Pro-vice-Chancellor, Edge Hill University. For services to Higher Education. (Merseyside) </p><p></p><p>Samuel Rowland Evans. For voluntary service to Vintage Agricultural Machinery. (Machynlleth, Powys) </p><p></p><p>William Bennett Evans. Formerly Councillor, Bridgend County Council. For services to Local Government. (Maesteg, Bridgend) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Gillian Mary Eweis. Assistant Anglican Chaplain, HM Prison Full Sutton, York. For services to Prisoners. (York, North Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Maj Stephen Farley. Team GB Quartermaster. For services to Sport. (Windsor, Berkshire) </p><p></p><p>Godfrey Eugene Featherstone. Formerly director, Kenward Trust. For services to Disadvantaged People. (Maidstone, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Ms Denice Fennell. For services to Nature Conservation. (London, SW1V) </p><p></p><p>Max Field. For services to the community in the West Midlands. (Wythall, Worcestershire) </p><p></p><p>Frederick James John Fielder. For voluntary service to the community in Greater Manchester. (Eccles, Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Miss Alison Claire Finch. Ward Sister and Senior Nurse, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. For services to Healthcare. (Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Margaret Fish. Formerly Teacher, Park Primary School, Alloa, Clackmannanshire. For services to Education and to the community in Alloa. (Alloa, Clackmannanshire) </p><p></p><p>Rodney Cyril Alban FitzGerald. For services to Local Government in the City of London. (London, W2) </p><p></p><p>Robert Fletcher. Bus Driver. For services to Public Transport in Liverpool. (Merseyside) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Patricia Flynn. Formerly head of Libraries and Information Services. For services to Local Government in Leicester. (West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Raymond Victor Fooks. For voluntary service to the community in Rye, East Sussex. (Rye, East Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Andrew Forbes. Health, Safety and Security manager, Babcock Marine. For services to Industry. (Dunfermline, Fife) </p><p></p><p>Roger Clem Ford. For services to Young People in the West Midlands. (Bridgnorth, Shropshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Susan Piggott-Forster. Formerly Senior Executive Officer, Learning and Development Unit, UK Border Agency, Home Office. (Tonbridge, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Sandra Forsythe. Chair, Board of Glasgow Housing Association. For services to Social Housing in Glasgow. (Glasgow) </p><p></p><p>Derek Samuel Foster. Director, Action Training (Stoke) Ltd. For services to Lifelong Learning in Staffordshire. (Stafford, Staffordshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Jennifer Ann Fox. For services to the Administration of Science in Norwich. (Norwich, Norfolk) </p><p></p><p>Michael Henry Francis. For services to the Tourist Industry in Bournemouth. (Bournemouth, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Jenny Frank. For services to Young Carers in Hampshire. (Stockbridge, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Michal Miriam Westmill Furr. Manager, Westhill Community Centre and Community Association. For services to the community in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. (Hitchin, Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Margaret Fyffe. For voluntary service to the community in the Isle of Eigg, Highland. (Inverness, Inverness-shire) </p><p></p><p>Colin James Galloway. Formerly Business Architecture and Customer Strand Lead, Pension Disability and Carers' Service, Department for Work and Pensions. (Tyne and Wear) </p><p></p><p>David Hugh Geldard. For voluntary service to People with Coronary Heart Disease. (Richdale, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Alexander Gill. For services to the fishing community in Kingston-upon-Hull. (Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Karen Gill. Director, Everywoman Ltd. For services to Women's Enterprise. (London, SW15) </p><p></p><p>Dr John Fitzroy Gillespie, JP, DL. For voluntary service to Horse Racing in Northern Ireland. (Armagh) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Gweneth Gimson. For voluntary service in Ulverscroft, Leicestershire. (Markfield, Leicestershire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Peggy Gledhill. For voluntary service to the community in Horsham, West Sussex. (Horsham, West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Thomas Guy Goldberg. Chairman, AWI Ltd. For services to International Trade. (East Riding of Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Paul Goodison. Sailor. For services to Sport. (Weymouth, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Dennis Edward Goodwin. For voluntary services to the First World War Veterans' Association. (Worthing, West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Maureen Gordon. For services to Social Work and to the Voluntary Sector in Northern Ireland. (Newtownabbey, Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Kay Gould. Formerly manager, Adderley Children's Centre, Saltley, Birmingham. For services to Children and Families. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Susan Patricia Gower. For voluntary service to Disabled Children and Young People in Bexley, Kent. (Welling, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Shirley Gowland, TD. For services to Disabled People in Billericay, Essex. (Billericay, Essex) </p><p></p><p>John Grady. For voluntary service to Disabled People in Jersey. (Jersey, Channel Islands) </p><p></p><p>John Graham. Formerly Teacher, Hurworth Primary School, Darlington. For services to Education. (Darlington, Durham) </p><p></p><p>John William Redhead Graham. For voluntary service to the community in Greenside, Tyne and Wear. (Ryton, Tyne and Wear) </p><p></p><p>Malise Charles Richard Graham. For voluntary service to the community in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. (Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Dorrett Buckley-Greaves. For services to Black and Minority Ethnic communities in Sheffield. (Sheffield, South Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Professor Clara Greed. Professor of Inclusive Urban Planning University of West England. For services to Urban Design. (Bristol) </p><p></p><p>Evelyn Winifred Mrs Green. For voluntary service to the community in South London. (London, SE9) </p><p></p><p>Harold James Green. Chief Road Safety Officer, Road Safety Division, Department of the Environment, Northern Ireland Executive. For public and voluntary service. (Craigavon, Armagh) </p><p></p><p>Nigel Francis Green. Chief Officer, Bedfordshire Special Constabulary. For voluntary service to the Police. (Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Russell Andrew Greenwood. Administrative Officer, Food and Farming Group, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. For public and voluntary service. (London, SW1P) </p><p></p><p>Barry David Gregory. For voluntary service to Woodhead Mountain Rescue Team, Holmfirth, West Yorkshire. (Holmfirth, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Capt Peter Royall Griffiths. Operations manager, Royal National Lifeboat Institution. For services to Maritime Safety in Swansea. (Swansea) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Winsome Elaine Griffiths. For services to the Metropolitan Police Service and to the community in South London. (Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Dr William Henry Grindle. For services to Music in Northern Ireland. (Belfast) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Patricia Grindle. Principal, Mitchell House Special School. For services to Special Needs Education in Northern Ireland. (Bangor, Down) </p><p></p><p>Robert Denis Guiler. For voluntary service to People with Learning Difficulties in Northern Ireland. (Carryduff, Belfast) </p><p></p><p>Chris Guille. For voluntary service to Disabled People in Essex. (Tilbury, Essex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Joyce Guy. For services to Older People in the African Caribbean community in the London Borough of Redbridge. (Ilford, Essex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Lynn Gwilliam. Formerly Support Grade Band 1, Security and Anti-Corruption Unit, UK Border Agency, Home Office. (Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Peter Haigh, JP. For voluntary service to the Scouts and to Sailing in West Yorkshire. (Halifax, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Deborah Anne Hall. Manager, Chigwell Riding Trust for Special Needs. For services to Disabled People in Essex. (Chigwell, Essex) </p><p></p><p>John Charles Hall. For voluntary service to the Scouts in Sheffield. (Sheffield, South Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Beverley Hallam. Grade E1, Ministry of Defence. (Bristol) </p><p></p><p>Dave Haller. Swimming Coach. For services to Sport. (South Glamorgan) </p><p></p><p>Gerald Halpin. For voluntary service to Art and to Charity in Chorley, Lancashire. (Chorley, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Lewis Hamilton. Formula One Driver. For services to Motor Racing. (London, SW1A) </p><p></p><p>Stanley Charles Raymond Hammond. For services to Young People and to the community in Bristol. (Bristol) </p><p></p><p>John Hansford. Formerly director, Swindon Office, Natural Environment Research Council. For services to Science. (Malmesbury, Wiltshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs June Mary Harbott. For voluntary service to the community in Stroud, Gloucestershire. (Gloucester, Gloucestershire) </p><p></p><p>Michael Hardman. For services to the Campaign for Real Ale and to the Brewing Industry. (Reigate, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Gabrielle Christine Harris. For services to Dance in Rhyl, Denbighshire. (Rhyl, Denbighshire) </p><p></p><p>John Harris. Shipwright, BAE Systems Submarine Solutions. For services to the Defence Industry. (Barrow in Furness, Cumbria) </p><p></p><p>Barry Albert Haseltine. For services to the Construction Industry. (Crawley Down, West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Colin Michael Hatch. Senior Divisional Officer, Cornwall County Fire Brigade. For services to Local Government. (Hayle, Cornwall) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Janet Anne Haynes. For voluntary service to the Leukaemia Research Fund in Rugby. (Rugby, Warwickshire) </p><p></p><p>Steven Thomas Hayward. Business Development manager, York Navy Systems. For services to the Defence Industry. (Basildon, Essex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Joan Healey. For voluntary service to the Citizens' Advice Bureau in Ross and Cromarty. (Dingwall, Ross and Cromarty) </p><p></p><p>Andrew Heath. For services to the Music Publishing Industry. (London, SW14) </p><p></p><p>Joseph Heatley. For services to Children and Young People within the Immigration System. (Enfield, Middlesex) </p><p></p><p>Raymond Francis Hemmett. Formerly Senior Conservator, Paintings, Historic Scotland Conservation Centre, Scottish Executive. (North Kelvinside, Glasgow) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Gwynneth Percival Hemmings. For voluntary service to Sufferers of Schizophrenia. (Caernarfon, Gwynedd) </p><p></p><p>David Christopher Henderson. For services to Animal Welfare. (By Biggar, South Lanarkshire) </p><p></p><p>Rex Andrew Hendricksen. For voluntary service to the Scouts in Cardiff. (Cardiff) </p><p></p><p>Kenneth Henning. For public service. (Belfast, Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Arek Hersh. For voluntary service to Holocaust Education. (Leeds, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Claire Elizabeth Hicks. Chief executive, IMPACT Foundation. For services to International Development. (West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Ms Gill Hicks. For charitable services. (London, NW1) </p><p></p><p>Peter Higgins. For voluntary service to Young People in South Gloucestershire. (Kingswood, Gloucestershire) </p><p></p><p>Peter Hindle. Chief executive, Saint Gobain Distribution UK. For services to the Building Industry and to Charity. (Cleveleys, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Anya Hindmarch. For services to the Fashion Industry. (London, SW1) </p><p></p><p>Miss Donna Johnston Hindmarch. Formerly Depute Headteacher, Coupar Angus Primary School. For services to Education. (Coupar Angus, Perthshire and Kinross) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Linda Hines. Director, Witton Lodge Community Association. For services to the community in North Birmingham. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Andrew Triggs-Hodge. Rower. For services to Sport. (Skipton, North Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Peter Norman Holden. Formerly head of People Engagement Department, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. For services to Nature Conservation. (Bedfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Harold William Holland. Chairman, North Shore Area Forum. For voluntary service to the community in Blackpool. (Blackpool, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Carole Jean Holmes. For voluntary service to Visually Impaired People in the North West. (Blackpool, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>John Edward Holmes. For voluntary service to People with Mental Health Problems in South West London. (London, SW14) </p><p></p><p>Lee Stephen Holmes. Formerly Constable, West Yorkshire Police. For services to the Police. (Keighley, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>John Holt. For voluntary service to the community in Featherstone, West Yorkshire. (Pontefract, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Kelly Hoppen. For services to Interior Design. (London, W11) </p><p></p><p>David Irwin Houghton. For services to Business and to International Trade in the West Midlands. (Uttoxeter, Staffordshire) </p><p></p><p>Frederick George Ernest Houlton. Formerly Fostering and Adoption Marketing and Recruitment Officer, Lincolnshire County Council. For services to Children and Families. (Lincolnshire) </p><p></p><p>John Houston. Senior Officer, HM Revenue and Customs. (Knaresborough, North Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Norman Howarth. For voluntary service to the community in Wythall, Worcestershire. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Carol Jane Hoy. Formerly Nurse Specialist. For services to Healthcare. (Edinburgh) </p><p></p><p>Stephen Lawrence Chard Hucklesby. For services during the July 2005 London Bombings. (Leamingon Spa, Warwickshire) </p><p></p><p>Derek Hudspeth. Departmental Superintendent, Department of Geography, University of Durham. For services to Higher Education. (Durham) </p><p></p><p>Laurence Roy Hulbert. Vice-chairman, Governing Body, Shire Oak School, Sutton Coldfield. For voluntary service to Education. (Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Mark Hunter. Rower. For services to Sport. (Buckinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>Robert Daniel Hutton, JP. For service to St. John Ambulance in Surrey. (West Wittering, West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Simon Illingworth. For charitable services. (Atherstone, Warwickshire) </p><p></p><p>Zafar Iqbal. Chairman of Governors, Bordesley Green Girls' School, Birmingham. For voluntary service to Education. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Eileen Joyce Jackson. For services to the Chertsey Over 60s Club in Surrey. (Addlestone, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Margery Rose James. For voluntary service to the Macmillan Cancer Support in Oswestry, Shropshire. (Oswestry, Shropshire) </p><p></p><p>Simon Charles James. Chief Engineer, SELEX Communications. For services to the Defence Industry. (Romford, Essex) </p><p></p><p>Thomas James. Rower. For services to Sport. (London, W14) </p><p></p><p>Councillor Thomas Raymond James. For services to Local Government in Wiltshire. (Trowbridge, Wiltshire) </p><p></p><p>Robert Stephen Jefferys. For voluntary service to the community in Berkshire. (Hungerford, Berkshire) </p><p></p><p>Christopher Dennis Alexander Martin-Jenkins. Cricket Commentator and Journalist. For services to Sport. (Rudgwick, West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Alderman Kenneth Jenkins. For voluntary service to the community in St. Albans and Harpenden, Hertfordshire. (Harpenden, Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Gordon Cyril Jenney. For voluntary service to the community in the East Riding of Yorkshire. (Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Peter James Jennings. Formerly chairman, Avenues Project, Tyne and Wear. For services to Young People. (Gateshead, Tyne and Wear) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Linda Mary Johnson. For services to Palliative Care in North East Wales. (Flintshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Tracy Yana Johnson. For services to the Cosmetics Industry. (London, SE12) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Andrea Johnstone. For voluntary service to the community in Berrow, Somerset. (Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset) </p><p></p><p>Dr Surinder Singh Jolly. General Medical Practitioner, Manchester. For services to Healthcare. (Whitefield, Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Bridget Jones. For services to Canterbury Gypsy and Traveller Support Group. (Canterbury, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Constance Zena Jones. For voluntary service to the community in Rilla Mill, Cornwall. (Callington, Cornwall) </p><p></p><p>David Onllwyn Jones. Assistant Headteacher, Villiers High School, Ealing, London. For services to Education. (London, W4) </p><p></p><p>John Stanley Jones. For services to Lithography. (Woodford Green, Essex) </p><p></p><p>Miss Joy Cummings-Jones. Formerly head of Patient and Public Involvement, Nottingham City Primary Care Trust. For services to the NHS. (Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>Kevin Clifford Jones. For charitable services to the community in Holyhead, Anglesey. (Anglesey, Gwynedd) </p><p></p><p>Ms Libby Jones. Manager, New Pathways, Merthyr Tydfil. For services to Vunerable People in Wales. (Treharris, Merthyr Tydfil) </p><p></p><p>Neil Rodney Wynn-Jones. For services to International Trade. (London, SW14) </p><p></p><p>Philip Thomas Morris-Jones. For voluntary service to the community in Telford, Shropshire. (Telford, Shropshire) </p><p></p><p>Robert Norman Jones. Formerly head of Design and Interpretative Services, Forestry Commission Scotland. (Kyle of Lochalsh, Highland) </p><p></p><p>Robert William Jost. Prison Officer Physical Education, HM Young Offenders' Institution Thorn Cross, Warrington, Ministry of Justice. For public and voluntary service. (Liverpool, Merseyside) </p><p></p><p>Capt Samson Sassoon Samuel Judah. Managing director, GBA Group of Companies. For services to Business and to the community in the East Riding of Yorkshire. (Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Roger Jukes. For services to Farming and to the Environment in Powys. (Welshpool, Powys) </p><p></p><p>Lt Col John Denis Kane. For voluntary service to the Army Benevolent Fund. (Warwick, Warwickshire) </p><p></p><p>Anthony Edward Kappes. Cyclist. For services to Disabled Sport. (Hazel Grove, Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Geoffrey Friend Karran. For services to Sport and to Disabled People in the Isle of Man. (Douglas, Isle of Man) </p><p></p><p>Douglas Robert Keitley. Industrial Grade, HM Prison Hewell Grange, Redditch, Worcestershire, Ministry of Justice. (Bromsgrove, Worcestershire) </p><p></p><p>Miss Renna Kellaway. Pianist and Artistic director, Lake District Summer Music. For services to Music. (Lancaster, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Alan Kells. Grade E1, Ministry of Defence. For public and voluntary service. (Codford-St-Peter, Wiltshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Maria Zofina Kempinska. Founder and Creative director, Jongleurs. For services to the Hospitality and Entertainment Industries. (London, W4) </p><p></p><p>Jason Kenny. Cyclist. For services to Sport. (Bolton, Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Elizabeth Kenworthy. For services during the July 2005 London Bombings. (Waltham Abbey, Essex) </p><p></p><p>David Arnold Kerfoot. Managing director, Kerfoot Group. For services to Business and to the community in Northallerton, North Yorkshire. (Northallerton, North Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Nicky Kinnaird. Founder, SpaceNK. For services to the Beauty Industry. (London, W8) </p><p></p><p>John Herbert Kirkpatrick. For voluntary service to the RAF Association. (Larne, Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Terence Kivlin. For services to Skills and to the community in King's Lynn, Norfolk. (Kings Lynn, Norfolk) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Diana Mary Kloss. For services to Occupational Health. (Manchester, Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Maria Kolpa. Executive Officer, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Leeds, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>John Lakeman. For voluntary service to the communities in the Malvern Hills District, Worcestershire. (Worcester, Worcestershire) </p><p></p><p>Canon Claire Anne Laland. For services to the Mothers' Union and to the community in Balsall Common, West Midlands. (Coventry, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Susan Lambert. Court Clerk, Her Majesty's Courts Service, Ministry of Justice. For public and voluntary service. (Addlestone, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Susan Lane. Assistant Principal, Student Services, Knowsley Community College. For services to Further Education in Liverpool. (Bury, Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Christopher John Wallis Lavers, JP, DL. For voluntary service to the community in Surrey. (St Albans, Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Marilyn Sheila Lazarus. For voluntary service to the Jewish Association for the Mentally Ill. (London, NW7) </p><p></p><p>Terence Michael Lazenby. Chairman, Engineering Construction Industry Training Board. For services to Skills and Training. (Surrey) </p><p></p><p>David Leach. Formerly Business Change manager, Pension, Disability and Carers' Service, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Blackpool, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Carol Leonard. Nursery Nurse, St. Clement Danes Church of England Primary School, Westminster, London. For services to Education. (London, SE11) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Davida Ann Lewis. For voluntary service to Music and to Culture in Wales. (Waunarlwydd, Swansea) </p><p></p><p>Geoffrey Ling. Executive Officer, Pension, Disability and Carers' Service, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Milnthorpe, Cumbria) </p><p></p><p>John Kelvin Lulham. Head of Contracts and Procurement, Transport for London. For services to Equality and Diversity. (Surbiton, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Bimla Devi Lyall. Executive Officer, South East Area Enforcement Office, Sidcup, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Department for Transport. For public and voluntary service. (Sidcup, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Michael Gabriel Lynch. Chair, Larne Citizens' Advice Bureau. For services to the community in Northern Ireland. (Larne, Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Miss Cheryl MacIntosh. For voluntary service to the community in Lochaber, Inverness-shire. (Inverness, Inverness-shire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Linda Maclean. Communication and Information Business Support Officer, Tribunals Service, Leicester, Ministry of Justice. For public and voluntary service. (Leicestershire) </p><p></p><p>Douglas Richard MacNeilage. Formerly Janitor, Tobermory High School. For services to Education and to the community in the Isle of Mull. (Isle of Mull, Argyll and Bute) </p><p></p><p>Lt Cdr Brian Leslie Maddock, R.N.(Retd.). Chief Umpire, Wimbledon Championships. For services to Tennis. (Portsmouth, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Miss Ranjula Madhani. Parliamentary Officer, HM Treasury. For public and voluntary service. (Ilford, Essex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Rosemary Maguire. For services to People with Parkinson's Disease in Cornwall. (Hayle, Cornwall) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Ann Maidment. Teacher, Kenmore Park Middle School, Harrow, London. For services to Education. (Pinner, Middlesex </p><p></p><p>Ms Robina Elizabeth Mallett. Family Carer Support Officer, Home Farm Trust, Bristol. For services to Children and Families. (Bristol) </p><p></p><p>Paul Christian Manning. Cyclist. For services to Sport. (Stockport, Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Raymond Arthur Manning. For voluntary service to the community in Benllech, Anglesey. (Anglesey, Gwynedd) </p><p></p><p>Kevin Anthony Marley. Senior Executive Officer, Shared Services, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Poynton, Cheshire) </p><p></p><p>Maurice Marshal. Chief Electrician, Northcott Theatre, Exeter. For services to Drama. (Topsham, Devon) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Jean Marshall. For services to Young People with Special Needs in Brighton. (Brighton, East Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Jonathan Marshall. Founder, Plymouth Centre for Faiths and Cultural Diversity. For services to the community in Plymouth. (South Brent, Devon) </p><p></p><p>Ms Pamela Marshall. Clinical director, Eating Disorder Service, Leicestershire. For services to Healthcare. (Leicestershire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Ruby Marshall. Chair, Hartlepool Carers. For services to Children and Families. (Hartlepool, Durham) </p><p></p><p>Nigel Platts-Martin. Restauranteur. For services to the Hospitality Industry. (London, W4) </p><p></p><p>Dr John William Mason. For services to the South Downs Planetarium and Science Centre, Chichester. (West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Israel Massey. Co-founder, Race Equality in Newham. For services to Black and Minority Ethnic communities in the London Borough of Newham. (London, E7) </p><p></p><p>David James Matthews. For services during the July 2005 London Bombings. (Luton, Bedfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Alison May McAusland. For voluntary service to the community in Warrington, Cheshire. (Warrington, Cheshire) </p><p></p><p>Seamus Aidan McCann. Staff Officer, Mental Health Unit, Social Policy Group, Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, Northern Ireland Executive. (Castlewellan, Down) </p><p></p><p>Derek McCarrick. For charitable services. (Sheppey, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Ms Leonie McCarthy. Manager, New Link Centre, Peterborough City Council. For services to Local Government. (Oundle, Northamptonshire) </p><p></p><p>Horace Michael McEvoy. For services to the community in North Wales. (Prestatyn, Denbighshire) </p><p></p><p>Owen Reid McGhee. For services to Sport and to Charity. (Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Margaret Mary McGoran. For voluntary service to the Catholic Guide Movement in Northern Ireland. (Downpatrick, Down) </p><p></p><p>Gerard McIlmurray. For services during the July 2005 London Bombings. (Epsom, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Malachy Peter McKernan. Deputy Principal, Energy Division, Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment, Northern Ireland Executive. For public and voluntary service. (Craigavon, Armagh) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Elizabeth Montgomery McLardy. For services to Local Government and to the community in West Kilbride. (West Kilbride, Ayrshire and Arran) </p><p></p><p>Stuart David McNeill. For voluntary service to Young People in the UK and Ghana. (Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>Geoffrey Meehan. For public service. (Swanage, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Rosemary Andrea Meeke. Grade E1, Ministry of Defence. (Tilshead, Wiltshire) </p><p></p><p>Narendra Mehta. For services to Visually Impaired Asian People. (London, N4) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Doreen Meiklem. Practice Nurse, Stoneyburn Health Centre. For services to Healthcare and to the community in West Lothian. (Bathgate, West Lothian) </p><p></p><p>Dr Alan William Thomas Melville. General Medical Practitioner. For services to Healthcare in Fife. (Dunfermline, Fife) </p><p></p><p>William Metcalf. For voluntary service to Homeless People in London. (London, W1U) </p><p></p><p>John Bissett Methven. For voluntary service to the Boys' Brigade in Kirkcaldy, Fife. (Kirkcaldy, Fife) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Charlotte Michaels. For voluntary service to the community in North London. (London, NW4) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Margaret Elizabeth Middlebrook. For voluntary service to the community in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. (Malton, North Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Miss Alice Patricia Middleton. Founder, Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide. For services to Vulnerable People. (Hull) </p><p></p><p>David Edward James Miles. Banjo Player. For services to Music. (Hertford, Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Yvonne Millar. Head, Community Child Psychology Service, Islington Primary Care Trust. For services to Children and Families. (London, N2) </p><p></p><p>Samuel Hamilton Miller. For services to Motorcycle Heritage. (Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Ross Gibson Milligan. Superintendent Medical Illustrator, Monklands Hospital, Airdrie. For services to Healthcare in Scotland. (Moffat Mills, North Lanarkshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Valerie Mitchell. For services to Nursing in Fife. (Cupar, Fife) </p><p></p><p>Alexander Moggach. For services to the Industry Engineers' Club Project. (Glasgow) </p><p></p><p>George Ramsey Martin Moore. For voluntary service to Heritage in the Isle of Man. (Douglas, Isle of Man) </p><p></p><p>Ms Maureen Tyler-Moore. Principal, Independent Specialist College, Foxes Academy, Minehead. For services to Special Needs Education. (Minehead, Somerset) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Ann Morgan. Branch manager, Bessbrook Library. For services to Local Government in Northern Ireland. (Newry, Down) </p><p></p><p>Dr Terence John Morris. Formerly consultant General Physician and Medical director, North Glamorgan NHS Trust. For services to the NHS and to the British Medical Association. (Cardiff) </p><p></p><p>Lincoln Moses. For services to Community Football in Birmingham. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Brian Mummery. Honorary Curator, Immingham Museum. For voluntary service to Heritage in Lincolnshire. (Immingham, Lincolnshire) </p><p></p><p>Douglas William Frederick Muncey. For services to WaterAid. (Woodford Green, Essex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Margaret Elizabeth Murphy. For charitable services to Bridgend and District Macmillan Cancer Support Group, South Wales. (Bridgend) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Alexandra Murray. Designer. For services to the Fashion and Textile Industries in Scotland. (Inverness, Highland) </p><p></p><p>Ms Rosemary Murray. For services to Vulnerable People and to Emergency Planning. (Coalville, Leicestershire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Alexandra Olivia Naish. For services to Community Relations in Bristol. (Bristol) </p><p></p><p>Frederick Walter Netley. For voluntary service to the Whitehawk community in Brighton. (Brighton, East Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Michael Newsome. For voluntary service to the community in York, North Yorkshire. (York, North Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>James Percy Newton. Bus Driver, Damory Coaches. For services to Public Transport in Dorset. (Blandford, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Dorothy Margaret Neyland. For voluntary service to Gymnastics and to the community in Swansea. (Swansea) </p><p></p><p>Miss Primrose Cherry Nixon. Complaints Liaison Officer, PAYE and Self Assessment, Belfast, HM Revenue and Customs. (Crumlin, Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Valerie Frances Norman. For voluntary service to the Samaritans in Bangor, North Wales. (Anglesey, Gwynedd) </p><p></p><p>Michael Robin Norton. For services to the Water Industry and to International Trade. (Malmesbury, Wiltshire) </p><p></p><p>Dr Heather Nunnerley. For services to Healthcare in South East London. (Beckenham, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Ms Margaret O'Callaghan. Chair, Outer West Area Forum. For services to the community in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne,Tyne and Wear, ) </p><p></p><p>Thomas O'Callaghan. For services to Lifelong Learning in the Transport Industry. (London, NW10) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Avril O'Sullivan. For voluntary service to People with Learning Disabilities in Essex. (Frinton on Sea, Essex) </p><p></p><p>David Oddie. Senior Lecturer in Drama, University College Plymouth of St. Mark and St.John. For services to International Relations. (Tavistock, Devon) </p><p></p><p>Ms Christine Ijeoma Ohuruogu. Athlete. For services to Sport. (London, E15) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Nora Oliver. Chief executive, Burton Addiction Centre. For services to Disadvantaged People in Staffordshire. (Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Comfort Oppong. Home manager, Anchor Homes. For services to Older People in Southwark, London. (London, SE20) </p><p></p><p>Derek Stanley Osbaldestin. For voluntary service to Young People and to the community in Greater Manchester. (Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>David Jeremy Owen Owen. For charitable services. (Rugby, Warwickshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Annabel Serena Oxley. For voluntary service to Injured Jockeys. (Newmarket, Suffolk) </p><p></p><p>Dr Shiv Pabary. General Practice Dentist, Newcastle and Gateshead. For services to the NHS. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne and Wear) </p><p></p><p>Russell Edward Parke. For services to the Scouts in Hampshire. (Nr Southampton, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Robert John Parsons. Herald Painter, College of Arms. For services to Art. (Brighton, East Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Charles Nicholas Partridge, TD. For public service. (Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Maj John William Joseph Paton. For voluntary service to Heritage in Scotland and Overseas. (Oldmeldrum, Aberdeen) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Gillian Patricolo. Non-Domestic Rating Reference manager, Valuation Office Agency, Cardiff, HM Revenue and Customs. (Cardiff) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Maureen May Payan. For voluntary service to the community in Twickenham, Middlesex. (Twickenham, Middlesex) </p><p></p><p>Ms Sara Payne. Co-Advocate, Phoenix Trust. For services to Child Protection. (Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Brian Pearson. Formerly Change manager, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>David Alan Pease. For services to Literature. (London, W2) </p><p></p><p>Richard Norman Pendlebury. For charitable services to the community in Bristol. (Bristol) </p><p></p><p>Miss Victoria Pendleton. Cyclist. For services to Sport. (Wilmslow, Cheshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Linda Margaret Pepper. Formerly chief executive Officer, Powys Association of Voluntary Organisations. For services to the Voluntary Sector in Wales. (Llandrindod Wells, Powys) </p><p></p><p>Maj Arthur Eric Robin Peters. For services to the Royal British Legion in Somerset. (Bath, Somerset) </p><p></p><p>Henry Desmond Kelly Phillips. For voluntary service to the community in Northern Ireland. (Crumlin, Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Pauline Pilkington. Executive Officer, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Ormskirk, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Andrew Richard Platt. Prison Officer, HM Prison Manchester, Ministry of Justice. For public and voluntary service. (Ashton Under Lyne, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Colin Ploughman. For voluntary service to the community in Golspie, Sutherland. (Sutherland, Highland) </p><p></p><p>Miss Janette Vicki Plumridge. Secretariat Administrator, Enemy Property Claims Assessment Panel, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. (Bexleyheath, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Dr Margaret Ebunoluwa Aderin-Pocock. Managing director, Science Innovation Ltd. For services to Science Education. (Guildford, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Brian Andrew Gillingham Poole. Chief Steward. For services to the Armed Forces. (Poole, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Rosie Swale Pope. For charitable services. (Tenby, Pembrokeshire) </p><p></p><p>William Roy Potter. For voluntary service to Cycling in Lancashire. (Lytham St Annes, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Michael John David Poulter. Chairman, Staffordshire Police Authority. For services to the community in Staffordshire. (Stafford, Staffordshire) </p><p></p><p>Colin Francis Powell. For services to the Oswestry Talking Newspaper in Shropshire. (Oswestry, Shropshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Lianne Walker Powell. Group General manager, Walker Filtration Ltd. For services to Manufacturing in Tyne and Wear and to International Trade. (Ponteland, Tyne and Wear) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Jane Pratt. Governor, The Connaught School, Aldershot, Hampshire. For voluntary service to Education. (Hook, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Veronica Kay Prichard. For services to Angling and to the Environment in West Wales. (Newport, Pembrokeshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Valerie Priestley. For services to Edith Cavell Lower School, Bedford. (Bedford, Bedfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Robin Kingsley Prince. Operations Standards manager, Victa Railfreight. For service to the Rail Industry. (Maidstone, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Trixie Pulsford. Head Coach, Ross-on-Wye Swimming Club. For voluntary service to Sport in Herefordshire. (Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire) </p><p></p><p>Zachary Purchase. Rower. For services to Sport. (Reading, Berkshire) </p><p></p><p>Christopher Billy Pye. British Swimming head Disability Coach. For services to Sport. (Waunceirch, Neath Port Talbot) </p><p></p><p>Bernard Godfrey Rainbow. Chief Locomotive Inspector, Severn Valley Railway. For voluntary service to the Rail Industry. (Birmingham, West Midlands) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Yvonne Rawley. For services to the Water Industry and to Charity. (Mitcham, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Lt Peter Reed. Rower. For services to Sport. (London, W4) </p><p></p><p>Allan Rees. For services to the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners and to the Royal British Legion in South Wales. (Bridgend) </p><p></p><p>Derek Reginald Reeves. For charitable services through the Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa Memorial Trust and to the community in Farnham, Surrey. (Farnham, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Ms Christine Reid. Lawyer, Lambert Group. For services to Collaborative Research and Innovation. (Oxford, Oxfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Caroline Rejdak. Foster Carer, Hertfordshire. For services to Children and Families. (Hitchin, Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Robert Rejdak. Foster Carer, Hertfordshire. For services to Children and Families. (Hitchin, Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Yvonne Rhoden. Constable, Metropolitan Police Service. For services to the Police. (London, SW1H) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Etheline Mavis Richards. For voluntary service to Healthcare and to the community in North London. (London, N17) </p><p></p><p>Simon Richardson. Cyclist. For services to Disabled Sport. (Porthcawl, Bridgend) </p><p></p><p>Trevor Maxwell Ringland. For services to the community in Northern Ireland. (Holywood, Down) </p><p></p><p>Kenelm Robert. Head of Customer Relations, Royal Festival Hall. For services to the Arts. (Northwood, Middlesex) </p><p></p><p>Capt John Alan Roberts. Chief executive, White Ensign Association. For services to Royal Navy Personnel. (Fareham, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Marcia Roberts. For services to Diversity and to the Recruitment Industry. (Bedfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Enid Barbara Rodd. For voluntary service to the community in Pentyrch, Cardiff. (Cardiff) </p><p></p><p>Ms Marjory Rodger. Director of Government Relations (Scotland), Confederation of Passenger Transport UK. For services to the Bus Industry. (Edinburgh) </p><p></p><p>Miss Rebecca Romero. Cyclist. For services to Sport. (Hatchmere, Cheshire) </p><p></p><p>Frederick Clifford Rose. For charitable services to the Anglican Church in Wales and to Music in Swansea. (Swansea) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Phyllis Freda Rose. For voluntary service to MIND East Berkshire. (Bracknell, Berkshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Elaine Rossall. For voluntary service to Home-Start Newark, Nottinghamshire. (Newark, Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>Martin Rourke. Pay and Conditions and Adelphi Human Resources manager,Home Office. (London, SW1P) </p><p></p><p>Colin Rouse. For voluntary service to the British Limbless Ex-Service Men's Association. (Lee-on-Solent, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Veronica Rowland. Cook manager, St Joseph's Boys' High School, Newry. For services to Education in Northern Ireland. (Newry, Down) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Jill Russell. For voluntary service to the community in Kilmacolm, Inverclyde. (Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Monica Joan Russell. For voluntary service at HM Prison Lewes. (Lewes, East Sussex) </p><p></p><p>David Ryan. For services to the Royal Mail and to the community in North London. (London, N1) </p><p></p><p>Councillor Rex Sadler. Member, Kerrier District Council. For services to Local Government in Cornwall. (Camborne, Cornwall) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Kate Schroder. Chief executive, 4sight. For services to Visually Impaired People in West Sussex. (Chichester, West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Jonathan Leslie Bernard Scriver. Officer, Heathrow Airport, HM Revenue and Customs. For public and voluntary service. (Hayes, Middlesex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Kathryn Mary Scully. Youth Worker, Bath and North East Somerset. For services to Young People. (Bath, Somerset) </p><p></p><p>Ms Jennifer Sealey. Artistic director, Graeae Theatre Company. For services to Disability Arts. (London, E8) </p><p></p><p>Dr Nigel Seddon. Novel Systems Technical Expert, MBDA UK Ltd. For services to the Defence Industry. (Stroud, Gloucestershire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Hilary Margaret Sewill. Vice-Chair, Gatwick Airport Consultative Committee. For public service. (Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Josephine Shanks. For voluntary service to Adult Literacy and to Numeracy in South Lanarkshire. (East Kilbride, Glasgow) </p><p></p><p>Gary Shaw. For services to the Police. (Sunderland, Tyne and Wear) </p><p></p><p>Michael Shefras. For voluntary service to Boaters in the Thames Valley. (Staines, Middlesex) </p><p></p><p>Martin Henry Sheppard. Grade C1, Ministry of Defence. (Blandford Forum, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Thomas Harley Sherlock. For services to Architecture, Conservation and to the community in Islington, London. (London, N1) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Jennifer Anne Shirreffs, DL. For voluntary service to the community in Aberdeen. (Aberdeen) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Elisabeth Alexandra Shorthose. For voluntary service to the community in Newhaven and Leith, Edinburgh. (Edinburgh) </p><p></p><p>Antonio Mario Silvestro. For services during the July 2005 London Bombings. (Epsom, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Miss Eleanor Simmonds. Swimmer. For services to Disabled Sport. (Swansea) </p><p></p><p>Andrew James Simpson. Sailor. For services to Sport. (Sherbourne, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Norma Mary Sinclair. For voluntary service to the community in Reading, Berkshire. (Reading, Berkshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Linda Geraldine Glennys Singleton. Head of Strategic Resourcing, People and Professional Capability Group Finance Directorate, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Blackpool, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Ruth Skinner. For services to Riding for the Disabled and to the community in Inverurie, Aberdeenshire. (Inverurie, Aberdeen) </p><p></p><p>Alfred John Slow. For voluntary service to the community in Wimborne, Dorset. (Wimborne, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Guy Wilson Smales, DL. For voluntary service to Neighbourhood Watch in West Hampshire. (Eastleigh, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Betty (Liz) Smith. Actor. For services to Drama. (London, N2) </p><p></p><p>Miss Catherine Smith. For voluntary service to the HM Prison Service Charity Fund. (Liverpool, Merseyside) </p><p></p><p>David George Gordon-Smith. Chief executive Officer, Orchard Trust. For services to People with Learning Difficulties, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. (Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Doreen Smith. For voluntary service to the community in Broadwater, Lancashire. (Fleetwood, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Jane Smith. For voluntary service to the Independent Monitoring Board, HM Prison and Young Offenders' Institution Eastwood Park, Gloucestershire. (Bristol, Gloucestershire) </p><p></p><p>Raymond John Smith. Formerly Senior Carpenter, St. Fagans National History Museum, Cardiff. For services to Welsh Heritage. (Cardiff) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Vivienne Evelyn Smith. For voluntary service to Girlguiding in the Anglia Region. (Near Banbury, Oxfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Graham Arthur Smout. Special Constable, Staffordshire Police. For voluntary service to the Police. (Swadlincote, Derbyshire) </p><p></p><p>Michael Douglas Snowling. For services to Children and Young People in Norfolk. (Norwich, Norfolk) </p><p></p><p>Colin Sparkes. Team Leader, Cross Tax Evasion Intervention, HM Revenue and Customs. (Broxbourne, Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Wayne Spence. Service Delivery assistant, Temple Meads Station, Bristol. For services to Passenger Transport. (Bristol) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Siobhan Spencer. Member, Derbyshire Gypsy Liaison Group. For services to Community Relations. (Matlock, Derbyshire) </p><p></p><p>Jamie Staff. Cyclist. For services to Sport. (Stockport, Cheshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Angela Star. For services to Healthcare for Young People in Tyne and Wear. (Washington, Tyne and Wear) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Eilish Steele. For services to People with Learning Disabilities in Northern Ireland. (Antrim) </p><p></p><p>Paul Stennett. Chief executive, United Kingdom Accreditation Service. For services to Business. (Horsham, West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Paul Darby Stevenage. Grade C1, Ministry of Defence. (Staines, Middlesex) </p><p></p><p>John James Surgeoner Stewart. For voluntary service to the community in Droylsden, Greater Manchester. (Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Dr Marie Stewart. For services to Education, Diversity and to Equal Opportunities. (London, EC1N) </p><p></p><p>Miss Patricia Elizabeth Stewart. Community Payback Supervisor, Kent Probation Area. For services to the Probation Service. (Chatham, Kent) </p><p></p><p>David Stone. Cyclist. For services to Disabled Sport. (Horsforth, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Richard Barnaby Storey. Cycling Pilot. For services to Disabled Sport. (Disley, Cheshire) </p><p></p><p>Donald Stringer. Governor, Northfield School and Sports College, Stockton-on-Tees. For voluntary service to Education. (Stockton-on-Tees) </p><p></p><p>David Alan Stroud. For services to Nature Conservation. (Peterborough, Northamptonshire) </p><p></p><p>Dr James Douglas Stuart. For voluntary service to the community in South Queensferry, West Lothian. (Edinburgh) </p><p></p><p>Brian Kenneth Sugden. Grade C1, Ministry of Defence. (Preston, Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Stephen Alan Sullivan. For charitable services to Cancer Care and Research, Velindre Hospital, Cardiff. (Caerphilly) </p><p></p><p>Alexander Ross Sutherland. For voluntary service to Swimming in Inverness. (Inverness, Highland) </p><p></p><p>Capt Michael John Sutherland. Harbour Master, Port of Fowey. For services to the Ports Industry in the South West. (Fowey, Cornwall) </p><p></p><p>Dr Doron Swade. For services to the History of Computing. (Kingston upon Thames, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Alan Godfrey Swerdlow. For services to the Arts and to the communities in Liverpool and Suffolk. (Woodbridge, Suffolk) </p><p></p><p>Ms Pauline Tagg. Formerly director, Infection Control and Prevention, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. For services to Healthcare. (Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Diane Talbot. Dietetic manager, Leicestershire County and Rutland Primary Care Trust. For services to Public Health. (Bisbrooke, Rutland) </p><p></p><p>William Mitchell Tate. Principal, Belvoir Park Primary School, Belfast. For services to Education in Northern Ireland. (Craigavon, Armagh) </p><p></p><p>Ms Tamsila Tauqir. For services to the Muslim Community. (London, N4) </p><p></p><p>Miss Anne Caroline Taylor. For services to Young People and to the community in Chichester, West Sussex. (Chichester, West Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Councillor The Honourable Joan Evelyn Taylor. For services to Local Government in the East Midlands. (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>John Teal. Caretaker, Hartlepool Sixth Form College. For services to Further Education. (Hartlepool) </p><p></p><p>David Roy Thomas. For services to the community in St. Davids, Pembrokeshire. (Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire) </p><p></p><p>Geraint Thomas. Cyclist. For services to Sport. (Cardiff) </p><p></p><p>Brian Thompson. For services to Young People and to the community in Maryport, Cumbria. (Maryport, Cumbria) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Wendy Thomson. Formerly Administrative assistant Typist, Crown Prosecution Service. For public and voluntary service. (Lancashire) </p><p></p><p>Tony Thornton. Salvation Army Centre manager. For services to Homeless People in Darlington, County Durham. (Darlington, Durham) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Karen Margaret Tonge. For voluntary service to Table Tennis. (Runcorn, Cheshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Lynda Ann Toon. For services to Adults with Learning Disabilities in Leicestershire. (Coalville, Leicestershire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Paula Mac Townsend. For voluntary service to the community of East and West Worlington, Devon. (Crediton, Devon) </p><p></p><p>Ms Sophi Tranchell. Managing director, Divine Chocolate. For services to the Food Industry. (London, SE1) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Sarah Tremellen. Chief executive Officer, Bravissimo. For services to Entrepreneurship. (Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire) </p><p></p><p>Ms Susan Tron. For services to Riding for Disadvantaged People in Tyne and Wear. (Durham) </p><p></p><p>Dennis Henry Arthur Tuffin. For services to the Rendezvous Advice Centre, Sherborne, Dorset. (Sherborne, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Graham David Tyler. Grade C2, Ministry of Defence. For public service. (London) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Sheila Tyson. Chair, Grange-over-Sands and South Cumbria Branch, NSPCC. For voluntary service to Children. (Grange Over Sands, Cumbria) </p><p></p><p>Eric George Vanlint. For services to Literature and to Charity in Suffolk. (Suffolk) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Bal Virdee. Higher Executive Officer, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. (London, SW12) </p><p></p><p>The Reverend Canon Peter Vowles. For voluntary service to Victim Support in Greater Manchester. (Fallowfield, Greater Manchester) </p><p></p><p>Peter John Vowles. Learning Gateway manager, Weymouth College. For services to Further Education. (Weymouth, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Josephine Mary Wakeham. Chair of Governors, Mousehole Community Primary School and vice-Chair, Cornwall School Governors' Council. For voluntary service to Education. (Hayle, Cornwall) </p><p></p><p>John Robert Walker. For services to Nature Conservation in Lincolnshire. (Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire) </p><p></p><p>Matthew Benedict Walker. Swimmer. For services to Disabled Sport. (Stockport, Cheshire) </p><p></p><p>Clifford John Wallace. For voluntary service to Older People in Rochford, Essex. (Rochford, Essex) </p><p></p><p>Daniel Wallis. Formerly Policy and Strategy manager, Pension Disability and Carers' Service, Department for Work and Pensions. For public and voluntary service. (Dorchester, Dorset) </p><p></p><p>Eric John Wallis. For voluntary service to the South West Coast Path Association. (Ermington, Devon) </p><p></p><p>Ms Patricia Ellen Wallson. Formerly Headteacher, Columbia Market Nursery School and vice-Chair, Little Oaks Children's Centre, Tower Hamlets, London. For services to Early Years Education. (London, E3) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Rosemary Anne Ward. Learning and Teaching Support assistant, School of Education, Nottingham Trent University. For services to Higher Education. (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire) </p><p></p><p>Ernest John Watkins. For voluntary service to Education in Newport, South Wales. (Newport) </p><p></p><p>Garry Watts. Formerly Non-Executive director and chairman, Risk and Audit Committee, Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. For services to Healthcare. (Perth and Kinross) </p><p></p><p>Miss Margaret Evelyn Way. For voluntary service to Speech and Drama in Taunton, Somerset. (Taunton, Somerset) </p><p></p><p>David Weir. Wheelchair Racer. For services to Disabled Sport. (Wallington, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>William Alfred Wells. Messenger, Cabinet Office. (Kent) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Carole Wendland. Senior Executive Officer, Low Cost Home Ownership Division, Department for Communities and Local Government. (Longfield, Kent) </p><p></p><p>John Miles Westcott. Chief executive, Kingswood Foundation, Bristol. For services to Young People. (Glastonbury, Somerset) </p><p></p><p>Canon Richard Ian White. For services to Music Education. (Truro, Cornwall) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Susan Margaret Whitham. Head of Secretariat, Sixth Form Colleges Forum. For services to Further Education. (Sutton, Surrey) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Pamela Mary McCane-Whitney. For voluntary service to Cancer Research UK. (Alfreton, Derbyshire) </p><p></p><p>Brian Hamilton Williams. For voluntary service to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in Cornwall. (Torpoint, Cornwall) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Diana Joy Williams. Assistant chief Officer, East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service. For services to Local Government. (Brighton, East Sussex) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Marjorie June Williams. For services to the Burma Star Association in the South West. (Glastonbury, Somerset) </p><p></p><p>Dr Roger Bevan Williams. Master of Chapel and Ceremonial Music, University of Aberdeen. For services to Music. (Inverurie, Aberdeen) </p><p></p><p>Christopher Wilson, JP. Chairman, Redbridge Pensioners' Forum. For services to Older People in Greater London. (Romford, Essex) </p><p></p><p>George Wilson. For services to Business in Kent. (Whitstable, Kent) </p><p></p><p>Miss Philippa Claire Wilson. Sailor. For services to Sport. (Lymington, Hampshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Stephanie Dawn Wilson. Governor, Newland School for Girls. For voluntary service to Education and to the community in Kingston-upon-Hull. (Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Edward Wingrave. For services to Cycling. (London, SE19) </p><p></p><p>Norris Winstone. For services to Folk Music and to Dance in Norfolk. (Norwich, Norfolk) </p><p></p><p>Miss Lisa Nicole Wise. For public service to Global Tax Issues, HM Revenue and Customs. (France) </p><p></p><p>Ping-ka Andrew Wong. For services to the Chinese community in Northern Ireland. (Belfast) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Christine Wood. Senior Library and Information assistant, Benwell Library, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. For services to Local Government. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne and Wear) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Katherine Ruth Askey-Wood. For voluntary service to Cancer Research UK. (London, SW6) </p><p></p><p>Raymond Wood. For voluntary service to the community in Morayshire. (Lossiemouth, Morayshire) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Christina Elizabeth Malcolm Wright. Formerly head of Performing Arts Faculty, Burnholme Community College, York. For services to Education. (York, North Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Jonathan Hedley Wright. For voluntary service to the community in Bradford, West Yorkshire. (Ilkley, West Yorkshire) </p><p></p><p>Syd Allen Wright. Chief Technician for Insect Survey, Rothamsted Research. For services to Science. (Harpenden, Hertfordshire) </p><p></p><p>Michael William Young. Chair, Institute of Northern Ireland Beekeepers. For voluntary service to Apiculture and to Conservation. (Hillsborough, Down) </p><p></p><p>Mrs Alice Zeitlyn. For voluntary service to the community in Cambridge. (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) </p><p></p><p></p><p>DIPLOMATIC SERVICE AND OVERSEAS LIST </p><p></p><p></p><p>Professor Christopher John Greenwood, CMG. Professor of International Law, London School of Economics. For services to public International Law. </p><p></p><p></p><p>KCMG </p><p></p><p>Andrew Thomas Cahn, CMG. Chief executive, UK Trade and Investment. </p><p></p><p>William Charters Patey, CMG. HM Ambassador, Riyadh. </p><p></p><p>CMG </p><p></p><p>Mark Canning. HM Ambassador, Rangoon. </p><p></p><p>Eugene Gerard Curley, OBE. Counsellor, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. </p><p></p><p>Christopher John Hickey. Director, British Council, Spain. </p><p></p><p>Anthony Michael Layden. The Foreign secretary's Representative for Deportation with Assurances. For services to counter terrorism. </p><p></p><p>Robert Macaire. Formerly director of Consular Services, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. </p><p></p><p>Ms Sarah MacIntosh. Formerly British High commissioner, Freetown. </p><p></p><p>Richard Gordon Monk, OBE, QPM. Formerly Police commissioner, UN Interim Mission in Kosovo. For services to policing in Kosovo. </p><p></p><p>Adam McClure Thomson. Director of South Asia and Afghanistan, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. </p><p></p><p>Scott Andrew Norman Wightman. Formerly director of Global and Economic Issues, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. </p><p></p><p></p><p>GBE </p><p></p><p>Gordon The Right Honourable Baron Slynn Of Hadley. Formerly chairman, International Law Association. For services to European and International Law. </p><p></p><p>CBE </p><p></p><p>Harry James Benson. Freelance Photo-Journalist. For services to photography, and to the community in the UK. </p><p></p><p>Nicholas Peter Clegg. Founder Trustee, managing Trustee and lately chairman, Daiwa Anglo- Japanese Foundation. For services to UK-Japanese relations. </p><p></p><p>Professor Linda Colley. Author and Professor of History, Princeton University. For services to historical studies. </p><p></p><p>Professor Peter Hugh Nolan. Sinyi Professor, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. For services to supporting British business in China and China's integration into the global economy. </p><p></p><p>Professor David Norse. Emeritus Professor of Environmental Management, University College London Environment Institute and Whitehall China Task Force Member. For services to international sustainable development and UK/China relations. </p><p></p><p>John Richard Shervington Skerritt. Financial secretary. For public service, Montserrat. </p><p></p><p>OBE </p><p></p><p>Nicholas Jonathan Alexander. First secretary, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. </p><p></p><p>George Alkiviades David. For services to UK/Greek relations in the field of education. </p><p></p><p>Dr Alexander William Lowndes De Waal. For services to development and conflict resolution in Africa. </p><p></p><p>Professor David Geraint Evans. Professor of Materials Science, Beijing University of Chemical Technology. For services to international science and UK/China Relations. </p><p></p><p>Michael Ernesto Francino. Formerly consultant Team Leader, Department for International Development. For services to economic reform in Iraq. </p><p></p><p>Patrick Hugo Gray. For services to British nuclear non-proliferation initiatives in Russia and the Commonwealth Independent States. </p><p></p><p>Dr John Anthony Director Hemery. Centre for Diplomatic Studies. For services to British interests overseas. </p><p></p><p>David Alexander James Hepworth, QGM. Formerly Senior Investigations Adviser, British Embassy, Kabul. For services to the Police in Afghanistan. </p><p></p><p>Michael John Holloway. Regional director, Consular and Visa Services for Iberia, British Embassy, Madrid. </p><p></p><p>Ms Ann Kenrick. Secretary-General, British Section, Franco-British Council. For services to promoting Franco-British relations. </p><p></p><p>Iftikhar Ahmed Khan. For services to UK/Bangladesh trade and development relations and corporate social responsibility. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Cheryl-Ann Elizabeth Lister. Formerly Chairperson and chief executive Officer, Bermuda Monetary Authority. For services to promoting sound financial regulation in Bermuda. </p><p></p><p>Rurik Miles Marsden. Formerly First Secertary (Development), British Embassy, Rangoon. </p><p></p><p>Jarlath Stephen Norman. First secretary, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. </p><p></p><p>Charles John Sinclair Nuttall. Formerly director, British Council, Colombia. </p><p></p><p>William James Paterson. Formerly EU chief Police Adviser and Team Leader, Darfur. For services in support of the African Union Peacekeeping Mission to Darfur. </p><p></p><p>Gary LeRoy Phillips. Consultant. For public service in Bermuda. </p><p></p><p>Derek Laurence Powell. Managing director, International Training Services. For services to training. </p><p></p><p>Paul Desmond Sherar. Formerly director, Visa Services Operations for the Asia Pacific Region, British Embassy, Beijing. </p><p></p><p>Professor James Arthur Ainscow Stockwin. Nissan Professor, Modern Japanese Studies and director, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, Oxford University. For services to academic excellence and the promotion of UK/Japanese understanding. </p><p></p><p>Rupert Robert Sword. Chairman and Regional head, Latin America Schroder Investment Management, Schroders plc. For services to British commercial interests and to the British community in Argentina. </p><p></p><p>Andrew Robert Hay Thomson. First secretary, British Embassy, Bogota. </p><p></p><p>David Richard Townsend. First secretary, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. </p><p></p><p>Professor David Warburton. Professor of Paediatric Surgery, Children's Hospital Los Angeles. For services to UK/USA collaboration on healthcare research. </p><p></p><p>Nicholas Charles Young. Journalist, Researcher and Trainer for Aid Agencies. For services to sustainable development and to civil society in China. </p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p></p><p>Sean Bennett. Fleet manager, British Embassy, Baghdad. For services to charitable activities in Iraq. </p><p></p><p>Ms Eziethamae Eleanor Bodden. For services to the community, Cayman Islands. </p><p></p><p>Philicianno Callwood. Proprietor, Foxy's Bar and Restaurant, Entrepreneur and Musician. For services to tourism, British Virgin Islands. </p><p></p><p>David John Carter. First secretary, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Pamela Dorothy Horridge-Deakin. Vice president, Ibiza and Formentera Association for the Prevention of Cancer. For services to charitable activities in Ibiza and Formentera. </p><p></p><p>Ms Vivien Christine Esslemont. Assistant director, British Council, Mozambique. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Rebecca Dawn Fortunato. President, Gibraltar Amateur Swimming Association, and vice president, Gibraltar Commonwealth Games Association. For services to sport. </p><p></p><p>Paul William Franklin. Second secretary, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. </p><p></p><p>Iain Peter McPherson Hardy. Honorary Consul, Valparaiso. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Marguerite Loudon Hopkin. For services to the British community in France. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Elizabeth Florence Joshua. For services to education and the community, St. Helena and Ascension Island. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Shirley Adams-Leach. For services to musical education, Falkland Islands. </p><p></p><p>Paul Stuart Millard. HM Ambassador's driver. For services to the British Embassy in Berne. </p><p></p><p>Nicholas Michael Miller. Second secretary, British Embassy, Bogota. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Samantha Jane Morshed. Founder, Hathay Bunano knitwear company. For services to disadvantaged and vulnerable women and children in Bangladesh. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Ann Munro. Vice Consul, British Embassy, Doha. </p><p></p><p>Ms Alexandra Maria Pearson. For services to victims of the Chinese earthquake in May 2008. </p><p></p><p>Ian Seabourne. Founder, Operation Breakthrough. For services to tackling juvenile delinquency through sport in Hong Kong. </p><p></p><p>Miss Layla Kelly Slatter. Formerly Third secretary, British Embassy, Damascus. For services in the Middle East and Afghanistan. </p><p></p><p>Ms Vanessa Frances Hall-Smith. Director, British Institute of Florence. For services to promoting UK culture in Italy. </p><p></p><p>Arthur Chesley Trott. Artist and Sculptor. For services to Art in Bermuda. </p><p></p><p>Anthony Tsui Tin-Yau. Director, Croucher Foundation. For services to science and UK/Hong Kong relations. </p><p></p><p>Alister Stanley Widdowson. Formerly Senior Teacher, British Council, Burma. </p><p></p><p>Ms Inga Mary Williams. Secretary, Links House Senior Citizens Residence. For services to the British community in Argentina. </p><p></p><p>Christopher John Worthington. Honorary Supervisor, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Sri Lanka. For services to the memory of the war dead. </p><p></p><p>COMMONWEALTH </p><p></p><p>ANTIGUA AND BARBADUA </p><p></p><p></p><p>CMG </p><p></p><p>Col Trevor A Thomas. For services to the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force. </p><p></p><p></p><p>OBE </p><p></p><p>Lt Col Edward H Croft. Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force. </p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p></p><p>Mrs Glendina Mashela Roberts-McKay. For public service. </p><p></p><p>BARBADOS </p><p></p><p>CBE </p><p></p><p>Miss Marvo Olivia Manning. For services to the arts and to youth development. </p><p></p><p>The Very Reverend Frank Bert Hamilton Harcourt Marshall. For services to religion and to the community. </p><p></p><p>Astor Burleigh Watts. For services to the construction industry. </p><p></p><p>OBE </p><p></p><p>Mrs Enid Amelia Gay. For services to nursing and nursing education. </p><p></p><p>Cyril Valentine Walker. For services to education and to the Diaspora. </p><p></p><p>Winston Carloyde Yearwood. For services to entertainment, tourism and youth education. </p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p></p><p>The Reverend Lucille Onita Baird. For services to the Church and the community. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Marion Loleita Hart. For services to the promotion of local cuisine. </p><p></p><p>Geoffrey Carlton Morris. For services to education and childcare. </p><p></p><p>BELIZE </p><p></p><p>CBE </p><p></p><p>Rodwell Roosevelt Adlai Williams. For public and community service. </p><p></p><p>OBE </p><p></p><p>Mrs Floridalba Carmita Contreras. For services to education and to the community. </p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p></p><p>Ms June Amelia Heusner, JP (S). For public and community service. </p><p></p><p>Ms Celi Nunez McCorkle. For services to the community and to commerce. </p><p></p><p>COOK ISLANDS </p><p></p><p>OBE </p><p></p><p>Mrs Marjorie Tuainekore Tere Crocombe. For services to the Cook Islands, the Pacific, education, literature and the community. </p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p></p><p>Tutai-o-Ngametua Toru. For public service and services to sport. </p><p></p><p></p><p>BEM </p><p></p><p>Taepae Tuteru. For public service and services to the Church. </p><p></p><p>Tomoavao Tamanu Wichman. For services to the community and to scientific inventions. </p><p></p><p>GRENADA </p><p></p><p>ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE </p><p></p><p>CBE </p><p></p><p>George Ignatius Brizan, CMG. For services to politics and education. </p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p></p><p>Miss Hillary Anne Gabriel. For community work with persons living with disabilities. </p><p></p><p>Richard N Hughes. For services to sport. </p><p></p><p>Michael Pierre. For services to politics and to education. </p><p></p><p></p><p>BEM </p><p></p><p>Peter Joseph Blair. For services to sport and culture. </p><p></p><p>John Francis. For services to farming. </p><p></p><p>SAINT CHRISTOPHER AND NEVIS </p><p></p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p></p><p>Mrs Mary Sophia Morton. For public service. </p><p></p><p>Clifford Macleod Fitzroy Thomas. For services to the Trade Unions. </p><p></p><p>SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES </p><p></p><p></p><p>CMG </p><p></p><p>The Reverend Arthur Hoskins Huggins. For services to religion and to education. </p><p></p><p></p><p>OBE </p><p></p><p>Alphius Nathaniel Jack. For services to business, religion and the community. </p><p></p><p>Dr Timothy Leroy Providence. For services to medicine and to the community. </p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p></p><p>Mrs Muriel Dorothy Gunsam. For services to business and to religion. </p><p></p><p>Ms Anesta Ileen Rodney. For services to education and to the community. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Cacheta Iselma Matthews-Williams. For services to business and to the community. </p><p></p><p>MILITARY DIVISION - ROYAL NAVY </p><p></p><p>ORDER OF THE BATH </p><p></p><p>KCB </p><p></p><p>Vice Admiral Trevor Alan Soar, OBE. </p><p></p><p>CB </p><p></p><p>Maj Gen John Gordon Rose, MBE. Royal Marines. </p><p></p><p>ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE </p><p></p><p>CBE, QHP </p><p></p><p>Surgeon Commodore Timothy Roger Douglas-Riley. Royal Navy. </p><p></p><p>CBE </p><p></p><p>Rear Admiral Trevor Allan Spires. </p><p></p><p>OBE </p><p></p><p>Cdr David Daniel Acland. Royal Navy. </p><p></p><p>Cdr Mark Vincent Carretta. Royal Navy. </p><p></p><p>Capt Lynne Gibbon, ARRC. Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service. </p><p></p><p>Cdr David Hadfield. Royal Navy. </p><p></p><p>Cdr Stephen John Murray. Royal Navy. </p><p></p><p>Cdr James Le Seelleur Perks. Royal Navy. </p><p></p><p>Cdr (now Capt) Gavin Scrimgeour Pritchard. Royal Navy. </p><p></p><p>Capt John Blain Minto Rees. Royal Navy. </p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p></p><p>Lt (now Lt Cdr) William John Adams. Royal Navy. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 1 Air Engineering Mechanic Martin Bailey. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 1 Warfare Specialist (Abovewater Warfare Weapons) Robert Bainbridge. </p><p></p><p>CPO Weapon Engineering Mechanic (Radio) (Submarine) Paul Burton. </p><p></p><p>PO Air Engineering Mechanic (Mechanical) David Robert James Dallimore. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 1 Warfare Specialist (Sensors Submarine) John Strannigan Dickie. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 2 (Acting WO Class 1) Steven Graham Eaton. Royal Marines. </p><p></p><p>Lt Cdr Derek John Login. Royal Naval Reserve (Sea Cadet Corps). </p><p></p><p>Maj John David Maddison. Royal Marines. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 2 Engineering Technician (Marine Engineering Submarine) Allan Lindsay Mason. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 1 Warfare Specialist (Abovewater Warfare Weapons) Paul Mounsor. </p><p></p><p>Maj (Acting Lt Col) Alexander Bruce Murray. Royal Marines. </p><p></p><p>Capt (Acting Maj) Martin David Tidman. Royal Marines. </p><p></p><p></p><p>MILITARY DIVISION - ARMY </p><p></p><p></p><p>GCB </p><p></p><p>General Sir Francis Richard Dannatt, KCB, CBE, MC, ADC. Gen., late The Green Howards. </p><p></p><p>CB </p><p></p><p>Maj Gen Adrian John Bradshaw, OBE. Late King's Royal Hussars. </p><p></p><p>Lt Gen Andrew Collingwood Figgures, CBE. Late Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. </p><p></p><p>Lt Gen Louis Patrick Lillywhite, MBE, QHS. Late Royal Army Medical Corps. </p><p></p><p>Maj Gen Jonathan David Page, OBE. Late The Parachute Regiment. </p><p></p><p></p><p>CMG </p><p></p><p>Col Peter David Fraser-Hopewell, MBE. Late The Royal Scots. </p><p></p><p></p><p>KBE </p><p></p><p>Lt Gen Graeme Cameron Maxwell Lamb, CMG, DSO, OBE. Late The Queen's Own Highlanders. </p><p></p><p>CBE </p><p></p><p>Brig Robert Hanbury Tenison Aitken. Late The Royal Regiment of Wales. </p><p></p><p>Brig Nicholas Roy Davies, MBE, MC. Late The Parachute Regiment. </p><p></p><p>Col Timothy John Hodgetts. Q.H.P., late Royal Army Medical Corps. </p><p></p><p>Brig Stephen George Vowles. Late Adjutant General's Corps (Army Legal Services Branch). </p><p></p><p>OBE </p><p></p><p>Lt Col Scott Ross Adam. Adjutant General's Corps (Staff and Personnel Support Branch). </p><p></p><p>Col Rakesh Kumar Bhabutta. Late Royal Army Medical Corps. </p><p></p><p>Acting Col Andrew Mark Blowers. Surrey Army Cadet Force. </p><p></p><p>Acting Col John Barrie Davies. Glamorgan Army Cadet Force. </p><p></p><p>Lt Col Edward Richard Bickersteth Heal. Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. </p><p></p><p>Col Philip James Hubbard. Late Royal Army Medical Corps. </p><p></p><p>Col James Timothy Edward Illingworth. Late Army Air Corps. </p><p></p><p>Lt Col Jonathan Charles Probert, MBE. The Royal Logistic Corps. </p><p></p><p>Col Peter Samuel Marshal Rawlinson, TD. Late Royal Army Medical Corps, Territorial Army. </p><p></p><p>Lt Col Alistair John Thomson. Adjutant General's Corps (Educational and Training Services Branch). </p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p></p><p>Staff Sgt Glen John Adams. The Royal Logistic Corps. </p><p></p><p>Capt Michael Paul Eamon Angove. Royal Corps of Signals. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 1 Robin David Bartlett. Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. </p><p></p><p>Maj Hugh Benson. The Royal Irish Regiment. </p><p></p><p>Acting Lt Col Jeremy Graham Bromfield. Bancroft's School Combined Cadet Force. </p><p></p><p>Maj Gavin Derek Brown. Corps of Royal Engineers. </p><p></p><p>Sgt Raymond Burke. Royal Regiment of Artillery. </p><p></p><p>Maj Kenneth Campbell. The Royal Regiment of Scotland. </p><p></p><p>Maj Jon Cadey Spencer Cheek. Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. </p><p></p><p>Maj Andrew David Cox. The Mercian Regiment. </p><p></p><p>Sgt Stephen John Crighton. The Yorkshire Regiment. </p><p></p><p>Maj Jody Philip Davies. The Royal Gurkha Rifles. </p><p></p><p>Lt Col Timothy John Davies. Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps. </p><p></p><p>Maj William Hywel Lewis Davies. The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. </p><p></p><p>Sgt Justin Paul Dine. Royal Corps of Signals. </p><p></p><p>Staff Sgt Paul Duffin. Corps of Royal Engineers. </p><p></p><p>Capt Neil Anthony England. Grenadier Guards. </p><p></p><p>Maj Rodney Victor Gray. The Rifles. </p><p></p><p>Maj Nigel Patrick Hanley. The Parachute Regiment. </p><p></p><p>Capt Colin Andrew Howard. The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment. </p><p></p><p>Maj Toby Alfred Warde Ingram. Royal Regiment of Scotland. </p><p></p><p>Acting Maj Barry Johnson. Yorkshire (North and West) Army Cadet Force. </p><p></p><p>Sgt Shane Anthony Jones. The Yorkshire Regiment. </p><p></p><p>Maj William Robert Kefford. The Royal Gurkha Rifles. </p><p></p><p>Maj Peter Alexander Little, BEM. The Parachute Regiment. </p><p></p><p>Maj Mathew Richard Pemberton MacKenzie. The Rifles. </p><p></p><p>Lance Cpl Angeline Patricia Matley. Royal Army Medical Corps. </p><p></p><p>Maj James McClung. Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. </p><p></p><p>Maj Bryan Mialkowsky, CD. Canadian Military Engineers. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 1 Andrew David Mills. Adjutant General's Corps (Staff and Personnel Support Branch). </p><p></p><p>Capt Dean Richard Murch. The Rifles. </p><p></p><p>Lt Col John Crispin Morison Orr. Army Air Corps. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 2 Geoffrey Paine. The Rifles, Territorial Army. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 1 Colin Neil Preece. Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. </p><p></p><p>Staff Sgt Christopher Price. Royal Regiment of Artillery. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 2 Robert Proctor. The Rifles. </p><p></p><p>Maj Thomas Robert David Ridgway. Royal Regiment of Artillery. </p><p></p><p>Maj Paul Shields. Royal Australian Infantry Corps. </p><p></p><p>Maj Michael John Short. Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. </p><p></p><p>Colour Sgt Paul Gregory Simpson. The Yorkshire Regiment. </p><p></p><p>Capt Neil Stuart Thomas. Adjutant General's Corps (Staff and Personnel Support Branch). </p><p></p><p>Maj Darren Lars Thompson. Army Air Corps. </p><p></p><p>Maj Jonathan Peter Thorn. The Royal Logistic Corps. </p><p></p><p>Maj Philip Shepheard-Walwyn. Royal Regiment of Artillery. </p><p></p><p>The Reverend Steven Royal Army Chaplains' Department Whiting. </p><p></p><p>Acting Lt Col Lewis John Williams, TD. Buckinghamshire Army Cadet Force. </p><p></p><p>Lt Col William Stewart Codrington Wright. The Rifles. </p><p></p><p>QUEEN'S VOLUNTEER RESERVES MEDAL </p><p></p><p>QVRM </p><p></p><p>WO Class 2 Maurice William Byrne. Royal Corps of Signals, Territorial Army. </p><p></p><p>Col Celia Jane Harvey, OBE, TD. Late Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Territorial Army. </p><p></p><p>WO Class 2 Joseph Raymond Krikorian. Royal Corps of Signals, Territorial Army. </p><p></p><p>Sgt David Paul Sadler. The Parachute Regiment, Territorial Army. </p><p></p><p></p><p>MILITARY DIVISION - ROYAL AIR FORCE </p><p></p><p>ORDER OF THE BATH </p><p></p><p>KCB </p><p></p><p>Air Marshal Christopher Hugh Moran, OBE, MVO. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Air Marshal Stuart William Peach, CBE. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>CB </p><p></p><p>Air Vice-Marshal Charles Wright Ness. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p></p><p>CBE </p><p></p><p>Group Capt Malcolm Andrew Brian Brecht, OBE. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Air Commodore Philip Colin Osborn, OBE. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Group Capt Edward Jackson Stringer, OBE. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>OBE </p><p></p><p>Wing Cdr Dean Richard Andrew. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Wing Cdr Lawrence John Bennett. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Wing Cdr Ian Duguid. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Wing Cdr Andrew Charles Hine. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Wing Cdr Richard David Mason, MBE. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Wing Cdr Peter William McAlpine. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Wing Cdr Simon Peter Rochelle, DFC. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>MBE </p><p></p><p>Flg Off Steven John Abbott. Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (Training). </p><p></p><p>Sqn Ldr Steven Andrew Berry. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Flt Sgt Robert Thomas Bray. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>WO Robert Michael Byrne. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Flt Lt Matthew Alan Clark. Royal Air Force Reserve. </p><p></p><p>Chief Technician Nicholas John Deavin. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>WO David Elder. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Sqn Ldr Robert Andrew Ellen. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>WO Stuart John Farmer. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Sgt Paul Anthony Fawcett. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Sqn Ldr Andrew Thomas Fell. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Sqn Ldr Lewis Gusterson. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Sqn Ldr Anthony Christian Keeling. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Sqn Ldr Sean Christopher Leach. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Sqn Ldr David Thomas Morgan. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>WO Mark Antony Salter. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Sgt Justin Hartland Scholes. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>Sqn Ldr Andrew John White. Royal Air Force. </p><p></p><p>QUEEN'S VOLUNTEER RESERVES MEDAL </p><p></p><p>QVRM </p><p></p><p>WO Andrew Bailey. Royal Auxiliary Air Force </p><p></p><p>SUNDRIES </p><p></p><p></p><p>QPM </p><p></p><p>ENGLAND AND WALES </p><p></p><p>Ms Anita Mary Ashcroft. Constable, Merseyside Police. </p><p></p><p>Anthony Colin Brett. Formerly Detective chief Superintendent, Greater Manchester Police. </p><p></p><p>Stephen Cahill. Deputy chief Constable, Home Office. </p><p></p><p>Makhdum Ali Chishty. Superintendent, Warwickshire Police. </p><p></p><p>Stewart Forrester. Constable, Metropolitan Police Service. </p><p></p><p>Michael Free. Chief inspector, Metropolitan Police Service. </p><p></p><p>Timothy John Godwin. Assistant commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Susan Handford. Constable, West Midlands Police. </p><p></p><p>Nicholas Francis Kinsella. Chief Superintendent, South Yorkshire Police. </p><p></p><p>Craig Thomas Mackey. Chief Constable, Cumbria Constabulary. </p><p></p><p>Ian Andrew McPherson. Chief Constable, Norfolk Constabulary. </p><p></p><p>Graham Meadows. Superintendent, Cleveland Police. </p><p></p><p>Brian Moore. Chief Constable, Wiltshire Constabulary. </p><p></p><p>Stephen Otter. Chief Constable, Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. </p><p></p><p>Mrs Lynn Gillian Owens. Temporary Deputy chief Constable, Surrey Police. </p><p></p><p>Kevin Michael Price. Chief Superintendent, Gwent Police. </p><p></p><p>Peter St Clair-Erskine Loughborough, The Earl of Rosslyn. Commander, Metropolitan Police Service. </p><p></p><p>Robert Michael Smart. Superintendent, Northamptonshire Police. </p><p></p><p>SCOTLAND </p><p></p><p>Daniel McVey Lapsley. Constable, Strathclyde Police. </p><p></p><p>John Lamont Stuart Malcolm. Formerly assistant chief Constable, Strathclyde Police. </p><p></p><p>George Simpson. Formerly chief Superintendent, Lothian and Borders Police. </p><p></p><p>NORTHERN IRELAND </p><p></p><p>Desmond Peter Austin. Formerly chief inspector, Police Service of Northern Ireland. </p><p></p><p>Philip Anthony James. Detective Superintendent, Police Service of Northern Ireland. </p><p></p><p>Ms Christine McCullough. Detective Superintendent, Police Service of Northern Ireland. </p><p></p><p></p><p>QFSM </p><p></p><p>ENGLAND AND WALES </p><p></p><p>Iain Cox. Chief Fire Officer, Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service. </p><p></p><p>Robert Rea. Group manager, Fire Service College, Moreton in Marsh, Gloucestershire. </p><p></p><p>Francis Stark. Deputy assistant chief Officer, London Fire Brigade. </p><p></p><p>Philip Toase. Chief Fire Officer and chief executive, West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service. </p><p></p><p>SCOTLAND </p><p></p><p>Douglas Colin MacDonald. Watch manager, Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. </p><p></p><p>Ian Knox Stocks. Scottish Project manager, Firelink. </p><p></p><p>NORTHERN IRELAND </p><p></p><p>Eoin Doyle. Area Commander, Western Area Command, Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service. </p><p></p><p></p><p>CPM </p><p></p><p>Robert Peliza. Police Inspector, Royal Gibraltar Police. </p><p></p><p>Edward Yome. Police Superintendent, Royal Gibraltar Police. </p><p>Gaskins puts this declining interest from financial backers down to the fact that many who invested in the sector got their fingers burnt and have been unwilling to return. </p><p>Lawyer Denning Rodriguez, whose firm Pearce LLP specialises in working with designers and the luxury goods industry, says: "Obviously there are investors that are willing to cope with losses because of their relationship with the designer and affinity for fashion. However, whether a particular investor has the financial resources to cover long-term losses, is another question." </p><p>When it comes to money, Keren Eldad, fashion advertising director for the LA Times, says that potential clients are not putting their money where their mouth is in spite of the economic recovery: "On the one hand, they're looking to be spending more on advertising, but the dollars aren't there yet." As to sales rates, she admits that "anything is better than last year" but says it's too early to tell how 2010 will turn out. </p><p>A regular at the Bryant Park tents, which have played host to the official New York Fashion Week for the past 17 years, Eldad believes that the shows she has seen so far during the week, which runs until Thursday, have been disappointing. </p><p>"I was expecting a lot of colour, a lot of attitude, but that has not yet materialised. Right now everything is grey, or beige. Designers are playing it so safe, and catering to the buyers and not the [magazine] editors."</p><p>In an industry notorious for costs, such a move is perhaps not surprising, and is also reflected in the push to use alternative venues to Bryant Park, the official home of New York fashion week run by event organiser IMG.</p><p>One change has been the rise of "Mac &amp; Milk," a joint venture between make-up firm MAC and Milk Studios in the city's Meatpacking District. Rather than charging designers upwards of $25,000 to stage a fashion show as IMG does, Mac &amp; Milk offers free space to designers and free make-up. But the designers have to be chosen by the organisers, creating exclusivity.</p><p>Another phenomenon is the rise of the presentation over the catwalk show &ndash; essentially a two-three hour installation of models wearing new collections, which journalists and buyers walk around, rather than the other way around. </p><p>Connie Wang, associate editor of Refinery29, a New York-based fashion blog says it is "more efficient on time" and allows editors to pop by and "actually spend time looking at the clothes". </p><p>But one thing Wang is seeing less of is the goody bag, the sought-after prize for many an attendee.</p><p>Still, it's not all bad news. After two seasons away from the Bryant Park tents, Starbucks has returned as the official coffee provider, ousting McDonald's. Maybe the good times really are back. </p><p>Each look was a seemingly haphazard, but highly-styled mix of metallic brocades, polka-dots, jeweled tweeds, leopard-print, stripes and exotic butterfly-prints.</p><p>Every detail and accessory was designed to the hilt, from the straw and flower, 'pancake' hats and 'Middle Europe' head-scarves to the fringed, tasseled tapestry bags, the satin, lace-up "yeti" boots and metallic, ankle-strap stilettos.</p><p>Jacobs, undoubtedly America's best-known and most influential designer (he is also creative director of the French label, Louis Vuitton), is the one all the stores look to, to set the style of the season; with this collection he played an absolute blinder.</p><p>As a senior American retailer put it in the post-show excitement backstage: "This was a home run."</p><p>There is so much to choose from, the British high street, which has long relied on Jacobs for its quick-fix catwalk looks, will not know where to begin. </p><p>"Of course I was attracted to the voice and her face, which has so many different angles," Wong says. "But first of all it was her personality. I thought she was going to be shy, but in a way she was very spontaneous, straightforward and confident." Wong, the supreme mannerist, concludes, somewhat surprisingly: "She's a natural." To preserve that quality, he refused to let Jones take acting lessons or to show her the film before its premi&egrave;re in Cannes.</p> <p>Jones had her own reasons for accepting. "I realised I would have to give up all control. But it appealed to me that he didn't have a script and that things were loose. I thought he knew what he was doing, even when I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do it. I had confidence in his confidence in me. </p> <p>"And I knew that, no matter what happened, Kar Wai would make me look better than I've ever looked in my life. I thought he was going to cut my hair and do something that would make me look and feel different - I was kind of disappointed that he didn't. But he takes a lot of care with the make-up and had better ideas about what I should wear than I do." Jones, 28, owes her exotic looks to her parents, the Indian musician Ravi Shankar and Sue Jones, an American ex-dancer. Her luscious beauty is highly cinegenic but she wears it lightly. Before we meet, in Paris, I catch her at a photocall sporting something gold and glamorous, but by the time we speak, an hour later, she has changed into a comfortable, old, dusty black hoodie and jeans.</p> <p>Her character in Blueberry Nights is a woman reeling from a broken romance. Blinded by regrets, she fails to recognise the new love flowering under her nose and goes instead on a long road trip across America. A perk of the assignment: Jude Law played Jones's leading man, a Mancunian running the diner in New York where she goes to drown her sorrows in copious late-night servings of blueberry pie. They would get to kiss - twice - and, this being a Wong Kar Wai movie, the swooningly romantic moment would be something to savour.</p> <p>"Shooting the first kiss took three days," Jones says. "They were trying to find the right angle, the right way. I had to lie on the table with my chin at an angle and cream on my face, and Jude was supposed to kind of sop it up. I don't really kiss him back. It's not like we made out." Notorious for tinkering with his work - he spent four years making 2046 - Wong re-cut the film after Cannes to distil this long kiss to a couple of fleeting, albeit potent, seconds.</p> <p>'We weren't going to put in any of my own music; it would be weird because my character's not a singer," says Jones (though she helped choose music for the soundtrack, which features Ry Cooder, Otis Redding and Mavis Staples). "Then at the last minute Kar Wai asked if I had anything." She did: a number she wrote early one morning after an all-night shoot. It starts with the line: "I don't know how to begin." Jones thinks her mellow, bluesy songs and Wong's movies are a good match because they "both tend towards the melancholy."</p> <p> Could her acting debut signal a new career? Jones demurs. "My music is my heart and my soul and my guts and my blood," she says firmly. "I create every aspect of it, from the artwork onwards, especially for my new album, on which I wrote all the songs. While I was doing the movie, I was very passionate about it and it was my whole life for three months. But I didn't feel like I had anything to lose from it." </p> <p>Yet this could be a year of fresh beginnings. Last year Jones's third album, Not Too Late, signalled a new, piquant dark streak in the eyes of many critics. Her private life is in flux - she has just split from her long-time boyfriend, the musician Lee Alexander - but she believes My Blueberry Nights has boosted her confidence. Perhaps most revealingly, when we met she had recently taken herself off to have her hair cut short.</p><p>The advantage of cooking food into sludge is that it makes it microbiologically safe, and the low cooking temperature optimises fuel consumption. Like driving your car at 60 miles an hour on the motorway, cooking your peasant&rsquo;s pottage at &ldquo;a slow burp&rdquo; is very efficient. </p><p>And, yet, I might as well be speaking a foreign language to anyone who eats microwave meals or dines out every night without a thought for the resources involved. Our series will appeal to anyone who, like me, feels divorced from, yet still interested in, what&rsquo;s on his or her plate. It celebrates all those who still beaver away to produce food that&rsquo;s rooted in Britain&rsquo;s various counties and landscapes. </p><p>During the course of filming, I ate oysters straight out of the salty sea, milked a cow for the first time in my life and saw the awesome sight of a great big turkey beating its wings as it died for the cause of my Christmas dinner. Not bad for someone who usually hunts and gathers via Ocado. </p><p>In Our Food, our leader Giles Coren is usually to be seen sailing a boat (or sometimes driving a train) through a region, while his troops pick out products that interest them. In Norfolk, where we start, James Wong grows some mint, Alys Fowler samples samphire, and Alex Langlands (fortunate man) gets to grips with turnips. And I begin to master the skill of herding turkeys. </p><p>Historically, turkeys did particularly well in Norfolk as they gleaned the leftover grain from the flat arable fields. Once fattened, 16th-century turkeys were sent on a route march to the markets of London, walking three or four miles a day. </p><p>Sadly we failed to prove, as we&rsquo;d read, that they wore little leather shoes to protect their feet. If anyone has evidence of this, I beg you to write and tell me. Of course the march of the turkeys was replaced in due course by the railway, but if you want a fit and flavoursome Christmas bird, don&rsquo;t choose some bland, white, mass-produced species that can hardly waddle under the weight of its massive breast &ndash; you need the traditional, active &ldquo;Norfolk Black&rdquo;, strong enough to walk to London, and the type of turkey closest to those introduced from Mexico into the England of Henry VIII. </p><p>What does the future hold for the British stomach? In one sense, the business of &ldquo;dressing victuals&rdquo;, as the Tudors described it, has gone global, and your food is as likely to have been prepared in Bolivia as it is in Bolton. And yet, if you care to take the trouble, you can buy British and eat British and be British from the inside out. We can support the heroic horticulturalists and cheese-makers and butchers in each county, and help maintain the types of farming that make the landscape of Kent different from Norfolk, and Wales different from Scotland. </p><p>It&rsquo;s exactly this variety - in scenery, in history, and, if you&rsquo;re lucky, in local eateries &ndash; that makes Britain great. </p><p></p><p>'Our Food' starts on BBC Two at 8.00pm on Wednesday 4 April </p><p></p><p></p><p> 22:20 That's it for this evening. Not the gold rush of Thrilling Thursday but some great moments nevertheless. Join us tomorrow for GB's shining light Ellie Simmonds as well as the superstar Oscar Pistorius. Goodnight.</p><p> 22:13 One of today's greatest events was the women's 4x100 medley - 34 points final where Claire Cashmore, Heather Frederiksen, Steph Millward and Louise Watkin won a glorious silver medal following one of the greatest comebacks seen in these Paralympic Games.<br></p><p> 21:59 Oscar Pistorius has had a long, long season and tomorrow will be his last race of the season as he aims to win another Paralympic gold medal in the 400m. After the race the "blade runner" said: <br><br>Tomorrow’s the last race of the year, so hopefully I can end on a high. The crowd’s been phenomenal and I know that will help me a lot tomorrow.</p><p> 21:55 It's easy as you like for Oscar Pistorius in his 400m T44 heat. He is out in front in dominant fashion by the last 50m and simply jogs to the line. He has much more left in the tank for tomorrow's final. </p><p> 21:49 Athletics: storming his way out of the blocks and in the first 200m Oliveira then slowed down the pace significantly before jogging the last 100m. When I say jogging, it was nearly walking. This certainly sparks the speculations; is he injured as someone claims? Who knows. What we do know is that he qualified for the final with ease. The race was won by American Blake Leeper, who caught up with Oliveira. <p></p><p> 21:42 Athletics: No more Brits involved on the track tonight but there is someone by the name of Oscar Pistorius. He goes in the 400m T44 heat in 10 minutes and in the same race but different heat will his Paralympic rival and 200m champion Alan Oliveira. He's due to start his run shortly. </p><p> 21:30 There is no repeat of Richard Whitehead's heroics in the 200m as the Brit finishes seventh - instead, it's Heinrich Popow who takes the plaudits this evening with a run of 12.40 in the men's 100m T42 final. <br><br>Scott Reardon takes silver for Australia, Germany's Wojtek Czyz takes bronze.</p><p> 21:26 Athletics: names are being announced and Richard Whitehead gets a massive roar of applause from the Olympic Stadium. This will be a good one! </p><p> 21:21 Athletics: Not long to go now before Britain's golden boy Richard Whitehead gets underway in the Men's 100m - T42. If you feel like you need to warm up before the race, have a look at this:<br> </p><p> 21:14 Tatyana McFadden rides a superb race to steal ahead of the Swiss superstar Edith Wolf and claim gold in the women's 1,500m T54. Shirley Reilly of America finishes third. <br><br>It's disappointment for the British contingent however, especially Shelly Woods who finishes sixth. She had been tipped for a medal tilt but no such luck. Jade Jones finishes 10th.<br><br>Edith Wolf Swiss<br>SHirley Reilly AM<br>Woods 6<br>Jones 10 </p><p> 21:10 Athletics: Cagey start in the T54 but that doesn't last long as the bell goes. Woods is about sixth.</p><p> 21:07 Athletics: Phew. Take a breath after that fantastic finish to the women's medley, because Shelly Woods and Jade Jones are about to begin the 1,500m T54 final. Woods is a genuine medal opportunity.</p><p> 20:58 Louise Watkin produced a marvelous last round in the pool in the Women's 4x100m Medley Relay to give Britain the silver. Paralympics GB started off slow and found consequently themselves second to last in the first changeover. Claire Cashmore, Heather Fredrikson and Steph Millward all looked to be struggling in the pool and a medal looked unlikely when Millward sent Louise Watkin out for the fourth and final lap. Watkin however looked determined not to give up and caught up on Russia, Australia and USA, eventually beating Russia and USA in a sprint to claim silver behind Australia. Super swimming from Watkin! <br><br></p><p> 20:54 Swimming: Russia way out in front at the half way stage; Britain are 10 seconds behind...</p><p> 20:52 Swimming: Canada, Russia and Australia lead at the turn of the first leg, but there's plenty of time still.</p><p> 20:48 Swimming: Is this Great Britain's best chance of a medal in the pool tonight? Let's hope so. Claire Cashmore, Heather Frederiksen, Steph Millward and Louise Watkin are about to splash down in the women's 4x100 medley - 34 points final. Four very good swimmers, though there's good swimmers everywhere you look.</p><p> 20:36 Li Huzhao takes gold in the men's 200m T53 but he has to battle hard against Brent Lakatos of Canada. The Chinese takes gold however, with compatriot Zhao Yufei in third. GB's Mickey Bushell goes strong until the final 50m and falls behind, finishing fourth.</p><p> 20:34 Brit Rhiannon Henry finished fourth in the Women's 200m Ind. Medley - SM13. Valerie Grand-Maison of Canada won her first gold medal of the Games having previously won two silver. Her name also translates as Val Big-House, which deserves a medal on its own.<br><br><p></p><p> 20:30 Athletics: Mickey Bushell is out on the track for the men's 200m T53. Big ask for the man in lane 3.</p><p> 20:27 Swimming: Big, big cheer for Henry as she makes her way out. It's been disappointing in the pool this evening for GB - what can the Wales lass do?</p><p> 20:24 Table tennis: We do love our celebratory pictures and this is as heartwarming as the rest of them. Jane Campbell and Sara Head celebrating winning the bronze medal in the Women's team table tennis - classes 1-3. </p><p> 20:24 Wow. Ihar Boki of Belarus takes gold in the men's 200m individual medley SM13. It's his fifth gold medal of the London Games and yet another world record too.<br><br><p></p><p> 20:16 Swimming: 25-year-old Rhiannon Henry is next in the pool in the women's 200m individual medley SM13 final. She qualified with a decent time this morning but improvement is needed - if possible - to find herself on the podium.</p><p> 20:09 British table tennis player, Ross Wilson, has just tweeted with delight after beating Germany 3-0 in the battle for the bronze medal: <br><br>Can't believe we've done it best day of my life! #stagetaken </p><p> 20:02 It's a personal best for Hannah Russell but there's little she can do against the awesome Oxana Savchenko of Russia who wins gold in the women's 50m freestyle S12, breaking the world record in a time of 26.90 seconds in the process. Natalii Pronina of Azerbaijan takes silver; Darya Stukalova wins bronze.<br><br><p></p><p> 19:58 Swimming: Britain's James Clegg found it difficult in the Men's 50m Freestyle - S12 final. Maksym Veraksan of Ukraine claimed the gold medal on 23.60secs followed closely by Aleksandr Nevolin-Svetov of Czech Republic and American Tucker Dupree with Clegg finishing sixth on 25.20secs. </p><p> 19:55 Swimming: Big cheer for Hannah Russell as she makes her way out to the pool. Chance of a medal, perhaps, in the women's 50m freestyle S12.</p>US Speaker of the House John Boehner pauses during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, DCPicture: Alex Wong/Getty Images<p>There were clips of Beatie flexing his muscles, looking like the sort of guy who might be interested in skateboarding. Then there was a clip of him showing off his neat bump. 'I'm a pregnant person,' he told Oprah. He said that getting pregnant hadn't made him feel suddenly more feminine - it hadn't, for instance, made him want to shave his legs.</p> <p>Oprah felt Beatie's bump. She commented on the fact that, for somebody who was six months pregnant, it was a neat bump.</p> <p>'I'm a man,' said Beatie. 'I just happen to be a pregnant man.'</p> <p>Watching all this, I began to have a certain amount of sympathy for him. But I still hoped it was a hoax. I thought of James Frey, who had also been a guest on Oprah when he wrote about his addictions to alcohol and crack. Frey, it turned out, had written stuff that wasn't strictly true. Later, he made another appearance on the Oprah show, this time to apologise. News headlines about Beatie's case invariably included a couple of queasily sceptical quote marks - as in ' "Pregnant" man appears on Oprah'.</p> <p>No offence to Beatie, but those quote marks should actually be around the word 'man'. His female reproductive organs are still intact; legally he's a man, but biologically, in many ways that count, he's still very much a woman. And he's not even the first transgender male to become pregnant - that honour belongs to Matt Califia-Rice, who gave birth to a baby boy back in 1999. Despite the headlines, the world is still waiting for the first true male pregnancy.</p> <p>But why was my instinct not to trust Beatie? Partly because the last time I read something about a pregnant man, the fellow in question, Lee Mingwei, turned out to be a character invented by the performance artist Virgil Wong. He was doing what all performance artists do - trying to attract attention to himself by doing something weird. And there aren't many things weirder than being a pregnant man.</p> <p>For the past 10 years Wong's character Mingwei has appeared on a website, telling us what was supposedly happening to him - he was a man, he was pregnant, this was technically possible using cutting-edge medical techniques, and so on. In the real world, he began walking the streets of New York wearing a fake belly ('no one ever looked at me twice - maybe they thought I was fat'). But then he didn't post anything about the actual birth. There was no actual birth. After a while, it became apparent that Wong was having a laugh. And also, possibly, making a serious point or two. In any case, he'd got our attention. (A little too much attention, in fact - he had to move home following death threats from Christian groups.)</p> <p>There was, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger's film Junior, in which the future governor of California played the part of Dr Alex Hesse, a pumped-up scientist working on a wonder drug, Expectane, that helped women get pregnant. When his research funding dried up, Hesse took the drug himself and got pregnant. Ludicrous, of course, one would think. But the film was based on actual research recounted in a 1985 article in the American magazine Omni. The author was a scientist called Dick Teresi. 'You don't need a science fiction drug,' he later wrote.' You may not need any kind of drug at all. We have all the technology we need right now to make a man pregnant.' We'll come back to that.</p> <p>But why is Beatie's situation so difficult to stomach? Here was somebody, so he said, who wanted a child, who was married, and whose wife, Nancy, could not give birth herself. Wasn't what Beatie wanted - a family - the same thing lots of other people want? How could I be appalled at that?</p> <p>But there it was. I was. Male pregnancy was something I found hard to think about - and also hard to talk about. I'd been interested in this subject before I heard of Thomas Beatie. Often, people ask me what I'm working on. If the answer is 'vacuum cleaners', I will launch into a detailed discussion about vacuum cleaners. But when it came to the subject of male pregnancy, I kept trying to change the subject.</p> <p>After a while, I forced myself to talk about it. Men, I discovered, felt the way I did. Women were slightly different. Some laughed. Their position was that men would not be able to go through with pregnancy. Men, they said, couldn't hack it. But what if they could, I said. They couldn't, they replied. Do you know what pregnancy is like?</p> <p>Well, up to a point. You feel sick. You put on weight. You 'bloom'. You get cravings. You feel big and unwieldy. You give birth.</p> <p>Even then, it's not quite over. There is lactation, and then weight you can't shift. Sometimes there is depression. But men could cope with this, couldn't they? After all, they go to war. They sit in muddy trenches, with bombs raining down on them.</p> <p>No! said the women, only half-joking. Or maybe not joking at all. Men could not cope with pregnancy: some of them cited research, or possibly folklore, which said that women, who are built to cope with 40-week stretches of discomfort, are also better able to cope with other ailments - colds, sore throats and the like. Whereas men take to their beds at the slightest thing.' Men are big sissies,' was the consensus.</p> <p>In any case, nobody seemed positive about the idea of male pregnancy. It mostly made them feel threatened. And that's the interesting thing.</p> <p>This is not the mild threat of other gender-shuffling ideas - concepts such as the house-husband, the male nanny, the female paratrooper, the female President of the United States. These things are a form of progress. Male pregnancy does not feel like progress. It feels threatening, and horrifying, and appalling.</p> <p>When I talked to fertility experts about male pregnancy, they seemed to feel the same way. Oh, it's possible, they said. How? Well, think of ectopic pregnancy. This is what happens when an embryo is fertilised outside the womb. Mostly, ectopic pregnancies fail. But occasionally, a healthy baby is born after an ectopic pregnancy. Theoretically, then, an embryo could be implanted into a man, along with some kind of hormone package that would encourage the placenta to grow. And then the man could keep taking hormones - progesterone and oestrogen.</p> <p>It's possible, they said. The man would not feel well. He would develop breasts. He might have severe mood-swings and cravings. At the end, he would have to have a caesarean. The only real obstacle is that the placenta would need to attach itself to the blood supply via an organ, making the birth potentially dangerous (for the man, not the baby). But that's solvable by placing the baby in a uterus - which may soon be possible thanks to the development of uterine transplants.</p> <p>But no one I spoke to sounded positive. And remember, these are fertility doctors. These are people who have spent their whole lives working, against the grain of popular opinion, on long-shot ideas. These are the promoters of IVF and surrogacy, of taking sperm and putting it here, of taking eggs and putting them there, always pushing the envelope of possibility.</p> <p>According to Dick Teresi, the inspiration for the Schwarzenegger film, what you'd have to do to impregnate a man is as follows: fertilise an egg in a test-tube. Then insert it into a part of the male abdomen called the omentum. This is 'a fatty tissue loaded with blood vessels that hangs down in front of the intestines'. (Thomas Beatie was impregnated by his wife, with the help of donated sperm and a device normally used for feeding birds.) In fact, one researcher, Cecil Jacobson, claimed to have impregnated a male baboon using this method in the 1960s, at George Washington University Medical School, though he hadn't allowed the pregnancy to go to term. Teresi said that, for a time, he wanted to be the first scientist to get a man pregnant. Bob Guccione, who founded Omni magazine, agreed to back the project, but Teresi got cold feet. The whole thing, he decided, would be too dangerous - and too weird.</p> <p>'There was the possibility,' he wrote, 'that the project would succeed, leaving the ''mother" and child to deal with the problem of what to call a male mum. Like someone waking up from an intoxicating daydream, I came to my senses.'</p> <p>I mentioned the concept of male pregnancy to Ian Craft, director of the London Fertility Centre. Craft and his team were the first to report that an egg could be successfully fertilised with sperm taken directly from the testis. He is the man who invented and developed the technique of 'sperm retrieval by needle aspiration'. He also showed that 'non-motile' sperm - sperm that appear to be dead - were not necessarily dead, and seemed to come alive after spending 24 hours in an in vitro environment.</p> <p>But male pregnancy? 'It's bizarre,' he said. 'Why would a man want to do this? It doesn't make sense. You can do many innovative things, but trying to change the whole male environment... it's so risky. I can't see why you'd want to do it in the first place. Why a man would want to have a baby I can't possibly contemplate. To me, it defies credibility that anybody would think about doing it. The people who are considering doing it have lost the plot. The plot is that women give birth to children - not men.'</p> <p>Dr Gillian Lockwood, of the Midland Fertility Service, confirmed that male pregnancy wasn't a new idea, and might be possible. 'But the consequences for the unfortunate man! It would be hormone soup. And the delivery would possibly be life-threatening. I don't think you'll get many candidates.' She added: 'I can't imagine any doctor who would co-operate. It's unnecessary and it's unethical. If a couple need to have a surrogate, they can use a surrogate mother without any great risk of harm.'</p> <p>I talked to Dr Simon Fischel of the Centre for Assisted Reproduction in Nottingham, who has said that there is 'no reason why a man could not carry a child. The placenta provides the necessary hormonal conditions, so it doesn't have to be inside a woman'. A few years ago he'd been cited as having been approached by three couples who were interested in the male half of the couple getting pregnant. But he hadn't gone ahead with any treatment. 'The man's life would be seriously at risk,' he told me. There would be issues with the Hippocratic Oath.</p> <p>And would the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulates fertility clinics, sanction it? Unlikely, he said.</p> <p>So it's possible, but dangerous. A man, pumped full of hormones, would begin to take on a womanly shape - he'd be the recipient of Gillian Lockwood's 'hormone soup'. These high levels of hormones might be carcinogenic, and they might have other long-term effects we don't know about. At the end of this process, having been closely monitored and scanned, he'd have a Caesarian, and then a baby. The Caesarian, of course, would be complicated by the fact that it wouldn't be a uterus the surgeon would be cutting open - it would be the man's intestines.</p> <p>Then the pregnant man would become a father. Or rather, a mother. And here's the thing. We find this unpalatable, but not because of the dangers involved, the strange technology, the cutting-edge operations. It's because it changes something fundamental about the way we see the world. Or rather, about the way we feel. Thinking about a pregnant man is difficult on an emotional level, because our emotions are formed, according to evolutionary biologists, by one crucial factor. And that's whether we have the brain chemistry of, on the one hand, a sperm shooter, or, on the other, an egg protector. These are the two halves of our emotional world. Even if you're gay, say the evolutionary biologists, you're either a sperm-shooter or an egg-protector at heart.</p> <p>But a pregnant man? A shooter who is also a protector? It shocks us on a very basic level.</p> <p>Naturally, it does. The way you feel about the world is guided by your primal urges, and the most important of these is the urge to reproduce. This, to quote the American gender expert Joe Quirk from his book Sperm are from Men, Eggs are from Women, is because 'whatever works out best for genes ends up constructing our emotions'.</p> <p>Think of human drives, says Quirk - 'Our hunger for love, our ambitions, our desire to belong, our urge to make beautiful things, our need to talk, our voracious curiosity, our fear of death, our longing for transcendence, our willingness to die for our community, our ache for God. All our qualities evolved to the extent they served the reproduction of genes.' And what is the most basic thing that defines you as an animal driven by the urge to replicate? It's not whether you are a hunter or a gatherer. It's not whether you want to be the leader of your tribe, or even President of the United States. These are secondary concerns. The big thing is whether or not you can get pregnant.</p> <p>Pregnancy is a huge risk. If it can happen to you, this risk defines the way you relate to other people. As the evolutionary biologist David Buss says, 'Because women in our evolutionary past risked enormous investment as a consequence of having sex, evolution favoured women who were highly selective about their mates.'</p> <p>How much investment is that? Well, as Joe Quirk points out, being pregnant costs a woman around 80,000 calories. That's the same energy expenditure as a thousand-mile run. And that's just the start - after that, there's all the feeding and caring, for many years to come. Compare this with the man's investment in having sex - it's about the same, calorie-wise, as watching the cup final while sitting on a sofa. That's why men relate to the world in a different way from women. In her lifetime, a woman produces around 400 eggs. A man, on the other hand, produces billions of sperm. There is never a sperm shortage. So, because men in our evolutionary past risked almost no investment as a consequence of having sex, evolution favoured men who sowed their seed far and wide. Things aren't quite as simple as that, of course, because evolution also favoured men who provided for their children.</p> <p>Pregnancy makes all the difference. Women can get pregnant, so they are hard-wired to be more sexually cautious, and to favour slightly older men who have proved themselves as providers. And, according to the feminist writer Susan Mausart, to organise the home environment so well that men don't want to leave it; and according to the psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, to be great empathisers and multitaskers.</p> <p>Men, on the other hand, can't get pregnant, so they have an evolutionary interest in having sex with as many women as possible. But, since women are hard-wired to be sexually cautious, men must compete with each other for female attention. Eggs, remember, are scarce. Eggs are expensive. It's sperm that's cheap.</p> <p>Quirk explains that women need to evolve ways of making men stay around to help them. That, he says, is why they're so complicated. 'It is not in an egg-maker's interest to be figured out,' he says. 'The clitoris and female psychology are designed to stay just out of reach, just a little teasing, so a man will bond through sexuality, fall in love, and stick around to raise the offspring.'</p> <p>We live in a world that is strictly divided into a male half and a female half. That's why Thomas Beatie throws us a curveball. That's why we are so confused and disturbed by the idea of a pregnant man, even when he did start out as a woman and will still give birth as a woman. The prejudice runs deep. Beatie says that one doctor agreed to treat him, but asked him to shave his facial hair. In one sense, that sounds like an appalling reaction. But you can see the doctor's point of view.</p><p>Bad boy: Matt Connolly (2 red cards, 2 yellow cards) </p><p>In: Jay Bothroyd (Cardiff, free), Kieron Dyer (West Ham, free), Danny Gabbidon (West Ham, free), DJ Campbell (Blackpool, &pound;1.25m) </p><p>Out: Lee Brown (Bristol Rovers, free), Angelo Balanta (MK Dons, loan), Peter Ramage (QPR, loan), Pascal Chimbonda, Gavin Mahon, Georgias Tofas, Josh Parker, Joe Oastler, Elliott Cox, Romone Rose, Niki-Lee Bulmer (all released) </p><p>Key man </p><p>Adel Taarabt: The Championship&rsquo;s player of the year last season will be fundamental to Rangers&rsquo; survival hopes </p><p>What Joey Barton might tweet<br> It&rsquo;s a disgrace how the working man is being priced out of going to football. But it&rsquo;s the way of the world now, like illegal foreign wars and the BBC cancelling Two Pints of Lager. </p><p>What are they made of?</p><p>Tabloid headline of the season<br> TAARABT DEMANDS OWN DRESSING ROOM </p><p>Most likely phone-hacking victim <br>Owner and master dealmaker Bernie Ecclestone </p><p>-----------------------------------------------------------------</p><p></p><p>Summer in six words<br> We&rsquo;ll have him&hellip; oh, he&rsquo;s gone </p><p>Last season </p><p>Finished: 13th </p><p>Top scorer: Robert Huth (6) </p><p>Bad boy: Ryan Shawcross (2 reds, 8 yellows) </p><p>In: Jonathan Woodgate (Tottenham) Mathew Upson (unattached)<br>Out: Carl Dickinson (Watford, &pound;500k), Abdoulaye Faye (West Ham, free), Eidur Gudjohnsen (AEK Athens, free), Ibrahima Sonko (Reading, free), Andrew Davies (Crystal Palace, loan), Matthew Lund (Oldham, loan), Zack Foster, Jack Harrison, Alexander Hedley, Cameron Mitchell, David Parton, Latom Wint (released) </p><p>Key man </p><p>Mathew Etherington: The winger has been revitalised at the Britannia and belies the club&rsquo;s muck 'n nettles reputation. </p><p>What Joey Barton might tweet<br> A proper football team. But can they do it on a balmy Saturday night in Barcelona? That&rsquo;s what everyone wants to know. </p><p>What are they made of?</p><p>Tabloid headline of the season<br> WOODGATE INJURED IN FREAK STANDING-UP ACCIDENT </p><p>Most likely phone-hacking victim <br>Jermaine Pennant, who receives hundreds of messages a day from his mother reminding him to breathe in and out </p><p>-----------------------------------------------------------------</p><p></p><p>Summer in six words<br> The favourite club of football agents </p><p>Last season </p><p>Finished: 10th </p><p>Top scorer: Asamoah Gyan (10) </p><p>Bad boy: Kieran Richardson (9 yellow cards) </p><p>In: Connor Wickham (Ipswich, &pound;8m), Craig Gardner (Birmingham, &pound;6m), Wes Brown, John O&rsquo;Shea (both Manchester United, undisclosed), Ahmed Elmohamady (ENPPI, &pound;2m), Wong-Don Ji (Chunnam Dragons, &pound;2m), David Vaughan (Blackpool, free), Sebastian Larsson (Birmingham, free), Keiren Westwood (Coventry, free), Roarie Deacon (Arsenal, free), James McClean (Derry City, &pound;350,000)<br>Out: Jordan Henderson (Liverpool, &pound;20m), Steed Malbranque (St Etienne, undisclosed), Cristian Riveros (Kayserispor, loan), Nathan Luscombe (Hartlepool, free), Robbie Weir, Michael Kay (both Tranmere, free), Jean-Yves M&rsquo;Voto (Oldham, free), Liam Noble (Carlisle, loan), Boudewijn Zenden, Dan Madden, Nathan Wilson, Michael Lamb, Andrew Harrison, David Brown (all released) </p><p>Key man </p><p>Connor Wickham. Comes with a hefty price-tag, despite his youth, and needs to provide an answer for Sunderland&rsquo;s striking struggles. </p><p>What Joey Barton might tweet</p><p>Nietzsche said &ldquo;the man of knowledge must not only to love his enemies but hate his friends&rdquo;. Ever since I heard that, I&rsquo;ve been much more inclined to think of Sunderland as friends. </p><p>What are they made of?</p><p>Tabloid headline of the season<br> GYAN LEAVES HOUSE AT NIGHT FOR THE FIRST TIME: SHOCKING PICTURES </p><p>Most likely phone-hacking victim <br>Given his close links to Sir Alex, it has to be Steve Bruce </p><p>----------------------------------------------------------------- </p><p></p><p>Summer in six words<br> Don&rsquo;t spend it all at once&hellip; </p><p>Last season </p><p>Finished 3rd: (Championship)</p><p>Top scorer: Scott Sinclair (19) </p><p>Bad boy: Mark Gower (7 yellow cards) </p><p>In: Danny Graham (Watford, &pound;3.5m), Leroy Lita (Middlesbrough, &pound;1.75m), Wayne Routledge (Newcastle, undisclosed), Jose Moreira (Benfica, undisclosed), Steven Caulker (Tottenham, loan)<br>Out: Darren Pratley (Bolton, free), Dorus de Vries (Wolves, free), Gorka Pintado, Sam Rose-Miles, Thomas Butler, Jamie Grimes, Albert Serran, Cedric Van Der Gun, Charles Kasler, Jordan Prosser, Matthew Whatley (all released) </p><p>Key man <br>Scott Sinclair. His form at the Liberty Stadium must make Chelsea rue the day they let him leave. </p><p>What Joey Barton might tweet<br> Swansea produced one of the greatest writers of all time, Dylan Thomas. I&rsquo;d quote some of his stuff but my internet&rsquo;s broken. </p><p>What are they made of?</p><p>Tabloid headline of the season<br>WELSH PREMIER LEAGUE DEMAND CHELSEA IN EXCHANGE </p><p>Most likely phone-hacking victim <br>Promising midfielder and celebrity wannabe Ashley Richards </p><p>In Sunshine, the sun is the big special effect, and it's a massive, enrapturing, life-giving, deadly and terrifying thing to behold. It doesn't need to do anything special: it's just there. Even viewed at three per cent of its actual intensity through the Icarus II's viewing filters, it's bright enough to scorch retinas, hot enough to fry you in your own tanning oil if you don't cover up quick.</p> <p>Every moment of the voyage hinges on the precise alignment of the ship's reflector shields. If they're even a fraction off, it's bye-bye to the all-important payload, as well as the rather less important octet of human beings on board.</p> <p>If you've seen Alien or Event Horizon, you will know that it's written into the small print of these space quests that a distress beacon has to be picked up somewhere en route. Here, it's coming from the Icarus I, whose continued existence presents ace physicist Capa (, on fine form) with a tricky dilemma. Is it worth the detour? The risk to the mission must be offset against the potential gain of delivering two bombs rather than one, or twice the bang for humanity's buck.</p> <p>Things start going wrong - grippingly, nail-bitingly wrong - the second Capa has made his fateful decision. Those reflectors have to be tweaked a degree or so for the new angle of approach. But they're not, an oversight the soon-suicidal navigation expert (Benedict Wong) won't forget in a hurry. Then, by way of a knock-on effect, the ship's oxygen garden gets incinerated, much to the agony of green-fingered biologist Michelle Yeoh. And so on and so on.</p> <p>Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland, who collaborated on The Beach and 28 Days Later, take an approach to the conventions here that's terse and elegant without being too knowing. The Icarus I, when it's eventually discovered, is a dusty tomb. There's a semi-coherent final entry on its video log, in which the captain (Mark Strong) rants apocalyptically about why the mission had to be sabotaged. </p> <p>Boyle supplies a novel touch in his almost subliminal flash inserts of the dead crew's faces in this sequence, before we glimpse their charred cadavers poignantly huddled together in the observation chamber.</p> <p>Sunshine burns out slightly in the final third, when its tightly scripted scientific veneer cracks apart in an over-edited frenzy. The surviving characters get separated for dim reasons to do with mainframe coolant, and it's easy to lose track of which bit of the ship we're on and why. </p> <p>You're reminded of how almost all Boyle's films, from Shallow Grave to 28 Days Later, tend to go a bit psycho near the end, tumbling over themselves to fulfil certain generic expectations and letting the compact ingenuity of their core conceits fly out of the window.</p> <p>Still, it's almost fitting that this journey into a great ball of fire should give itself over to pure sensory bombardment, more in the tradition of trippy, visionary science fiction (Solaris or 2001, say) than your usual interstellar disaster movie. </p> <p>Time, space and plausibility all become fairly elastic notions as we head towards a blistering immolation in heat and light, masterfully cooked up by Boyle's director of photography Alwin K&uuml;chler (Morvern Callar) and post-production team.</p> <p>This must, at any rate, be the most visually dazzling picture ever to be shot in London's East End, providing the splendidly impressive and quite indispensable sensation of being 90 million miles from Stratford. </p> El Topo <p> <br>(18 cert, 125 min)</p> <p>Alejandro Jodorowsky's famously insane western, first released in 1970, was the very definition of an underground cult in its day, playing for months on end, seven nights a week, in the midnight slot at New York's Elgin Theatre. </p> <p>It will be hard to recreate this buzz at our newly rebranded BFI Southbank, and the movie looks more zany curio now than Zen classic. </p> <p>The director himself plays a black-clad gunslinger riding off on one crazy mission after another in the company of his naked seven-year-old son. Monks are molested and hundreds of dead white rabbits form a funeral pyre. </p> <p>Anything goes in this mad, macho vision.</p> The Messengers <p> <br> (15 cert, 90 min)</p> <p>A family from Chicago moves to a Midwestern farm, undeterred by the fact that their new dream home is a blackened husk in which people have clearly died. Their three-year-old son giggles at ghosties while Hitchcockian crows attack the crops. </p> <p>Asian horror experts the Pang brothers, on their first English-language film, can't get the turgid plot going.</p> Prick Up Your Ears <p> <br>(15 cert, 110 min)</p> <p>Twentieth-anniversary reissue for Stephen Frears's snappy, vital Joe Orton biopic, a tonal masterclass from a scaldingly funny Alan Bennett screenplay.</p> <p> Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina, as Orton's lover and eventual murderer Kenneth Halliwell, could hardly be better.</p><p>Murray will be hoping to emulate last year's run at Wimbledon when, on his first appearance at a grand slam, he made the third round before losing over five sets to Argentina's David Nalbandian. The attention on Henman could allow Murray to play more freely.</p> <p>Henman, Britain's finest tennis player since the pre-Second World War Fred Perry, showed some grass-court rejuvenation by reaching the semi-finals at Queen's Club in London last week, so to have a projected second-round match against Federer was unfortunate. All that form and flair that he had been working on at Queen's Club could come to very little at Wimbledon should he fail to go beyond the second round for the second successive year.</p> <p>And yet Federer will probably not be that delighted about his draw either. The world No 1 may be unbeaten in his last 41 matches on grass, putting him level with Bjorn Borg's record, but playing matches against Gasquet and then possibly Henman is not exactly the way for him to ease into the tournament.</p> <p>Gasquet, who is much more talented than his ranking of 66 would suggest, troubled Federer in Halle last week, and will like to think that he can cause an upset. And Federer still regards Henman as a danger man on grass. Federer could probably not meet two more testing unseeded opponents.</p> <p>As they should have been, most of Henman's thoughts yesterday centred not on Federer but on Soderling, the world No 48. Henman won their only previous match, a third-round tie at Wimbledon in 2003. "The first match has got my attention because Soderling has been playing well," Henman said. "But in terms of the section with me and Soderling and Gasquet, I think, with all due respect to us, there's only one person that there's any pressure on because of Roger's record. I feel even less pressure and expectation now. But it's a fantastic opportunity to possibly play Roger."</p> <p>Andre Agassi, the 1992 champion who is probably playing his last Wimbledon, could face Nadal in the third round. Possibilities abound in SW19. </p> Men's draw (1) Roger Federer (Swi) (1) v Richard Gasquet (Fra) (2) Robin Soderling (Swe) v Tim Henman (Gbr) (3) Nicolas Mahut (Fra) v Jurgen Melzer (Aut) (4) Jiri Novak (Cze) v Kristof Vliegen (Bel) (30) (5) Tommy Haas (Ger) (19) v Jiri Vanek (Cze) (6) Carlos Berlocq (Arg) v Richard Bloomfield (Gbr) (7) Wayne Arthurs (Aus) v Fabrice Santoro (Fra) (8) Jan Hernych (Cze) v Tomas Berdych (Cze) (13) (9) Tommy Robredo (Spa) (11) v Simon Greul (Ger) (10) Paul Goldstein (USA) v Novak Djokovic (Ser) (11) Potito Starace (Ita) v Mikhail Youzhny (Rus) (12) Igor Kunitsyn (Rus) v Gael Monfils (Fra) (21) (13) Paradorn Srichaphan (Tha) (29) v Agustin Calleri (Arg) (14) Ivo Karlovic (Cro) v Stanislas Wawrinka (Swi) (15) Davide Sanguinetti (Ita) v Kevin Kim (USA) (16) Nicolas Almagro (Spa) v Mario Ancic (Cro) (7) (17) David Nalbandian (Arg) (4) v Wesley Moodie (Rsa) (18) Albert Portas (Spa) v Arnaud Clement (Fra) (19) Benjamin Becker (Ger) v Juan Ignacio Chela (Arg) (20) Vincent Spadea (USA) v Fernando Verdasco (Spa) (28) (21) Juan Carlos Ferrero (Spa) (24) v Fernando Vicente (Spa) (22) Roko Karanusic (Cro) v Rainer Schuettler (Ger) (23) Xavier Malisse (Bel) v Benedikt Dorsch (Ger) (24) Frank Dancevic (Can) v Radek Stepanek (Cze) (14) (25) Thomas Johansson (Swe) (12) v Jonas Bjorkman (Swe) (26) Florent Serra (Fra) v Lukas Dlouhy (Cze) (27) Stefano Galvani (Ita) v Alexander Waske (Ger) (28) Daniele Bracciali (Ita) v Dominik Hrbaty (Svk) (20) (29) Paul-Henri Mathieu (Fra) (32) v Mark Philippoussis (Aus) (30) Max Mirnyi (Blr) v Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo (Spa) (31) Oliver Marach (Aut) v Yeu-Tzuoo Wang (Tpe) (32) Kristian Pless (Den) v James Blake (USA) (8) (33) Lleyton Hewitt (Aus) (6) v Filippo Volandri (Ita) (34) Flavio Saretta (Bra) v Hyung Taik Lee (Kor) (35) Albert Montanes (Spa) v Tomas Zib (Cze) (36) Gilles Muller (Lux) v Olivier Rochus (Bel) (26) (37) David Ferrer (Spa) (23) v Simon Stadler (Ger) (38) Ivo Minar (Cze) v Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (Spa) (39) Greg Rusedski (Gbr) v Marat Safin (Rus) (40) Luis Horna (Per) v Fernando Gonzalez (Chi) (41) Sebastien Grosjean (Fra) (15) v Gilles Simon (Fra) (42) Jamie Delgado (Gbr) v Michael Berrer (Ger) (43) Marcel Granollers-Pujol (Spa) v Andrei Pavel (Rom) (44) Alan Mackin (Gbr) v Marcos Baghdatis (Cyp) (18) (45) Nicolas Massu (Chi) (31) v Andrew Murray (Gbr) (46) Bjorn Phau (Ger) v Julien Benneteau (Fra) (47) Robin Vik (Cze) v Florian Mayer (Ger) (48) Janko Tipsarevic (Ser) v Andy Roddick (USA) (3) (49) Ivan Ljubicic (Cro) (5) v Feliciano Lopez (Spa) (50) Justin Gimelstob (USA) v Christophe Rochus (Bel) (51) Alessio Di Mauro (Ita) v Alberto Martin (Spa) (52) Danai Udomchoke (Tha) v Dmitry Tursunov (Rus) (27) (53) Jarkko Nieminen (Fin) (22) v Marcos Daniel (Bra) (54) Dick Norman (Bel) v Martin Lee (Gbr) (55) Razvan Sabau (Rom) v Phillip Kohlschreiber (Ger) (56) Alejandro Falla (Col) v Nikolay Davydenko (Rus) (9) (57) Gaston Gaudio (Arg) (16) v Jean-Christophe Faurel (Fra) (58) Alexander Peya (Aut) v Irakli Labadze (Geo) (59) Melle Van Gemerden (Ned) v Joshua Goodall (Gbr) (60) Mardy Fish (USA) v Robby Ginepri (USA) (61) Andre Agassi (USA) (25) v Boris Pashanski (Ser) (62) Andreas Seppi (Ita) v Jamie Baker (Gbr) (63) Yen-Hsun Lu (Tpe) v Robert Kendrick (USA) (64) Alex Bogdanovic (Gbr) v Rafael Nadal (Spa) (2) Women's draw (1) Amelie Mauresmo (Fra) (1) v Ivana Abramovic (Cro) (2) Michaella Krajicek (Ned) v Samantha Stosur (Aus) (3) Jarmila Gajdosova (Svk) v Nicole Pratt (Aus) (4) Mariana Diaz-Oliva (Arg) v Tatiana Golovin (Fra) (29) (5) Ana Ivanovic (Ser) (19) v Emmanuelle Gagliardi (Swi) (6) Marta Domachowska (Pol) v Sarah Borwell (Gbr) (7) Mashona Washington (USA) v Julia Schruff (Ger) (8) Jill Craybas (USA) v Dinara Safina (Rus) (14) (9) Anastasia Myskina (Rus) (9) v Cara Black (Zim) (10) Martina Muller (Ger) v Kaia Kanepi (Est) (11) Clarisa Fernandez (Arg) v Conchita Martinez-Granados (Spa) (12) Su-Wei Hsieh (Tpe) v Anabel Medina Garrigues (Spa) (23) (13) Jelena Jankovic (Ser) (26) v Lourdes Dominguez Lino (Spa) (14) Julia Vakulenko (Ukr) v Vania King (USA) (15) Lisa Raymond (USA) v Yaroslava Shvedova (Rus) (16) Bethanie Mattek (USA) v Venus Williams (USA) (6) (17) Maria Sharapova (Rus) (4) v Anna Smashnova (Isr) (18) Ashley Harkleroad (USA) v Jelena Kostanic (Cro) (19) Laura Pous Tio (Spa) v Melinda Czink (Hun) (20) Amy Frazier (USA) v Mara Santangelo (Ita) (32) (21) Shahar Peer (Isr) v Yuliana Fedak (Ukr) (22) Eleni Daniilidou (Gre) v Shuai Peng (Chn) (23) Maret Ani (Est) v Laura Granville (USA) (24) Sandra Kloesol (Ger) v Flavia Pennetta (Ita) (16) (25) Francesca Schiavone (Ita) (11) v Melanie South (Gbr) (26) Shenay Perry (USA) v Kristina Barrois (Ger) (27) Anastassia Rodionova (Rus) v Emilie Loit (Fra) (28) Sybille Bammer (Aut) v Nathalie Dechy (Fra) (22) (29) Elena Likhovtseva (Rus) (25) v Stephanie Foretz (Fra) (30) Tian Tian Sun (Chn) v Nathalie Vierin (Ita) (31) Meghann Shaughnessy (USA) v Katerina Bondarenko (Ukr) (32) Sania Mirza (Ind) v Elena Dementieva (Rus) (7) (33) Patty Schnyder (Swi) (8) v Antonella Serra-Zanetti (Ita) (34) Anastasia Yakimova (Blr) v Severine Bremond (Fra) (35) Hana Sromova (Cze) v Virginia Ruano Pascual (Spa) (36) Emma Laine (Fin) v Gisela Dulko (Arg) (31) (37) Ai Sugiyama (Jpn) (18) v Naomi Cavaday (Gbr) (38) Vera Dushevina (Rus) v Akiko Morigami (Jpn) (39) Tathiana Garbin (Ita) v Katie O'Brien (Gbr) (40) Olga Savchuk (Ukr) v Martina Hingis (Swi) (12) (41) Daniela Hantuchova (Svk) (15) v Maria Elena Camerin (Ita) (42) Kirsten Flipkens (Bel) v Jamea Jackson (USA) (43) Alicia Molik (Aus) v Yung-Jan Chan (Tpe) (44) Martina Sucha (Svk) v Katarina Srebotnik (Slo) (45) Anna Chakvetadze (Rus) (30) v Zi Yan (Chn) (46) Maria Antonia Sanchez-Lorenzo (Spa) v Elena Vesnina (Rus) (47) Aiko Nakamura (Jpn) v Ekaterina Bychkova (Rus) (48) Meng Yuan (Chn) v Justine Henin-Hardenne (Bel) (3) (49) Svetlana Kuznetsova (Rus) (5) v Romina Oprandi (Swi) (50) Kveta Peschke (Cze) v Kristina Brandi (Pur) (51) Melien Tu (USA) v Vassilissa Bardina (Rus) (52) Virginie Razzano (Fra) v Na Li (Chn) (27) (53) Marion Bartoli (Fra) (24) v Camille Pin (Fra) (54) Karolina Sprem (Cro) v Anne Keothavong (Gbr) (55) Ivana Lisjak (Cro) v Katerina Bondarenko (Ukr) (56) Klara Koukalova (Cze) v Nicole Vaidisova (Cze) (10) (57) Anna-Lena Groenefeld (Ger) (13) v Tzvetana Pironkova (Bul) (58) Agnieska Radwanska (Pol) v Victoria Azarenka (Blr) (59) Catalina Castano (Col) v Tamarine Tanasugarn (Tha) (60) Shinobu Asagoe (Jpn) v Maria Kirilenko (Rus) (17) (61) Sofia Arvidsson (Swe) (28) v Eva Birnerova (Cze) (62) Jie Zheng (Chn) v Iveta Benesova (Cze) (63) Viktoria Kutuzova (Ukr) v Lilia Osterloh (USA) (64) Vera Zvonareva (Rus) v Kim Clijsters (Bel) (2) <p> </p><p> China: Bu Xiangzhi, Ni Hua, Wang Yue, Wang Hao and Li Chao </p> <p> Netherlands: Loek van Wely, Jan Smeets, Daniel Stellwagen, Erwin l'Ami, Jan Werle </p> <p>Ukraine have yet to declare. There have been difficulties between the federation and one or two of the top players in the last so this may explain the delay. If they could field Vasily Ivanchuk, Ruslan Ponomariov and Sergey Karjakin they would be serious contenders. </p> <p>We saw a lovely attacking game from the new women&rsquo;s world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk earlier in the week. Here is another from the quarter finals. This sharp line is dangerous for both sides and Nigel Short employed it against Garry Kasparov at their WCC title match in 1993. Kasparov, played 14.Bxd5 although this move also subsequently fell out of favour. 14.Bh7+ has not been seen for some time since Short nearly defeated Ivan Sokolov with black in 1995. This game demonstrates what many had doubtless foreseen, after a forced sequence White&rsquo;s king is trapped in the centre and perishes there. </p> A Ushenina &ndash; A Kosteniuk <p> <br> </p> Women&rsquo;s W Ch (4) Nalchik <p> <br>Nimzo-Indian</p> <p> 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 d5 5.cxd5 exd5 6.Bg5 c5 7.dxc5 h6 8.Bh4 g5 9.Bg3 Ne4 10.e3 Qa5 11.Be5 0&ndash;0 12.Bd3 Nc6 13.Bxe4 Nxe5 14.Bh7+ Kg7 15.Bd3 b6! (Now 16.Nge2 would escape with a whole skin) </p> <p> 16.cxb6 d4! (White&rsquo;s reply is forced and her king is now exposed) </p> <p> 17.exd4 Nxd3+ 18.Qxd3 Re8+ 19.Kd1 Bf5 20.Qd2 Bxc3 21.Qxc3 (21.bxc3 Qa4+ 22.Kc1 Re1+ 23.Qxe1 Qc2 mate) </p> <p> 21...Qxb6 (White is lost, there is no defence to what follows) </p> <p> 22.Ne2 Rac8 23.Qa3 Rc2 24.Re1 Rd8 25.Qe3 Qxb2 26.Rc1 Re8 0&ndash;1 </p> Kosteniuk Ushenina <p>Final position after 26...Re8 and 27.Qxe8 Rd2 mate </p> <p>Another fine win from Eugenio Torre who was featured yesterday. </p> E Torre - L Miagmasuren <p> <br> </p> Malta Olympiad 1980 <p> <br>Queen&rsquo;s Gambit</p> <p> 1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.d4 Be7 5.Bg5 0&ndash;0 6.e3 Nbd7 7.Qc2 c6 8.Bd3 h6 9.Bh4 Re8 10.0&ndash;0 Nf8 11.Rad1 Nh5 12.Bxe7 Qxe7 13.e4 Nf4 14.Rfe1 Nxd3 15.Qxd3 dxc4 16.Qxc4 Bd7 17.e5 Red8 18.Nd2 b5 19.Qe2 c5 20.d5! exd5 21.Nxd5 Qh4 22.Ne4 c4 23.Nd6 Ng6 24.Nxf7! Bg4 25.Qxg4! 1&ndash;0 </p> <p>After 25...Qxg4 26.Nxh6+! gxh6 27.Nf6+ wins back the queen with a won endgame. </p><p>Mr Cameron was in black tie while Mrs Obama wore a teal off-the-shoulder Marchesa gown designed by Georgina Chapman, who attended the dinner along with her husband, the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. She completed the outfit with a Tom Binns necklace. </p><p></p><p>Miss Chapman, who had not known beforehand that Mrs Obama had selected one of her gowns, said: "I'm knocked out." </p><p>Mr and Mrs Obama welcomed the couple to the White House at around 7pm, with the President remarking: "They look better than us." </p><p>Roksanda Ilincic, who has dressed both Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Cameron, said: "First lady Mrs. Obama always looks so chic and modern. I love the addition of texture with the Tom Binns necklace. </p><p> "Dressing Mrs. Obama and Samantha Cameron have been wonderful. I am honoured that each woman representing their countries have been such advocates in their respective roles." </p><p></p><p> (EPA/Alex Wong)</p><p>Mr Cameron later joked about his well-documented visit to a basketball game with Mr Obama, saying: "We have to have a guys' night out because so often we find we are completely overshadowed by our beautiful wives." </p><p>The sartorial efforts made by the two leaders and their wives was unlikely to go unnoticed at the event, which was attended by American Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who wore Chanel. </p><p>British acting stars Carey Mulligan and Downton Abbey's Hugh Bonneville were also at the party as well as golfer Rory McIlroy. </p><p>The evening's entertainment was suited to meet the President and Prime Minister's tastes with British folk rock band Mumford and Sons warming up for US R&amp;B star John Legend. </p><p></p><p>Other notable guests included The Wire star Idris Elba, Downton Abbey's Elizabeth McGovern, and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. </p><p>Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson, Olympic gold medallist Denise Lewis and politicians George Osborne and William Hague were also on the list. </p><p>Mr Elba compared the evening to a visit to Disney World, where "you don't know what to expect next". </p><p>Miss Lewis said she was as giddy as a schoolgirl, while Sir Richard said his wife was "very jealous" to miss the occasion. </p><p> (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)</p><p>Paying tribute to the Prime Minister in a toast, Mr Obama said: "I've seen his character, I've seen his commitment to human dignity in Libya. </p><p> "I've seen his resolve, his determination to get the job done." </p><p>And referring to the death of the Camerons' disabled son Ivan, who died in 2009 aged six, the president said: "I will say something else, David: all of us have seen how you as a parent along with Samantha have shown a measure of strength that few of us will ever know. </p><p> "Tonight I thank you for bringing that same strength and solidarity to our partnership." </p><p> (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)</p><p>Mr Cameron responded by saying he felt the special relationship "in his bones". </p><p>He praised Mr Obama's "strength, moral authority and wisdom", citing his decision to order the mission which led to the death of Osama bin Laden. </p><p> "Let us all agree, the world is better off without bin Laden but the world is better off without Gaddafi too," said Mr Cameron. </p><p>He said that Mr Obama had "pressed the reset button" on moral authority in the world. </p>Career highlights:<p>Her diving career started when she competed for Great Britain&rsquo;s Junior Squad in 2003. In 2008 she took silver at the FINA Diving World Series in the 10m Synchro with her partner Monique Gladding. In 2012, partnering Tonia Couch, she became Britain's first ever medallists at London's Aquatic Centre where they took bronze in the World Cup.</p><p>With senior figures either sat on the bench or back at United&rsquo;s Carrington base after returning to training late from Euro 2012 duty, youngsters such as Frederic Veseli, Robbie Brady and Powell were handed the chance to build on their promising displays so far on tour. </p><p>But Powell&rsquo;s involvement in the game almost came to a painful end after just 13 minutes when he was on the receiving end of a crude challenge by Shanghai midfielder Shouting (corr) Wang. </p><p>Pursuing a 50-50 ball, Powell appeared to win the tackle before Wang&rsquo;s right boot caught the young midfielder&rsquo;s left knee. </p><p>Powell, a &pound;4m summer signing from Crewe, had to receive treatment before continuing, but Wang&rsquo;s challenge went unpunished by Chinese referee Di Wang. </p><p>Italian midfielder Davide Petrucci had the first chance for United on 17 minutes when, after being released by Anderson, saw a well-struck effort from 20 yards saved by goalkeeper Fei Xiong. </p><p>Powell then wasted a good chance six minutes later when he scuffed a left-foot effort wide from 12 yards after springing the offside trap to latch onto Petrucci&rsquo;s pass. </p><p>Petrucci, captain of United&rsquo;s reserves last season, and Powell both suggested they could contribute to the first-team this term before being replaced at half-time by Ryan Tunnicliffe and Bebe respectively. </p><p>Prior to the interval, though, Shanghai almost scored the opener when Australian midfielder Joel Griffiths was denied by a crucial low save by Anders Lindegaard. </p><p>It was a rare Shanghai opportunity, however, with United dominating the game. Kagawa, in particular, grew in stature as the game wore on. </p><p>The Japanese midfielder excelled in his role just behind the front-line and he was unfortunate not to see Federico Macheda score from one of his passed when the Italian&rsquo;s angled shot was saved on 56 minutes. </p><p>Kagawa then laid off a ball for Anderson to tee up Bebe for a half-volley that forced another good save from the Shanghai keeper. </p><p>Xiong was finally beaten on 68 minutes, however, and Kagawa scored his first goal in a United shirt. </p><p>Bebe, who scored an injury-time equaliser against Ajax Cape Town in South Africa last Saturday, did well to create the goal, beating his marker down the left flank before pulling back for Kagawa on the penalty spot. </p><p>Kagawa then controlled the ball before beating Xiong with a right-foot shot from ten yards. </p><p>United went close to extending their lead in the closing stages, with substitute Paul Scholes heading Marnick Vermijl&rsquo;s cross over the bar before Bebe forced a Xiong into a full-stretch save to keep out his powerful 25-yard effort. </p><p>Manchester United (4-4-1-1): Lindegaard (Johnstone 46); Veseli (Vermijl 71), Ferdinand, Carrick, Brady; Valencia (Lingard 71), Powell (Tunnicliffe 46), Anderson (Scholes 71), Petrucci (Bebe 46); Kagawa; Macheda (Hernandez 60).<br>Substitutes: Wootton, Blackett, Berbatov. </p><p>And over the winter she was filming a documentary about the suffragettes, another thing she said &lsquo;yes&rsquo; to. &lsquo;It was so cold,&rsquo; she recalls. &lsquo;I couldn&rsquo;t believe this pinched old face I saw on the screen.&rsquo; Oh, and she is about to fly to China for another filming project. </p><p>&lsquo;Normally people my age are content to put their feet up and watch the telly, wear Crimplene trousers and baggy jumpers. But I need challenges. I&rsquo;d seize up if I didn&rsquo;t do things.&rsquo; No afternoon naps then? &lsquo;Sometimes I look with envy at women who have naps, but it&rsquo;s not right for me yet. There will come a time. I always get a shock when people come round who have been at school with me and I see what I should look like.&rsquo; </p><p>Another, perhaps more surprising, thing she said yes to was the frothy and camp Over the Rainbow, a search for a &lsquo;Dorothy&rsquo; to star in a West End version of The Wizard of Oz, hosted by Graham Norton and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Hancock was a judge on the show and, with her always polite but sometimes arch remarks, she proved a hit with critics and audiences alike, even when she had a dig at them. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t get carried away by the crowd,&rsquo; she told one young hopeful. &lsquo;Every time you sing loudly they applaud.&rsquo; </p><p>&lsquo;It was the highest camp in the world,&rsquo; she says now. &lsquo;When the girls went off in that moon! Hysterical! I&rsquo;m told I&rsquo;ve become a gay icon, which I find flattering. I put it down to having this image as a strong and bossy woman.&rsquo; </p><p>Still, it seemed an unlikely departure for her, given how serious-minded she could be in her memoirs, and given that for most of her career she was performing Shakespeare and Chekhov at the RSC and the National. Indeed we soon find ourselves on the subject of politics. Though she has always been Left-wing, she says, she likes the idea of the coalition Government. </p><p>&lsquo;I think it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;m a Quaker. Everything at Quaker meetings is done through discussion, and I like that. We don&rsquo;t vote. Everybody comes to a compromise or an agreement. I joined the Society about 20 years ago. I was an attender before that. No one is in charge. No rules, well, only loose ones and no hierarchy. Total equality. Living simple lives. Good people.&rsquo; </p><p>Is she a good person? Has she led a good life? &lsquo;Me? Oh no. Not like them. As far as I know I haven&rsquo;t done anything really, really bad. But I find it hard to get rid of material things. I mean, my car! That is so not Quaker. I am trying to pare right down. Before I die I want to get shot of everything.&rsquo; Perhaps she could put it towards the national debt. </p><p>&lsquo;The recession is going to hit us all hugely and I&rsquo;ve already lost quite a lot of money. It doesn&rsquo;t alarm me because as a I child I lived frugally and could do so again. John was the same. When I was in rep I always lived in digs. For years actors never had mortgages, you see, because we didn&rsquo;t have the money to put down. We were all rogues and vagabonds so we didn&rsquo;t have to worry about what our peers thought. And I still always get clothes second-hand, sometimes after I&rsquo;ve worn them on telly. I don&rsquo;t mind investing in things like paintings because they can be sold. I seldom buy things for pleasure.&rsquo; </p><p>She still has the house she and her husband bought in France, but she wanted to move from her old house in Wiltshire because it was full of memories of Thaw. Were they unhappy memories? </p><p>&lsquo;Our marriage wasn&rsquo;t always plain sailing, but it wasn&rsquo;t that. It&rsquo;s more that I&rsquo;m a mover on. I&rsquo;ve done that all my life. When you have children your life changes. </p><p>&lsquo;Life is about change. Someone dies; you have a time of grieving and then you have to get back to your own life. I have sad memories all the time driving around London, but also happy memories that leave you a little sad because the person they were about is not there to share them with, be it my first husband Alex, or my mother, or John. I sometimes find myself in tears. </p><p>But I have a life to continue. I often say to people who write to me: you must fill your day, visit museums and galleries, take evening classes.&rsquo; Write a memoir? &lsquo;Well, yes, but I suppose that&rsquo;s not for everyone. When I was writing I thought people would be interested in our lives as actors. What I didn&rsquo;t get was that the grief would be what readers related to.&rsquo; </p><p>Her unflinching, cold-eyed honesty took a lot of readers by surprise. She left nothing out, not even the afternoon shortly before her husband&rsquo;s death when they had sex in a Gloucestershire field, and she accidentally squashed his chemotherapy tube. &lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t want to censor it and make it nice, so I went back to my diary and quoted from that. I had gone through a dreadful period of grieving, when I was almost clinically depressed and I felt bleugh &ndash; horrid, horrid, horrid &ndash; and I thought &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to go on&rdquo;. </p><p>&lsquo;Gradually, I went travelling and now my life couldn&rsquo;t be fuller.&rsquo; Does she in some way feel liberated by being on her own? &lsquo;Yes, there is an element of that. You don&rsquo;t have anyone else to feel responsible for. I would have to turn work down because John was away and I had to look after the children. Now I can be utterly selfish. I live a totally selfish life.&rsquo; Has it made her less sentimental? I only ask because of the way she turned that cold eye of hers on to the budding Dorothys on BBC TV. </p><p>&lsquo;They were choosing to go in the profession and they had to find out whether they could survive the ordeal. The talent is important but it is just as important to have resilience, because you are choosing a career that is all about criticism, from brutal casting directors to brutal critics in the press. I try to be constructive. There was one girl who kept turning away from the camera all the time. It&rsquo;s the Nick Clegg thing about looking into the lens. </p><p>&lsquo;The following week she did it properly and she was much better. But you have to remember it&rsquo;s Saturday night entertainment. It&rsquo;s not a deeply intellectual show.&rsquo; I ask if she developed any coping mechanisms for the criticism. &lsquo;Yes, I don&rsquo;t read reviews, because they will put you off your stride. Even if they are good. It can make you self-conscious. Anyway, you always know if they have been good, bad or indifferent because of the atmosphere the next day.&rsquo; </p><p>Though she doesn&rsquo;t read reviews, she did always listen to her husband&rsquo;s advice. &lsquo;He was my support because I trusted him implicitly. It was mutual, too. He would listen to my analysis about his work. I knew more about theatre and he knew more about television. Technically, as a television actor, he was brilliant. Such honesty. He was a good critic of work on screen. I would always be depressed if he didn&rsquo;t think something I had done was good.&rsquo; </p><p>And she has known what the whip of theatre criticism feels like. When, in 1965, she opened on Broadway in Joe Orton&rsquo;s Entertaining Mr Sloane, the New York Times declared: &lsquo;Throw this cesspit back into the Atlantic.&rsquo; The American audiences came around, and she was eventually nominated for a Tony for that role. </p><p>She has fond memories of that time. &lsquo;Orton was wonderful. I adored him. So decadent. So naughty. A naughty boy. My mother came out to New York with my young child and would make Orton a Sunday lunch. If she had only known what he was up to. But I suppose she wouldn&rsquo;t have understood it, that gay world.&rsquo; </p><p>Hancock herself was more hardened to camp humour, not least because one of her earliest West End roles after graduating from Rada had been with Kenneth Williams in One Over the Eight. That was in 1961. &lsquo;Back then, homosexuality was against the law. I had lots of gay friends and it was a nightmare for them, one of them even committed suicide. </p><p>'Kenneth was made to feel so ashamed. Reading his diaries, it was appalling how he suffered. But gay men felt safe in my profession because we didn&rsquo;t give a damn. Now most people are tolerant. I think David Cameron is genuinely ashamed of the past homophobia of the Tory party.&rsquo; </p><p>Hancock went on to appear with Williams in Carry on Cleo in 1964. &lsquo;Such a low budget but great fun. The filming was so quick. Everything would be done on the first take. That was tricky for me because I was having to breastfeed between takes.&rsquo; Did that make her an early feminist, the working mother? &lsquo;Well, I certainly didn&rsquo;t play the little wifey at home. But later, when I was married to John, I did lose some of my own identity. And when he died I did find I was less confident in social situations.&rsquo; </p><p>She says she is still learning how to enter a room on her own, because throughout her life she always had a man to hold her hand. In Just Me, her second memoir, she poignantly described her first holidays on her own: the embarrassment of learning to eat alone in a restaurant, the invisibility of the single woman to a professional waiter. </p><p>&lsquo;A big part of you dies with your husband,&rsquo; she says. &lsquo;I try not to think about what life would have been like if John had still been alive. Not necessarily better, because I have managed to make a life that is exciting. But I do want to show him the book, show him how well it did. He would have been proud of himself. I asked him to write his life story when he was dying &ndash; though he didn&rsquo;t know he was at the time &ndash; and he said: &ldquo;No one will be interested in my life&rdquo;, and I said: &ldquo;Oh, come on&rdquo;. The only reason I felt I had permission to write that book about him after he died was that he said: &ldquo;OK kid, I&rsquo;ll think about it.&rdquo;&rsquo; </p><p>Thaw, she says, had no idea how remarkable it was to have had such a distinguished career after such an unpromising start in life. &lsquo;It was quite a journey. He grew up in poverty and went on to break the mould in television, first with The Sweeney then with Morse, but he had no idea how good he was. He would say: &ldquo;Yeah but it&rsquo;s only telly. I haven&rsquo;t played Lear.&rdquo;&rsquo; </p><p>Her memoir is frank about Thaw and his alcoholism. Did she agonise about shedding so much light on their private world? &lsquo;Yes I did. But I figured so many people knew about it that if I didn&rsquo;t write about it then people would think the book dishonest. I checked with the girls first, our daughters, and they actually thought I&rsquo;d been too soft on him!&rsquo; Thaw and Hancock had a daughter each when they met and a third together. </p><p>&lsquo;What was remarkable was that he beat the drinking in the last years of his life. He hadn&rsquo;t realised that the depression he suffered was to do with his drinking.&rsquo; I ask whether, when she was writing the book, she felt angry with him once more for his behaviour? &lsquo;Not really. I did feel anger at the time, but then I wasn&rsquo;t easy to live with either. My father was a drinker and both my husbands were drinkers.&rsquo; Her father was a publican and her first husband, Alec Ross, was an actor. </p><p>They married in 1954 and he died of cancer in 1971. Two years later, she married Thaw. &lsquo;I think women like me are often drawn to men like that. And I had to change my ways before John could change his. Sometimes you support people in their addiction and it was only when I went to Al-Anon (a charity that supports the families of alcoholics) that I could see my part in it. With our endless, all-night talks, I was encouraging him. I had to learn to back off and let him deal with his own addiction rather than off loading it on me.&rsquo; </p><p>Thaw sounds like a force of nature, wildly romantic and unpredictable. She must miss the chaos almost as much as him? &lsquo;That kind of dramatic up and down you do get used to, yes. But I&rsquo;m constantly telling girls, don&rsquo;t sneer at boring. Life with a boring man can be beautiful and lovely. But I know there is something in me that needs some kind of volatility, not knowing what&rsquo;s around the corner.&rsquo; </p><p>What was around the corner in 1987 was a diagnosis of breast cancer. Her husband was less than supportive, unable to cope with it. They split up briefly, not for the first or last time. &lsquo;That was the drinking. He couldn&rsquo;t look at things. He was terrified I was going to die. It was like getting rid of me before it happened.&rsquo; </p><p>When Thaw was ill, she went to his every appointment and all his chemo treatments. She remembers once he embraced her and said: &lsquo;I am so ashamed that I didn&rsquo;t do this for you.&rsquo; But she made a full recovery. She is a survivor. Presumably every day must have felt like a bonus since then? &lsquo;I wish I could say that was true, but I don&rsquo;t learn by experience. If I&rsquo;m honest, I fill my life out of practicality. </p><p>&lsquo;I&rsquo;m very fearful. I get over one thing and assume there will be something else around the corner. I woke up with an ache in my foot this morning and thought, oh here it is, old age. Because we do disintegrate. I often accept work because I think I can&rsquo;t put it off for a year.&rsquo; </p><p>Punishing work too, given she has always suffered from debilitating stage fright. This aspect of her personality is hard to square with her no-nonsense, headmistress manner. Yet for all her calm professionalism, her meeting of challenges with a steady eye, Hancock is easily spooked and probably a bit neurotic, like a retired thoroughbred racehorse who can&rsquo;t stop herself from galloping in the direction of the finish line whenever she glimpses a starting flag. </p><p>It is telling, reading back over this interview, how often she uses the word depression. It makes me wonder: is she addicted to the adrenalin of stage fright because she worries that life will feel flat, empty and, well, depressing without it? &lsquo;In theory, but my goodness I do loathe that fear. With Sister Act, when we were about to open, I was lying on my bed thinking: &ldquo;I cannot go through with this.&rdquo; I was actually vomiting with fear. Even when it&rsquo;s happening, I am thinking: &ldquo;This is stupid. Irrational.&rdquo; There are people dying and starving in the world. </p><p>&lsquo;But even when you say you have no reason to be frightened, it doesn&rsquo;t help. It used to ruin performances, but now I go to see a hypnotist before a show. The main fear is drying up, especially in a musical because you can&rsquo;t improvise your way out of it. Even when you know your lines backwards there is the danger of going on automatic pilot and suddenly realising you don&rsquo;t know what comes next.&rsquo; </p><p>Does she get nervous about live television as well? &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a different kind of nervousness. On Over the Rainbow, I was nervous about swearing, because I swear a lot, and badly, and the BBC is really hot about it. I said: &ldquo;Eyes, teeth and tits&rdquo; in one episode and that worried them. On Dorothy, I usually wanted to say: &ldquo;Oh for f---&rsquo;s sake, pull yourself together!&rdquo; </p><p>I think, as I get on, I will become one of those older women who wear purple and suddenly go berserk and obscene.&rsquo; She laughs, realising she has just described the character she played in the Catherine Tate Show, the sister of the swearing &lsquo;Nan&rsquo;. &lsquo;Or maybe the opposite will happen to me. Maybe when I become demented I will become very prim and proper.&rsquo; </p><p>&lsquo;Sister Act&rsquo; is at the London Palladium until October (0844 412 2704; www.sisteractthemusical.co.uk)</p><p>There will be two further runner-up prizes of &pound;5,000 each to be awarded to the second and third placed schools, with a further &pound;1,000 to each of the pupils.</p><p>All the works shortlisted for the competition will be featured in an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London from December 3 to December 14.</p><p>A selection of entries can be seen at and </p><p>The shortlist:</p><p>Lauren Mincher, 18, Durham Johnston School, Durham</p><p>Joseph McKenna, 8, Kings Nympton, Umberleigh, Devon</p><p>Arthur Skinner, 11, Sturminster Newton High School, Dorset</p><p>Bani Shamie, 9, The Friends School of Ramallah and El-Bireh, Ramallah, Palestinian Territory</p><p>James Lomax, 18, Magdalen College School, Oxford</p><p>Maggie Wong, 15, Blundell's School, Tiverton, Devon</p><p>Zia Ferris, 18, Blundell's School, Tiverton, Devon</p><p>Ghan Chansuwan, 18, Brentside High School, Ealing, London</p><p>Oscar Williams-Grut, 18, Wilson's School, Wallington, London</p><p>Hung-Ju Park, 11, Let's Art Children's Center, Seoul, South Korea</p><p>I Nugent, 17, Eton College, Windsor</p><p>Marina Kramnik, 8, Tager Center of Creative Studies, Las Vegas, USA</p><p>Tae-Hyun Yu, 9, Let's Art Children's Center, Seoul, South Korea</p><p>Hetty Miller, 8, Manley Village School, Frodsham, Cheshire</p><p>Richard Braham, 17, Eton College, Windsor</p><p>Michael Maguire, 11, Collingwood School, Wallington, London</p><p>Ji-Woo Park, 9, Let's Art Children's Center, Seoul, South Korea</p><p>James Coffey, 17, Chalfonts Community College, Chalfont St Peter, Bucks</p><p>Alex Pepes, 16, Lady Margaret School, Parsons Green, London</p><p>Katie Lewis, 16, Sir James Henderson School, Milan, Italy</p><p> </p>Space Shuttle Discovery, mounted atop a 747 shuttle carrier aircraft, lands at Washington Dulles International AirportPicture: Alex Wong/Getty Images<p>GRANGE CLASSIC (Stockport).-2nd rd: T Johnstone (Warrington) 21, J Muff (Holmes Chapel) 11; R Hitchen (Halifax) 21, G Cookson (Winsford) 13; G Hickey (Halifax) 21, K Shaw (Westhoughton) 20; S Coupe (Preston) 21, A Spragg (Chesterfield) 18.</p> <p>PANEL (Red Lion, Westhoughton).-C Morrison (Budenbergs) 41, A Heaton (St Helens 1 &amp; jack) 36, M Bradshaw (Bolton) 41, B Darbyshire (Garswood 1 &amp; jack) 39.</p> <p> Cycling </p> <p> TOUR OF BENELUX.-Leading positions after 1st stage (Waremme to Eupen, Belgium, 189.5km).-1 N Nuyens (Belgium) Cofidis - Le Credit par Telephone 4h 42m 38s; 2 T Dekker (Holland) Rabobank, ST; 3 J I G Palacios (Spain) Caisse d'Epargne, ST. Overall: 1 Nuyens, Cofidis - Le Credit par Telephone 4h 48m 39s.</p> <p> Football </p> <p> INTERNATIONAL MATCHES: Costa Rica 1 Peru 1; Mexico 0 Colombia 1; Paraguay 1 Venezuela 1.</p> <p> BLUE SQUARE PREM: Weymouth 1 (Robinson 18) Burton 2 (Corbett 40, Harrad 45) 1,404.</p> <p> Golf </p> <p> KML OPEN (Zandvoort, Holland).-Leading 1st rd scores (GB &amp; Irl unless stated): 64 J-B Gonnet (France), T Teshima (Japan). 65-D Carter, S Webster, M Campbell (NZ), A Noren (Sweden), A Coltart, D Lynn, T Levet (France). 66-H Nystrom (Sweden), S Alker (NZ), C Riley (US), R Fisher, K Ferrie, L Slattery, S Struver (Germany), A Marshall, Paul Lawrie, A Forsyth. 67-B Langer (Germany), A Tampion (Australia), L Claverie (Spain), N Colsaerts (Belgium), M Lafeber (Holland), J Axgren (Sweden), S Dyson, T Pilkadaris (Australia), S Khan, G Murphy, M Brier (Austria), E Canonica (Italy). 68-J Luiten (Holland), S Jeppesen (Sweden), J Bickerton, S O'Hara, S Wakefield, T Finau (US), M Warren, J Spence, M Millar (Australia), D Higgins, S Little, G Houston, S Kapur (India), M Siem (Germany), P Price, C Rodiles (Spain), R Finch, T Whitehouse, D Bransdon (Australia).</p> <p> EUROPEAN AMATEUR CH'SHIP (Berlin).-Leading 2nd rd scores: 137-W Booth (Comrie, Scotland) 74, 63, B Evans (Rye, England) 69, 68, B Hebert (France) 68, 69. 138-C Wood (Bristol and Clifton, England) 70, 68, J Sjoholm (Sweden) 69, 69. 140-J Campillo (Spain) 72, 68, J Blixt (Sweden) 69, 71.</p> <p> WOMEN'S BRITISH OPEN AMATEUR STROKE PLAY CH'SHIP (Conwy).-Leading 2nd rd scores: 142-M Reid (Chevin) 70, 72. 147-R Jennings (Izaak Walton) 71, 76. 148-N Edwards (Ganton) 72, 76; E Cabrera (Spain) 75, 73.</p> <p> Hockey </p> <p> EUROPEAN CUP (Manchester).-Women's semi-finals: Holland 3 Spain 0; England 1 Germany 2 (Holland and Germany qualify for Beijing Olympics).</p> <p> Rugby Union </p> <p> WALES (V FRANCE AT MILLENNIUM STADIUM TOMORROW).-K Morgan (Newport Gwent Dragons); M Jones (Llanelli Scarlets), J Robinson (Cardiff Blues), G Thomas (Cardiff Blues, capt), S Williams (Ospreys); J Hook (Ospreys), D Peel (Llanelli Scarlets); D Jones (Ospreys); M Rees (Llanelli Scarlets), C Horsman (Worcester), I Gough (Ospreys), A-W Jones (Ospreys), J Thomas (Ospreys), M Williams (Cardiff Blues), A Popham (Llanelli Scarlets). Replacements: TR Thomas (Cardiff Blues), G Jenkins (Cardiff Blues), W James (Gloucester), C Charvis (Newport Gwent Dragons), M Phillips (Ospreys), C Sweeney (Newport Gwent Dragons), S Parker (Ospreys).</p> <p> SOUTH AFRICA (V SCOTLAND AT MURRAYFIELD TOMORROW).-P Montgomery; JP Pietersen, J Fourie, F Steyn, B Habana; B James, F du Preez; O du Randt, G Botha, CJ van der Linde, B Botha, V Matfield (captain), S Burger, J Smith, D Rossouw. Replacements: B du Plessis, BJ Botha, A van den Berg, W van Heerden, R Pienaar, A Pretorius, A Willemse.</p> <p> Shooting </p> <p> CANADIAN NATIONAL RIFLE CH'SHIPS (OTTAWA).-Winners: Macdonald Stewart Grand Aggregate (after 7 of 8 events): T Raincock (GB) 703.86. Gibson (300m, 600yds &amp; 800m): D Calvert (GB) 150.22. President's Prize after tie-shoot: J Underwood (GB). Letson (after tie-shoot): D Luckman 25.5/V. Alexander of Tunis (900m): G Webb-Enslin (Australia) 50.8. Governor General's Qualifier: D Luckman (GB) 255.41. John C Brick tie-shoot: D Enslin (Australia). 25.3.</p> <p> Swimming </p> <p> JAPAN INTERNATIONAL MEET (CHIBA).-Winners and GB: Men, freestyle 200m: K Monk (Australia) 1-47.25. 1500m: G Hackett (Australia) 14-48;70. 6 D Davies (GB) 15-06.01. 200m backstroke: R Irie (Japan) 1-57.30. 3 G Tait (GB) 1-58;86. 200m breaststroke: K Kitajima (Japan) 2-10.02. 2 K Gilchrist (GB) 2-10.32 (British record). Women, 200m freestyle: B Barratt (Australia) 1-57.92. 2 C M Clatchey (GB) 1-58.28. 200m backstroke K Coventry (Zimbabwe) 2-06.83. 2 E Simmonds (GB) 2-09.52. 200m breaststroke: L Jones (Australia) 2-21.45. 100m butterfly: L Lenton (Australia) 57.88. 5 J Lowe (GB) 58.71 (British record).</p> <p> Tennis </p> <p> ATP &amp; WTA T'MENT (New Haven, Connecticut).-Men, 3rd rd: I Karlovic (Croatia) bt T Johansson (Sweden) 4-6 6-4 7-5; S Wawrinka (Switzerland) bt T Robredo (Spain) 6-3 6-3; M Fish (US) bt J Acasuso (Argentina) 6-7 (4-7) 6-3 6-0; I Andreev (Russia) bt D Ferrer (Spain) 3-6 7-6 (7-3) 6-4; F Verdasco (Spain) bt J Nieminen (Finland) 6-3 2-6 6-4; G Simon (France) bt N Davydenko (Russia) 6-4 6-4; J Blake (US) bt A Calleri (Argentina) 3-6 7-6 (7-2) 6-1; P Henri-Mathieu (France) bt N Amalgro (Spain) 4-6 6-3 6-2.</p> <p>Women, Qtr-finals: A Szavay (Hungary) bt A Bondarenko (Ukraine) 6-1 6-4; S Kuznetsova (Russia) bt F Schiavone (Italy) 6-2 0-0 ret; E Dementieva (Russia) bt M Bartoli (France) 6-4 6-2.</p> <p> LTA event (Cumberland Club, London).-1st rd: (GB unless stated): K Paterson bt K Pooler (US) 7-6 (7-4) 6-2; J Bone bt M Kambic (Slovenia) 6-0 6-4; M Babakova (Slovakia) bt K Shlomo (Israel) 6-2 6-1; A Smith bt R Hatch 6-1 6-1; E Thomas bt T-D Nguyen (Vie) 7-6 (7-3) 6-1; A Sargeant bt E Webley-Smith 1-0 rtd; K Chevalier (France) bt C Homewood 6-1 6-1; P Wong (Holland) bt L Warburton (GB) 6-2 6-0.</p> <p> Ariel National Ch'ships (Bournemouth).-16&amp;under semi-finals, Boys: J Chaudry (Hants) bt J McCulloch (Cheshire) 6-2 4-6 7-5; G Goodall (Surrey) bt R Morgan (Lancs) 6-4 6-2. Girls: L Slater (Surrey) bt H James (Warks) 3-6 7-6 (7-3) 6-3; H Watson (Channel Islands) bt J Rae (Notts) 6-2 6-2.</p>Sukhdev Sandhu <p>Sukhdev Sandhu is a film writer for the Daily Telegraph and a former Critic of the Year at the British Press Awards. His books include I&rsquo;ll Get My Coat (2005) and Night Haunts: A Journey Through The London Night (2007). He edited the essay collection Leaving The Factory: Wang Bing&rsquo;s &lsquo;West of the Tracks&rsquo; (2009). </p><p>Still, few of Syms's peers would begrudge her the honour for her career. The Rada-trained actress has rarely, if ever, been out of work since she shot to stardom playing Anna Neagle's wayward daughter in the 1956 box office hit My Teenage Daughter.</p> <p>Widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women of her generation, she landed a string of starring roles in films such as Ice-Cold in Alex, Victim, Conspiracy of Hearts and The World of Suzie Wong.</p> <p>Syms insists she was never too conscious of her looks at the time - even though she gleefully recalls the night she once brought traffic to a halt in Glasgow during filming. "I didn't think about how I looked, really. Having said that, I was very aware of just how appalling men could be towards the female of the species. I do think that is one of the reasons I married so early. I wanted a man next to me so I wouldn't face that alone.</p> <p>"The behaviour of many successful men in the film industry to young women at that time was terrible," she continues. "I remember doing a film called The Virgins of Rome and there was a producer who more or less insisted on pursuing me to my room. I had made friends with [the actor] Jack Palance, who was over there doing another film. One night the producer - who was a little squit - was being a real pain and hadn't noticed that Jack, who was six foot six and really powerful, was standing right behind him. Jack picked him up and held him over the stairs. I never had trouble with him after that."</p> <p>Syms turned down several approaches from Hollywood ("the thought of having to be beautiful all the time frightened me"), preferring to marry her teenage sweetheart, Alan Edney, when she was 22.</p> <p>"We had the odd party, because it was the Sixties after all, but I wanted a home and kids. I wouldn't give up work, but that's what I wanted. I was a war child and that colours you."</p> <p>However, her dream to have a family was far from easy. Her first baby was still-born and a daughter, Jessica, lived for only two days. Convinced that she would never have a child of her own, she adopted a baby boy, Ben, who is now in his forties and working as a teacher in Bangkok. Soon afterwards she discovered she was pregnant for the third time with a girl, Beatie Edney.</p> <p>The struggles to have a family were not Syms's first brush with tragedy. Her mother had a brain tumour and epilepsy and committed suicide when Sylvia was 12. "I have vivid memories of her," she recalls. "I remember she taught all us children to read before we went to school."</p> <p>Two years after her mother's death, her father, Ted, a civil servant and trade unionist, married Aunt Dorothy, the woman who was to become one of the most influential figures in Syms's life. "One of the reasons I think Dorothy married my father was because he had no one to look after me. She paid for me to go to boarding school. She was very keen for me to get into drama school. It was Dorothy who, when I once had a near breakdown, arranged for me to go to a therapist. It was very revolutionary in those days. She continued to love all of us kids even though my father died young. Dorothy died two years ago."</p> <p>Syms's own marriage to Edney came to an abrupt halt after 33 years when he suddenly confessed that he had been having an affair with a colleague and they had a two-year-old daughter.</p> <p>"The marriage was over long before then," Syms says. "We lived in the same house but were not living together. We had not shared a room for some time. But despite that, I had still come to regard him as the most honourable of men. The shock about the affair was that he hadn't told me about it before. I now realise he lied about many things.</p> <p>"Looking back, I think if we had stayed together, I would probably have killed myself," she continues. "He had power over me in a very odd way. He could be very controlling. He had such a wonderful brain and a wonderful personality, but I'm surprised he didn't do more with his life. He worked hard at **** all."</p> <p>Unsurprisingly, given her family history and all that she has had to endure, Syms admits to a lifelong battle with depression. "I have always suffered from depression, even in my most successful times. You don't want to get up. You don't want to go on living. But you haven't the courage to kill yourself. I know it will pass and I can shame myself into feeling better because I have so much."</p> <p>Syms admits that work has been her sanctuary. In 2006 she starred as the Queen Mother in the Oscar-winning film The Queen, which was immediately followed by a guest spot on EastEnders.</p> <p>"I don't know what else to do but work. All my kids are grown up. What would I do? But I've never earned that much. People think because I'm on the telly and in films, I must have earned a lot of money. But when I was making Ice-Cold in Alex, which was very unpleasant because the location was horrible, I was on 30 quid a week."</p> <p>One of the most unusual aspects of her professional life is the fact that this lifelong Labour supporter has played Lady Thatcher not once but three times. She recalls how her colleagues' attitudes towards her shifted as she got into costume. "We'd be laughing and chatting but gradually, as the bits of the Thatcher image went on, the men became quiet," she recalls. "She had a frisson of sexuality. She knew her power."</p> <p>However, there is one Tory she really cannot stand: Boris Johnson. "I would have to go if Boris ever became mayor. I know Ken has made mistakes but Boris would be terrible. He lives in bloody Henley! It is frightening that we could end up with someone who doesn't know anything about how 90 per cent of people in this city really live. I would have to go abroad for good. Somewhere like Australia."</p> <p>Still, for all its faults, she remains loyal to Britain - ageism not withstanding. "They have great respect for older people in France," she states. "Look at Sir John Mills, who was always loyal to this country and never ****** off to Switzerland with his money. He and his wife Mary found it a real struggle towards the end. But in France, someone of his stature would have been given a special pension. It so different in this country. If you're Mrs Crapville who has done a bit of telly then you get the repeat fees. How do they justify paying all of these millions to Jonathan Ross? I mean, did he invent radium or something?"</p> <p>&bull; Is There Anybody There? is out later this year</p><p> 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 d6 4.0&ndash;0 Bd7 5.Re1 Nf6 6.c3 a6 7.Bf1 (7.Bxc6 Bxc6 8.d4 Bxe4 9.Bg5 is a sharp alternative but this calm retreat leaves Black with a problem. How shall he contest the centre?)<br> 7...Bg4 (7&hellip;e5 8.d4 is a pleasant kind of Ruy Lopez for White)<br> 8.d4 cxd4 9.cxd4 d5 (Black tries to close the position in view of his lack of kingside development. If 9...Bxf3 10.gxf3 e5 11.d5 Ne7 12.f4 exf4 13.Bxf4 Ng6 14.e5 is crushing)<br> 10.e5 Ng8 (10...Ne4 is a playable alternative)<br> 11.e6! (If Black were allowed to play Bxf3 and Nge7-f5 he would have a reasonable French Defence structure with his light squared bishop exchanged)</p> Timofeev Wang Hao <p>Position after 11.e6!</p> <p> 11...Bxe6 (11...fxe6 12.h3 Bxf3 13.Qxf3 Nxd4? 14.Qh5+ is very strong because if 14...g6 15.Qe5 wins)<br> 12.Rxe6! fxe6 13.Qb3 (Black's kingside is bottled up and in the long run he cannot defend e6 although at this stage it is far from obvious)<br> 13...Na5 14.Qe3 Rc8 15.Nc3 Qd6 16.g3! g6 (This does not work out well but if 16...Nf6 17.Bh3 Nc4 18.Qe2 g6 19.Bxe6 Rc6 20.Ng5)<br> 17.Bh3 Bh6 18.Qe2 Rc6 19.Bg5 Kf8 (19...Nc4 looks better)<br> 20.Re1 Kg7 21.Bxh6+ Nxh6 22.Bxe6 (The d5 pawn cannot be held and Black's position falls apart with startling rapidity)<br> 22...Re8 23.Nxd5 Ng4? 24.Qd2 (Loose pieces drop off as they say nowadays in junior chess)<br> 24...Nf6 (24...Nc4 25.Qg5 Nf6 26.Nh4! and Black has to give up his queen to stave off the threats)<br> 25.Qxa5 b6 26.Nxf6! exf6 (26...bxa5 27.Nxe8+)<br> 27.Qd2 Re7 (27...Rxe6 28.Rxe6 Qxe6 29.d5 wins)<br> 28.Kg2 b5 29.h4 h5 30.Bb3 Rcc7 31.d5 1&ndash;0 </p> Timofeev Wang Hao <p>Position after 31.d5 and Black resigned as a knight will land on e6.</p><p>If it wasn't for the film The Painted Veil, starring Naomi Watts and Edward Norton, and released in April, Somerset Maugham's novel set in Hong Kong might well have been missed. But what a pity that the film switched Hong Kong, where the novel was originally based, to Shanghai. None the less, I suppose finding Maugham on Hong Kong's literary list has given it a tinge of respectable provenance. Maybe, in time, John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbour - which won the 2002 Whitbread Prize and tells the story of an English expat seeking his fortune in Hong Kong - might have the same effect.</p> <p>Already half-forgotten are Timothy Mo's The Monkey King (1978) and An Insular Possession (1986), as well as Alexander Cordell's The Sinews of Love (1965). And definitely overlooked are William Marshall's half-dozen Yellowthread Street mysteries, all set in Hong Kong.</p> <p>Also obscure are the works of R.H. van Gulik, who created a Chinese detective, Judge Dee, whose character was based on a clever official in AD 630 during the Tang Dynasty. Because van Gulik was a serious Chinese scholar and diplomat, and stiffly Dutch to boot, he seemed more concerned with exploring the ancient Chinese penal codes, rather than bringing excitement to the chronicles of Judge Dee.</p> <p>I find it sad that no one I know in Hong Kong is au fait with any of these writers. Hong Kong has never developed an English literary curiosity, possibly because of its overwhelming sense of commercialism. This might also explain why film, which is much more in tune with popular culture, has fared better than English literature.</p> <p>Take Sax Rohmer, who invented the death-defiant Dr Fu Manchu. His first Fu Manchu novel was published in 1913, and some have been made into films, starring Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee. Perhaps much better remembered would be Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), with its memorable theme tune and its popular storyline of a married Western war-correspondent coming to Hong Kong, and falling in forbidden love with a local woman. It won three Oscars. The original novel was by a Chinese called Dr Han Suyin, incongruously played by Jennifer Jones who, with a suave William Holden, roamed around a hugely nostalgic Hong Kong. The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) was another famous 'Chinese' success - starring the wholesome, but immaculately beautiful, Swede Ingrid Bergman - with another piece of ludicrous casting of a Brit, Robert Donat, and the German-born but naturalised Austrian Curt J&uuml;rgens, playing the two main Chinese characters.</p> <p>A little more authentic is the film of The World of Suzie Wong, a novel by Richard Mason. Again, William Holden starred, falling in love with the Eurasian Nancy Kwan, who became a Hollywood sex symbol. The hotel featured in the film was based on the Luk Kwok Hotel, in Wanchai, which remains in name only. The original was totally demolished and rebuilt. Elsewhere, the Excelsior Hotel, in Causeway Bay, was the setting for the marvellous comedy Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), starring Peter Sellers. The actor, at his funniest, checked in with Dyan Cannon as 'Mr and Mrs Low Key'; when he left to carry out his heist, dressed as a fat Mafia boss, he told the driver to head for 'Lee Kee Shipyard'. All vintage Clouseau.</p> <p>Yet what makes me curl up has to be The Road to Hong Kong, the last of the 'Road' pictures featuring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. It was partly filmed in Hong Kong and star-studded: Joan Collins, Robert Morley, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, David Niven and Sellers all took part. If I feel slightly depressed, I cheer myself up by watching it. How I wish that all these characters could have been assembled for dinner in Hong Kong.</p> <p>So colonial Hong Kong failed to inspire the heavyweight writers, even though it touched a tiny corner of Hollywood. This is a sad discovery: old Hong Kong must have been a wonderful tapestry of the Orient and the Occident, redolent of romance and cross-cultural memories, which might well have fed on great writers.</p> <p>But it's too late now. Our hybrid status of a handful of Brits ruling over millions of Chinese disappeared in 1997, and there is now no looking back with what might have been in English literature. Ichabod!</p><p>97. Monster (Patty Jenkins, 2003) </p><p></p><p>96. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones, 2005) </p><p>95. Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner (Zacharias Kunuk, 2001) </p><p>94. Last Resort (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2000) </p><p>93. Sugar (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, 2008) </p><p>92. In this World (Michael Winterbottom, 2002) </p><p>91. The Last Victory (John Appel, 2004) </p><p>90. Before the Devil Knows You&rsquo;re Dead (Sidney Lumet, 2007) </p><p>89. Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2004) </p><p>88. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000) </p><p>87. A Time for Drunken Horses (Bahman Ghobadi, 2000) </p><p>86. Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (Park Chan-wook, 2002) </p><p>85. The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky, 2006) </p><p>84. Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2002) </p><p>83. White Material (Claire Denis, 2009) </p><p>82. Adaptation. (Spike Jonze, 2002) </p><p>81. Frozen Land (Aku Louhimies, 2005) </p><p>80. The King of Kong (Seth Gordon, 2007) </p><p>79. Johnny Mad Dog (Jean-St&eacute;phane Sauvaire, 2008) </p><p>78. Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004) </p><p>77. Les petites vacances (Olivier Peyon, 2006) </p><p>76. Abouna (Mahamat Saleh-Haroun, 2002) </p><p>75. We Own the Night (James Gray, 2007) </p><p>74. School of Rock (Richard Linklater, 2003) </p><p>73. The Night of the Sunflowers (Jorge S&aacute;nchez-Cabezudo, 2006) </p><p>72. Yella (Christian Petzold, 2007) </p><p>71. Red Road (Andrea Arnold, 2006) </p><p>70. Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004) </p><p>69. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, 2008) </p><p>68. Deep Water (Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell, 2006) </p><p>67. Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong, 2007) </p><p>66. 13 Lakes (James Benning, 2004) </p><p>65. Requiem (Hans-Christian Schmid, 2006) </p><p></p><p>64. Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009) </p><p>63. Uzak (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002) </p><p>62. Capote (Bennett Miller, 2005) </p><p>61. Julia (Erick Zonca, 2008) </p><p>60. Modern Life (Raymond Depardon, 2008) </p><p>59. Nationale 7 (Jean-Pierre Sinapi, 2000) </p><p>58. The Corporation (Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, 2003) </p><p>57. King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005) </p><p>56. When the Levees Broke (Spike Lee, 2006) </p><p>55. I ? Huckabees (David O Russell, 2004) </p><p>54. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009) </p><p>53. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008) </p><p>52. Lady Chatterley (Pascale Ferran, 2006) </p><p>51. The Fall (Tarsem, 2006) </p><p>50. Bus 174 (Jos&eacute; Padilha, 2004) </p><p>49. The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000) </p><p>48. Adam &amp; Paul (Lenny Abrahamson, 2004) </p><p>47. Y tu mam&aacute; tambi&eacute;n (Alfonso Cuar&oacute;n, 2001) </p><p>46. Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin, 2004) </p><p>45. Couscous (Abdel Kechiche, 2007) </p><p>44. The Company (Robert Altman, 2003) </p><p>43. Punch-Drunk Love (PT Anderson, 2002) </p><p>42. Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh, 2000) </p><p></p><p>41. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001) </p><p>40. The Son (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2002) </p><p>39. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter&hellip; and Spring (Kim Ki-duk, 2003) </p><p>38. The Holy Girl (Lucrecia Martel, 2004) </p><p>37. Solaris (Steven Soderbergh, 2002) </p><p>36. The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass, 2004) </p><p>35. Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) </p><p>34. Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003) </p><p>33. The Sun (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2005) </p><p>32. Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2004) </p><p>31. Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, 2000) </p><p>30. Amores perros (Alejandro Gonz&aacute;lez I&ntilde;&aacute;rritu, 2000) </p><p>29. Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002) </p><p>28. Code Unknown (Michael Haneke, 2000) </p><p>27. Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001) </p><p>26. The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004) </p><p>25. Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002) </p><p>24. What Time is it There? (Tsai Ming-liang, 2001) </p><p>23. Talk to Her (Pedro Almod&oacute;var, 2002) </p><p>22. The House of Mirth (Terence Davies, 2000) </p><p>21. Eureka (Shinji Aoyama, 2000) </p><p>20. I&rsquo;m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007) </p><p>19. Our Daily Bread (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, 2005) </p><p>18. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) </p><p>17. Spider (David Cronenberg, 2002) </p><p></p><p>16. Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008) </p><p>15. A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, 2009) </p><p>14. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, 2007) </p><p>13. L&rsquo;emploi du temps (Laurent Cantet, 2001) </p><p>12. Black Sun (Gary Tarn, 2005) </p><p>11. The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke, 2001) </p><p>The Top 10</p><p>10. Synecdoche, NY (Charlie Kaufman, 2008) </p><p>9. Junebug (Phil Morrison, 2005) </p><p>8. INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch, 2006) </p><p>7. Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000) </p><p>6. demonlover (Olivier Assayas, 2002) </p><p>5. The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005) </p><p>4. There Will Be Blood (PT Anderson, 2007) </p><p>3. The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005) </p><p>2. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir, 2003) </p><p>1. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001) </p><p> From its claws and "curved longer pedal penultimate phalange" (toe bone), which were adapted to clinging to branches, they know it was a tree dweller, he adds.</p> <p> There were gingko forests at the time and the creature flitted about them, eating insects.</p> <p> The tiny pterosaur is called Nemicolopterus crypticus, the Greek for 'hidden flying forest dweller'.</p> <p> Dr Dave Martill of the University of Portsmouth comments: "This is an amazing discovery. Fossils of pterosaurs are incredibly rare, and we have little or no evidence of small species."</p> <p> But because there are no examples of the babies of the giant pterosaurs (only three pterosaur eggs have ever been found), he adds a note of caution: "One has to be very careful when describing new species though. There were plenty of toothless pterosaurs of medium to gigantic size in the Cretaceous, and it is possible that the youngsters looked quite different from the adults.</p> <p> "Because pterosaurs are thought to have been able to fly at a very early age, their skeletons had to be fully ossified at an early stage, and therefore it can be very difficult to distinguish between juveniles of large species and full grown adults of small species."</p> <p> "I look forward to getting to see the original specimen in China, which is where the next International Pterosaur Symposium will be held in 2010."</p> <p> Pterosaurs were not dinosaurs, but they were closely related and lived during the same Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, from about 220 million years ago until the mass extinction that took place 65 million years ago.</p> <p> The reptiles developed the ability to fly independently of birds, although some 70 million years beforehand.</p><p>6. Voynich Manuscript is at least 400 years old and is a 232-page illuminated manuscript entirely written in a secret script. It is filled with copious drawings of unidentified plants, herbal recipes of some sort, astrological diagrams, and many small human figures in strange plumbing-like contraptions. In 2004 there were some compelling arguments which described a technique that would seemingly prove that the manuscript was a hoax, but to date, none of the described techniques have been able to replicate a single section of the Manuscript, so speculations continue.</p><p>7. The Dorabella Cipher was written by the composer Elgar in 1897. He sent a letter to a young friend, Miss Dora Penny, the 22 year-old daughter of the Rev. Alfred Penny, Rector of St Peter&rsquo;s, Wolverhampton, and with it a cipher which to this day has remained unsolved.</p><p>8. Chaocipher. John F. Byrne invented Chaocipher in 1918 and tried unsuccessfully for almost 40 years to interest the U.S. government in his cipher system. He offered a reward to anyone who could break his cipher but the reward was never claimed. It has latterly been re-examined by members of his family to determine whether there is any commercial value in it.</p><p>9. The D&rsquo;Agapeyeff cipher is an as-yet unbroken cipher that appears in the first edition of Codes and Ciphers, an elementary book on cryptography published by the Russian-born English cartographer Alexander D&rsquo;Agapeyeff in 1939. Offered as a &ldquo;challenge cipher&rdquo; at the end of the book, it was not included in later editions, and D&rsquo;Agapeyeff is said to have admitted later to having forgotten how he had encrypted it. It has been argued that the failure of all attempts at decryption is due to D&rsquo;Agapeyeff incorrectly encrypting the original text. However, it has been argued that the cipher may still be successfully attacked using computational methods such as genetic algorithms.</p><p>10. Taman Shud. An unidentified male body was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia in 1948 wearing a sweater and coat despite the hot day, carrying no identification. There were no clues as to his identity and dental records and fingerprints matched no living person. An autopsy discovered bizarre congestion, blood in the stomach and enlarged organs but no foreign substances. A suitcase found at the train station that may have belonged to the man contained a pair of trousers with a secret hidden pocket, which held a piece of paper torn from a book imprinted with the words &ldquo;Taman Shud&rdquo;. The paper was matched to a very rare copy of Omar Khayyam&rsquo;s &lsquo;The Rubaiyat&rsquo; that was found in the backseat of an unlocked vehicle and on the back of the book was scrawled five lines of capital letters that seem to be a code. To this day, the entire case remains one of Australia&rsquo;s most bizarre mysteries.</p><p></p><p>James Cameron, 2009, DVD n/a: On the basis of a sneak 15-minute show reel, it&rsquo;s not premature to predict that this ground-breaking 3D sci-fi epic will change the way we look at movies. </p><p></p><p>Lukas Moodysson, 2000, &pound;12.72: Astutely observed and delightfully delicate comic drama about a Swedish hippie commune in the Seventies. </p><p></p><p>Paul Haggis, 2005, &pound;9.78: Oscar voters loved this multi-stranded depiction of contemporary LA&rsquo;s combustible race politics. </p><p></p><p>Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004, &pound;12.72: Thrill-seeking audiences rejoiced (while scratching their heads) at this mesmerising gay love story featuring soldiers adrift in Thai forests. </p><p></p><p>Andrew Adamson, 2001, &pound;9.78: Charming, witty computer-generated animation fairy tale about a princess and an ogre. Hugely promising, but its sequels have fallen far short. </p><p></p><p>Tony Gilroy, 2007, &pound;8.80: In this intelligent, literate thriller, George Clooney, as a disillusioned fixer at a New York law firm, did his best acting work to date, proving that he&rsquo;s a movie star for the ages. </p><p></p><p>Vincent Gallo, 2003 , &pound;7.82: Heckled at Cannes, the decade&rsquo;s most reviled film is now destined to become a future lost classic. </p><p></p><p>Werner Herzog, 2005 , &pound;8.80: Still fierce, still idiosyncratic, the German director&rsquo;s superb documentary about two slain bear enthusiasts was riveting from first to last. </p><p></p><p>Darren Aronofsky, 2008 , &pound;12.72: Comeback of the decade from Mickey Rourke, in a lacerating saga of steroid overkill and trailer-trash redemption. </p><p></p><p>Zacharias Kunuk, 2001, &pound;12.72: This Inuit epic with extraordinary snow chases, based on a tale 2,000 years old, was a unique achievement that lingers. </p><p></p><p>Gurinder Chadha, 2002, &pound;8.80: A surprise British global hit, blending football with teen-girl comedy and cultural diversity issues. The launch pad for Keira Knightley, one of the decade&rsquo;s biggest stars. </p><p></p><p>Steven Spielberg, 2005, &pound;8.80: Dark, pensive thriller about Mossad agents bent on killing Palestinian terrorists who massacred Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. A complex, unsentimental one-off. </p><p> </p><p>Roman Polanski, 2002, &pound;8.80: Polanski won an Oscar for this comeback of unexpected acuity, with Adrien Brody bringing haunted charisma to the lead role. </p><p></p><p>Dardenne brothers, 2005, &pound;9.78: Europe&rsquo;s finest purveyors of social humanist cinema outdid themselves with this Bresson-like portrait of a feckless young father who sells his infant son. </p><p></p><p>Tomas Alfredson, 2008, &pound;12.72: Vampire movies have been 10-a-penny this decade. None was remotely as affecting as this snow-capped charmer about alienated Swedish teenagers. </p><p></p><p>Steven Soderbergh, 2000, &pound;8.80: Julia Roberts got the role of her life &ndash; and a slam-dunk Oscar &ndash; in Soderbergh&rsquo;s legal?crusader drama. </p><p></p><p>Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, 2005, &pound;10.76: Fanboys salivated over the noir fidelity of this super-stylised comic book transfer, with 300 and Watchmen to come. </p><p></p><p>Wolfgang Becker, 2003, &pound;8.80: A young man tries to shield his frail mother from the news that Communism is over in this charming exercise in &ldquo;Ostalgia&rdquo;. </p><p></p><p>Mira Nair, 2001, &pound;15.65: The changing face of middle-class, urban India was brought to warts-and-all life in this freewheeling, thought-provoking drama. </p><p></p><p>Gus Van Sant, 2008, &pound;10.76: Sean Penn wasn&rsquo;t an obvious choice to play gay rights activist, Harvey Milk. His funny and seething Oscar-winning performance proved sceptics wrong. </p><p></p><p>Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2003, &pound;19.56: This emotionally subtle drama about two brothers dealing with the return of their missing father signalled a new dawn in Russian cinema. </p><p></p><p>Sam Raimi, 2002, &pound;8.80: The first hit for an amiable comic-book franchise set the tone with humour, a warm romance and Tobey Maguire&rsquo;s likeable hero. </p><p></p><p>Kathryn Bigelow, 2008, DVD n/a: The one Iraq drama that mattered, shaking us with the street-level view of America&rsquo;s perilous occupation. </p><p></p><p>Alfonso Cuar&rdquo;n, 2006, &pound;9.78: This apocalyptic vision of a world in which man can no longer procreate gnawed at the imagination. </p><p></p><p>Lars von Trier, 2009, dvd n/a: Instant notoriety was the name of the game in von Trier&rsquo;s lavish, rusty-scissored attack on bourgeois sensibilities. </p><p></p><p>Richard Linklater, 2003, &pound;7.82: The chameleonic Linklater teamed up with Jack Black to create a hugely endearing take on the rags-to-riches rock movie template. </p><p></p><p>Thom Anderson, 2003, DVD n/a: Copyright issues mean it will likely never be commercially released, but this archive-essay </p><p>exploring cinematic depictions of LA was an underground smash. </p><p></p><p>Peter Weir, 2003, &pound;9.78: A magisterial seafaring epic from Weir, serenely adapting Patrick O&rsquo;Brian and putting a brave focus on the quotidian. </p><p></p><p>Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002, &pound;9.78: One of the great revelations of the decade was this Turkish auteur whose portraits of broody masculinity seduced art house audiences. </p><p></p><p>David Cronenberg, 2005, &pound;9.78: Cronenberg switched tack with a bruising study of dormant criminality, anchored by the ever-improving Viggo Mortensen. </p><p></p><p>David Lynch, 2001, &pound;9.78: From the wreckage of an abandoned television pilot, Lynch crafted a seductive dreamscape of fractured identity in Tinseltown. </p><p></p><p>Laurent Cantet, 2008, &pound;19.56: A rare great Best Foreign Film, this pedagogical docudrama bristled with teacher-student brinkmanship. </p><p></p><p>Ari Folman, 2008, &pound;19.56: Few animation features were as bold as this graphic and surreal account from Israel about the (true) mass slaughter of Palestinian refugees. </p><p></p><p>Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris, 2006, &pound;8.80</p><p>This light, offbeat, uplifting comedy about a dysfunctional family en route to a gruesome children&rsquo;s beauty contest pointed the way for American independent cinema. </p><p></p><p>Paul Greengrass, 2006, &pound;8.80: Could the events of 9/11 be filmed? More to the point, should they? This extraordinarily powerful film answered only the first question. </p><p></p><p>Martin Scorsese, 2006, &pound;9.78: An all-star cast &ndash; DiCaprio, Damon, Nicholson, Wahlberg &ndash; pulled together to make this twisty, underworld drama a total knockout. </p><p></p><p>Hayao Miyazaki, 2001, &pound;12.72: The film that finally made Japan&rsquo;s master of animation familiar in the West. A moving story, exquisitely drawn. </p><p></p><p>Michael Haneke, 2001, &pound;9.78: Isabelle Huppert delivered the decade&rsquo;s boldest performance in this portrait of the self-mutilating repression of the Austrian bourgeoisie. </p><p></p><p>David Frankel, 2006, &pound;8.80: Spearheading Meryl Streep&rsquo;s reascent to mega-stardom, this bitchy fashion face-off was a female-targeted blockbuster like no other. </p><p></p><p>Michael Winterbottom, 2002, &pound;12.72: This magnificent drama about two Pakistani asylum seekers confirmed migration as one of the key themes of cinema this decade. </p><p></p><p>Quentin Tarantino, 2003, &pound;10.76: Tarantino split the film in two and his critics down the middle, serving up a delirious martial arts revenge saga. </p><p></p><p>Andrew Stanton, 2008, &pound;22.50: Pixar trawled the debris of a disused Earth in this brave, breath-taking robot romance. </p><p></p><p>Richard kelly, 2001, &pound;7.82: This darkly beautiful suburban fable was the cult sensation of the decade. </p><p></p><p>Alexander Payne, 2004, &pound;8.80: No Merlot! Everyone&rsquo;s favourite wine-trip comedy, this was a rare buddy movie with serious wit, integrity and great performances. </p><p></p><p>Joe Wright, 2007, &pound;9.78: This flamboyant, visually ravishing adaptation of Ian McEwan&rsquo;s Second World War novel put its British director on the map and confirmed Keira Knightley&rsquo;s star quality. </p><p></p><p>Michael Moore, 2002, &pound;9.78: Passionate, wildly funny condemnation of America&rsquo;s gun culture. It inspired a wave of politically-minded young people to become documentary film-makers. </p><p></p><p>Pedro Almod&rdquo;var, 2002, &pound;9.78: Beguiling top pick from the Almod&oacute;var offerings, as the Spanish director went from strength to strength in his ongoing &ldquo;mature&rdquo; phase. </p><p></p><p>Joel &amp; Ethan Coen, 2007, &pound;9.78: Fine adaptation of Cormac McCarthy&rsquo;s dark vision of evil in Texas, blending savage humour and genuine dread with stunning photography. </p><p></p><p>Steve McQueen, 2008, &pound;12.72: Recent history &ndash; and Bobby Sands&rsquo;s starvation campaign &ndash; was brought to intense, visceral life by the Turner prize-winner&rsquo;s feature debut. </p><p></p><p>Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001, dvd n/a: A stirring fusion of masala music and anti-colonial cricketing epic that opened many eyes to Bollywood. </p><p></p><p>Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002, &pound;9.78: Technically spellbinding, the film comprised one tracking shot through Russia&rsquo;s State Hemitage Museum. The result is an extraordinary meditation on history and identity. </p><p></p><p>Todd Haynes, 2002, &pound;9.78: Todd Haynes&rsquo;s homage to Douglas Sirk&rsquo;s melodramas, starring Julianne Moore, was both succulent and devastating. </p><p></p><p>Ridley Scott, 2000, &pound;12.72: Russell Crowe&rsquo;s grave, imprisoned Roman general wreaks vengeance. Implausibly, it revived the sword-and-sandals epic. </p><p></p><p>Robert Altman, 2001, &pound;9.78: Altman returned to peak form in his glittering country-house murder mystery. </p><p></p><p>Alfonso CUar&rdquo;n, 2001, &pound;7.82: Sand and hormones eddied in Cuar&oacute;n&rsquo;s three-way road trip, which made a superstar of Gael Garc&iacute;a Bernal. </p><p></p><p>Neill Blomkamp, 2009, DVD n/a: Sci-fi was reinvented for the developing nations with this thrillingly inventive apartheid allegory set in South Africa. </p><p></p><p>Michael Haneke, 2005, &pound;9.78: Big themes &ndash; historical amnesia, surveillance society, postcolonial terror &ndash; were brought to terrifyingly thrilling life care of Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche. </p><p></p><p>Christopher Nolan, 2008, &pound;10.76: The jet-black, immersive Batman movie everyone was hoping Nolan would deliver, was a blistering swansong for its late Joker, Heath Ledger. </p><p></p><p>Brad Bird, 2007, &pound;14.67: Who could have imagined that rats preparing food in a Parisian kitchen could have been so adorable? Pixar strikes again. </p><p></p><p>Chris Columbus, 2001, &pound;10.76: Not the best, but the first: JK Rowling&rsquo;s boy-wizard adventure introduced with terrific exemplary production design and fruity cameos by British acting veterans. </p><p></p><p>Baz Luhrmann, 2001, &pound;9.78: Wildly ambitious attempt to reinvigorate movie musicals. Nicole Kidman&rsquo;s singing dis-appoints, the plot falters, but its visual flair set the bar high. </p><p></p><p>Martin Campbell, 2006, &pound;9.78: Daniel Craig sizzled opposite Eva Green and proved the sceptics wrong in this muscular and intense reworking of the first Bond novel. </p><p></p><p>Guillermo del Toro, 2006, &pound;8.80: The Spanish Civil War re-imagined as a child&rsquo;s supernatural dream. Del Toro became the third Mexican director of the decade to receive global plaudits. </p><p></p><p>Stephen Daldry, 2000, &pound;8.80: A Durham miner&rsquo;s young son dreams of dancing ballet. This hit feel-good tear-jerker launched Jamie Bell and his debutant director. </p><p></p><p>Davis Guggenheim, 2006, &pound;9.78: Essentially a well-delivered PowerPoint lecture, Al Gore&rsquo;s wake-up call to Americans about impending eco-catastrophe helped win him a Nobel prize. </p><p></p><p>Judd Apatow, 2007, &pound;22.50: Foul-mouthed frat-boy humour retooled for the sensitive Noughties is Apatow&rsquo;s forte; this made Seth Rogen an unlikely star. </p><p></p><p>Ousmane Sembene, 2004, &pound;10.76: The Senegalese director, a giant of African cinema, capped a glorious career with this stirring drama about a woman who revolts against ritualised brutality. </p><p></p><p>Ang Lee, 2000, &pound;9.78</p><p>Lee married his trademark fascination for the complexities of family life with classic Chinese swordplay to visually bewitching,emotionally penetrating effect. </p><p></p><p>Park Chan-wook, 2003, &pound;12.72</p><p>Korean cinema exploded after Park Chan-Wook&rsquo;s visceral vendetta flick, like Titus Andronicus with octopus-chomping. </p><p></p><p>Gore Verbinski, 2003, &pound;9.78: Relentless high-seas action-adventure that made Johnny Depp big box-office. So successful that its sequels essentially repeated its incoherent plot. </p><p></p><p>Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004, &pound;9.78: Bruno Ganz gives the best ever portrayal of Hitler on film in this intense account of the desperate madness of the F&uuml;hrer&rsquo;s final days. </p><p></p><p>Wong Kar Wai, 2000, &pound;12.72: Exquisitely gorgeous romance set in Sixties Hong Kong confirmed Tony Leung&rsquo;s film-idol status and made its director internationally famous. </p><p></p><p>Stephen Frears, 2006, &pound;8.80: Helen Mirren&rsquo;s astonishing portrayal of Elizabeth II in the week after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales helped make screenwriter Peter Morgan a name to reckon with. </p><p></p><p>JJ Abrams, 2009, &pound;19.56: Who would have guessed that this wheezy old franchise could be freshened up by a cast of unknowns? </p><p></p><p>Nicolas Philibert, 2002, &pound;9.78: A documentary about a devoted schoolteacher in rural France was heart-warming in both its subject matter and its word-of-mouth success. </p><p></p><p>Pete docter, 2009, DVD n/a: This wondrous animated Pixar fable about an old man who ties balloons to his house and drifts off to South America had more emotional truth and depth than almost any film this year. </p><p></p><p>Agn&Egrave;s Varda, 2000, dvd n/a: Funny, melancholic and deeply political, Varda&rsquo;s digital cine-essay about social outsiders scouring the French countryside for food has been quietly influencing young filmmakers all decade. </p><p></p><p>Edgar Wright, 2004, &pound;9.78: There were lots of zombie films this decade, but only this super-smart, suburban updating of a once-tired genre featured gags about Eighties electro. </p><p></p><p>Fernando Meirelles, 2002, &pound;10.76: Flashy Guy Ritchie visuals meshed with Ken Loach-style politics in this kinetic and stylised dispatch from the favelas of Rio. </p><p>Paul Greengrass, 2004, &pound;19.56: Greengrass took the wheel and the influential amnesiac-assassin franchise leapt into hyperdrive in this barnstorming sequel. </p><p></p><p>Sofia Coppola, 2003, &pound;9.78: Dreamy not-quite romance, about a young American girl wandering through Tokyo with a faded actor, made Scarlett Johansson a star. </p><p></p><p>Bennett Miller, 2005, &pound;8.80: Genuine biopic gold, thanks to its sober elegance and Philip Seymour Hoffman&rsquo;s masterclass in falsetto self-love. </p><p></p><p>Phyllida Lloyd, 2008, &pound;15.65: This cheerful version of Abba&rsquo;s greatest hits became the highest-grossing British movie of all time. Indifferently sung, clumsily directed &ndash; but for millions of people, it was a grand night out. </p><p></p><p>Cristian Mungiu, 2007, &pound;9.78: Romanian cinema was a powerhouse in the second half of the decade; this gripping drama about abortion and female friendship was a standout. </p><p></p><p>Michel Gondry, 2004, &pound;9.78: The dream team of writer Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry broke our hearts with this ineffable, wildly clever valentine to sundered romance. </p><p></p><p>Richard Linklater, 2004, &pound;9.78: Before Sunrise&rsquo;s Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reunited for a dream-parade through Parisian boulevards in the decade&rsquo;s most gorgeous and affectingly romantic film. </p><p></p><p>James Wan, 2004, &pound;9.78: The decade of Abu Ghraib found its cinematic equivalent in the torture porn aesthetics of this and the Hostel series. </p><p></p><p>Wang Bing, 2003, DVD n/a: Nine hours long with not a minute wasted, this portrait of a dying industrial district in China is a towering, epoch-defining masterpiece. </p><p></p><p>Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001, &pound;9.78: France&rsquo;s biggest-ever global hit &ndash; an idealised view of Paris, and a star vehicle for Audrey Tautou as a young do-gooder. Its droll tone and tricksy style almost mask its heroine&rsquo;s solitude and tristesse. </p><p></p><p>Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006, &pound;9.78: Emotional, intellectual and immeasurably compelling drama about a Cold War surveillance operator who warms to the radical theatre director on whom he&rsquo;s spying. </p><p></p><p>Danny Boyle, 2008, &pound;12.72: Frenetic, savage but sentimental account of a young Mumbai man&rsquo;s surprising success in a TV quiz show. A worldwide hit, its generosity of spirit and insistence on telling its story through Indian, not Western eyes, seemed to chime with new, tolerant attitudes to otherness, coinciding with the ascent of Barack Obama. </p><p></p><p>Mel Gibson, 2004, &pound;9.78: Mel Gibson&rsquo;s reputation has been tarred by anti-Jewish outbursts. Nothing, though, should take away from this phenomenal work of outsider art, a neo-avant-garde exercise in bodyshock violence that features an unknown cast and dialogue in Latin and Aramaic.Self-financed, and distributed to demographics normally beyond Hollywood&rsquo;s reach, this reinvented the Bible for a torture-porn generation. </p><p></p><p>Alejandro Gonz&Aacute;lez I&mdash;&Aacute;rritu, 2000, &pound;9.78: Visceral, thrilling, operatic story set in Mexico City, with three colliding plots &ndash; all of which feature dogs. It made influential screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga a name to conjure with, and kick-started a series of audacious films by Mexican directors that dominated non-Anglophone films throughout the decade. </p><p></p><p>Larry Charles, 2006, &pound;9.78: Is nice! Perturbing the world in a green Lycra thong, and parlaying this into unbeatable word-of-mouth, Sacha Baron Cohen&rsquo;s mock-doc sensation overcame minimal pre-existing brand recognition to gross more than $250 million worldwide, and might just have defined US-Kazakhstan relations for all time. </p><p></p><p>Christopher Nolan, 2000, &pound;17.60: Christopher Nolan could write the rulebook for how to emerge, in no time, as a world-class director. The model indie breakthrough, a fractured thriller, had all the ingredients to wow. Its time-splicing script, in particular, has proven more influential than any other for a new generation of screenwriters. </p><p></p><p>Peter Jackson, 2001, &pound;9.78: If there was one franchise to rule them all, it was surely this. A hugely risky commitment for its studio, the outlay paid off more than anyone could have dreamed. It&rsquo;s the enduring quality of the first instalment, leading us by the hand into Tolkien&rsquo;s richly imagined world, that made our collective Hobbit-love possible. </p><p></p><p>Paul Thomas anderson, 2007, &pound;10.76: It kick-started a catchphrase: &ldquo;I drink your milkshake!&rdquo; It featured the greatest performance of Daniel Day-Lewis&rsquo;s already illustrious career. Its score &ndash; by Radiohead&rsquo;s Jonny Greenwood &ndash; was hugely distinctive. P?? T Anderson&rsquo;s epic about the birth of America&rsquo;s obsession with oil was as ruggedly individual, frontier-pushing and darkly magnificent, as its subject matter. </p><p></p><p>Brad Bird, 2004, &pound;12.72:The revolution in digital cartoons had the same clear leader this decade that it did in the Nineties. No one, not even a smelly green ogre, could touch Pixar, who hit the peak of their miraculous creative streak with this dazzling caper about a superficially ordinary American family&hellip; with secret superpowers. </p><p></p><p>Ang Lee, 2005, &pound;9.78: Director Ang Lee insists on calling this simply &ldquo;a love story&rdquo; but it broke new ground as a gay cowboy movie. Achingly moving, with career-high performances from Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as the strong, silent, repressed lead characters. A stunning achievement, brilliantly executed, with an acute sense of time and location. </p><p></p><p>Michael Moore, 2004, &pound;8.80: It may not have been the best film of the decade. It may not have been the best film Moore has made (that honour still belongs to 1989&rsquo;s Roger and Me). Nevertheless, it&rsquo;s hard to overstate the importance of this film, a modestly funded political documentary that was shunned by its Disney backers but went on to win the Palme d&rsquo;Or at Cannes, coin more than $220 million around the world, and boost the emergence of politically liberal, agenda-driven multiplex fare such as Supersize Me and An Inconvenient Truth. </p><p>A speculation: might the accessible and populist fashion in which it marshalled its denunciation of George Bush&rsquo;s 2000 &ldquo;electoral theft&rdquo;, to say nothing of the scorn it poured on American neo-conservative support for the &ldquo;War on Terror&rdquo;, have helped create or at least re-identify a large chunk of the non-traditional constituencies who were later tapped successfully by the Obama campaign team? </p><p>Criticism that Moore played fast and loose with his facts misses the point. He&rsquo;s an old-fashioned circus barker. He trades in passion not science. But these days, when Tony Blair gets dubbed a &ldquo;war criminal&rdquo; and when the US economy is still ailing after the trillions squandered in the Middle East, the questions he asks look like patriotism rather than treachery. </p><p>To buy any of the films listed, go to </p><p>2. Vishy Anand (India) 2788 </p><p>3. Levon Aronian (Armenia) 2773 </p><p>4. Magnus Carlsen (Norway) 2772 </p><p>5. Vladimir Kramnik (Russia) 2772 </p><p>6. Peter Leko (Hungary) 2762 </p><p>7. Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan) 2757 </p><p>8. Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine) 2756 </p><p>9. Boris Gelfand (Israel) 2756 </p><p>10. Alexander Morozevich (Russia) 2750 </p><p>11. Dmitry Jakovenko (Russia) 2742 </p><p>12. Peter Svidler (Russia) 2741 </p><p>13. Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine) 2741 </p><p>14. Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan) 2740 </p><p>15. Wang Yue (China) 2736 </p><p>16. Hikaru Nakamura (USA) 2735 </p><p>17. Alexander Grischuk (Russia) 2733 </p><p>18. Alexei Shirov (Spain) 2730 </p><p>19. Alekseev (Russia) 2725 </p><p>20. Sergey Karjakin (Russia) 2722 </p><p></p><p>The top English player is now Nigel Short who has risen to 2706 and is ranked 29th. Michael Adams has plunged to 2682 and is ranked 50th. Anatoly Karpov has dropped out of the world&rsquo;s top 100 for the first time. Veselin Topalov remains at the top of the pile, well ahead Vishy Anand but neither played a rated game in July or August. </p><p></p><p>The Siesta Variation is a dangerous weapon against the Ruy Lopez. White is a bit sleepy here and forgets the theory. </p><p></p><p>S Tiviakov (2697) &ndash; A Baskaran (2483)</p><p>1st SCS Open Bhubaneswar (India) </p><p>Ruy Lopez Siesta Variation</p><p>1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 d6 5.c3 f5 6.exf5 Bxf5 7.0&ndash;0 Bd3 8.Re1 Be7 9.Re3 (9.Bc2) 9...e4 10.Ne1 Bg5 11.Nxd3 Bxe3 12.Nb4 (After 12.dxe3 exd3 13.Qxd3 Black is the exchange for a pawn up) 12...Bxf2+! 13.Kxf2 Qh4+ 14.Kg1 Nh6 15.Nxc6 (15.Qf1 Ng4 16.Qf4 Rf8 17.Qg3 Rf1+ 18.Kxf1 Nxh2+ 19.Qxh2 Qxh2 0&ndash;1 Adams-Piket Wijk aan Zee 1991) 15...0&ndash;0 16.h3 Rf2 17.Ne7+ Kh8 18.Nd5 Raf8 19.Ne3 R8f3 (19...Nf5 20.Nxf5 R8xf5 and Qg3 is even quicker) 20.Bd7 Qg3 21.Qe1 Nf7 (Also 21...Rxe3) 22.d4 Rxe3! 23.Qxf2 Re1+ 24.Qf1 e3! 25.Nd2 Qf2+ 0-1 25...Qf2+ 26.Kh2 Rxf1 27.Nxf1 e2 wins. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sir Philip described the world as moving into the age of the merchant, not the city trader. </p><p>&ldquo;The financial jiggery-pokery and engineering is all over. This is a world where we&rsquo;re back to the real operators; back, hopefully, to the merchants and the people who actually love the business and can drive it forward.&rdquo; </p><p>The New York store, designed by the UK architects, Daziel Powell, features floor to ceiling display windows on every level for &ldquo;an army of mannequins&rdquo;, with original beams, Ionic columns and reclaimed timber floors mixed with raw brick, futuristic lighting and a DJ booth suspended over the heads of shoppers. </p><p>Apart from the Kate Moss collections, the store will carry the main Topshop and Topman trend-driven ranges; &lsquo;Unique&rsquo;, which is launched each season at London Fashion Week; and designer capsule collections by young British brands including Jonathan Saunders, Preen and Dexter Wong. It will also stock a new menswear range by the legendary rock &lsquo;n&rsquo; roll tailor, Antony Price, who dressed Bryan Ferry, David Bowie and Duran Duran. </p><p>Sir Philip said he also hoped to work with Diane von Furstenberg, president of the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) and Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue, with a view to showcasing a young American designer. </p><p>The New York store will be the first of a planned US expansion, with other shops envisaged in Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Boston. </p><p>British No 1 Greg Rusedski has been drawn with the unseeded former Australian and US Open champion Marat Safin while British No 2 Andy Murray will play Chile's Nicolas Massu, the 31st seed.</p> <p>Meanwhile, in the women's singles, Britain's Anne Keothavong, a wild-card entry, faces Karolina Sprem of Croatia, who beat Venus Williams at the AELTC in 2004 while Katie O'Brien meets Tathiana Garbin of Italy.</p> <p>Defending women's champion Venus Williams has been handed a first-round draw against fellow American Bethanie Mattek.</p> <p>Amelie Mauresmo, the world No 1 and top seed, will play Croatian qualifier Ivana Abramovic.</p> <p>Former champion Maria Sharapova is set for a first-round tie with Israeli Anna Smashnova, while Kim Clijsters, the number two seed from Belgium, will meet Russia's Vera Zvonareva and Justin Henin-Hardenne will play Meng Yuan of China.</p> Men's draw (1) Roger Federer (Swi) (1) v Richard Gasquet (Fra) (2) Robin Soderling (Swe) v Tim Henman (Gbr) (3) Nicolas Mahut (Fra) v Jurgen Melzer (Aut) (4) Jiri Novak (Cze) v Kristof Vliegen (Bel) (30) (5) Tommy Haas (Ger) (19) v Jiri Vanek (Cze) (6) Carlos Berlocq (Arg) v Richard Bloomfield (Gbr) (7) Wayne Arthurs (Aus) v Fabrice Santoro (Fra) (8) Jan Hernych (Cze) v Tomas Berdych (Cze) (13) (9) Tommy Robredo (Spa) (11) v Simon Greul (Ger) (10) Paul Goldstein (USA) v Novak Djokovic (Ser) (11) Potito Starace (Ita) v Mikhail Youzhny (Rus) (12) Igor Kunitsyn (Rus) v Gael Monfils (Fra) (21) (13) Paradorn Srichaphan (Tha) (29) v Agustin Calleri (Arg) (14) Ivo Karlovic (Cro) v Stanislas Wawrinka (Swi) (15) Davide Sanguinetti (Ita) v Kevin Kim (USA) (16) Nicolas Almagro (Spa) v Mario Ancic (Cro) (7) (17) David Nalbandian (Arg) (4) v Wesley Moodie (Rsa) (18) Albert Portas (Spa) v Arnaud Clement (Fra) (19) Benjamin Becker (Ger) v Juan Ignacio Chela (Arg) (20) Vincent Spadea (USA) v Fernando Verdasco (Spa) (28) (21) Juan Carlos Ferrero (Spa) (24) v Fernando Vicente (Spa) (22) Roko Karanusic (Cro) v Rainer Schuettler (Ger) (23) Xavier Malisse (Bel) v Benedikt Dorsch (Ger) (24) Frank Dancevic (Can) v Radek Stepanek (Cze) (14) (25) Thomas Johansson (Swe) (12) v Jonas Bjorkman (Swe) (26) Florent Serra (Fra) v Lukas Dlouhy (Cze) (27) Stefano Galvani (Ita) v Alexander Waske (Ger) (28) Daniele Bracciali (Ita) v Dominik Hrbaty (Svk) (20) (29) Paul-Henri Mathieu (Fra) (32) v Mark Philippoussis (Aus) (30) Max Mirnyi (Blr) v Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo (Spa) (31) Oliver Marach (Aut) v Yeu-Tzuoo Wang (Tpe) (32) Kristian Pless (Den) v James Blake (USA) (8) (33) Lleyton Hewitt (Aus) (6) v Filippo Volandri (Ita) (34) Flavio Saretta (Bra) v Hyung Taik Lee (Kor) (35) Albert Montanes (Spa) v Tomas Zib (Cze) (36) Gilles Muller (Lux) v Olivier Rochus (Bel) (26) (37) David Ferrer (Spa) (23) v Simon Stadler (Ger) (38) Ivo Minar (Cze) v Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (Spa) (39) Greg Rusedski (Gbr) v Marat Safin (Rus) (40) Luis Horna (Per) v Fernando Gonzalez (Chi) (41) Sebastien Grosjean (Fra) (15) v Gilles Simon (Fra) (42) Jamie Delgado (Gbr) v Michael Berrer (Ger) (43) Marcel Granollers-Pujol (Spa) v Andrei Pavel (Rom) (44) Alan Mackin (Gbr) v Marcos Baghdatis (Cyp) (18) (45) Nicolas Massu (Chi) (31) v Andrew Murray (Gbr) (46) Bjorn Phau (Ger) v Julien Benneteau (Fra) (47) Robin Vik (Cze) v Florian Mayer (Ger) (48) Janko Tipsarevic (Ser) v Andy Roddick (USA) (3) (49) Ivan Ljubicic (Cro) (5) v Feliciano Lopez (Spa) (50) Justin Gimelstob (USA) v Christophe Rochus (Bel) (51) Alessio Di Mauro (Ita) v Alberto Martin (Spa) (52) Danai Udomchoke (Tha) v Dmitry Tursunov (Rus) (27) (53) Jarkko Nieminen (Fin) (22) v Marcos Daniel (Bra) (54) Dick Norman (Bel) v Martin Lee (Gbr) (55) Razvan Sabau (Rom) v Phillip Kohlschreiber (Ger) (56) Alejandro Falla (Col) v Nikolay Davydenko (Rus) (9) (57) Gaston Gaudio (Arg) (16) v Jean-Christophe Faurel (Fra) (58) Alexander Peya (Aut) v Irakli Labadze (Geo) (59) Melle Van Gemerden (Ned) v Joshua Goodall (Gbr) (60) Mardy Fish (USA) v Robby Ginepri (USA) (61) Andre Agassi (USA) (25) v Boris Pashanski (Ser) (62) Andreas Seppi (Ita) v Jamie Baker (Gbr) (63) Yen-Hsun Lu (Tpe) v Robert Kendrick (USA) (64) Alex Bogdanovic (Gbr) v Rafael Nadal (Spa) (2) Women's draw (1) Amelie Mauresmo (Fra) (1) v Ivana Abramovic (Cro) (2) Michaella Krajicek (Ned) v Samantha Stosur (Aus) (3) Jarmila Gajdosova (Svk) v Nicole Pratt (Aus) (4) Mariana Diaz-Oliva (Arg) v Tatiana Golovin (Fra) (29) (5) Ana Ivanovic (Ser) (19) v Emmanuelle Gagliardi (Swi) (6) Marta Domachowska (Pol) v Sarah Borwell (Gbr) (7) Mashona Washington (USA) v Julia Schruff (Ger) (8) Jill Craybas (USA) v Dinara Safina (Rus) (14) (9) Anastasia Myskina (Rus) (9) v Cara Black (Zim) (10) Martina Muller (Ger) v Kaia Kanepi (Est) (11) Clarisa Fernandez (Arg) v Conchita Martinez-Granados (Spa) (12) Su-Wei Hsieh (Tpe) v Anabel Medina Garrigues (Spa) (23) (13) Jelena Jankovic (Ser) (26) v Lourdes Dominguez Lino (Spa) (14) Julia Vakulenko (Ukr) v Vania King (USA) (15) Lisa Raymond (USA) v Yaroslava Shvedova (Rus) (16) Bethanie Mattek (USA) v Venus Williams (USA) (6) (17) Maria Sharapova (Rus) (4) v Anna Smashnova (Isr) (18) Ashley Harkleroad (USA) v Jelena Kostanic (Cro) (19) Laura Pous Tio (Spa) v Melinda Czink (Hun) (20) Amy Frazier (USA) v Mara Santangelo (Ita) (32) (21) Shahar Peer (Isr) v Yuliana Fedak (Ukr) (22) Eleni Daniilidou (Gre) v Shuai Peng (Chn) (23) Maret Ani (Est) v Laura Granville (USA) (24) Sandra Kloesol (Ger) v Flavia Pennetta (Ita) (16) (25) Francesca Schiavone (Ita) (11) v Melanie South (Gbr) (26) Shenay Perry (USA) v Kristina Barrois (Ger) (27) Anastassia Rodionova (Rus) v Emilie Loit (Fra) (28) Sybille Bammer (Aut) v Nathalie Dechy (Fra) (22) (29) Elena Likhovtseva (Rus) (25) v Stephanie Foretz (Fra) (30) Tian Tian Sun (Chn) v Nathalie Vierin (Ita) (31) Meghann Shaughnessy (USA) v Katerina Bondarenko (Ukr) (32) Sania Mirza (Ind) v Elena Dementieva (Rus) (7) (33) Patty Schnyder (Swi) (8) v Antonella Serra-Zanetti (Ita) (34) Anastasia Yakimova (Blr) v Severine Bremond (Fra) (35) Hana Sromova (Cze) v Virginia Ruano Pascual (Spa) (36) Emma Laine (Fin) v Gisela Dulko (Arg) (31) (37) Ai Sugiyama (Jpn) (18) v Naomi Cavaday (Gbr) (38) Vera Dushevina (Rus) v Akiko Morigami (Jpn) (39) Tathiana Garbin (Ita) v Katie O'Brien (Gbr) (40) Olga Savchuk (Ukr) v Martina Hingis (Swi) (12) (41) Daniela Hantuchova (Svk) (15) v Maria Elena Camerin (Ita) (42) Kirsten Flipkens (Bel) v Jamea Jackson (USA) (43) Alicia Molik (Aus) v Yung-Jan Chan (Tpe) (44) Martina Sucha (Svk) v Katarina Srebotnik (Slo) (45) Anna Chakvetadze (Rus) (30) v Zi Yan (Chn) (46) Maria Antonia Sanchez-Lorenzo (Spa) v Elena Vesnina (Rus) (47) Aiko Nakamura (Jpn) v Ekaterina Bychkova (Rus) (48) Meng Yuan (Chn) v Justine Henin-Hardenne (Bel) (3) (49) Svetlana Kuznetsova (Rus) (5) v Romina Oprandi (Swi) (50) Kveta Peschke (Cze) v Kristina Brandi (Pur) (51) Melien Tu (USA) v Vassilissa Bardina (Rus) (52) Virginie Razzano (Fra) v Na Li (Chn) (27) (53) Marion Bartoli (Fra) (24) v Camille Pin (Fra) (54) Karolina Sprem (Cro) v Anne Keothavong (Gbr) (55) Ivana Lisjak (Cro) v Katerina Bondarenko (Ukr) (56) Klara Koukalova (Cze) v Nicole Vaidisova (Cze) (10) (57) Anna-Lena Groenefeld (Ger) (13) v Tzvetana Pironkova (Bul) (58) Agnieska Radwanska (Pol) v Victoria Azarenka (Blr) (59) Catalina Castano (Col) v Tamarine Tanasugarn (Tha) (60) Shinobu Asagoe (Jpn) v Maria Kirilenko (Rus) (17) (61) Sofia Arvidsson (Swe) (28) v Eva Birnerova (Cze) (62) Jie Zheng (Chn) v Iveta Benesova (Cze) (63) Viktoria Kutuzova (Ukr) v Lilia Osterloh (USA) (64) Vera Zvonareva (Rus) v Kim Clijsters (Bel) (2)<p>For its part, the US "will take steps to sustain and reinforce" recent evidence of rising savings rates and improvement in its balance of trade with the rest of the world, he added.</p><p>The world's largest developed and developing nations wrapped up two days of in-depth talks to chart out the future of their relationship, which President Barack Obama said would "shape the course of the 21st century".</p><p>The two countries also discussed global arms buildup.</p><p>Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state and co-host of the meeting, said she was "pleased that China shares our concerns about Iran becoming a nuclear weapons state". Both nations feared that a nuclear-armed Iran would trigger a regional arms race, she added.</p><p>Though no breakthroughs were expected, the lack of detail in the memorandum of understanding on energy and the environment underscored how far the two sides are from meaningful collaboration.</p><p>The two nations, by far the biggest emitters of carbon, which is blamed for global warming, pledged to put the fight against climate change at the heart of their relationship.</p><p>However, few details were offered beyond agreeing to set up a joint committee on environmental cooperation aimed at smoothing the path toward a new global treaty on climate change in Copenhagen in December. </p><p>However a firm contract has so far proved elusive as talks have become bogged down in pricing disagreements. Hu's visit to Moscow in June delivered no breakthrough.</p><p>China became Russia's top trading partner for the first time last year and the two countries want to nearly double trade to $100 billion by 2015 and then to $200 billion by 2020.</p><p>Putin has paid frequent visits to China in his capacity as president and prime minister since he took power in 1999.</p><p>But some experts say that while Beijing and Moscow are often viewed as partners in international diplomacy, there is limited trust between them.</p><p>The Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute said in a report last week that China's dependence on Russia for arms and energy imports had declined and Moscow's position when dealing with Beijing had weakened.</p><p>It pointed out that China had found other partners in the oil and gas sectors in the Middle East, Africa or central Asia.</p><p>China's foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said on Monday that "new progress and achievements" had been made in energy talks, but did not specify whether he was referring to the major gas agreement.</p><p>He said energy negotiators on both sides had a working meeting on Monday ahead of Putin's arrival.</p><p>China's vice premier Wang Qishan and state councillor Liu Yandong met Zhukov to "exchange views on how to further deepen bilateral energy co-operation", the spokesman said. </p><p>Compare Mrs Clinton&rsquo;s enforced tact with her husband&rsquo;s 1992 election campaign promise to be tough with the &lsquo;Butchers of Beijing&rsquo;, and it&rsquo;s clear how just successful China&rsquo;s metamorphosis from pariah to power has been in the 20 years since Tiananmen. Even Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the house, who in 1991 unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square "to those who died for democracy in China", made only a passing reference to rights on a visit to China last week focused on climate change. </p><p>In the rarified world of high-level diplomacy, potentially ground-breaking progress can be measured by an ampersand. In 2006, under George W Bush, Beijing and Washington embarked upon the Strategic Economic Dialogue. Under Obama, that has been recast as the Strategic &amp; Economic Dialogue. Biannual meetings will become annual and will encompass much more than trade. Mrs Clinton, unlike her predecessor Condoleezza Rice, will lead the US delegation, alongside Mr Geithner. The first formal round of talks with their opposite numbers, Wang Qishan and Dai Bingguo, will be held in Washington next month.</p><p>These meetings are only the apex of burgeoning US-China co-operation. Earlier this year Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, travelled to Beijing to lobby for China to use more of its influence to help stabilise Pakistan amid the rising threat of the Taliban. As those diplomatic revolving doors keep moving, this week Stephen Bosworth, the US special envoy on North Korea, is also expected to arrive in Beijing for discussion on how to deal with an increasingly inflammatory Pyongyang.</p><p>Such is the current momentum of US-China relations &ndash; reinforced by China&rsquo;s taking a leading role at the G20 in London earlier this year &ndash; that in some corners of Washington there is enthusiastic talk about the development of an unofficial &ldquo;G2&rdquo; relationship in which the two powers will act together to bring a central core of stability in an increasingly unstable, multi-polar world.</p><p>Chief among the cheerleaders is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser who was sent by Jimmy Carter to negotiate the normalization of relations with Beijing in 1978, and who remains on friendly terms with the Obama administration. In a speech in Beijing earlier this year Mr Brzezinski called for an &ldquo;informal G2&rdquo; that should form a &ldquo;comprehensive partnership&rdquo; in which &ndash; using a phrase beloved of China&rsquo;s President Hu Jintao &ndash; the two presidents would seek to create a more &ldquo;harmonious world&rdquo; </p><p>From a Western perspective at least, it is a vision that calls for China to eschew the Deng Xiaoping approach to foreign policy &ndash; encapsulated in his saying &ldquo;never take the lead&rdquo; &ndash; and play a more proactive and constructive role. Both David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who last month lavished praise on China as the century's &ldquo;indispensable power&rdquo; and Mrs Clinton, who observed that China and America &ldquo;are truly going to rise or fall together&rdquo;, have rarely missed an opportunity to encourage China to shoulder those new responsibilities. </p><p>However, for all the diplomatic blandishments, China remains instinctively cautious about being pushed too far, too fast. Talk of an emerging &ldquo;G2&rdquo; and a new, bipolar world order makes Beijing especially nervous, with Wen Jiabao, China&rsquo;s premier, dismissing the notion of Sino-US hegemony as &ldquo;baseless and wrong&rdquo; at the EU-China summit last month. Instead he argued for a multi-lateral approach which leaves China free to pursue its own interests even as it recognises the centrality of the relationship with Washington.</p><p>The result, according to Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Peking University, will be a China which co-operates with America and Europe on matters of mutual interest, but won&rsquo;t always move as far and as fast as the leaders of those powers would like. </p><p>&ldquo;China will do more in the world &ndash; indeed it already is &ndash; but if the West asks us to take 100 steps, there are times when China may only be able to make ten. China will always maintain its independence and has a longstanding belief in a multi-lateral world which is why on so many issues &ndash; North Korea, climate change, the economy &ndash; the notion of a G2 is, objectively speaking, nonsense.&rdquo;</p><p>In practical terms this means that China will continue to buy US debt, although this is an act of necessity, not charity, since China would be one of the biggest losers in the event of a dollar collapse. However, it may be slower to heed Mr Geithner&rsquo;s call to allow the yuan to rise against the dollar and take the potentially politically dangerous step of handing greater spending power to Chinese consumers and private enterprises. And as the recent blocking of the takeover of a major Chinese soft drinks maker by Coca Cola showed, China continues to deny the full access to markets that America seeks. </p><p>On climate change it seems that mutual interests are outweighing longstanding differences. Both China and the US are now talking optimistically of a deal to replace the Kyoto treaty in Copenhagen in December, thanks in part to a fresh approach by the Obama administration. However, China is driving a hard bargain, calling for industrialised nations to cut green house emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 and give up to one per cent of GDP to help developing countries deal with impact of global warming. </p><p>&ldquo;We think a deal is definitely on the table,&rdquo; said a Beijing diplomat close to pre-Copenhagen negotiations, &ldquo;but right now the Chinese are giving about six out of ten. We need to push them to eight.&rdquo;</p><p>It is in the diplomatic arena, as recent events in North Korea have shown, that the surface warming of Sino-US ties comes up against some cold strategic realities. While neither the US nor China wants a nuclear North Korea, China has resisted US pressure for tougher sanctions against Pyongyang, preferring a soft-line with its old ally and buffer state, despite the provocation of last week&rsquo;s nuclear test which left the Chinese-sponsored six party talks in tatters. </p><p>&ldquo;Even though North Korea has slapped Beijing in the face,&rdquo; said Yu Tiejun, associate professor at Peking University&rsquo;s school of international studies, &ldquo;co-operating with the US over North Korea is still a big problem for China. A fundamental mistrust remains, particularly for the older military officers and that will take many years to overcome.&rdquo;</p><p>Similarly, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the US is lobbying hard for China to use its influence directly with Islamabad to rein in the Taliban, mutual interests must contend with strategic realities. While China shares the US&rsquo;s desire for a stable Pakistan it is also wary of being encircled by permanent US and Nato bases, a consideration which holds back China from engaging more deeply. </p><p>For all the diplomatic rhetoric and the growth of China-US collaboration, deep differences and long-term strategic conflicts remain. &ldquo;G2 is a very seductive notion,&rdquo; said Stefan Halper, an assistant secretary of state under Ronald Reagan who is now a senior fellow at the Cambridge Centre of International Studies and whose forthcoming book Global Shift focuses on China. &ldquo;It suggests the Chinese will act in cooperative harmony, but it ignores the fundamental problem that we don&rsquo;t share the same objectives.&rdquo; </p><p>China&rsquo;s world view, he asserted, &ldquo;serves market authoritarianism and a Confucian model&rdquo; that offers a profound challenge to the Western ideals of free trade and liberal democracy. &ldquo;We are moving towards a battle of ideas with the Chinese,&rdquo; he added.</p><p>Which is perhaps the best argument for agreeing with Mr Geithner that, as the world faces the threat of financial crisis, global warming, nuclear proliferation and competition for natural resources, it is in everyone's interests for the United States and China to pull together in a concerted way &ndash; Tong Xin Xie Li.</p><p>Many of today's worldly-wise media bears were raging bulls back then. Now some of the shrewdest stock pickers in the world say the pessimists of today are as wrong as they were a decade or more ago when they were optimistic about the outlook.</p><p>More specifically, Mr Buffett has become one of the biggest shareholders in IBM after a lifetime of avoiding technology shares. At the risk of moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, this came as particularly good news to your humble correspondent because I had picked up some technology shares for my self invested personal pension (Sipp) in August.</p><p>Back then, the FTSE 100 had fallen by 15pc in a fortnight and it seemed like a good opportunity to buy into an investment trust I had been following for more than a year. So I bought some Polar Capital Technology shares at 301p and &ndash; even though the FTSE has fallen by more than 7pc in the last month &ndash; Polar Technology was trading around 325p this week.</p><p>Of course, I have no idea where these shares or the FTSE will be next week or next year &ndash; but I have no intention of cashing in my Sipp next week or next year. The main reason I bought the shares was that my Sipp had little direct exposure to technology and I notice how much of my time and money are now spent online.</p><p>This &pound;420m investment trust's biggest single holding is Apple &ndash; a company whose products I have been buying for more than two decades &ndash; followed by Google, Oracle, Samsung, Microsoft and IBM. Total returns over the past year are a measly 3pc but shareholders have received 42pc over the past five years.</p><p>Alex Breese, manager of Neptune UK Special Situations fund, also expects to see economic growth online in future. He said: "Total internet traffic is forecast to quadruple by 2015.</p><p>"Currently, it is estimated that the average consumer spends just over seven hours per day on media and communications. </p><p>"These trends present big opportunities for the technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sector, and &ndash; unlike in the dotcom bubble &ndash; valuations are generally very attractive."</p><p>While individual technology stocks are riskier than diversified funds, Tom Gidley-Kitchin of Charles Stanley stockbrokers favours some that generate cash and are debt-free.</p><p>He said: "Arm Holdings, which is present in something like 25pc of all the electronics in the world as well as 95pc of mobile phones, is a good example. Also, they are accustomed to a world where prices are constantly falling, to be replenished by new products, and often their items are 'must have'."</p><p>Similarly, Mick Gilligan of Killik pointed out: "Driven by the increasing adoption of smartphones and tablets, internet access is becoming more mobile.</p><p>"Changes in the way goods are purchased and media is consumed provide opportunities in e-commerce and advertising. Our preferred ways of playing this are through Google and Bango."</p><p>Fanciful valuations &ndash; such as those forecast for the flotation of Facebook next year &ndash; should be scrutinised with caution. Philip Wong of Redmayne Bentley said: "Perhaps this is all too reminiscent of the boom from over a decade ago, and the danger is that investors will be caught out again."</p><p>Technology remains a volatile and high-risk sector, which is unsuitable for anyone who might lose sleep at night when share prices fall. But investors willing to take a medium to long-term view should consider some exposure to the changing ways in which we spend our time and money online in future. Amid a credit crisis caused by excessive debt, much of it secured to overpriced property, the Government now proposes to encourage more lax lending to people with no history of repaying debt so that they can buy overpriced property.</p><p>You really couldn't make it up. Government proposals for taxpayers to underwrite looser mortgage lending for first-time buyers may help buy-to-let landlords exit the housing market with handsome profits before house prices fall further.</p><p>But they are unlikely to be of lasting benefit to anyone encouraged to take on excessive debt before interest rates rise from their current historic low and more homebuyers find themselves in negative equity.</p><p>The Coalition Government describes its latest intervention in the housing market as "radical and unashamedly ambitious" &ndash; which would be worrying enough for many Conservative voters, even if it didn't follow a week in which we learnt that taxpayers lost at least &pound;400m in the Government's bid to prop up Northern Rock. Politicians do not have an encouraging record of profitable intervention in markets, to put it politely.</p><p>Nor is this a party political point, specific to the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats. Gordon Brown's decision to sell 60pc of the United Kingdom's gold reserves at an average price little more than a sixth of the current level is a shining example of a politician who thought he knew better than the market but who only succeeded in destroying billions of taxpayers' funds.</p><p>It is unlikely that the Government will risk anything like as much in its attempt to prop up the housing market. But the mortgage guarantee, the first time such a scheme has been attempted in the UK, will result in lenders providing loans with significantly lower deposits than the 20pc or more that is typically demanded. This means taxpayers will be liable for losses when borrowers default and homes are repossessed.</p><p>Against all that, a year ago in this space I reported how Genworth Financial argued that mortgage indemnity insurance &ndash; similar to what the Government proposed this week but provided by the private sector &ndash; could prevent a generation of young people from being excluded from home ownership.</p><p>Some may suspect that the insurer was merely talking its own book and that first-time buyers would be wise to save hard and wait for house prices to fall further. Now, as then, that would be the way to bet. Tantalising though the wait may be for "generation rent", the housing market will turn eventually, as all market cycles must. First-time buyers will do better relying on patience than politicians' promises. </p><p>Germany (4)</p><p>India (13)</p><p>Japan (9)</p><p>Korea (11)</p><p>TBA</p><p>Holland (1)</p><p>New Zealand (7)</p><p>South Africa (12)</p><p>Spain (8)</p><p>Number in brackets denotes world ranking</p><p>International stars on show</p><p>A repeat of the All England final between Malaysia's sporting icon and eventual winner , China's Olympic champion, would send Wembley into overdrive come finals day on Sunday. </p><p>Europe's hopes rest with popular Dane Tine Baun in the women's singles. In the men's doubles, Denmark pair Carsten Mogensen and Mathias Boe always provide entertainment as their rampaging All England triumph proved. </p><p>In the know ...</p><p>Malaysia will be looking to win their first world title since the tournament's inception in 1977. Meanwhile arch rivals China are aiming to become the first country to successfully defend all five titles. </p><p>Wembley wonder</p><p>In 1976, English great Gillian Gilkes won all three events she entered - singles, doubles, mixed doubles - at the All Englands, the days when the tournament was held at Wembley. She was the last player to sweep the board. </p><p>What they say ...</p><p>"We are expecting some tough and long matches for Chong Wei. We will prepare him to face such an ordeal. The men&rsquo;s singles title is precious to China and they will do everything they can to retain it." Malaysia coach Tey Seu Bock </p><p>"It is the focus and belief in our young players that gets me out of bed in the morning. It's what makes us want to deliver." Adrian Christy, Badminton England chief executive </p><p>The Telegraph has teamed up with Badminton England to offer readers the chance to win a pair of VIP tickets for the final on August 14. To enter, visit before midnight, August 10.</p><p></p><p>Saturday, Yigal Azrouel complemented his punk-rock collection with tribal-inspired accessories courtesy of New York-based jewelry designer Pamela Love (included in the mix was a studded, leather cuff that wrapped three-quarters of its wearer's forearm…not exactly subtle). At Alexander Wang, the designer showed off the fruits of his collaboration with Brooklyn-based designer Paris Kain of Abraxas Rex (who worked with Francisco Costa of Calvin Klein). Wang's silver cuffs and earrings that encircle the ear, outfitted with dagger-like appendages, were far from demure. Lastly, at Elise Øverland, the jewelry was sourced from Parisian artist Alexander Calder (whom the Whitney recently honored with a retrospective). Calder is famous for his mobile creations, and his jewelry is similarly fascinating—it bends and twists and looks almost malleable.</p><p>The industry has some experience with addiction and 12-step programs; that it would be empathetic of Winehouse and drawn to her music is no surprise. Designers, models, and other players within the business have faced down the kind of enormous personal demons that have done in many a young musician or actor. Some have struggled privately with an unnerving tendency to overindulge at parties, believing that the only way to navigate fashion’s turbulent social waters was with the help of one too many glasses of Champagne. Some have relied on vodka tonics or other bracing cocktails to cope with the stresses of corporate demands while also living up to a self-created glamorous persona that was as much narcissism as it was a marketing strategy. And others, from Donatella Versace to Marc Jacobs to , have had full-on public meltdowns requiring the intervention of friends and colleagues, followed by the intense personal work that can only be conducted in rehab.</p>Fashion and music often go hand in hand, and the Fall 2012 T by Alexander campaign is no exception. Watch this intricately designed video for the fall campaign, featuring Banks rapping her song 'Van Vogue.'<p>At New York Fashion Week, buyers are as pleased as can possibly be expected given the recession’s devastating effect on their bottom line. For the most part, designers are walking the fine line between commercial appeal and creativity, sending out sellable ensembles that don’t sacrifice desirability, a favorable harbinger for next season’s retail numbers. Social critics, however, also have something to smile about, because the most important trend to emerge on the runway so far is color, as in models of color, who seem to have reached a critical mass in terms of their casting levels. In seasons past you could always count on a token black or Asian model to make an appearance at some point, usually as one, two, or at the max, three of the 40-50 exits that make up an average show. But something has changed—models of color are suddenly in demand.</p><p>It’s difficult to believe that Obama alone, or one sensational issue of a fashion magazine could have convinced one of the commercial centers of the world to reconsider its attitude toward racial diversity. </p><p>In a recent in the New York Times, Guy Trebay theorized that an "Obama Effect" might be influencing the fashion flock’s attitude toward racial diversity. There is an undeniable argument to be made that the president’s emergence into the collective consciousness has had a broadening influence on people’s ideas about race.</p><p>Fashion, however, is one of the few industries in the world where a complete disregard for social responsibility can be rationalized away as part and parcel of the neverending pursuit of new and stimulating forms of beauty. In the past, the mainstream fashion media hasn’t expressed much discomfort with the notion of limiting these representations to an overwhelmingly Caucasian group of women, but beginning in July 2008, with Vogue Italia’s " ," shot by Steven Meisel and starring a cast composed exclusively of the most famous black models in the world, the issue of race in fashion became more difficult to ignore.</p><p>It seems as if designers and casting agents have finally gotten the message—the army of alarmingly homogenous Eastern European girls who have, until now, hogged the limelight has been partially displaced by a surprising number of non-white faces. Both big and small labels have embraced a rainbow approach to casting—at ‘80s overload of a show, eight models were girls of color; at , an unofficial outfitter of the WASP-saturated Upper East Side, five, and at presentation, a jaw-dropping 10 girls of color made the grade. Younger designers were also getting in on the inclusive act—at first lady favorite , black British supermodel Jourdan Dunn opened the show and seven more models were non-Caucasian. Dunn also closed the show for another of Michelle Obama’s fashion adoptees, , while (also an Obama favourite), opened her show with another dark-skinned stunner, and peppered plenty of other black models throughout her show.</p><p>So what caused this sea change? It’s difficult to believe that Obama alone, or one sensational issue of a fashion magazine could have convinced one of the commercial centers of the world to reconsider its attitude toward racial diversity. I don’t mean to discount the role that conscience can play, but after all—this is fashion. In an industry that, ultimately, is all about manufacturing and commodifying glossy surface appeal, what matters the most is what sells.</p><p>How else to explain Conde Nast’s embrace of President Obama on the cover of and Michelle on the cover of (only the second first lady in history, after Hillary Clinton, to land this coveted spot)? High-powered editors like Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter, who still wield considerable power to define what is "in" and "out," have come to the conclusion that black is beautiful, at least for now. Just as editors take the temperature of the zeitgeist and attempt to package their intuition into a product that will stimulate consumers to spend, runway shows, which can stretch into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, represent a major investment by designers on which they depend to get their "message" across. In other words, sleeping with a clear conscience isn’t their top priority—making enough money to keep themselves in 400-threadcount Frette linens is, and so, the statement they make with their models has to have a viable commercial appeal.</p><p>Jason Campbell, the editor-in-chief of online fashion site and one of the prominent black faces within the industry, observes that “with the current economic turmoil and the need to court [new] business, this may change [fashion’s] ways.” That said, he doesn’t feel that a strong season for models of color is going to be enough to sustain the forward momentum on its own. “It will endure if we keep the pressure on. I personally think that Oprah needs to put her voice to the issue. She trumpets all kinds of designers on her show but she should dig a little deeper and confront this very real problem. I think fashion is a racist business. For some strange reason… only white is synonymous with luxury and glamour, unless of course you're a celebrity or entertainer.”</p><p>Still, it’s hard to deny the feeling that things are at least beginning to move in the right direction. , vice president of fashion at IMG and one of the most familiar faces in the Bryant Park tents, concurs, pointing out that, “thanks in large part to the efforts of activists and others keeping the pressure on the designers, there is definitely more inclusion. Many of the runways are now looking more like the world outside.”</p><p>Anita Bitton, the owner of , one of New York’s most influential casting agencies, has worked on some of this season’s biggest shows, including hot-ticket Alexander Wang. She says that she also senses that change is in the air: “It’s extremely clear that the tides are shifting. The global culture of "cool" is being forced to recognize that we live in a world of diversity. Obama’s values are being regurgitated and celebrated around the planet, and the global economy and its trendsetters are listening to what people want.” Bitton’s belief in the power of the market to facilitate social change is both encouraging and unsettling—after all, if we’ve learned anything from Project Runway, it’s that, in fashion, one day you’re in, and the next you’re out.</p><p>Let’s hope that models of color are more than just "of the moment," another trend to be consumed and then discarded like last season’s harem pants, while the fashion world feeds on the next big thing. That kind of cynicism would undercut the positive social momentum the US is building, and it would negate the hopeful impact of these first tentative steps toward balanced representation within the hierarchy of beauty ideals. As with Obama’s presidency, when it comes to racial diversity on the runways, I’m hoping it lasts for more than just one term.</p><p>Sameer Reddy is a special correspondent for Newsweek International, to which he contributes two columns—Top Shelf, which deals with luxury, and Tendencies, a survey of trends in culture. Based out of Berlin, he edits a recently launched blog about aesthetics, while consuming large amounts of sausage and gluten-free pretzels.</p><p>How would you describe this moment in history? Barack Obama's inaugural poet on the weighty honor of capturing the country's mood in her 'humble offering'</p>T Magazine’s Hocatio Silva immediately after: “Scandale!! Who leaked that Billy Reid won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund to WWD?”</p><p>A 1920s Berlin psychoanalyst rejects the idea that “repression of sex impulse” is “the origin of philosophical thought,” then goes on to catalogue the neuroses of 30 famous philosophers. Surprise—philosophers are “abnormal,” solitary, and unstable when not nasty, brutish, and short. You may know that Schopenhauer threw an old lady down the stairs, but had you heard that Rousseau accused his enemies of giving him invisible ink so he couldn’t write his Confessions?</p><p></p><p>But one person dismayed by it all was The New York Times' Cathy Horyn.</p><p>"I hope it doesn't go on," she says, a week later, seated at a café on the Upper West Side in between the fall fashion shows. "I don't want it to continue… You know, we're a nation of shoppers. That's how people spend their time, shopping online, shopping in stores, acquiring. And I feel like we perpetuate that with Fashion's Night Out. What are you really celebrating? Not art or great books. You're celebrating shopping."</p><p>Of course, it's not irrational to take issue with an event that's basically a fundraiser for global capitalism. But the position is somewhat unusual for a person in Horyn's line of work.</p><p>For the last 12 years, she has been the Times' fashion critic, covering a multibillion-dollar industry that depends almost entirely on a culture of shopping. Moreover, most "fashion journalists" work for magazines that exist to help sell clothes, so Horyn's attitude ruffles more feathers than it would in an industry better accustomed to aggressive journalism.</p><p>At various points, Carolina Herrera, Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Helmut Lang, Nicole Miller, and Oscar de la Renta have all banned Horyn from their shows. When she won the CFDA award for fashion journalism back in 2002, Women's Wear Daily celebrated the event with an article, "Does The New York Times Hate Fashion?" complete with a quote from Oscar de la Renta who argued just that: "Cathy Horyn is not one who loves fashion or enhances fashion in any manner," he told WWD. "There are personal commentaries and digs, not only about the designers, but about people who attend the shows, which I consider unnecessary and unprofessional in reviewing a collection… I'll say it. I'm not a coward."</p><p>None of this has seemed to faze the journalist, who, this fashion season, displayed her trademark ability to excite and infuriate.</p><p>Her recently drew more than 800,000 page views on the Times website as well as from press critics like Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams, who said the article "neatly encapsulates everything most despicable about the Times and its cultural coverage—its snotty, keep 'em at arm's length, can you believe these people? attitude, the way you can practically feel the reporter holding her nose while she writes."</p><p>"I wanted to say to people 'read the article,'" Horyn says. "I described her as a silhouette and an icon by virtue of her pouf and her body shape. I've acknowledged her and her impact. But am I going to be tough with her? Yeah. I don't think people understood it, honestly, and I don't know what they expected to read."</p><p></p><p>Then, as Fashion Week got under way, and said he is "not a great designer," but is successful because his clothes are made in China and are priced to sell. Later, in Europe, there was a stinging review of Balmain, a house that has achieved near-mythic status among the fashion crowd. "Yikes," she wrote. "Mr. Decarnin isn't one for change, but couldn't he have hit a fashion button other than redial?"</p><p>And then there was her review of Tommy Hilfiger, whose 25th anniversary show coincided with New York Fashion Week. Horyn deconstructed the invitation—a plastic swatch of privet in a transparent plastic box—describing it as a "perfect" metaphor for how the milestone felt like a marketing push. And that was just the beginning. She tore into the celebrities seated in the front row (Jennifer Lopez and Bradley Cooper) as well as the clothes. "For Mr. Hilfiger," she wrote, "the runway may be paved in imitation fieldstone."</p><p>"It was terrible," says Horyn, who's 54, a brunette, and on this afternoon wears a simple black dress, conveniently forgetting who designed it. She also sports a sparkly new ring given to her by her boyfriend, Art Ortenberg, the widower of Liz Claiborne. "When Ralph Lauren did his big anniversary party in Central Park, it was one of the most elegant evenings I can remember. So if Tommy's doing his anniversary, he has the ability to say, 'Do I really want to have all these cheesy celebrities?'—and celebrities that as far as I can see have no relationship to his brand. It's not friendly. It's not intimate. It's there to get some pictures and then the clothes come out… I found it very artificial."</p><p>Horyn may be a big admirer of Lauren's, but it's worth noting that he hasn't escaped her barbs. In 2003, Horyn shocked many in the fashion world with a description of Lauren as a "little man astride a horse swinging a polo mallet."</p><p>It was neither the first nor the last time Horyn jabbed at someone's looks in print. This year, she drew fire when she wrote about Mad Men's Christina Hendricks' appearance at the Golden Globes, including : "You don't put a big girl in a big dress."</p><p>"It hurt my feelings," . "I thought that dress was stunning. I stand by that dress to this day. I had just gotten back from my honeymoon, and I felt beautiful."</p><p>In retrospect, Horyn thinks she made a mistake—though she says she didn't mean to be derisive about the actress' weight. "She's a lovely girl," Horyn says. "I should have stepped back and explained what that person meant. It wasn't about Christina's figure. It's about what looks best."</p><p>Horyn is less apologetic about Wang, saying she wants to bring a critical eye to those admired uncritically. "I don't think that's any different than Christopher Hitchens talking about Mother Teresa," she says. "With Alexander, he's a smart kid, I admire the business that he's built, but you have to be critical of what he's done. You can't just say 'oh well, he's young and he's working hard, he's putting a product on the runway.' I found that show boring. I may not have found other shows boring, but I found that one boring."</p><p>And a boring show doesn't go over well with a woman who's spent more time in fashion than many career models or designers. Horyn grew up in Ohio. Her mother worked for a foundation; her father was a journalist who worked for The Columbus Citizen-Journal, covering, among other things, executions. After graduating high school, Horyn went to Barnard College, got a master's in journalism from Northwestern, and went to work at the Virginian-Pilot, where, for the next six years, she covered everything from school boards to home furnishings.</p><p>In her mid-twenties, single and pregnant with her only son, she moved to the Detroit News and her first job as a fashion reporter. After that, The Washington Post Style Section came calling, then Vanity Fair, where she covered celebrities and fashion designers. When the Times' late fashion critic Amy Spindler was hired as the Times Magazine's style editor in 1998, Horyn replaced her at the paper and quickly earned a reputation for not pulling punches.</p><p>“She’s not neutered, let’s put it that way.”—Donna Karan </p><p>"Amy and I shared the same Midwestern quality, which is that we want people to be better," Horyn says. (Spindler died of cancer six years ago). "We have standards. We want people to be not just good but very good. And I can be tough on people, sometimes too tough, especially with the most creative. I once called one of Tom Ford's collections freakish and ugly."</p><p>Today, few designers ban her from coming to their shows, but they don't seem eager to acknowledge Horyn's importance either. During Fashion Week, I went from show to show, and party to party, asking about Horyn. Almost everyone declined comment or claimed that they don't actually read her reviews.</p><p></p><p>"I prefer to look at beautiful pictures in magazines like American Vogue and French Vogue by editors like Anna Wintour and Carine Roitfeld," Karl Lagerfeld told me.</p><p>"I don't think reviews really matter anymore," said Carolina Herrera.</p><p>Donna Karan allowed that getting swiped by Horyn "still hurts."</p><p>"You can agree or disagree with her, but it's definitely passionate. She's not neutered, let's put it that way."</p><p>Not that her criticisms are always easy to make sense of. One of the favorite pastimes of fashionistas is reading aloud from Cathy Horyn and asking "what does this even mean?" Take a review from the current fashion season: "If irony is the thread that runs through modern fashion, then the Chanel cardigan jacket is the eye of the needle."</p><p>"I think her sentences are like a series of poses. It's as if she's walking down the runway as she's writing," said Bob Colacello, who covers society and culture for Vanity Fair. "She's intelligent, but I think she's trying to make something out of fashion that it isn't."</p><p>Sarah Jessica Parker was kinder. "I love reading her, and I'm rightly intimidated by her, which I like… She's Pauline Kael."</p><p>Another oft-heard criticism is that Horyn doesn't seem to like anything—a charge somewhat countered by her focus on the horse race between Nicolas Ghesquiere at Balenciaga and Raf Simons at Jil Sander to be leader of the fashion pack—a focus that sometimes gets in the way of addressing important style developments taking place off the runway.</p><p>In 2009, as the global economy had begun its meltdown, Horyn wrote an article called "What's Wrong With Vogue?" in which she criticized the magazine for running a piece about a rich woman going to Walmart for the first time, calling it "embarrassing" and "out of touch."</p><p>Yet during the entire presidential election of 2008, Horyn was completely silent about Sarah Palin and what her style/presentation indicated about the changing image of women in the Republican Party. Similarly, style arbiters like Lady Gaga, Madonna, and Britney Spears—who connect high fashion to mass culture in important ways and influence how millions of women dress (for better and for worse)—receive scant coverage from Horyn. She has barely addressed Project Runway. "I just don't really have anything to say about it," she says, with a shrug.</p><p>This season, , , , and . The former Gucci designer's womens-wear presentation was held for a hundred people at his Madison Avenue store and the scaled-back quality was part of what she most appreciated. "It was an incredible experience," Horyn says. "There were no celebrities in the front row, so he was able to control everything and really make you look at the clothes… He could tell a unique story by putting those clothes on a variety of beautiful women, all ages, not calling attention to the fact that some of them are famous, and some of them are older and have all kinds of body shapes. That's what everybody had their mouths open about. It was so beautiful. What an idea. What fashion. And you don't come away with that often."</p><p>Plus: .</p><p>Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.</p><p>Kanye West was on stage to introduce , who was given the International Award celebrating her work with the Paris-based brand, Celine. Philo has turned the moribund label into a powerhouse of minimalism. But given West’s history there was a good chance that he might take the opportunity to go rogue about how some other designer was more deserving or that he himself deserved the award. Would there be some sort of signature West wackiness? No, no. He was on his best behavior. Indeed, Philo’s skill was dynamic enough that it practically made West go weepy as he shared his love for her work and admitted to even trying on some of her womenswear at the Celine store in Paris, even though he knew he’d have hell to pay on the hip-hop blogs.</p><p>Dressed in a simple black suit and white shirt, Klein described how he launched his business back in 1968 with a collection of four coats and three dresses, an investment of $10,000 and the help of his childhood friend Barry Schwartz. Klein, reading from notes, explained how he booked a room—No. 613 as he recalled—at an old Manhattan hotel favored by out-of-town manufacturers. All these years later, Klein still could describe the weekend his career took off: it began on a Thursday evening, he said, when a representative from Bonwit Teller, at the time one of the top specialty store chains in the country, arrived to look at the clothes. Liking what he saw, the brusque merchant explained that he’d be sending a buyer over the next day. And on Saturday, Klein would meet the company president. And then in the telling of the story, Klein paused. He still remembers the exact words of the merchant: “And then you will have been discovered.”</p><p>Under Bailey, Burberry was among the first luxury houses to its fashion show, beginning with the Spring/Summer 2010 collection. It was the first brand to stream in when it hosted events in five cities around the world—and then took over the megatron in London’s Picadilly Circus, which is viewed by approximately 1.2 million people a week. Burberry’s biannual shows are, as Vanessa Friedman, fashion editor of the puts it, “the event of the British fashion season.” But with Twitter and Facebook, it has become a global event as well. (Both “Christopher Bailey” and “Burberry” trended globally on Twitter during the show last season.) Soon, Bailey realized that his online audience wanted to buy clothes they were seeing—and they didn’t want to wait half a year to do so. This prompted the launch of “runway to retail,” which allows viewers to purchase items from Burberry’s next collection online as soon as they come down the runway.</p><p>Diane von Furstenberg unleashed vibrant color, Victoria Beckham channeled her sporty side, and Gisele Bundchen made a surprise appearance at Alexander Wang. See highlights from New York Fashion Week. </p><p>Ninja met Yo-Landi a decade ago, and they began work on a rap group five years ago, before finally unveiling Die Antwoord in 2008. The following year, they released their debut album, , for free on their website. In early 2010, their wild music videos for “” and “” hit YouTube—the latter causing their site to crash. They were suddenly the toast of the music industry, being courted by record companies, including Interscope, which flew the band to Los Angeles and offered them a $1 million contract. They accepted, and re-released their debut in 2010 on Interscope shingle Cherrytree Records to critical acclaim.<br></p><p>The seating arrangement at a fashion show has always telegraphed power and prestige; Vogue editor Anna Wintour, for instance, sat front and center at Jason Wu this season, draped in fur and dripping with jewels, flanked by The September Issue's breakout star, creative director Grace Coddington. But that hierarchy is being upended by the industry's hottest new trend: streaming shows live, which bestows first-row status on anyone with a laptop and a high-speed Internet connection.</p><p>This season both Emporio Armani and Dolce &amp; Gabbana streamed their fall-winter 2010 shows live from Milan. Armani sent out models draped in black velvet, transmitting the show to the label's new Web site, while D&amp;G's show was viewable exclusively on iPhones, showing off the newest strict but sexy designs. Burberry one-upped them by offering not just a live Webcast but also providing 3-D viewing to select members of the press, who gathered at locations in Tokyo, Dubai, Los Angeles, and Paris, where they donned glasses while sipping champagne and nibbling on canapés. In New York, Alexander Wang and Rodarte both partnered with photographer Nick Knight's London-based creative agency, SHOWstudio, to stream their shows, resulting in much larger audiences than the hundreds that typically turn up for a live show.</p><p>By streaming their collections for the masses, designers are moving the fashion circus into a much bigger tent. Aided by the huge popularity of TV shows like Project Runway and America's Top Model, they are transforming the place of high fashion in popular culture. "Fashion hasn't managed to take itself out of its tiny niche market," says Knight. "We're trying to turn fashion shows into much broader entertainment events."</p><p>The late Alexander McQueen jump-started the trend when he partnered with SHOWstudio to stream his spring-summer 2010 show last October. Titled Plato's Atlantis, the futuristic baroque collection, featuring 10-inch stilettos that resembled alien appendages, was paraded down the catwalk to a soundtrack that debuted Lady Gaga's single "Bad Romance." Stoked by a Twitter tip from Gaga about the new single, hordes of enthusiastic viewers crashed SHOWstudio's server, making it impossible to determine the total Web audience. Since then, however, the footage has received more than 3 million hits on YouTube, dramatically eclipsing the in-house live audience of several hundred.</p><p>The move toward streaming represents more than the democratization of fashion. It's shrinking the delay between the time clothes are unveiled and when the wider public sees them in magazines and stores—usually about four months. "We're live reporting from the shows, and the public is seeing the fashion as it happens on the catwalk," says Knight. "They want it now. If there are, say, 200,000 people who want a Rodarte dress, they should be able to get that message out to the designers." That creates new opportunities for business, including designers selling directly to consumers over the Web, even while their shows are still in progress.</p><p>Not everyone relishes that prospect. For one thing, many designers are already struggling to meet production schedules and wouldn't be able to handle the added load. And some believe speeding up the fashion cycle will only destroy the industry's mystique. During a recent discussion at Fashion Institute of Technology, Donna Karan advocated a return to making fashion shows industry-only events and preventing the dissemination of information via Internet or wire services—in effect reinforcing the traditional hierarchy. But Anita Bitton, a casting agent who works on Alexander Wang's shows, believes that designers ultimately have no choice but to make maximum use of technology. "The archaic idea of hierarchies and controlled access is being broken down," she says. "Tech-savvy consumers want to be informed, they want to have a voice, and they no longer want to be told what to do. It's up to us to embrace and utilize [new media] to its best potential."</p><p>In any case, the revolution is likely just beginning. Labels and designers including Yves Saint Laurent and British avant-garde talent Gareth Pugh are eschewing shows altogether during certain seasons, opting instead to produce and present films to editors both in person and online. Others are experimenting with meeting instant consumer demand; New York's Proenza Schouler offered customers the chance to purchase their new PS. 11 handbag via their Web site for 24 hours following their recent fall-winter 2010 live show. Burberry is offering both accessories and outerwear from their fall-winter '10 collection for immediate order on their Web site. Clearly designers are seeking to develop a viable blueprint for growth in the digital age. After all, embracing the future is what fashion is all about.</p><p></p><p>Despite the overcast skies, designers kept it light and vibrant on Day Seven of fall fashion week. Michael Kors brightened the morning at Bryant Park. His versatile pastel collection included scores of lavender dresses, pistachio tops and aqua separates—and of course a few little black dresses (with tastefully cutout midriffs, sheer hemlines and zipper detailing). Lauren Conrad (and a bevy of paparazzi) showed up early at Nanette Lepore, where hints of neon, pleated trousers and berry-hued dresses warmed up the catwalk underneath chunky neutral knits. Anna Wintour, Grace Coddington, Carine Roitfeld and Zac Posen were front and center for Oscar de la Renta’s afternoon show. Models floated down the runway in textured pieces, from black lace gowns, organza confections, eyelet trimmed skirt-suits and crochet dresses, giving uptown girls (and perhaps Michelle Obama?) something to look forward too for spring.</p><p>Proenza Schouler closed the day with a truly innovative collection full of clever touches, sublime cuts and a serious sense of humor. Models stomped down the runway in layered dresses and skirts with tromp l’oeil tiers that looked like jackets casually tied around their waists. The racing lines of surfer shorts found their way onto a smart pair of slacks, and there were plenty of tough blazers and breezy skirts to go around. But the highlight of the show was a series of cocktail dresses in vibrant, aquatic patterns adorned with tinsel—assuring that all the most fashionable young starlets will be dressing like Christmas trees next spring.</p><p></p><p>______________________________________________</p><p><br></p><p>Like and for updates all day long.</p> <p><p>Robin Givhan is a special correspondent for style and culture for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. In 1995 she became the fashion editor of The Washington Post, where she covered the news, trends, and business of the international fashion industry. She contributed to Runway Madness, No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade and the Rights of Garment Workers and . She is the author, along with the Washington Post photo staff, of . In 2006 she won the Pulitzer Prize in criticism for her fashion coverage. She lives and works in Washington, D.C.</p></p> <p>For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at </p><p></p><p>But the shows must go on. And on they went, beginning with BCBG Max Azria’s powerful collection of color-blocked outerwear. The collection at Chado Ralph Rucci on Thursday featured a fringed fur cocoon coat and structured cropped jackets—staples that also appeared on Yigal Azouël’s runway Friday morning. One of the most buzzed-about young models of Fashion Week, Jacquelyn Jablonski, opened Azouël’s show in a black jacket with gorilla-like shearling sleeves. Cynthia Rowley—who usually presents colorful and feminine clothes—opted for a darker collection this season, which also included tiered fringes and feathers on dresses and tops.</p><p>Later on Friday afternoon, Jason Wu took the freezing fashion set down the rabbit hole, sending playful, Alice in Wonderland-inspired looks down the pink carpeted runway. One ombre bell-shaped dress appeared to be dripping in black paint—and looked directly borrowed from the illustrated pages of Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece.</p><p>More Fashion Week Coverage from The Daily Beast <br>• <br>• <br>• <br> • <br>• The fantasy continued on Prabal Gurung’s runway Saturday afternoon. The show drew an A-list crowd, from Rachel Zoe and Anna Wintour to Zoe Saldana and Barbara Bush. Gurung—a young Nepalese designer who has, in the last season, became fashion’s new "It" boy—did not disappoint: The collection featured a range of looks that showed off both his conceptual talents and skilled tailoring, from color-blocked camel and wool cocoon coats to draped chiffon dresses with gazar ruffles. A collection standout was a strapless nude dress, covered in feathers and Swarovski jewels. “It has been an incredible first year,” Gurung said of the show. “I am here because of the tremendous support from the people who have trust in me. This truly has been a labor of love.”</p><p>We’re only a few days in, yet Fashion Week’s schedule has, so far, been exhausting: More and more designers have featured collections away from the tents, which results in a week more spread out across Manhattan than ever before. Because Fashion Week will move to Lincoln Center in the fall, there’s a nostalgia that permeates the tents at Bryant Park. Fashion’s old guard—Oscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera—have yet to show, but until they do, the excitement is all about the young designers: Alexander Wang, Peter Som, Prabal Gurung, and Jason Wu.</p><p></p><p>The biggest scene of all, however, may have been Naomi Campbell’s Fashion for Relief show, which raised more than $100,000 to benefit Haiti. Though Campbell scraped the show together at the last minute, everyone turned out: Tickets were sold to the public (and sold out in four days), and—a welcome change—the show featured more boldfaced names on the runway than in the front row. Chris Brown, British singer Estelle, Kelly Osbourne, and many other stars, took a trip down the runway.</p><p>Daphne Guinness, who recently a tribute of McQueen for The Daily Beast, channeled Lady Gaga in a gold bodysuit and webbed face mask. Even Donna Karan and Diane Von Furstenberg strutted the catwalk—but stopped to high five each other in the middle. British "It" girl Agyness Deyn lost her footing twice in her high heels—and finally removed her shoes to applause.</p><p>The most moving moment of the night, however, was a tribute to Alexander McQueen. Patti Smith’s “Because the Night” began to play, Guinness and Campbell, joined by models Helena Christensen, Karen Elson, and Angela Lindvall congregated on the end of the runway, all in designs by McQueen. “Alexander McQueen” flashed in big letters on the wall behind the runway, and the women—who all appeared to be crying—walked off the runway, hand in hand.</p><p>Plus: .</p>The theme of 's Fall/Winter 2011 show was "American Legends." As von Furstenberg described in her program notes, her woman this season dreams "under the open sky, she rides the untraveled trail." The collection captured this pioneer's spirit, with several nods to the West: cowboy boots trimmed with fringe, bright alpaca vests, and gaucho jumpsuits. For evening, Von Furstenberg gave us several floor-length sequined wrap-dresses, which seemed to be modern takes on the iconic mermaid dresses of in the 1970s.<p></p><p>The events are taking place on opposite sides of the continent and showcase seemingly opposite poles of human endeavor, but they serve a shared purpose: celebrating skill and ingenuity, turning bright young talents into heroes, churning out new models of physical perfection over which the rest of us can obsess for the rest of this long, cold winter.</p><p>But in the wake of those two deaths last week—designer Alexander McQueen's apparent suicide, discovered February 11, the first day of Fashion Week, and 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili's fatal crash during a practice run just hours before the start of the Olympics—both now proceed under a pall.</p><p>At first, there were touching memorials—flowers at the McQueen store in Manhattan and under the Olympic rings—and tearful moments of silence. Then, gradually, the old spirit returned. More than 65 million people watched the Olympic Opening Ceremony on NBC. While in New York, Kirsten Dunst, Chloe Sevigny, Jason Schwartzman, and Alexander Wang-clad throngs showed up for Saturday night's Opening Ceremony party at the Ace Hotel.</p><p>Already the parallel spectacles have yielded new stars: In Vancouver, there are Torah Bright, the aptly named Australian snowboard princess, and women's freestyle mogul gold-medalist, American Hannah Kearney. In New York, designer Prabal Gurung is fashion's " ," and model Jacqueline Jablonski, the sloe-eyed goddess du jour.</p><p>The media frenzy around both events has also continued unabated. Bob Costas and his fashion counterpart, supermodel Coco Rocha (who's been tweeting and broadcasting non-stop for "Fashion Week TV"), have ably guided viewers through heartbreak and triumph, through Apolo Anton Ohno's medal-winning skate and Diane von Furstenberg's latest array of textured knitwear.</p><p></p><p>There have been bloopers to lighten the mood: The Olympic torch failed to rise and the Korean short track speedskating team wiped out together. While the normally steady Agyness Deyn fell twice during a runway walk at Naomi Campbell's benefit for Haiti. And there have been touching instances of patriotism: The U.S. athletes in their Ralph Lauren-designed uniforms marching together on Friday night; the large hoisted high above Marc Jacobs' show.</p><p>And, of course, there have been plenty of VIPs preening for the cameras. The Bidens, Donald Sutherland, Sarah McLachlan, k.d. lang and Arnold Schwarzenegger took time out for the Winter Games. And who hasn't made an appearance at Fashion Week? It's been difficult to walk through Bryant Park without running into Jared Leto, Victoria Beckham, Mena Suvari, Amber Rose, or the cast of Gossip Girl.</p><p>And there's still much to come. VIEW OUR GALLERY of the highs and lows of the Olympics and Fashion Week.</p><p>Plus: .</p><p></p><p>This time around, Barneys’ Fashion’s Night Out event included appearances by… Alexander Wang and the Olsen twins! Plus ping pong, karaoke, and musical chairs for the crowd (some of whom looked old enough to legally drink the free booze) and appearances by downtown darlings Proenza Schouler, Rodarte, and Rag and Bone.</p><p>In the months leading up to this year’s spectacular, some in the fashion business quietly grumbled about the dismal financials of the night. It costs around $20,000 to throw a pretty basic event, keeping a storefront open late, paying staff, hiring a DJ and serving up plastic flutes of cheap Champagne. For this, brands racked up little in the way of sales and also little in the way of good publicity because when everyone throws a party with DJs and free Champagne, it’s difficult to stand out. But few who contemplated scaling back this year actually followed suit.</p><p>It costs around $20,000 to throw a pretty basic event for the night.</p><p>• At the beginning of the night, , “It's early, but I think right out of the gate it seems to have become so much bigger."</p><p>Hundreds of people stood on line to get into a mock-up Parisian flea market at the Opening Ceremony store at Manhattan’s Ace Hotel around 7:30 p.m., but few were actually shopping inside.</p><p></p><p>"I haven't seen anything I really liked," said Rachel Snyder, a young woman milling around the Alexander Wang kiosk with a glass of white wine.</p><p>"It's kind of hard to shop with so much going on." said her friend Jillian Zurcher, 21 and unemployed.</p><p>No one had trouble finding the open bar.</p><p>At the Intermix store downtown, a crush of RSVP-ed guests danced to a house DJ, drank free cocktails passed around by the wait staff, mugged for photographers, and mulled around with celebrity guests Daisy Lowe and Byrdie Bell. A reporter stationed at the cash register observed two transactions in the first half-hour of business: A $25 Fashion’s Night Out T-shirt to Jennifer Yau, who works in sales for the denim brand Mavi, and a second shirt a few minutes later.</p><p>“I'm on a tight budget these days,” Yau said. “If I see something that jumps out at me I might splurge.”</p><p>Midway through the evening, there had been two more purchases: two more Fashion’s Night Out souvenir shirts. Asked near the end of the evening if any major sales had come through, a sales girl looked around to see if anyone was listening, and then said, “No, just a lot of Fashion's Night Out shirts.”</p><p>David Widjaja, a fashion stylist, said, “Compared to last year, I hope [FNO] serves its purpose… at the end of the day, you spend a lot, you need to see some economy moving.”</p><p>He was out with his best friend, Lisa Tam, who said wasn't planning on doing any shopping. She’s unemployed.</p><p>A few blocks away, Ann Klutz and a friend waited in a line of about 25 people outside Catherine Malandrino’s Meatpacking District store, where store personnel were handing out free “Malandrino” branded shopping bags.</p><p>“We’ve been walking around and have accumulated all this free stuff and need a bag to put the stuff in,” Klootz said.</p><p>Did she buy anything?</p><p>“Some of the stores are too crowded to shop. I think it’s more about being out and having fun.”</p><p>Two T-shirts sold in around 40 minutes at the Trina Turk store nearby.</p><p>“I’m based in LA, and I was here for our presentation yesterday so I figured I’d stay and the city and see what happens,” Turk told The Daily Beast. “I wasn’t here for last year's, but I heard there were a lot of people hanging out, having a really good time but not a lot of purchases.”</p><p>Of course, there were impulse buys around town.</p><p>At Jeffrey, the crowd was thin, but their pockets were deep. One thirtysomething forked over his platinum AmEx card for a $1,200 pair of studded Christian Louboutin loafers. “I just loved them so much,” he said. Another shopper, 42-year-old Shawn, bought a $300 lace overlay skirt at Tory Burch earlier in the night. Early in the evening, around 100 customers lined up outside the Billionaire Boys Club for the privilege of dropping $80 on a special shirt.</p><p>All the way uptown, lines snaked around the corner at Bergdorf Goodman, where shoppers herded through barricades into the store. But for all the apparent demand, there was little evidence that money was changing hands inside.</p><p>Somewhere in the crush was Martina, a Chihuahua in a blue foxhair chubby and a string of jewels, running terribly late for the celebrity dog show on floor three.</p><p>Tinsley Mortimer, Kelly Rutherford, and others judged the affair, in the hands of merciless emcee, Robert Verdi, who proclaimed: “There have never been this many bitches in Bergdorf Goodman!” before the show began.</p><p>Crowds had been waiting in the center of the women's luxury retail section—between Marc Jacobs and Alaia—but had their backs to the clothes. They were focused on celebrity appearances, meeting their favorite designers, and then getting out of there.</p><p>“How can you shop?” Asked one onlooker motioning toward the crush of people blockading every clothes rack.</p><p>“Oh god no—not tonight!” said Kelly Rutherford when asked if she was actually shopping. “But it'll give me a chance to preview the clothes.”</p><p>Marchesa designer Keren Craig's basenji, Alabama, won the Sarah Jessica Pawwwker award. “Well, if I see something, I brought my credit card,” Craig said. “I think it’s so amazing that people are getting out. It’s such a good thing for the fashion community. I support it 100 percent.”</p><p>Designer Simon Spurr brought along his hulking, 90-pound pup Apollo. “I think the economy is turning back around,” he said. “Regardless of tonight, people are shopping again.”</p><p>Includes reporting from Jacob Bernstein, Rebecca Dana, Lauren Streib, Joyce Tang, Isabel Wilkinson, and Claire Howorth.</p><p>Plus: .</p><p>For Jessica Kaufman, the decision to attend Fashion’s Night Out happened at 3 p.m. Thursday, right after she got home from high school. That’s when the 16-year-old checked her Facebook page and saw a status update that Justin Bieber would be at Manhattan’s Dolce &amp; Gabbana store that night. She tossed on a dress and bolted for the door of her Westchester home—with her mother in tow. A few hours later, she was huddled inside the Madison Avenue store with a crowd of other squealing teens who had all shelled out $35 for the tube of lip gloss required for purchase to stand in an area of the store where you might glimpse Bieber. “I’m more in love with him than any person I’ve ever seen!” she squealed.</p><p>You might say that Sean Avery is the human equivalent of jock itch. It's his job, as the baddest badass in the National Hockey League, to annoy his opponents, to get under their skin—anything to gain an edge. Like the time he painted his fingernails black. "It was an experiment to see what a guy would do when he saw a fist coming at him and the nails are painted," he says. Or the time he turned his back on a game against New Jersey so he could wave his arms to block goalie Martin Brodeur's view and glare at him like a jackal. "I still remember the look on his face," says Avery. "I think at that point he thought I was officially out of my f–––ing mind." The NHL promptly outlawed that kind of diversionary tactic in what is now called "the Avery Rule." "I only got to do it once," he says, "but it was a good once."</p><p>If you met Avery on the street, though, you'd never guess he likes to get bloody. Quite the opposite. He may be the most hated guy in the NHL, but he's hands down its best-dressed player, too, with taste that runs to Alexander McQueen, Dries van Noten, Gucci and white patent-leather Saint Laurent shoes. Plenty of athletes are also known for being fashion plates: David Beckham, Roger Federer, Greg Norman. But Avery is cut from a different cloth, and not just because those guys are gentlemen and he's a professional jerk. His real passion is women's fashion—appreciating it, not wearing it. He started as a mini-clotheshorse growing up outside Toronto and gradually developed a taste for couture. With men's fashion, "you do suits and pants and that's about that," he says. "Women's clothes tell a story. That's what's interesting to me." Even though he left the New York Rangers to play for Dallas this year, Avery still makes it back to Manhattan for Fashion Week—he sat between Martha Stewart and Winona Ryder at the fall's Marc Jacobs show. He even spent the summer doing an internship at Vogue. "When you see a guy walking out of a game with a broken nose and a busted lip and two days later you see him at a Vera Wang show, it's probably confusing to some people," he says. "Or intriguing."</p><p>So intriguing that New Line has commissioned a screenplay based on his double life. It's sort of "The Devil Wears Prada" with skates and brawls. "I think it's going to be something that guys can take their girls to," says Avery, who envisions fellow Canadian Ryan Gosling playing him. His internship provided plenty of fish-out-of-ice stories. During one of his first trips to the magazine's cafeteria, he took too much food—making him the first Vogue staffer to do that—and promptly spilled beef stroganoff on a horrified woman. The fashion world is with him when he plays, too. On the road he travels with a big bag to hold his favorite magazines: American Vogue, French Vogue, British Vogue, V, V Men. The ribbing from the guys, of course, can get ugly. "They call me a fag, and I laugh," he says. "It's so narrow-minded and stereotypical." And unwise. If you make Sean Avery mad, you might get a fistful of black nail polish.</p><p>Harper Beckham’s an It-Girl: Move aside Anna Wintour, Harper Beckham may be the new HBIC of New York Fashion Week. The tiny tot has been spotted sitting front row and testing out her mother’s runway prior to its public debut. Her only competition? Alexander Wang’s Chanel-bag clad niece. []<br></p><p><br> New Costume Institute: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced their theme for next year’s Costume Institute exhibit. “Punk: Chaos to Couture” will open to the public on May 9 and will feature designers like Marc Jacobs, Dolce &amp; Gabbana, and Alexander Wang. But not before the museum’s annual splashy gala which will take place three days prior on the 6th, hosted by the likes of Rooney Mara, Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci, and of course, Anna Wintour. []<br></p><p><br> Baby #2 for Adriana Lima: Victoria’s Secret model Adriana Lima has given birth to a daughter named Sienna. This is the second child for Lima and husband Marko Jaric who already have Valentina, age 2 ½. []<br></p><p><br> A Costly Slap to the Face: Lynn Tesoro, the PR guru who was slapped in the face by an angry show goer at Zac Posen, is suing her perpetrator for $1 million, claiming “assault, battery, emotional distress, slander and/or libel.” []<br></p><p>The bill addresses a handful of voting practices that critics say ultimately makes it harder for people to participate in elections. Groups that conduct registration drives, such as the League of Women Voters, now have to submit completed voter applications within 48 hours of filling them out, or face fines up to $1,000. People who move to a different county within the state are required to cast provisional ballots—historically counted only about half the time—if they fail to notify their local election board of their move before Election Day. And early voting, which helps people who, for various reasons, don’t vote on Election Day, is now restricted to the period between the 10th and third day before the general election. This includes the Sunday before Election Day, which in 2008 brought many African-Americans to the polls for church-voting drives known as “Souls to the Polls.”</p><p>From vintage-clothing store owner to reality-TV star, Project Runway Season One winner Jay McCarroll isn't your average fashion success story. Since being touted as "one-to-watch" by the likes of Nina Garcia and Heidi Klum, and having subsequently staged a runway show at New York Fashion Week in 2006, the fashion world has heard very little from very vocal designer. But thanks to a new documentary, 11 Minutes (named for the average length of a fashion show), the Pennsylvania native can extend his 15 minutes of fame. Over fish and chips at the London Hotel, the always-entertaining McCarroll spoke to The Daily Beast about how fashion is like high school (he’s the band nerd), why Project Runway is not reality, and what separates him from Alexander Wang.</p><p> “I don’t feel like making women sexy. I didn’t grow up that way. I grew up with middle American women who didn’t care what color sweatshirt they had on.” </p><p>How did you get involved with the film? </p><p>I'm really self-obsessed and a real ruthless self-promoter… I'm kidding. No, I wanted to do it. I did it as a reaction to my role on Project Runway and the fact that everyone thought I could just make clothes quick. I always wanted to show the process of clothes—the whole dog and pony show of doing a show at Fashion Week. It was very low budget. They basically shot it with one camera person.</p><p>Do you miss not showing at Fashion Week? </p><p>No, not at all. It's fun to go to those things. That's the funny thing about fashion: I could come back six seasons from now and it would be refreshing for people to see. Or I could never come back and no one would care.</p><p>Is there a comeback in your future? </p><p>No. You have to have been somewhere to make a comeback. I didn't really get anywhere. I showed one blip of a season and that was it.</p><p>Are you always so self-effacing? </p><p>No, am I being that bad? I'm just realistic. I'm not one to say "I'm working on this fabulous collection, girl; it is ferosh. You are going to love it." I'm just not like that.</p><p>Is Project Runway realistic? </p><p>No, you're never a young designer and someone hands you an envelope of money and says, go make something. And then you're in a workroom with other designers. And then you stand on a runway and have a bunch of people make you feel like shit. And then they pay for a show at Bryant Park. That's not reality for anybody. It was for me. But it does give a glimpse into a bit of the creative process—like, here's an inspiration and make it into a garment. That really does happen in real fashion life.</p><p>Do you think Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn are genuinely interested in helping launch careers, or is it just a show for show's sake? </p><p>Um, option B. The show was a lot of fun; it was very motivating. You're in fashion prison basically. They take your wallet; you don't have Internet. You're just living and breathing clothes. I don't have any regrets. But the aftermath was tricky. We were in a vacuum for three weeks. Then it comes out six months later and you're a household name. And it's, like, go be Calvin Klein. It's tough. Not everyone can be Alexander Wang. It's who you know. If you're a Parsons grad, if you're part of the New York social scene and you're fucking hanging out with Erin Wasson—and your father conveniently owns an apparel-manufacturing factory in China. Then there are the Alexander McQueens where it is talent; or you are Richie Rich and you are a club kid and you're just doing it for the love of it. So there are many different versions of it.</p><p>Where do you fall into the mix? </p><p>Working at Dairy Queen. I don't know. You just live your life. But, because I was proclaimed on national television as being "the next big thing," now everyone expects it. If I want to become a dentist right now, that's my fucking choice. I'm motivated but I'm not the most fashion-motivated person. I just want to make clothes. That was all it ever was. I don't feel like making women sexy. I mean, "Do you want to always feel sexy?" I didn't grow up that way. I grew up with middle American women who didn't care what color sweatshirt they had on.</p><p>Maybe they just don't know any better... </p><p>I kind of like that. I don't want to be a tastemaker. I've always liked the weirder end of things.</p><p>Did doing the movie give you a better idea? </p><p>Yeah, it helped me figure out what to get away from—this nonsense. The dog and pony show on 42nd Street. At Bryant Park you have to pay these people $40,000 to set up a tent for four hours. And as a young designer you're, like, this is pointless. It's like high school, the industry here. It's been a little stuffy the past ten years. But I think there is a new group of people who are really exciting. Like the Rodarte girls. Their collection this week was so gorgeous. Oh, Proenza Schouler was crapola in the city. I don't get them. Does anyone get them?</p><p>So keeping with the high school metaphor, what clique would you roll with? </p><p>The band nerds. I was a band nerd in high school and I think that's pretty much my role in life. And Anna Wintour is the principal. And Diane von Furstenberg would be president of student council…</p><p>What impression do you want people to leave the film with? </p><p>Just the fact that it's hard. There are a lot of factors that go into putting my name inside of the back of a T-shirt. It's a lot of people: It's hair and makeup, publicists, interns, shoes, sales. It's too much. I always say, the day Sean Puffy Combs won menswear designer of the year was the day I gave up on fashion in New York. Justin Timberlake with Anna Wintour in the front row… it's a joke. But I'm part of it.</p><p>Alisa Gould-Simon is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor of The Daily Beast’s Fashion Week coverage. She also covers fashion and culture for BlackBook, New York and PAPER among other publications.</p><p>This year, photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin photographed each of the nominees and honorees for the CFDA Journal, which will be distributed during Monday night’s event. “We wanted to do really simple and classic portraits,” Trey Laird, graphics creative director of the awards, tells The Daily Beast. “[Inez and Vinoodh] worked to portray each designer in a new way. Marc Jacobs, for example, appears shirtless with tattoos—but also in a suit. “Sometimes people shoot Marc in a sensational way,” Laird says. “So there is something very elegant about these pictures.”</p><p>Skrillex (Sonny Moore) to Newsweek &amp; The Daily Beast’s Marlow Stern, but the megapopular DJ now refuses to talk on camera. Undeterred, Beast TV assigned director Jacob Septimus to go “In Search of Skrillex.” This short documentary investigates one musician’s very human struggle to bring electronic music into the mainstream.</p><p></p><p>The red petal print, silk organza gown wasn’t so much an as a broad statement about the new realities of the fashion industry. In choosing a dress from Alexander McQueen, Mrs. Obama championed the cause of artisan design, the legacy of bespoke tailoring, and the staggering creativity that can be nurtured in the frock trade when it is at its best. The sleeveless dress, with its asymmetrical neckline, was created by a house that represents the designer imagination at its most indulgent and devilish. And in wearing the gown to honor China, a country that many view with disdain for its abundance of cheap labor, counterfeit products, and poor labor practices, Mrs. Obama seemed to be recognizing the country’s inevitable place in the fashion cycle and giving it its due. Indeed, Chinese consumers represent a vast new marketplace for designer companies, and the production quality of its factories continues to improve. In short, Mrs. Obama’s choice was an optimistic celebration of all that fashion can be and it seemed to suggest that China was welcome to be a part of that vision.</p><p>The dress also served as a razzle-dazzle fashion moment. An American first lady was embracing a brand known for its willingness to push boundaries, to agitate, and even to offend. The house, founded in 1992 by , has found its inspiration in everything from medieval armor to witch-hunts. (Oh, how far the East Wing has come from the sedate days of Oleg Cassini and Arnold Scaasi!) Lee McQueen could see beauty in the morose and even the morbid. Even though his great talent was rooted in the strict tailoring expertise he gained as an apprentice on Savile Row, there was never anything subtle or reserved about the brand. He was a showman who indulged in ostentation and flamboyance. His ready-to-wear was often created with the lavish attention to detail and the handcrafted quality normally reserved for couture.</p><p>When , the creative reins of the company were handed to his longtime assistant . This dress was pulled from Burton’s recently presented resort collection for the house. It was originally shown with short puffy sleeves; the version Mrs. Obama wore was cut to reveal her famously sculpted arms.</p><p></p><p>After McQueen died, many fashion observers questioned whether the house would, or even could, continue without its founder, who had injected so much of his personality, and his anguish, into each collection. But the brand’s owner, Gucci Group, moved forward without missing a season and Burton seems to have been able to channel the essence of the label, although without its often deeply dark moods. For an international fashion industry that has lost one of its most innovative designers, the first lady’s decision to support the house by wearing one of its gowns on such an auspicious occasion is an extraordinary expression of support for a kind of creativity that is neither safe nor tidy.</p><p>The choice is also intriguing because McQueen, who was British, has no connections—at least no obvious ones—to China. Before the dress debuted, it seemed more likely that Mrs. Obama might have chosen something by Jason Wu, the Taiwanese-born designer of her inaugural gown, or by Vera Wang, who is of Chinese descent and who was a guest at the dinner. There’s also any number of young designers in New York who have familial connections to China who could have been tapped for the honor. Instead, only the color of the dress paid direct homage to China; red symbolizes good luck and happiness. And nothing, frankly, was overtly American.</p><p>This dress, less body conscious and richly adorned than Mrs. Obama’s previous state dinner gowns by Naeem Khan and Peter Soronen, seemed to be more of a celebration of the global fashion industry rather than a more narrowly focused desire to spotlight the creativity of China or any American designers who can claim a familial connection to it.</p><p>In Mrs. Obama’s considered fashion message, her full-skirted dress, from a British design house worn in celebration of a Chinese president, struck a blow for creativity. In grand and sweeping terms, one could argue that it symbolized the ability of a designer’s imagination to cross borders, connect different cultures, and ultimately express itself in a singular moment of beauty.</p><p>Put more simply, Mrs. Obama made a surprising fashion choice, but ultimately, it seemed like the right one.</p><p>Plus: .</p><p>Robin Givhan is a special correspondent for style and culture for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. In 1995 she became the fashion editor of The Washington Post, where she covered the news, trends, and business of the international fashion industry and wrote a weekly style column. She is the author, along with The Washington Post photo staff, of Michelle: Her First Year as First Lady . In 2006, she won the Pulitzer Prize in criticism for her fashion coverage. She lives and works in Washington, DC.</p><p></p><p>The image of Pelosi marching through Washington on Sunday, with her giant gavel and a lock-step herd of Democrats at her back, is the one that will illustrate history textbooks and haunt Rush Limbaugh’s dreams. It looked as if America’s grandmother ducked out of her Easter brunch, between Bellinis, to dramatically recast the government’s approach to national health and welfare.</p><p>Closeups show her manicure was perfect. Her hair, as always, was neatly coiffed, with five carefully applied blond highlights emanating, just so, from the center of her scalp. Her accessories were lovely, her shoes dyed to match.</p><p>The look was remarkably on trend, if inadvertently so. For their fall collections, many top designers showed versions of the traditional power suit, deconstructing and reimagining that old career-gal standard into something with a little more personality. Alexander Wang cut up and re-stitched pinstripes. Dries van Noten experimented with tailoring. Zac Posen went with—yes, lavender.</p><p>It’s a historic moment for the working woman, the one who hustles night and day to wrangle 219 votes for a sweeping legislative victory and also those who struggle toward marginally less stratospheric goals. With her subtle, maternal sense of style, Pelosi is helping to create a new archetype of sophisticated femininity, in Washington and around the country. Come September, all the most fashionable ladies will look a little like the speaker of the House.</p><p>Pelosi’s aesthetic has barely changed over her tenure in public office. That lavender suit has made dozens of appearances. Pelosi doesn’t have a stylist, according to a source close to her. She’s useless with a blow dryer and allots 20 minutes a session with an expert at a salon, coming and going with clockwork precision and spending the whole time studying notes. For the most part, her husband, Paul, picks out her clothes.</p><p>Gary Croteau of Salon Mario Russo in Boston does Pelosi’s hair from time to time, as well as a number of other high-powered women’s, including Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s. “Anna is basically the Nancy Pelosi of fashion,” he says. Pelosi, for her fearsome authority and consistent style, could likewise be called the Anna Wintour of Congress.</p><p>The speaker has been going for a softer look lately, Croteau said. “She’s told me before that the temptation people have when they do her hair is to make it look very helmet-like just because of who she is. She wants it to look good all day, but doesn’t want it to look hard.”</p><p>A helmet might have been useful at some stages of the debate, but Pelosi managed to emerge looking like a warrior. Every day she turned up power-suited for battle. She invariably adds a feminine touch, a strategy often employed by women in positions of power. Madeleine Albright had her ; Nancy has her .</p><p></p><p>Purple, the color of bipartisanship, has been Pelosi’s go-to wardrobe shade at major moments throughout her term as speaker. She wore the same lavender suit and pearls to President Obama’s first State of the Union address, on Jan. 27. (Like first lady Michelle Obama, Pelosi is not afraid to repeat a look.) She wore eggplant for a March 2 press conference to discuss the state of health-care reform negotiations outside her congressional office in Washington. She went with more of a cranberry hue for a Jan. 14 speech at the House Democratic Caucus retreat, and back in November, she rolled out the lavender number again for a joint session of Congress.</p><p>She’s useless with a blow dryer and allots 20 minutes a session with an expert at a salon, coming and going with clockwork precision and spending the whole time studying notes. </p><p>“It’s the color of suffragettes,” she recently told a friend.</p><p>It isn’t easy for path-breaking female public figures—or first female anythings—to balance a feminine aesthetic with the need to act tough in a room full of men. Hillary Clinton took constant drubbing for her fashion choices throughout her husband’s campaign and presidency, including during their own go at health-care reform. Pelosi has caught flak for her taut skin, remarkably smooth and lineless for a 70-year-old grandmother. On the other side of the aisle, right-wing clotheshorse Sarah Palin has grappled with a whole host of sartorial issues, from her spendy campaign days to her .</p><p>Pelosi has long built her public image around an understated elegance, wearing tasteful silk scarves in and a full complement of . The look is grownup and feminine, not mannish in the least. Here is a mother of five, who obviously has spent plenty of time taking temperatures and feeding spoonfuls of cough medicine to sick kids—certainly more time than she’s spent at Barneys—agonizing over what to wear. It was comforting to see the woman in lavender leading the pack for health-care reform.</p><p>And, all things considered, it was good she also brought the gavel.</p><p>Plus: .</p><p>Rebecca Dana is a senior correspondent for The Daily Beast. A former editor and reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she has also written for The New York Times, The New York Observer, Rolling Stone and Slate, among other publications.</p><p>Google debuts its high-tech glasses on Diane von Furstenberg’s runway, Alexander Wang goes Day-Glo, and Victoria Beckham gets flirty. See highlights from the first four days of New York Fashion Week.<br></p><p></p><p>Beckham’s great crime, it seems, was her earnestness. She was not being ironic. She was not being self-consciously hip. And the cool girls turned on her. It wasn’t pretty.</p><p>While the fashion business is overwhelmingly for and about women, it always seems that women have the hardest time capturing the imagination of the industry’s king—or queen—makers. Today, women such as and Diane von Furstenberg have a large footprint on the American fashion business. Karan has evolved into the kind of designer who attempts to capture the soulfulness and power of femininity—and for fall she did it with a collection that was all lean pencil skirts, cinched waist jackets and luxurious coats done up in a sensual iridescence inspired by pearls. And von Furstenberg’s fall collection of artful print dresses layered over slender trousers, her raucously sparkling tunics and jackets, and her sense of easy glamour reaffirmed her status as the quintessential New York designer. She represents the supremely confident and sexy dame that most every young woman in the fashion industry imagines herself to be.</p><p></p><p>But while there seem to be countless young men in the fashion pipeline who have been anointed as the next great designer, the women who are their contemporaries seem to be quietly plugging along, without much fanfare and certainly without the labels of “darling,” “wunderkind” or anything else that suggests they have some kind of genius struggling to escape.</p><p>The list of male designers who have at one time been—or still are—fashion darlings is long, ranging from and Phillip Lim, to Zac Posen, Jason Wu, Thakoon Panichgul and now, . They are talented designers, but it also seems that they have an advantage simply from being male. They can charm and woo the female editors and models. It is as though what they have to say about feminine style and female allure is more legitimate, more believable, more acceptable or simply more exciting because it is coming from a man.</p><p>No one seemed to care very much that designer Scott Sternberg’s first runway show for mostly took place in the dark as the lights flashed and danced and did everything except actually illuminate the clothes. His collection reflected his eccentric take on classic American sportswear. But in many ways he seemed to be given a gentle pass for a show that was so lacking in production values that it did a disservice to his design work. There was no obvious chuckling or quiet gaffawing at the lighting mishap.</p><p>And there was, as always, breathless anticipation for Alexander Wang’s show that also seems a bit much considering his modest design acumen. is an expert at creating languid T-shirts, low-slung trousers, smartly functional accessories and the kind of outerwear that really reflects the swagger of the urban dweller. And his fall collection was, indeed, one of his best, with his quilted ponchos and slightly beaten-up knits. Indeed, the growth of his business is proof of his skill at discerning what it is that consumers want to wear. But rarely has the fashion industry been so enamored of a designer whose greatest skill is his understanding of the commercial market—not his artistry.</p><p>The rush of guests to get into Wang’s Saturday evening show at New York’s Pier 94 came to mind when designer Daryl Kerrigan presented her collection a few hours later and a dozen blocks farther south at Pier 59. Kerrigan, one could argue, was one of the first downtown designers to step into the mainstream spotlight. In many ways, she is the precursor to Wang. Her Daryl K business has been through countless ups and downs. The Harvard Business School is not going to be doing an affirmative case study of her company any time soon.</p><p>Still, when she presented her new collection, one wondered why she couldn’t stir the same kind of enthusiasm as Wang. Her collection was filled with refined forest-print capes, leather leggings under breezy oversize white shirts, and cropped trousers worn with sharply tailored jackets.</p><p>When Kerrigan appeared on the runway to take her bows, she lingered for a few moments with her hands clasped in front of her heart and she mouthed her thanks to the audience. It was a brief little scene but it seemed so terribly honest and sweet. Indeed, her gesture could even be described as earnest. And unfortunately, that wins a woman no friends in the fashion game.</p><p>Plus: .</p><p>Robin Givhan is a special correspondent for style and culture for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. In 1995 she became the fashion editor of The Washington Post, where she covered the news, trends and business of the international fashion industry and wrote a weekly style column. She has contributed to several books including Runway Madness, No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade and the Rights of Garment Workers , and Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers . She is the author, along with The Washington Post photo staff, of Michelle: Her First Year as First Lady . In 2006, she won the Pulitzer Prize in criticism for her fashion coverage. She lives and works in Washington, DC.</p><p>These challenging fabrics force the eye to recalibrate. All of a sudden an admiring gaze is turned to things that are rough or lumpy; things that look like plastic, which appear to be stiff and unyielding. The work of designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler overstimulate the eye, and yet it still leaves us wanting more. Their are oversize and so exaggerated that models were practically swallowed by wide-leg trousers and origami tops that were large enough to hold two of these rarified gazelles who walk the runway. Then they offer up lacquered knits and lace, woven leather, woven and lacquered leather. They play so many aesthetic games that when faced with plain old black cotton, it’s impossible not to wonder, is that rubber?</p><p>Indeed, female designers, both newcomers and veterans, have no use for this kind of Barbie-doll perfection. Doori Chung—inspired by the illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley and trained by modernist Geoffrey Beene—looks decidedly forward with her draped white shirtdresses and loose-limbed blazers and light-as-air skirts. Victoria Beckham’s slim-fitting dresses in blocks of navy and searing orange are as sleek and aerodynamic as a modern sports car. Tess Giberson deconstructs her knits until they are little more than fragile strands, turning them into a kind of abstract art. Nicole Miller turned to pop art, skateboard culture, and street style for her inspiration. Tracy Reese’s Blanche DuBois gowns and juke-joint strapless dresses might be retro in nature, but they are never precious and rarefied.</p><p>New York Fashion Week’s Spring/Summer 2012 collections are off to a colorful start. And by colorful, we mean everything from neon ball gowns on the Jason Wu runway to the surreal floral prints at Prabal Gurung to the color of Nicki Minaj’s giant wig. See highlights from the first three days.</p><p>Robin Givhan, Jacob Bernstein, and Isabel Wilkinson contributed to this report. </p>and in March, the fruits of their labor will be online and entirely clickable. Until now, Uniqlo’s line could only be found at its gargantuan space in downtown Manhattan, but with the launch of Opening Ceremony’s chic new e-commerce site that just launched this the low-cost diffusion line will be available everywhere, along with house brand Alexander Wang.</p><p>On Wednesday night, a full three weeks before the real start of the holiday shopping season, a group of pedestrians and cordoned-off VIPs will gather in the cold to watch what must be the most extravagant commercial ever made.</p><p>It is a seven-minute ad for , to be projected onto the facades of the brand’s flagship stores in London and New York, although “ad” hardly describes the thing. Seeing it, or a pared-down, 2-D version, doesn’t help much either. Ralph Lauren calls the project “a historic fusion of art, fashion, and technology” but really it’s more like window shopping. In The Matrix. On peyote.</p><p>If all goes according to plan, onlookers will be enveloped in a four-dimensional, multisensual experience of the Ralph Lauren Lifestyle. It’s not about convincing recession-spooked consumers to buy one thing—a $98 Skinny-Fit Big Pony Polo, say—but to buy everything: the whole, glamorous, Milford-educated, New World WASP aesthetic; the cashmere, the Nantucket winters, the ponies. Near the end of the event, which involves holograms, fragrance-blasts, and proprietary architectural mapping technology, two teams of polo players, each four stories tall, will swing their mallets over Madison Avenue.</p><p>The ad—the “fusion”—is the brainchild of David Lauren, Ralph’s son, boyfriend to Lauren Bush, and the company’s digital visionary. It’s the latest in a long line of new-media ventures that have allowed the brand to gallop far ahead of many of its fashion-world competitors, technologically speaking.</p><p>“At first my father told the story just through his designs,” says David Lauren. “Now we’re constantly looking for new ways to tell that story through innovation and technology.”</p><p>“Ralph Lauren has always had a story,” David says. “At first my father told the story just through his designs. Now we’re constantly looking for new ways to tell that story through innovation and technology.”</p><p> <p> <p> <p> <br>Watch the full Ralph Lauren 4D ad.</p><p>The Laurens father and son, “best friends” in David’s words, have a name for this approach to marketing their brand. They call it “merchentainment,” and it’s exactly as it sounds: finding every possible way to turn the acquisition of a $100 Polo shirt into an expression of one’s humanity. It’s not just buying stuff, it’s life!</p><p>While most other industries have embraced the Internet by now, large segments of the fashion business barely acknowledge the 20th century, let alone the 21st. For years, designers and editors have wrung their hands about Many major brands still don’t have e-commerce sites. An article this fall in , “Fashion Week Embraces Computers!”</p><p>Ralph Lauren Media embraced computers a decade ago, via David, an aspiring media tycoon, who started Swing, a lifestyle magazine for Generation X, and then joined the family business. Under his stewardship, was the first luxury brand to have an e-commerce site, the first to have a sales platform for mobile devices, the first to use QR codes, those retail Rorschach blotches you scan with your phone. started as a joint venture with NBC in 2000 and has evolved into a whole media universe, with original content, articles, videos, live-stream tennis lessons from Boris Becker and Venus Williams, and, as of this summer, outside advertising (from Mercedes-Benz).</p><p>This digital bear-hug at first seems incongruous for a brand whose style is so unflinchingly “classic.” Shouldn’t Balenciaga or Alexander Wang or some downtown darling be the one projecting handbags onto buildings? Instead it’s Ralph Lifshitz’s 40-year-old clothing company that got the jump. “Print media just felt so constraining,” David says. And so they expanded, and expanded. One thing led to another, and many millions of dollars later—Lauren declines to specify costs—an in-house technology studio emerged.</p><p>What David Lauren was among the first to realize, and what designers like Burberry’s Christopher Bailey, who simulcast his last two fashion shows in 3-D, and Wang, who just launched an e-commerce site this year, have begun to accept, is that in 2010, people don’t buy shirts anymore, they buy shirt experiences. Shopping’s aspiration-to-consumption ratio is approaching infinity. The brand that gives the best experience wins.</p><p>“In a Ralph Lauren store today, you can create your own polo shirt, with your own monograms, or your own engraving, all while sitting in front of a beautiful fireplace while someone serves you tea,” David says. “And the shirt will be ready within 20 minutes.” As of a couple of weeks ago, you can do this on an iPad.</p><p>Wednesday night’s spectacle takes the philosophy of “merchentainment” to a level that should inspire fear in ad-supported content companies everywhere. In theory, the ad will now be the content (and the ad will have ads of its own).</p><p>Come 8 p.m. ET, giant models will strut down towering catwalks, buildings will collapse and rebuild themselves in midair. It is “the future” as envisioned by so many movies from the 1990s. And at the end, a giant holographic Ralph Lauren will lean out of the corner of his Upper East Side mansion and wave at the real Ralph Lauren, standing on the street below.</p><p>Rebecca Dana is a senior correspondent for The Daily Beast. A former editor and reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she has also written for The New York Times, The New York Observer, Rolling Stone, and Slate, among other publications.</p><p>Fashion folks love her for her striking looks, that tiny clothes-hanger frame, and her willingness to take a risk. (She had her own private part pierced for the role of Lisbeth Salander, after all.) And when she arrived on the red carpet dressed in a Givenchy couture gown stitched from panels of cream-colored mixed lace, it was a fine fashion moment. The dress had exaggerated details at the bust line, giving the effect of tail fins shooting off her bosom. It was odd and fascinating, strangely enticing but not exactly pretty. It was the most interesting garment to make an appearance on the red carpet at the .</p><p>The Gilt Groupe, an online sample sale site, has a million members and caused an epic shopping craze—even in a recession. Why are women so obsessed? <br></p><p>“You have to have a strategy,” explains a 30-year-old New York City-based businesswoman. “It’s an incredibly aggressive market. Work from the bottom up and work fast, or you’re dead in the water.”</p><p>This is not a conversation about trolling the stock market for bargains; rather, this woman is offering advice on scoring items on , a members-only discount-designer-clothing Web site. Featuring heavily discounted wares from coveted designers like Oscar de la Renta, Alexander McQueen, and Vera Wang, Gilt Groupe launches a new sale each day at 12 p.m. What follows next can often be compared to a bloodbath as members try to outscramble each other in filling their carts with shoes, dresses, bags, and other treasure.</p><p>“It. Is. Ruining. Me,” writes the D.C.-based journalist in an email. “I was going crazy at first, just buying stuff because the discounts were so great, despite whether I really like it or not.” </p><p>“I was covering the finance ministers’ meeting in Horsham, as everyone was trying to figure out how to lift the world out of this economic crisis,” says one D.C.-based journalist in her early 30s. “Suddenly I realized that it was midday on the East Coast. Our London correspondent, an employee from the Treasury department, and I all stopped what we were doing and sat in the press tent, clicking madly, trying to order stuff.”</p><p>In this realm of discount Web sites, fashion-minded consumers appear to be as ravenous as ever—crazed, even—as huge price cuts make what were once pipe-dream Vogue editorial—only designer brands accessible to the masses for the first time in years.</p><p>Gilt Groupe reports that it has just signed its one-millionth member, creating fierce competition to land that pair of size-38 Christian Louboutin patent leather heels. The clientele has become diverse, ranging from socialites looking for a wear-one-time-only gala dress, to office-assistant underlings looking to jolt their wardrobe with a trophy item, to grandmothers in Florida cat fighting it out over Tory Burch sandals.</p><p>The upside: It’s all terribly democratic. Anyone with a fast Internet connection can snare a trendy Doo.Ri and Thakoon (a Michelle Obama favorite!) dress for $300 or $400.</p><p>The bad news: Gilt Groupe gets expensive and overwhelming very quickly. Some hardcore members say that they have become calamitously hooked on buying the still-not-cheap bargains, even in the trough of a recession. And these women are not of the limitless-funds, ladies-who-lunch variety, either.</p><p>“It. Is. Ruining. Me,” writes the D.C.-based journalist in an email. “I was going crazy at first, just buying stuff because the discounts were so great, despite whether I really like it or not.”</p><p>It’s hardly a newsflash that sales of all varieties often lead to dubious choices and false economies. As glamour icon (and marathon shopper) Marlene Dietrich once pointed out, “the temptation of getting things ‘cheaper’ is cluttering up our households with unnecessary objects and actually burdens the budget.”</p><p></p><p>So, it should come as no real surprise, then, that Gilt Groupe’s trigger-happy, sales-psychology-on-crack formula is creating, shall we say, some spiraling habits among its customers. And yet some of the anecdotes of self-described addiction are still staggering.</p><p>“You only have five minutes to get what you want and then you’re fucked. If you look at the clock and it’s 12:10, you’re like, forget it, there’s no point in even looking.” </p><p>“I am definitely a Gilt Groupe junkie,” says a New York City-based writer, who says she has spent over $10,000—almost a quarter of her annual income—on the site over the last 12 months. “You just get really caught up in it. It’s almost like drunk shopping. I damaged the mouse on my computer from over-clicking on an item, to get it into my cart.”</p><p>Gilt Groupe, which launched in 2007, is not alone in turning women into combative shopping zombies; competitor outlets such as and also have large followings. Yet something about Gilt that has made it the queen bee of sales sites, the zeitgeist face of the phenomenon. Perhaps it has something to do with how easily the name "Gilt Groupe" lends itself to a particular slang; many refer to the site as “Guilt Groupe” and say that they are “gilty” of buying too much clothing from the site; often they call themselves “Gilt Groupies.”</p><p>“I prefer to think of our members as ‘shopping athletes,’” says Gilt Groupe co-founder Alexandra Wilkis Wilson. “It’s like a competitive sport, and when you get an item, you feel victorious and there’s a sense of pride associated with it. You’d never get that shopping at an outlet; you just feel like you’re slinking around, looking for treasure.”</p><p>Most of the Gilt members consulted for this piece say that they have spent around $5,000 on the site—yet Ms. Wilson says that some shoppers have spent more than $100,000 on Gilt Groupe merchandise.</p><p>“It’s the thrill of the hunt,” says Michele Wissot, who covered sample sales as a senior writer at . “It’s that feeling of, ‘Ha ha ha, I got those shoes before that other girl.’ Gilt Groupe is smart to capitalize on our need to do that.”</p><p>This survival-of-the-fittest jungle is so intense that many staunch Gilt Groupies say that they will no longer schedule or attend meetings at noon if a particularly toothsome sale is going up.</p><p>“You only have five minutes to get what you want and then you’re fucked,” says Hilary Rowland, CEO of talent agency New Faces, who says she drops everything for one of Gilt’s Dolce and Gabbana sales. “If you look at the clock and it’s 12:10, you’re like, forget it, there’s no point in even looking.”</p><p>Copycat enterprises will long examine Gilt’s business plan to see what makes it so successful. Ms. Wilson points out that—beyond the adrenaline rush of “winning” an item—the recession has simply made better merchandise and deeper quantities available to the site, and that consumers are in the mood to take advantage of bargains while they last.</p><p></p><p>“If the economy hadn’t taken the turn that it did, certain luxury brands and designers might not have pursued an offline channel,” she says.</p><p>Yet for many, it just comes down to this: Gilt Groupe is ridiculously easy to use. Two clicks (if you’re lucky): one on the product, one on the "purchase" button—and lo! That gratifying, slim Gilt Groupe box arrives on your doorstep practically the next day.</p><p>Far easier than picking up your dry cleaning, as one Gilt Groupie points out. “They make it really painless to spend a lot of money,” says Rowland. "That is, until you look at your bank account.”</p><p>Look for a Gilt Groupe Anonymous in your neighborhood soon.</p><p>Plus: .</p><p>Lesley M. M. Blume is a writer and journalist based in New York City, where she was born. The author of three books for Knopf, Ms. Blume has worked for Cronkite Productions, The Jordan Times in Amman, and ABC News Nightline.</p><p>Wang Gang: Rapper and Alexander Wang muse Azealia Banks’s new Dazed &amp; Confused cover has been preemptively banned in seven countries ahead of its release.  Though photos have yet to be released, the cover features Banks holding an inflated pink condom between her teeth with the tagline, ‘Azealia Banks Blows Up.’ The Dazed team seems pleased, however, tweeting: &quot;Just been told our upcoming @AZEALIABANKS cover has been banned from 7 countries so far. Thank God for the Internet, huh?&quot; []</p><p></p><p>But now, it’s just beginning.</p><p>And begin it does with the arrival of none other than Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue, and the lady behind the whole event.</p><p>There she is with her perfect bob haircut and her perfect Chanel gown, along with her two perfect-looking children and a phalanx of perfect-looking people following in hot pursuit.</p><p>“What are you wearing, Bee?” the reporters yell to the editor’s daughter as mom gamely talks to a camera crew somewhere in the distance.</p><p>“Balenciaga,” she says, while striking a pose, or two, or three.</p><p>We try to get Wintour’s attention, but it’s no go.</p><p>No matter. There’s enough movie stars and fashion royals coming to this affair to rival the Oscars.</p><p>Someone in the A-plus crowd—Karl Lagerfeld, Jennifer Lopez, Carolina Herrera, Hugh Jackman, Calvin Klein, Tina Fey, Donna Karan, Anne Hathaway, Diane von Furstenberg, Blake Lively, Nicolas Ghesquiere, Diane Kruger—will talk to us.</p><p>Why, look! It’s Nicole Richie, who has arrived in a totally perfect glittery Marc Jacobs dress, and who is chatting it up with Donatella Versace.</p><p>Since the theme of the exhibition is American women, we ask the Italian style maven a silly question about what she likes about American women, and she says, “American women are a little bit safer than European women, but they’re very themselves.”</p><p>We’re trying to figure out if this is really a compliment, when another reporter interrupts.</p><p>What American woman would she most like to dress?</p><p>“Michelle Obama,” Versace says. “She has such great style.”</p><p>Suddenly, the photographers are going insane. Oprah Winfrey is here. And not just Oprah, mind you, but Oprah flanked by the dapper-as-ever Oscar de la Renta.</p><p>Reporters descend.</p><p>“He’s the quintessential American designer,” Winfrey says of her date, as a throng listens with rapt attention. “Years ago, when I thought I might actually be the marrying kind, I dreamt of getting married in an Oscar de la Renta gown. I truly feel like Cinderella at the ball.”</p><p>Was she at all intimidated by the prospect of going to work on the event with a woman who’s occasionally been known to inspire fear as much as admiration?</p><p>“She called me directly and you go ‘eeggghhh’ it’s Anna Wintour,” says Winfrey, giving a look of mock worry. “It’s been great.”</p><p>Soon after, guests begin arriving in droves.</p><p></p><p>There’s Sarah Jessica Parker looking luminescent in a dress for Halston that she designed herself. (In case you haven’t heard, the Sex and the City star is now helping to oversee the 21st-century revision of the fabled fashion brand.)</p><p>A hop, skip, and a jump away, it’s Gwen Stefani primping and posing with her husband Gavin Rossdale, in a shimmering off-white frock of her own design. (This is something of a trend at the Costume Institute Gala and at public appearances all over the two major coasts these days. Now that celebrities have their own fashion lines, they no longer need designers to construct their gowns. Or at least, Parker and Stefani don’t.)</p><p>Over there on a landing near the top are Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel exchanging pleasantries with Bono and his wife Ali Hewson (even she has a clothing line).</p><p>A few dozen feet away, at the entranceway separating yours truly from the gliteratti cavorting inside, a style summit is taking place, as the legendary fashion critic Suzy Menkes pops photos of herself with Tom Ford and his boyfriend Richard Buckley on what looks like a disposable camera. Ralph Lauren mingles nearby in a tuxedo-jacket, bowtie and faded blue jeans with his wife, Ricky.</p><p>Up walks Gisele Bündchen, who’s sauntering by in an Alexander Wang dominatrix-ey black leather thing with slits down the front.</p><p>Motherhood has seemingly had no effect on her body, whatsoever.</p><p>In fact, the way she tells it, everything about having a child has been a breeze. “He’s the most quiet, easy, peaceful baby,” she says of her four-and-a-half month old son to a reporter from Allure magazine, as her husband Tom Brady walks inside. “People are like ‘Where did he come from. I say ‘I have no idea.’”</p><p>Historically, one of the best things about the Costume Institute Gala is that it’s one of the few red-carpet affairs at which people still take some risks.</p><p>This year is no different. As Zac Posen puts it, “This is about fashion for fashion’s sake. It holds the bar for the fantasy of red-carpet dressing. It’s dressing for fashion, not for your next role.”</p><p>In addition to Lauren’s gloriously mismatched tux and Bündchen’s much-admired ode to S&M chic, Twilight’s Kristen Stewart arrives wearing a black strapless, asymmetrical dress cut up to there with a sheer overlay and enough black eyeliner to rival Siouxsie Sioux during her “Cities in Dust” phase.</p><p>Renée Zellweger strolls over a few minutes later, in a Carolina Herrera mermaid dress that’s got a black and gold Jackson Pollock-like splash effect, and says there’s no doubt she feels freer here to go all out than she does at other red-carpet affairs.</p><p>“It’s like, ‘If not now, when?’” Zellweger says, around the time Marc Jacobs makes his way up the steps in a baseball cap, to Women’s Wear Daily the real reason for his odd sartorial choice. “I had a hair transplant.”</p><p>But the evening’s winner for most daring celebrity is clearly pop singer Katy Perry, who shows up in a gown that lights up like a billboard in Times Square. “I chose it because fashion can be really serious and I want to lighten things up,” she says.</p><p>Plus: .</p><p>Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.</p><p>As Oscars coverage rolls on, all eyes turn to fashion—and then quickly glaze over as the inevitable parade of safe, beige gowns unfolds. Discerning style lovers sigh, and unreflective tabloid editors ask themselves why, yet again, actress after actress has chosen to dress, unremarkably, in the color of gruel.</p><p>The answer is obvious: We’ve forced them to, by labeling any real fashion risk with the dreaded “Worst Dressed” tag. To achieve the sort of lowest-common-denominator “good taste” that pleases InTouch readers and Snuggie owners, anxious stars have formed “a lifeless sea of beige,” as one blogger put it. “When you get right down to it, red-carpet fashion is more plebeian than haute,” said the Miami Herald in a 2007 elegy for idiosyncratic Oscar fashion. “This is an opportunity for stars to register, on their own terms, with the people who eat at TGIF’s.”</p><p>Decades of “Academy Awards Gowns Hits & Misses” stories have slowly killed sheer sartorial gutsiness, backgrounded by a long crimson rug. It’s time to revisit—and reevaluate—ten of the so-called “Worst Dresses.” And yes, there will be swans.</p><p>What Wasson has created is a line with a vision—one that says that fashion should be accessible and easy for everyone, with a little bit of rebellion thrown in. It’s the embodiment of her own story, which began in Texas and a chance Polaroid that her father sent into a modeling contest. “Dude, I didn’t think it was in my stars,” she says of her modeling career. “I never even looked at fashion magazines. I was a tomboy girl growing up in Texas. I played AAU basketball every hour of my life. I wanted to go to culinary school. I would obsessively watch the Secrets of the CIA. That is what got me off.”</p><p>When she got the call that her photo interested agents in New York, Wasson was less than thrilled. “I was like, ‘Ugh, I don’t want to go to New York,’” she says. “And I really came to New York bitching and screaming, as crazy as that sounds. I didn’t have a desire, and I thought, nobody’s going to want me, it’s not going to work out for me, and I’ll be able to get back to my life in Texas.” It didn’t work out that way—Mario Testino picked her for a Vogue shoot within her first month in town from a cheap Xeroxed portfolio she showed him on a whim—but her outsider attitude is what has allowed her to stay sane, and retain a personality, while navigating the fashion world.</p><p>“I think most models are victims of entrapment and a hive mind,” she explains. “I just got back from the shows, and it was, like, every girl back stage was rocking their leather leggings, and their oversized white T-shirt, and their leather jacket, with scarves. But when I first started out in the business, girls backstage at the shows are supposed to wear high heels and skirts—you had to be dressed to the nines, wearing an of-the-moment designer piece; Alaia or whatever it was. I’d get complaints about the fact that I’d just wear holey jeans and a wife-beater. Stuff that I was doing eight years ago is embraced now, but I had to really stay true to who I was back then.”</p><p>Erin’s early path was made all the more difficult by the fact that she married a 28-year-old artist when she was only 18. “We lived in a big loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,” she says. “It was a blessing in disguise. Because I’d come home. It kept me out of all the trouble that I might have gotten into in the beginning.”</p><p>But as that relationship fell apart and her career took off, she found that she wanted more than the New York scene could offer. “I bought a truck from a Polish guy for $1,000 cash in Brooklyn, and I just set off on a five-month road trip,” she says. “I remember just rolling up onto Venice Beach, and living in a hostel and hanging out in Venice Beach and I was just like, 'Fuck dude, I need to live here.' And that’s when the light came on.”</p><p>It is in her own nomadic way that Wasson stands to become a new sort of fashion icon—the girl who left the high-end rat race to strike out on her own, to live in peace and pursue creative endeavors. In these tough economic times, girls need models like Erin who are role models, who reject both the impenetrable couture world, but also refuse to give up the artistry involved in fashion for reality-TV projects or other mainstream avenues.</p><p></p><p>“I get approached for a lot of TV projects,” she says.” And I sit in a room with these people and I say ‘You guys realize you’re talking to the wrong girl?’ I’m not your cheesy girl that’s going to dress up in a hokey outfit and say all the sound bites that you want me to say. That’s just not who I am. I’m a total odd bird. I collect prison art and paper mache masks. I keep a journal and rip pages out of books. I think that when you open your mind, you realize there’s art everywhere, there’s art all around us. That’s what keeps the wheels in motion. To create is my ultimate goal. So why would I ever sell out?”</p><p>The closest Wasson has come to selling out was a video she made with Justin Timberlake in the fall to promote his clothing line, William Rast. She played “Birdie,” a Southern Bonnie to Timberlake’s Clyde. “I put this real country twang on it,” she laughs. “It's nice to remember that I'm just a girl from Texas.”</p><p> </p><p>It&#39;s the Tuesday night before New York&#39;s Fashion Week and the scene is pretty much what you expect. Robbie Myers, the editor in chief of Elle, is circulating around a room full of skinny young women who are holding glasses of champagne with one hand, while using their other hand to shoo away waiters carrying hors d&#39;oeuvres. Modern rock music is pulsing; lights are flashing to a static beat and the white couches scattered around the room are crowded with New York socialites (The real ones, not those that you see on MTV&#39;s &quot;The City.&quot;). All this begs some questions: Aren&#39;t we in a recession? Who still has the wherewithal to throw bashes like this?<br><br>The Answer: JC Penney.<br><br>&quot;They&#39;re the only ones that still have money,&quot; says a junior editor at an elite fashion magazine who doesn&#39;t want to have his name published because he doesn&#39;t want to get fired. More than 20 designers have canceled this week&#39;s runway presentations and fashion blogs have sounded the alarm: &quot;Stop checking you in-box, these invitations aren&#39;t coming,&quot; wrote Sharon Clott on New York Magazine&#39;s fashion blog. Classic labels like Bill Blass and new stars like Obedient Sons have been forced to close their lines, lacking the capital to run the business. And earlier this month, it was reported that Bryant Park--the home to Fashion Week since 1993--would no longer be hosting the shows.<br><br>At this point, you&#39;re probably saying, &quot;Who Cares?&quot; Perhaps you don&#39;t live in New York. Perhaps you don&#39;t care about clothes. Perhaps you realize, like I do, that there are far more important consequences stemming from the downfall of the banking industry, or the auto industry, or the real estate market. But the obvious point here is that we all get dressed each morning. And whether it&#39;s leggings, or plaid shirts or women choosing whether or not to wear blazers to work, much of that originates on the runways of New York, the most commercial of the trifecta of fashion weeks that happen biannually in New York, Paris and Milan. More than 100,000 people attend New York Fashion Week, making it one of the largest marketing events in any industry. <br><br>It&#39;s these runway shows that have made household names out of once-obscure designers. It’s the one week each season that designers, buyers, fashion editors and fashionable Americans gather to help determine what styles and trends best capture the American Zeitgeist. Shows are praised or panned, samples are made, fast fashion retailers like H&amp;M or Forever 21 take note, and suddenly there’s a slew of new styles.<br><br>But suddenly that’s in slow motion: to cut back costs, huge names like Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs are dialing back their audiences, making the shows more exclusive. Vera Wang and Betsey Johnson are opting out of the Bryant Park tents, putting on smaller presentations. Models, once 90s glamazons with big hair, are learning how to work for trade or not work at all; recently, the brand Alice+Olivia cleverly cut prices by saying they’d be using paper mannequins. (Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not sure women should wear clothes that haven’t been displayed on the human body.) Meanwhile, PR Firms and designers are finally telling the truth. A outspoken publicist named Kelly Cutrone told her up-and-coming clients to talk openly about the state of the business to the New York Times, which produced this quote from designer Andrew Buckler: “A lot of people in this industry just want to lie like everything is fine.”<br><br>Of course, clothes won’t go away. But the creativity and aspiration that comes from America&#39;s most, well, expensive designers -- the sort that Michelle Obama mixes with J.Crew -- just might. “They made me come to this,” groaned the junior editor as he watched JC Penney present their five new young-designer collections by Charlotte Ronson, Kimora Lee Simmons, Nicole Miller, Allen Schwartz and Michele Bohbot. “We have to start keeping our eye on the lower markets,&quot; the editor says. That&#39;s because these lines might save the industry. JC Penney will be running commercials showing off these new collections during next Sunday’s Academy Awards, using the tag line: “We’re stepping up our style … because quality and price matter.” <br><br>And that may be the limelight of Fashion Week’s disappearance: As designers realize that expensive frocks aren’t selling, they’re looking to participate in diffusion lines like JC Penney’s new program or H&amp;M’s guest designer program, which puts designers like Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld in reach for the regular customer. Target has already introduced some of the hottest young designers  (see: Thakoon, Rogan, Erin Fetherston) to the masses with their GO International fast fashion lines. They’ll step up their game this week with French couturier Alexander McQueen, the first participant in their new fashion series dubbed, quite simply, “Designer Collaborations.”<br><br>But before these young designers made it to the combed-over racks of your favorite stores, they proved they had talent on the runways of New York. That’s where H&amp;M and other stores find their inspiration; it’s where buyers from local boutiques to department stores pick their brands, and it’s the same place from which our fashionable First Lady found her style - whether that was Jason Wu, or Patrick Robinson&#39;s newly-redesigned Gap. Without a showcase for new, young, designers, Mrs. Obama might as well be cycling through the clothes she already has in her White House closet. Though, in these times, that might make her America’s most fashionable role model.<br><br><br>PopVox will blogging the best and worst of New York Fashion Week. Stay tuned!<br><br></p><p>Looking for the perfect name for your firstborn, you practically earn a degree in actuarial science studying the Social Security most popular names list. Of course you wouldn’t choose a ubiquitous name like Emily or Jacob, but you’re also determined to suss out those names that are rising too fast through the ranks: Lila and Luca, Peyton and Pax.</p><p>No, what you want is a name as classy as a sterling teaspoon, as cool as vintage Balenciaga, as hard to locate as a wood-framed cottage in Manhattan—yet just as desirable.</p><p>And you think you’ve actually found it—a name not even registering on the Top 1,000 or hiding deep in its middle, a name you truly love, yet have never even heard used for a real live human being.</p><p>Until your first visit to Dr. Laura Popper’s office, or your first summer on the beach in Easthampton, or—you must have been out of the country—the preschool interview at Bank Street, when you are horrified to encounter another little Imogen. A Maisie or a Maeve. A Jasper, two Dashiells, and three Ashers.</p><p>What’s going on here? How can you work so hard to find a name that’s singularly distinctive, only to discover it’s everywhere—or at least, everywhere you go?</p><p>Call it Elite Popularity, the same principle that has everybody wearing the same Alexander Wang for Linda Farrow sunglasses and drinking the same tomato martinis at the same little hidden-away speakeasies. These elite favorites might not be what the masses are wearing in Atlantic City or sipping at Applebee’s, but they’re just as ubiquitous on a higher plane.</p><p>The problem is that when it comes to baby names, it’s much more difficult to pinpoint the Elite Popular Choices as well as considerably tougher to offload a pick if it becomes embarrassingly pervasive. You can’t just sell little Jasper’s name on Ebay, after all, the way you might a clichéd Prada bag.</p><p>But as the co-founder of , which we like to think of as the high-quality, intelligent source for stylish names, I have the privilege of peeking behind the digital curtain and seeing which names discerning parents are seeking out this year, this month, and this very minute.</p><p>It’s not Emily and Jacob, that’s for sure. Here, the nameberry Top 25 for the first two months of this year, with the number of places higher or lower each name is on the elite list compared with the most recent Social Security list.</p><p>Warning: The smaller the differential, the more likely it is you’re going to hear the name yelled not only in the halls of Dalton but on the D train.</p><p>Girls:</p><p>1. CHARLOTTE +86 <br> 2. SERAPHINA +>998 (not on the Top 1,000, though thanks to the younger Miss Affleck, it’s heading up fast) <br> 3. OLIVIA +3 <br> 4. ELIZABETH +5 <br> 5. LUCY +107 <br> 6. ISLA +617 <br> 7. VIOLET +177 <br> 8. SOPHIA -1 <br> 9. ALICE +317 <br> 10. MAISIE +>990 (not in the Top 1,000) <br> 11. AVA -6 <br> 12. SCARLETT +198 <br> 13. LAURA +202 <br> 14. CAROLINE +80 <br> 15. GRACE +6 <br> 16. CLAIRE +46 <br> 17. LILY +7 <br> 18. AMELIA +50 <br> 19. IMOGEN +>981 (not in the Top 1,000) <br> 20. HARPER +277 <br> 21. ELLA -2 <br> 22. MATILDA +807 <br> 23. STELLA +164 <br> 24. JANE + 366 <br> 25. EMMA -24</p><p>Boys: </p><p>1. HENRY +77 <br> 2. FINN +366 <br> 3. OLIVER +115 <br> 4. JAMES +13 <br> 5. ASHER +201 <br> 6. JACK +33 <br> 7. JASPER +445 <br> 8. MAX +118 <br> 9. KAI +220 <br> 10. ATTICUS +679 <br> 11. LIAM +64 <br> 12. JUDE +212 <br> 13. FELIX +341 <br> 14. OWEN +44 <br> 15. QUINN +265 <br> 16. NOAH -1 <br> 17. MICHAEL -15 <br> 18. MILO +431 <br> 19. SAWYER +206 <br> 20. PHINEAS +>970 (not in the Top 1,000) <br> 21. WILLIAM -14 <br> 22. HARPER +275 <br> 23. LEO +204 <br> 24. AUDEN +>976 (not in the Top 1,000) <br> 25. SILAS +288</p><p>These names and numbers tell us a couple of significant things:</p><p>In a reversal of the naming habits of the general population. Elite parents are more likely to give their sons non-traditional names than they are their daughters. The boys’ list diverges 6513 points from the general list, compared with 6451 for the girls. And only four names on the boys’ list—James, Michael, William, and Noah—are on the overall Top 25, versus eight of the girls. The conclusion: Rich boys can get away with a quirky name like Quinn or Phineas, while upscale girls are more often given conventional, non-hoochie names such as Caroline and Jane.</p><p>This divergence from male conventionality stretches even further, judging from the names on the Elite list. It’s probable that Elite boys are less likely to be named after their fathers or grandfathers, while the overall boys’ popularity list is still crowded with outmoded names such as Anthony and John that can only be explained by family ties. Names on the Elite boys’ list more often have soft sounds—Asher, Silas—and vowel endings—Kai, Milo—which telegraph a greater acceptance of an unconventional style of masculinity.</p><p>Elite parents are still influenced by popular culture, but it’s a higher class of popular culture. Yes, they imitate celebrity parents’ baby names, but they copy Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck and Julia Roberts, not Britney Spears. Other upscale influences: authors Harper Lee and W.H. Auden, literary heroes Atticus Finch and Tom Sawyer and Scarlett O’Hara—or maybe that’s just Scarlett Johansson.</p><p>Other names frequently searched recently on nameberry include:</p><p>Girls:</p><p>ADELINE <br> ARABELLA <br> AURORA <br> BEATRIX <br> CLARA <br> CLEMENTINE <br> DELILAH <br> ELEANOR <br> ELIZA <br> ELODIE <br> ESME <br> HAZEL <br> IRIS <br> MAEVE <br> OLIVE <br> PIPER <br> REMI <br> THEA <br> VIVIAN</p><p>Boys:</p><p>BLAIZE <br> DASHIELL <br> FINNEGAN <br> HOLDEN <br> HUXLEY <br> LEVI <br> MASSIMO <br> RAPHAEL <br> REMY <br> RHYS <br> RONAN <br> SAMPSON <br> SIMEON</p><p>Pamela Redmond Satran, with Linda Rosenkrantz, is the developer of the baby-naming site and the author of 10 books on names, including </p><p>Capping off a fashion week unusually weighed down by real-world concerns—as in, will anyone actually buy these clothes?—a panel was convened Thursday at Milk Studios in Manhattan to discuss a very serious question: the future of fashion.</p><p>Emceed by Estee Lauder President John Demsey and moderated by International Herald Tribune fashion critic Suzy Menkes, the event brought together hot young designers (Proenza Schouler, Alexander Wang); hot young boutique owners (Opening Ceremony’s Carol Lim and Humberto Leon); the hot young dean of fashion at Parsons (Simon Collins); and a hot young fashion mogul (Milk Studios’ co-founder Mazdack Rassi) to contemplate such heavy topics as whether being a fashion designer makes any sense.</p><p>“Fashion shows are really creating fantasy,” said Steven Kolb, executive director of the CFDA. “They’re defining aspirations.”</p><p>“All you really need is passion, and a point of view,” asked Jack Lazaro, one half of Proenza Schouler.</p><p>But in an era of belt-tightening, is passion enough to survive? (How about a generous investor, too?) Alexander Wang was more practical: “You can't just be creative. It's just as important to stay involved in all aspects, especially the business, and see that the clothes are being worn, and sold.”</p><p>Fashion Week is the time of year when the industry is in its most publicly extravagant mode, so in this sour economic climate all the inevitable questions about an industry predicated on splurges came up: Does Fashion Week really need to be as big as it is? Do designers really need these expensive 15-minute runway shows? Is Fashion Week just an absurd artifact from the good old days of 2007? If people aren’t shopping the same way they used to—indiscriminately, in droves—does something fundamental need to change about the way clothes are made and sold? Maybe expensive-to-produce shows are…demode.</p><p>This summer, the Council of Fashion Designers of America held a town-hall meeting with various members of the fashion community—Diane von Furstenberg, Donna Karan, Betsey Johnson, Proenza Schouler, and others—to discuss the question of Fashion Week’s relevance at a time when retail is in crisis.</p><p>“Retailers made the strongest case that it clinches the deal and helps make the sale for their customers,” said Fern Mallis, the senior vice president of IMG Fashion who attended the meeting. (IMG Fashion produces Mercedes-Benz , the shows that take place in the tents at Bryant Park.) “It’s important to see collections at the shows. Whatever designers spend, they get value from—they get fame and notice and get their vision out there. Many have seen that when they don’t do shows, they don’t see their clothes out there and they don’t get the same kind of press.”</p><p>As lavish as it may seem, especially in the depths of an economic downturn, Fashion Week is still an essential part of the retail business. When you strip away all the pomp, circumstance, and Madonna sightings, it’s really just a fancy trade show. It’s a time when brands get defined, images get made and designers big and small get press—something that’s especially important in an age of slashed advertising budgets.</p><p>“Fashion shows are really creating fantasy,” said Steven Kolb, executive director of the CFDA. “They’re defining aspirations.”</p><p>This year, designers defined aspirations as simple as “to dress like Michelle Obama” (Jason Wu) and as complex as “to star in The King and I” (Marc Jacobs). But perhaps the biggest revelation of the week was that even in difficult times, women everywhere still aspire to dress beautifully.</p><p>Once again, Fashion Week became a city-wide documentary project (or reality-TV show, if that’s your speed) in which, by some enormous feat of organization and selective chaos, everyone from Anna Wintour to the casual Queens mall shopper got caught up in the spirit of fashion.</p><p>“There are more and more media outlets, more and more Internet sites, more and more people at cable TV stations,” said Mallis. “More people have blogs and Facebook pages and tweet. Everybody has TV shows—there’s Project Runway, The Devil Wears Prada, The Fashion Show. People are fascinated by the workings of the fashion industry.”</p><p>Given all this public interest, could a consumer-driven fashion week be retail’s salvation, expanded to include a full schedule of shows targeted to the buying public?</p><p>Not necessarily—in part, because the runway show isn’t the be all, end all.</p><p>“It would be a waste of time, energy and money,” said Julie Gilhart, women’s fashion director of Barneys New York. “I feel the shows are mostly for the press.” Gilhart acknowledged the benefits involved for designers who have shows—“It certainly creates more press and name recognition”—but that at the end of the day, “I feel the customer is interested in buying great clothes that work for her and not made on a decision if a designer has a show.”</p><p>Yet for certain commercial, mass-market brands, having a runway show has become a way to simulate “high fashion” credibility. As a marketing move, both Ann Taylor and QVC staged runway shows this season—except that instead of showing clothes that wouldn’t be available for six more months, they showed ready-to-buy fall fare sold directly to the consumer. QVC’s three-hour long runway affair was broadcast to viewers nationwide, who could buy Rachel Zoe’s collection for QVC, among others, straight off the runway. And Norma Kamali and Ralph Lauren both used the buzz of Fashion Week to launch e-commerce iPhone applications.</p><p>In a different sense, for emerging designers Fashion Week offers convenient one-stop shopping for their company. “When you're a smaller brand, you have to take advantage of these opportunities,” said Liam Fayed of menswear label Bespoken. “It's great to have a captive audience, from all the key influential press and stores, for one week in the same city. To be able to get in front of them to present our line is extremely valuable.”</p><p>The problem is, there are close to 250 shows packed into the schedule each season, stretched from uptown to downtown over too short a time—and yes, while there is more media attention than ever, major outlets tend to only focus on the biggest, most established names. So questioning Fashion Week’s relevancy might have more to do with this: If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?</p><p>One of the strengths of the New York fashion industry has been promoting emerging talent, whether it’s helping defray some of the costs of showing at Fashion Week through sponsorship, or offering prizes like the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, which selects one designer each year from a pool of 10 finalists who receive mentorship and $200,000, as well as two runners-up who each receive $50,000. “I think that New York has better conditions for young designers; we help them, we support them,” said Diane von Furstenberg, designer and president of the CFDA. “That’s really what I want to do with New York Fashion Week, is to support them.”</p><p>On the sponsorship end, making headlines this season was M.A.C and Milk, a partnership between M.A.C cosmetics and Milk Studios. Thanks to M.A.C’s sponsorship, Milk offered space to 30 designers for free, making it the second largest single venue in the city outside of the tents at Bryant Park, otherwise known as Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week—where M.A.C was formerly a sponsor.</p><p>More than just offering free space, what M.A.C and Milk offered was a way for designers to effectively document their shows. “Unlike with the tents, where they pop up twice a year, we are here 365 days a year,” said Mazdack Rassi, founder and creative director of Milk Studios. “This is what we do. We are more interested in the creative process of this whole week than we are in having the shows.”</p><p>Legs, Milk’s Emmy-award nominated film division, produced two films this season, for Temperley London and Shipley & Halmos; their casting company, called House, cast nine shows. This is M.A.C and Milk’s answer to ensuring that the falling tree in the forest makes some noise.</p><p>And then, of course, there was Fashion’s Night Out, the first “global celebration of fashion” and the brainchild of Anna Wintour. Von Furstenberg compared the event, which drew exuberant hordes into the streets around New York, to La Fete de la Musique, the Parisian street music festival that takes place every June. She hopes the night will become an annual tradition.</p><p>“It’s like what back to school is for children—you get your new coat, your new little black dress, your new handbag,” said von Furstenberg. “It forces consumers to look into the stores, so while Fashion Week is going on, there is buzz on the consumer level.”</p><p>When it comes to the retail crisis, there are other more serious questions to address: Has the psychology behind spending irreversibly changed—is the desire to shop still there? Is the tolerance for frivolity shrinking? As of late, fashion’s way of justifying itself has been, “In this economic downturn we need glamour and fantasy more than ever.” You may not need a new pair of shoes, the reasoning goes, but you need this dream. Fashion’s Night Out took this one step further, by adding a moral dimension to desire. Not only do you want to shop, because you aspire to feel more glamorous, but you need to shop, or people will lose their jobs. In the department of ethics, it’s Dilemma 101: Will you be a good citizen by saving jobs, or by saying no to overconsumption?</p><p>With designer fashion, at least, the mentality is that you’re buying something of heirloom quality, not just off-the-rack disposable goods. “We’re talking about the high end here,” says Fern Mallis. “We’re not selling underwear.”</p><p>Plus: .</p><p>Renata Espinosa is the New York editor of . She is also the co-founder of impressionistic fashion and art blog and a sometimes backup dancer for "The Anna Copa Cabanna Show."</p><p>You've probably never heard of the overclass, which is just how its members like it; they have a lot to answer for. They are the people who put Jim Carrey on magazine covers, who renamed blue-green "teal" and keep loaning money to Donald Trump--not out of any sinister conspiracy to ruin the country but because, well, it's their job. As "professionals" and "managers" they lay claim to an increasing share of the national income, but they wind up spending most of it at mirror-walled restaurants where they have to eat $10 arugula salads. They're famous for having opinions, but it's hard to know what these are, since they never call talk-radio shows. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent them, because otherwise we'd have no answer to the question, whatever happened to all those Yuppies we used to see running around, anyway?</p><p>We are witnessing an epochal moment in American sociology, the birth of a new class. There is, obviously, nothing new in the fact that some people in America have more money, influence and prestige than others. But designating them "the overclass" is not just another way for journalists to package the squeal of the skewered bourgeoisie. When "the poor" became "the underclass" it meant no longer thinking of them as just "a lot of people without money," but as the inheritors of a "culture of poverty." Similarly, the overclass refers to a group with a common culture and interests, with the obvious difference from the underclass that nobody is trying to get out of the overclass.</p><p>Important discoveries like this always galvanize the national dialogue. Michael Lind, who gives a neo-Marxian analysis of the overclass in his new book "The Next American Nation," was still being attacked last week from both the left and the right, even as The Atlantic Monthly was arriving in mailboxes with a cover story by Nicholas Lemann on "The Structure of Success in America." Lind puts more emphasis on race and parentage, while Lemann dwells more on the role of SAT tests in determining who gets the goodies in American society. But they're talking about the same people, who are also part of the IQ elite described in last year's best seller "The Bell Curve."</p><p>And this same insight resonates throughout society. Marketing consultants are already whacking the overclass into demographic slices so thin that they can peel off the Lexus segment from that for Infinitis. Political consultants study how to covertly appeal to the newly identified bloc, while simultaneously attacking their opponents for pandering to it. Bashing an elite is always great political sport. But somehow the people derided by the left as "corporate America" and by the right as the "liberal establishment" seldom find their real interests seriously threatened.</p><p>Who is the overclass? It is hard to talk about class in America, a country in which 90 percent of adults in defiance of statistics and common sense identify themselves to pollsters as "middle class." What distinguishes the overclass, in fact, is precisely its effort to distance itself from the middle class, rather than lay claim to it. If the over-class is hard to define, it's because it is a state of mind and also a slice on the income curve. But it is not a ruling class: Bill Clinton seems to belong, but Newt Gingrich clearly doesn't; Bill Gates does, but probably not the chairman of Dow Chemical. The over-class obviously is affluent, but how much is that in dollars? Lind refers to families in the top "quintile," or 20 percent, of household income, because most government statistics are kept that way. But that implies a cutoff of only about $67,000 a year. Any figure is necessarily arbitrary, but it seems more logical to speak of a class consisting of the top 5 percent in household income, roughly 12.5 million people with incomes starting at $115,182.</p><p>That figure-- more than three times the median household income--probably seems extravagant to most Americans, but Fortune magazine recently proclaimed on its cover the alarming news that the new standard for executive pay is "four times your age"--in other words, $120,000 at the age of $0. The fact is that no matter how many Danielle Steel novels we read most of us have only the vaguest idea of the lives of people much richer (or poorer) than we are. Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, once asked voters to imagine what it would be like to have dinner with their congress-men. Overwhelmingly they described a meal out of an Edith Wharton novel, with liveried servants and string quartets. Congressmen make $133,600 a year.</p><p>But money is not the only entry requirement. Inherited wealth doesn't count for much, unless you're actively investing it yourself, preferably in something creative luke a yogurt plant in Kazakhstan, nor does income from a local business like a fast-food franchise. (Owning a Cajun or Tuscan restaurant is OK, though, even if it loses money.) The overclass is national, or even transnational, in outlook, although its members mostly cluster on both coasts. It judges people, itself included, mainly on "merit," a quality that can be demonstrated only by a continual and strenuous accumulation of academic and professional credentials. Even more than money, it values competitive achievement: books published, screenplays produced, products launched, elections won. Of course, those things generally translate into money in the end anyway.</p><p>You might think that anyone would be proud to be associated with such a productive and successful class, but somehow that's not the case. The overclass, in fact, is one of the most anguished and self-doubting oligarchies in history, a habit of mind that began in the first act that defined it as a generation, its resistance to being drafted for Vietnam. "We've kept our compact with ourselves," says Chicago novelist and lawyer Scott Turow. "We know the unexamined life is not worth living, we're good parents, we recycle. But what have we done for anybody else? That's the question people of this class will ask when their kids are grown." Who wants to be in that position? Not I, says Eric Redman, a partner in a big Seattle law office, with a corner office on the 61st floor of Seattle's tallest building. Also a Rhodes scholar, a Harvard Law graduate and a member of the Harvard class of 1970--of whom nearly 30 percent, responding to an anonymous survey for their 25th reunion, reported a net worth of more than $1 million. But Redman describes himself as just a "glorified hourly wage slave . . . My broker told me the really big money isn't being made in salaries, but real estate and stock options." So count him out. What about Faith Popcorn, the endlessly quotable president of a marketing firm called Brain Reserve, who lives and works in her own town house in the most expensive part of Manhattan? Not her either. "I'm not psychologically like those rich people," she says. "I lived in a studio apartment for 25 years before I bought my brownstone, and my cottage in Wainscott [a fashionable section in the Hamptons] is only 750 square feet."</p><p>Perhaps they just don't realize that the overclass is not the old-fashioned, discredited, morally bankrupt aristocracy. "They're the first wave of people who went to Ivy League schools on .their merits, did well and are still hustling to do well," says Nelson W. Aldrich Jr.-himself a scion of an old aristocratic family and the author of "Old Money." The overclass was made possible by the transformation in the 1950s and 1960s of the Ivy League from a closed network dedicated to serving the least disreputable offspring of the WASP elite into a great machine for identifying future national leaders. A degree from an Ivy League or equivalent school is an almost indispensable credential of overclass membership--and not only because it presumes that you learned something while getting it. "At the highest levels," Lind says, "everyone was a roommate in college." Turow, who has degrees from Amherst, Stanford and Harvard, says friends sometimes ask him whether their children really need $100,000 worth of higher education to get ahead in life. "If you're asking me whether an Ivy League graduate will have access in ways that don't exist to graduates of otherwise outstanding schools like the University of Illinois," he tells them, "the answer is yes."</p><p>The overclass leads a distinctive lifestyle, which basically reflects Yuppie tastes updated to take into account its increased affluence, sophistication, and of course weight-often a simple matter of substituting a Mercedes SL320 for a 10-speed bicycle. It is a lifestyle founded on privilege--on the premise, according to Stan Schultz, a cultural historian at the University of Wisconsin, that "we are terribly busy souls doing important things that no one else can do. . ." so of course we have to fly business class, we need a full-time nanny instead of day care, we eat out four nights a week instead of trying to make our oven risotto with squid ink. The widespread belief that Yuppies as a class would perish from Brie-cheese poisoning turned out to be over-optimistic. They're still at it, according to the consumer-research wizards of Claritas, Inc., who have identified a specific segment of the overclass, comprising mostly urban singles and couples without children, whose members eat Brie cheese at more than five times the national average.</p><p>Politically, the overclass exists in a state of perpetual tension between its economic interests, which lie with the Republicans, and its psychological affinity for the Democrats. "One trait that comes through the data is the economic conservatism of this group," says Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. "They don't like to give money away." But their values are libertarian and cosmopolitan-typically pro-choice on abortion, pro-NAFTA on trade, environmentally aware. And at odds, therefore, with the Republican social agenda, which is driven by groups like the Christian Coalition (founded by Yale Law School alumnus Pat Robertson) and The Family Research Council, which actively loathe everything about the overclass, except its money. "If you're making six figures, Republicans aren't hurting you," said Diana Sperrazza, a TV news producer vacationing on Nantucket Island this summer. "You don't want to think about it," she says. "You have a foot in each camp, really."</p><p>It's likely those tendencies described by Sperrazza actually cancel each other out. As far as political power goes, individual members of the overclass naturally serve in high positions--such as the presidency--in both parties. But except for those whose careers are actually in politics or journalism, they don't seem to wield extraordinary influence. "These people want access and power," says Maria Cantwell, a former Democratic congresswoman who represented Seattle's East Side, home to many Microsoft millionaires. "But they're too busy to use it. They're used to the fast track to make things happen. That's not government."</p><p>One of Lind's most controversial points is that the overclass has used its money and access to manipulate public policy, enriching itself at the expense of everyone else. But the money and access that count in Congress are wielded by institutions, not "classes" composed of disparate individuals. Much has been made of the reduction in marginal tax rates since 1980. But over the same period many loopholes were closed, so that while tax burdens were shifted around some among individuals, as a group the top 5 percent paid 31 percent of all federal income taxes last year--up from 27.8 percent in 1977. It is true that the gap in after-tax income between the richest Americans and all the others has been growing. But economists now agree that the government's consumer price index, which is used to adjust income statistics, overstates the effect of inflation on people's wages. By other measures, middle-class income is growing--slowly--the poor are stagnating, and the rich are getting richer, very rapidly.</p><p>If it lacks a distinctive political interest, the overclass nevertheless has an ideology, the ideology of "merit." Its success validates its intelligence and effort. Other oligarchies in the past have made similar assertions, of course, but the overclass is the first that is able to demonstrate superiority mathematically, with the help of SAT scores. "They believe they create their job, their opportunity and their wealth," says Edward Blakely, dean of urban planning at the University of Southern California. The attitude he describes may account for the peculiar reaction the overclass has to failure, such as the loss of a job. Its members decline to acknowledge it. "Their view," says Peter Meder, who rims an executive-search firm in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, "is still one of total entitlement. . . . The opening line is, 'I'm networking right now. I'm taking some time off to evaluate my options.' Can you imagine a factory worker or a retail-store manager getting fired and saying, 'I'm taking time off to evaluate my options?'"</p><p>In the abstract, "merit" is a wonderful ideal, and a far more efficient way to allocate rewards in a modern society than, say, primogeniture. Of course, in the real world luck plays a role in everyone's life; some people go to high school in Beverly Hills and some in East St. Louis. But people who believe that all rewards flow from merit tend not to have much sympathy for life's failures. "As you do well, you convince yourself that anyone can do well," says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University. "They don't feel particularly connected to the plight of the working class," says Blakely. When a factory worker loses his job, the overclass isn't hostile, just uncomprehending, he says: "It's a case of 'What's wrong with them? Why can't they go back to school?'"</p><p>Failure just is not an option for the over-class. Elise Gunter, a successful Hollywood lawyer, had dinner with an investment-banker friend recently, who explained his theory that America is becoming a two-tier society. One class will have the autonomy to live where and how it wants; the other will be increasingly constrained and shut out. Pedigree and power, money and education will make the difference, and so he had set out to become as rich and successful as possible. "You couldn't imagine anyone saying that 10 or 15 years ago," she said with a shudder. "But he said it matter-of-factly, as if to say, 'Of course that's the way it is.' On the one hand it was disturbing, but part of me agrees with that."</p><p>Gunter's friend had an extreme case, verging on paranoia, of a more general overclass anxiety: "You could call them scared to death, leading lives of quiet desperation," says Aldrich. "Or not-so-quiet desperation. They talk about their desperation while eating out." This belief in the coming triumph of the smart and rich helps explain why the over-class is so driven to reject so vehemently middle-class values and tastes. Is health the only reason so few of them smoke? Or is it also a way of choosing sides with the winners? "'We are the talented few'," says Schultz. "'We wouldn't think of going to Las Vegas, except once to be able to comment on how tacky America is'." Can anyone doubt that arugula would quickly be seen for the bitter, stringy vegetable it actually is if Burger King began offering it on sandwiches?</p><p>Of course, salad vegetables don't have much significance, even symbolically. But other personal choices, such as where to live and send children to school, very much do. Increasingly the overclass is choosing to live in ways that minimize its mixing with the middle class (which is doing the same, of course, with respect to the poor). Sometimes it just moves farther out into the suburbs, or higher up the high-rise. But increasingly often it chooses to live in a walled and gated community guarded by private security forces. "It becomes a matter of status not to have contact [with strangers]," observes Mike Davis, a perceptive critic of Los Angeles society. "Physical isolation is a luxury." In Laguna Niguel, a wealthy Orange County beach town, a group of homeowners won permission to put gates at their entry roads--guarding not just the 250 homes, but a public park right in the middle of their subdivision. The plan is being challenged in court by another resident of the town.</p><p>No issue is more fraught with desperation for the overclass than schools. Their conviction that they rose to their eminence in one generation on "merit" leads inescapably to the conclusion that their own kids might not make it, or deserve to. But few are willing to put that proposition to the test; instead they maneuver frantically to get their offspring into the best possible private schools, starting (in highly competitive environments such as Manhattan) with preschool before the age of 3. "Those who believe in public education as a democratic ideal," says Pearl Kane, an authority on independent schools at Columbia University Teachers College, "move to Greenwich, Conn., and pay a million dollars for their homes." Those who do it are like one well-to-do Los Angeles mother, a former public-school teacher herself, who says bluntly that the problem with the public schools is having children of different social classes, where "they don't have the same values in their home . . . if I'm working hard to push my child I want to make sure the other parents are, too." One development soon to be built in California has hit on the perfect overclass solution: a gated community with a private school inside.</p><p>And let's wish the future residents long and happy lives, in contented ignorance of people like Michael Brennan, a union electrician from Arlington Heights, Ill. He had a few years of college, intending to be a teacher, but lost interest. When a friend from college derided people with "dead-end jobs," Brennan thought to himself, "Hey, some people just want to feed their kids and meet their responsibilities." He's working now on a job at a big Chicago law firm, and when he shows up at 2 a.m. to shut off the power, he finds lawyers still at their desks from 18 hours before, even on weekends. Some of them probably feel sorry for or even contemptuous toward him. They probably think, if they think about it at all, that he envies them. They're very wrong. "Some of these people I feel sorry for," he says. "You wonder if they've sold their souls. Life's pretty short." Even for the overclass.</p><p>1. The object above is . . .(a) a weed(b) the Jolly Green Giant's codpiece(c) a bunch of arugula2. Have you ever bought stock in an initial public offering?(a) yes(b) no3. The object above is used to . . .(a) change light bulbs in high ceilings(b) catch crappie in your local fishing hole(c) play the game of lacrosse4. Choate Rosemary Hall is . . .(a) a chain of women's discount-clothing stores(b) the classic '50s crooner who pitched paper towels(c) a boarding school in Connecticut5. A 401(k) refers to . . .(a) a kind of footrace(b) a new breakfast cereal(c) a tax-deferred retirement account6. True or false: You can tell the difference between a Manet anda Monet7. Unscramble the following: StaMsirtear; Lobletroop; ShamartDrivenay; KNDY8. To you, a public office is(a) a public trust(b) a place to steal(c) a real financial sacrifice but a great place to network9. Do you a book a shiatsu massage on every business trip?10. Has your child ever called your nanny "Mommy?"(a) yes(b) no11. Did you take a year off from college to find yourself?12. Which has more milk?(a) a tall cappuccino(b) a dry cappuccino(c) a mocha cappuccino13. Have you ever seen someone you actually know on "Jenny Jones"or "Cops"?14. You use this vehicle almost exclusively for:(a) driving off-road in the Appalachian Mountains(b) getting around the Louisiana bayous(c) driving on newly repaved suburban roads from home to thecountry club15. Do you haul back issues of The New York Review of Books tovacation in Tuscany?16. Fill in the blank: "Wow, I heard a really great(underbar)onSunday."(a) sermon(b) Loretta Lynn song(c) stock tipAnswers: (1) c; (2) a; (3) c; (4) c; (5) c; (6) true; (7)StairMaster; Portobello; Martha's Vineyard; DKNY; (8) c; (9) yes;(10) a; (11) yes; (12) a; (13) no; (14) c; (15) yes; (16) cScoring yourself: 0-7: You're not going to be running the countryany time soon8-15: You obviously know your Pellegrino from your Perrier, butmaybe it's time to send your kinds to YMCA camp for a changePerfect score: Proceed to Kmart and get back in touch with America<p>Matt Williams, 44, wrote for proto-overclass sitcom "The Cosby Show" and fueled blue-collar chic as creator of "Roseanne." Now he's executive producer of "Home Improvement"-and said to be a top SKG Dream Team draft pick.</p><p>Shelby Coffey III, 48, won kudos as editor of the Los Angeles Times for his paper's coverage of riots and quakes, but he sometimes looks too chummy with The Industry. Reputed pals include Michael Eisner and Mike Ovitz. Big layoffs at paper send some employees spinning out of the overclass.</p><p>Louis Rossetto, 46, first shopped the idea for his digital-age magazine four years ago, but nobody wanted to pluG in. Now the hype-happy Wired editor and publisher's monthly is required reading for the Net set.</p><p>Chris Matthews, 49, San Francisco Examiner Washington bureau chief and author of clever political how-to guide, "Hardball." A sound-bite savant, he hustled so many talk-show appearances they just gave him one of his own.</p><p>Janet Billig, 27, may have something to do with the racket coming from Junior's room. The former manager of Nirvana, Hole and the Breeders jumped the fence in January to Atlantic Records, where, as a VP, she'll dish out more of the same.</p><p>Brian Williams, 36, projects a confident blandness, giving him the inside track to succeed Tom Brokaw as NBC's nightly anchor. Though he's the net's White House correspondent, he goes where the power story is playing.</p><p>Judy McGrath, 42, joined MTV soon after its founding in 1981. She's risen from copywriter to creative director to president, shaping the face of the network that's supercharging the style and pacing of all TV. Do you loathe Beavis and Butthead? Blame her.</p><p>Charles Murray, 52, achieved notoriety a decade ago calling for the end of welfare in "Losing Ground." In last year's "The Bell Curve," his linkage of race and IQ made him the most controversial social scientist of his time.</p><p>Wayne Wang, 46, has earned acclaim for a string of offbeat films that explored the Asian-American diaspora. In his new movie, "Smoke," the Hong Kong native proves equally at home with a roguish gang at Brooklyn storytellers.</p><p>Donna Karan, 46, is the Henry Ford of fashion: you can have any color you want-as long as it's black. She's expanded her line to include children and men, and her smart ads have so supersaturated the atmosphere that people who don't know a handbag from a glad rag know DKNY. She's venerated for clothes blending style and comfort-and they've become the overclass boardroom uniform of choice.</p><p>Kurt Andersen, 40, helped members of the overclass feel superior to their lampooned brethren as cofounder of the scathing '80s must-read Spy. The Harvard man with the overdeveloped taste buds now runs influential city mag New York.</p><p>Nicholas Lemann, 40, says he's "a little skeptical of this whole overclass theory." but as national correspondent for the highbrow Atlantic Monthly, the author of "The Promised Land" is squarely in the middle of it, completing a new book on class and success in the meritocracy.</p><p>Matthew Marks, 32, is the most adroit art dealer of the post-Mary Boone generation, with a smart little shop in uptown Manhattan and a huge new space in trendy Chelsea. If you've got six figures and a taste for hype, he's got the Julian Schnabel.</p><p>Walter Isaacson, 43, New Media editor at Time Warner. Rhodes scholar, historian and marathon glitterati schmoozer, he is charged with merging Luce Empire onto the Info Highway. A boy wonder for two decades.</p><p>Leslie Moonves, 45, was just hired to head CBS's entertainment division. In his old job at Warner Brothers, he lured even the TV-leery to the tube with megahits like "E.R." and "Friends"-and made WB the leading supplier of network shows.</p><p>Katie Couric, 38, wins ratings and amuses bleary overclass travellers, who watch the energetic NBC "Today" cohost in lonely hotels. Katie hates "perky." But she is.</p><p>Christopher Buckley, 42, is the son of conservative Godfather Bill, did go to Yale and did write speeches for George Bush. But as a magazine editor, satirical novelist ("Thank You for Smoking") and legendary cocktail-circuit raconteur, he had drolly ad-libbed his own irreverent success story.</p><p>Thomas Rogers, 40, is charged with moving NBC into the 21st century. As president of cable and business development, he honchos CNBC, NBC Online and, in partnership with Microsoft, a budding interactive TV operation.</p><p>Maureen Orth, 49, sharpened her eye for pomposity as a House staffer and with filmmaker Lina Wertmuller. In D.C., the former NEWSWEEK writer rustles other schmoozers with husband Tim Russert, pens poison profiles of powerful pooh-bahs from Madonna to Arianna Huffington.</p><p>Ann Godoff, 46, plugged-in editorial director of Random House, has the knack for turning offbeat straw into gold (like John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"). She jump-started Random's re-emergence as publishing's hot shop.</p><p>Robert Morton, 42, known as "Morty," helps entertain insomniacs both as executive producer for the oh-so-ironic "Late Show With David Letterman" and as a fixture on the Manhattan-to-Montauk party circuit.</p><p>John Grisham, 40, has made a fortune writing thrillers about loners who whip the establishment. The Mississippi bred writer waves young overclass aspirants away from trapping themselves with wasteful careers in the law.</p><p>Cokie Roberts, 51. The Wellesley-educated daughter of a New Orleans congressman mixes decent reporting lukewarm conventional wisdom on ABC News, NPR. Taking fire over accepting huge speech fees from corporations with Washington business.</p><p>James Truman, 38, leapfrogged over The New Yorker's Tina Brown to become chief agent in the British infiltration of American publishing. As editorial director for Conde Nast magazines-from Vogue to GQ to Vanity Fair-relentlessly hip Truman helps decide what the affluent read and wear.</p><p>Harvey Weinstein, 43, and brother, Bob, 40, are modern David O. Selznicks: movie distributors with enough moxie to sell art-house fare to the Raisinettes crowd. You don't just talk about their Miramax films like "Pulp Fiction" or "The Piano." You discuss them.</p><p>Shelby Steele, 49, was an unknown African-American English professor at San Jose State until 1990, when he published. "The Content of Our Character." That critique of affirmative action propelled Steele to the front rank of conservative thinkers, earned him a Hoover Institution fellowship and made him an easy target for liberals. His next book, "The End of Oppression," ponders the ironies in the legacy of the Great Society.</p><p>Kathy Halbreich, 46, maintains Minneapolis's prestigious Walker Art Center's reputation for avant-grade liveliness by striking a balance between political correctness (Jenny Holzer) and lurid fun (Jeff Koons). It's a far cry from Lake Wobegon, but the neighbors haven't complained.</p><p>Tim Russert, 45, NBC's chief networker, took the helm of "Meet the Press" in 1991, replaced its snoozy chat with what he calls "civilized aggressiveness" and made it the Beltway crowd's favorite Sunday-morning wake-up call.</p><p>Frank Rich, 46. So powerful-and vicious-as The New York Times's theater critic, producers called him "The Butcher of Broadway." Now he's the reigning lefty cultural elitist on the op-ed page: thumbs up for gays and rap, curtains for anyone to the right of Sheldon Hackney.</p><p>'Mo' Siegel, 45. What's the ex-hippie founder of Celestial Seasonings doing on a list of the fiber-powerful? After a brief sabbatical promoting environmental causes, he's back to pushing herbal brews. Too much corporate stress? Have a cup of Tummy Mint, Mo.</p><p>Bonnie Tempesta, 42, never dreamed that she was creating a cookie monster when she baked her first biscotti in '85. Today her La Tempesta bakery produces 300,000 twice-baked biscotti a day. Annual revenues approach $9 million. While Oreos may not be worried, '90s sophisticates woudn't be caught dead dunking anything else in their coffee.</p><p>Yvon Chouinard, 56. Outdoorsman, Buddhist and altruist, Chouinard is the founder of Patagonia, the rugged-clothing company. With 1 percent of its annual sales going to environmental causes, he's the P.C. outdoor clothier.</p><p>Danny Meyer, 37, feeds peach-fig chutney and quinoa-basmati pilaf to New York's elite at his tony Union Square Care and Gramercy Tavern. A cookbook- autographed copies available-brings his taste to the hinterlands.</p><p>Patty Stonesifer, 39, If you've been bragging about your new Pentium-chip system, but don't know a hard from a floppy, the eager head of Microsoft's prized consumer division wants to meet you. Her corporate mandate: developing software for the computer-insecure.</p><p>Ed Hagenlocker, 55, the Ford veep who brought us the Explorer, the hot vehicle of choice. Would the power-driven commute from Winnetka in anything else?</p><p>Peter Kann, 52. Yes, some overclassers actually started in the mad room--or in Kann's case, the journalistic equivalent. Once a newspaper copy boy, he flourished overseas and now chairs Dow Jones &amp; Co., publisher of the moneyed-class bible, The Wall Street Journal.</p><p>Karen Elliott House, 47. A Pulitzer Prize winner for the Journal, she's the no-nonsense head of the business and editorial staffs of Dow Jones &amp; Co,'s overseas operations. And married to Big Boss Kann.</p><p>Howard Schultz, 42. An epiphany at a Milan espresso bar prompted him to purchase Starbucks in 1987, then a tiny coffee-bean company. Today, he keeps the overclass awake.</p><p>Elliott Hillback, 51. The president of Integrated Genetics, he's a fearless pioneer in the field of gene-based diagnostics. He's leading the charge to develop a test for Down's syndrome u sing fetal cells in the mother's blood.</p><p>Michael Dell, 30. The wunderkind hit the computer big-time at a painfully early age. His company, Dell Computer, has been to hell and back: its sales tanked in '93 when it lost nearly $36 million. but was scrambling back to the top last year.</p><p>Raymond McGuire, 38. A managing director at Merrill Lynch. this softspoken M&amp;A expert is a model of how to combine Wall Street success with roots in the community. Three degrees from Harvard--and he still works hard on Harlem's problems.</p><p>Dave Checketts, 39, CEO of Madison Square Garden. Checketts has been president of both the New York Knicks and the Utah Jazz. He attended Brigham Young University--where he lasted only one season on the basketball team. But now he controls the floor.</p><p>James Dimon, 39, the high-powered exec at Smith Barney and its parent, Traveler's Group, is best known for this spring's "Memorial Day Massacre" at the brokerage. Dimon flexed his muscles and axed traders who were placing risky orders.</p><p>Alex Kozinski, 45, was the youngest federal appeals judge when Reagan picked him in 1985. A Romanian immigrant and eccentric libertarian, he clerked for Warren Burger and is a chum of Anthony Kennedy's. Now he covets his own seat.</p><p>Dan Harmetz, 33, vice president at Fidelity Investments, the country's biggest mutual-fund company. A former junk-bond junkie, he's still done well in the conservative '90s. He even helped bail out Donald Trump.</p><p>Gun Denhart, 50, cofounder of Portland's Hanna Andersson Corp., the Swedish immigrant has been outfitting the toddlers of the well off in all-cotton clothing since 1984. The company is named after her grandmother. she says, because "my name [Gun] wasn't appropriate."</p><p>Tom Jones, 45, head of TIAA-CREF the world's largest private pension fund. In 1969 Jones led a 34-hour armed occupation of Cornell University's student-union building. Now he serves on the university's board of trustees.</p><p>Robert Rosenkranz, 52. The New York financier has left his mark on the leather cushions of numerous corporate boardrooms and. with big donations, on alma mater Yale. When he's not piloting his yellow Porsche, he's cutting deals and becoming a second-wave Henry Kravis.</p><p>Steven Brill, 44, ace reporter, had made a big success of American Lawyer and other legal publications when he dreamed up Court TV in 1991. Guys named Menendez, Kennedy Smith and Simpson will keep this abrasive Yalie in cigars for years.</p><p>Scott Cook 43, chairman and cofounder of Intuit, Inc. A Harvard MBA, Cook got his business legs selling Crisco for Procter &amp; Gamble. Now the former hotshot Bain &amp; Co. consultant uses his shortening-selling skills to peddle software.</p><p>Billy Payne, 47, quit his lucrative real-estate law practice to bring the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta. A former Georgia Bulldog linebacker who has already had two heart-by-pass operations, he bucked a skeptical Buckhead establishment while good-ole-boying the Summer Games into the biggest thing since Coca-Cola.</p><p>Robert L. Johnson, 49, founder and head of Black Entertainment TV. Founded in 1980, the network first broadcast only for three hours on Friday nights. It took Johnson, himself a legendary networker, 15 years, but now BET reaches 40 million homes around the clock.</p><p>Steven Rattner, 43, once covered business for The New York Times. But these days, the Times covers Rattner. A managing director at investment giant Lazard Freres, he was cool enough to go scuba diving while negotiating the Paramount takeover battle.</p><p>Brad Silverberg, 40. Also known as Mr. Windows, he's created some of the best-selling software in history. The next Bill Gates?</p><p>Raymond Ozzie, 39, founder of Lotus Notes, has Americans loading his software program into their computers faster than you can say "system crash." The boyishly handsome Ozzie's brain-child made IBM swoon, and brought Big Blue to the table to buy Lotus this spring.</p><p>Ted Leonsis, 39. He was a new-media guru in Florida when America Online bought his company. He hitched a ride on the Information Highway, and now Online has more than 3 million subscribers. He's helping all of us surf the Net.</p><p>John Shields, 63, chairman and CEO of Trader Joe's, the West Coast's popular specialty food-store chain. Joe's, which has served up discount gourmet food for 28 years, will take its cheese straws and flavored waters to a dozen stores on the East Coast next year.</p><p>Alvin (Buzzy) Krongard, 58, chairman of the board and CEO of Alex. Brown &amp; Sons, the blue-blooded Baltimore-based investors. The Princeton-educated, tough-talkin' Krongard used to be a marine; now he's barkin' orders at investors.</p><p>Emily Woods, 34. Daughter of J. Crew founder Arthur Cinader, she's taken over as the company's chief designer. Woods conjures up family memories-- of swimming in Nantucket and skiing in New Mexico--to create her preppified fashions.</p><p>Kurt Schmoke, 45. this charismatic Rhodes scholar became the black mayor of Baltimore, home to Camden Yards, the overclass dream park. Schmoke may yet carry urban renewal beyond the shiny waterfront.</p><p>Al Gore, 47. Scion of Washington and Carthage, Tenn., his accent deepens the farther South he goes. But this high-tech maven boasts impeccable credentials-two grad degrees (plus a Harvard B.A.) and a best seller on how to save the environment.</p><p>George Stephanopoulos, 34, graduate from Columbia to Oxford, then from the War Room to the White House. Still the underclassman of the overclass, he's already perfected the art of having a say on everything and his fingertips on nothing.</p><p>Liz Robbins, 49, well-tanned lobbyist and FOB whose Hamptons political salon is in session when Congress isn't. Her clients-mostly city governments and liberal nonprofits-are desperate for help on the Hill nowadays, and she's still wired.</p><p>Ralph Reed, 33. Pat Robertson's boyish front man who has mastered the GOP with waspish political threats. As head of the Christian Coalition, he's the Holy Yuppie.</p><p>Earl Wylie Potter, 51, first went to New Mexico as a VISTA volunteer; he's now state Democratic chair. His law firm champions the little guy-and handles zoning for developers.</p><p>Frank Raines, 46. Harvard Rhodes scholar, former Wall Street adviser to inner-city mayors, he now shepherds home loans to the downtrodden as Fannie Mae's vice chair. The overclass's idea of a man of the people-and their dream mayor for D.C.</p><p>Elaine Chao, 42, pledged to bring "a new reverence for donor dollars" after becoming president of United Way-a feeling the overclass relates to deeply. Formerly a head of the Peace Corps under Bush, she's married to Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell.</p><p>Mike Murphy, 33, dropped out of college to run his first media firm. At 29, he styled ads for Bush, then boosted Governors Whitman and Engler into the statehouse. He lost with Ollie North, but if new client Lamar Alexander does well in '96, he's the next Lee Atwater.</p><p>John Kerry, 51, hardworking senator from high-tech paleo-lib Massachusetts. Well-coiffed Vietnam War hero and Kennedy wanna-be married the widow of a dead colleague-ketchup heir John Heinz-and her $600 million.</p><p>Richard Holbrooke, 54, Democratic foreign-policy mandarin and onetime boyfriend of Diane Sawyer, now married to the former Mrs. Peter Jennings. His gray matter and tenacity redeem his reputation for shameless self-promotion.</p><p>William Kristol, 42, buffed his reputation by leaking cleverly to the press as Dan Quayle's chief of staff and, later, as an all-round GOP guru. His new right-wing magazine, The Standard, may be The New Republic of the Gingrich era.</p><p>Jamie Gorelick, 45, steered Janet Reno's confirmation so smoothly, the attorney general soon brought her on as her No. 2. a pragmatic former corporate lawyer, she may one day succeed to the top post.</p><p>Elizabeth McCaughey, 46, was an obscure if stylish wonk until she helped sink the Clinton health plan with her 1994 critique in The New Republic. It landed her the lieutenant governor's office in Albany-and a glossy spread in Vanity Fair.</p><p>Susan Estrich, 42. The first woman to run Harvard Law Review, the first to run a presidential campaign (Dukakis), she wrote a book on rape and now teaches gender-discrimination and criminal law at USC and hosts a radio talk show. She's who Hillary might have been.</p><p>Strobe Talbott, 49. Tapped for the Yale Corporation at 30, the former Time editor gracefully leapt from high-level journalism to a high-level State post. FOB from Oxford days would be secretary of state if Jesse helms didn't hate him.</p><p>William Weld, 50. Squash-playing Brahmin GOP governor exorcised Dukakis ghosts by cutting Taxachussets bloat. Smart and Kennedy-esque, but doomed by Christian right vendetta against him.</p><p>Bob Reich, 49, secretary of labor and charter FOB from Oxford days. Despite his early and influential vision of the underside of the overclass, his influence may be greater at Renaissance Weekend than in he job market.</p><p>Bill Daley, 46, upscale, polished brother and son of classically middle-class Chicago mayors. He swung the Illinois primary, then NAFTA for Clinton; too valuable at home to collect a Washington post before '96.</p><p>Timothy Wirth, 55, rivals Al Gore for coolest, greenest Harvard neolib. Preppy and photogenic, he chose not to run for re-election to his Colorado Senate seat in 1992 and took instead the impressively vague title of under secretary for global affairs at State.</p><p>Paul Krugman, 42, outspoken economist from Stanford, has become a major Clinton headache. A prolific writer, he calls the president's obsession with opening Japanese and other foreign markets to fix U.S. economic problems "baloney."</p><p>Jerry Reinsdorf, 59, one of the toughest owners in sports. With new standiums for his Chicago Bulls and White Sox, he's given the Second City the feel of a winner-even if Chicagoans hate giving Brooklyn-born Reindorf the credit.</p><p>Steven Pinker, 40, of MIT, developed the first comprehensive theory of language development in children. The irreverent linguist is shaking up neuroscience by arguing that syntax is a product of evolution and that "black English" follows rules just as grammatical as the Queen's.</p><p>Condoleezza Rice, 40, Bush's chief Soviet military adviser, is the first black, the first woman, and probably the first piano-playing Republican to be provost at Stanford-the No. 2 job. Moreover, Strobe Talbott.</p><p>Bert Vogelstein, 46, a hard-driving Howard Hughes Medical Institute geneticist, leads the elite Johns Hopkins team that discovered a gene for colon cancer, turning the worldwide search for cancer genes into the hottest field in medical research.</p><p>Elaine Pagels, 52, unassuming religion scholar at Priceton, makes tangled theology clear. In 1979, she took a ground-breaking look at early Christians whose beliefs didn't make it into the canon. Her current book, popular with the chattering class, probes the origins of Satan.</p><p>Len Elmore, 43, spent 10 years in the NBA before heading to Harvard Law School. In a sport where the players are mostly black but the Players-the dealmakers-are mostly white, he's changing the race equation as a rising black agent.</p><p>David Gelernter, 40, of Yale, invented a versatile new computer language and is brainstorming software for "smart" public transit (it comes to you when and when you want it). For his technotrailblazing, the iconoclastic scientist nearly lost his life to a 1993 package sent by the Unabomer.</p><p>Nicholas Negroponte, 51, uberwired director of the Media Lab at MIT and author of "Being Digital," led the team that invented multimedia and predicted that the nerdy Net would become the hippest thing since Praque.</p><p>J. Craig Venter, 48, was ostracized by scientists who were shocked-shocked-when, at NIH, he tried to patent strings of DNA. So the entrepreneurial biologist founded The Institute for Genomic Research in '92, and has confounded snipers by IDing moe than half of all human genes.</p><p>Grant Hill, 22, NBA rarity: an all-star with a courtly on-court manner. Dad was a NFL star who went to Yale. His mom roomed with Hillary Clinton at Wellesley. The Duke grad and Detroit Piston takes home $5 million in endorsements from Coke and Fila. And he's only a rookie.</p><p>The Most Rev. John H. Ricard, 55, though only an auxiliary bishop (of Baltimore), shapes church policy on social and political issues as head of its U.S. domestic-policy committee, making him Catholicism's most prominent African-American. A handsome, self-confident comer.</p><p>Michael Beschloss, 39, set aside his M.B.A. from Harvard to become the nation's leading presidential historian. The popular scholar with movie-star good looks is emerging as a semi-stuffy guru on the Washington media circuit.</p><p>Judith Rodin, 50, president of Penn and first woman head on an Ivy League school. Bonus points: the photogenic Columbia Ph.D.'s opus on eating disorders won her a spot on "Oprah Winfrey."</p><p>Andrew Wiles, 42, a publicity-shy Princeton mathematician, holed up in his house and proved the 358-year-old puzzle known as Fermat's Last Theorem this year, demonstrating that even math can be cool enough to land you on the front page of the Times.</p><p>Dick Darman, 52, thrilled the overclass with his busque style and daring, anti-chick suits and hair as Bush's budget director. But his smoke-and-mirrors gamesmanship alienated government drones and failed to reduce the deficit.</p><p>Robert McNamara, 79. Godfather to the overclass, the auto exec, secretary of defense and World Banker typifies the idea of failing upward. But still at all the right parties.</p><p>Benno Schmidt Jr., 53, was a preppy, brainy man for all academies: dean of Columbia Law, president of Yale, Then, pfft . . . he left the Ivy League to become CEO of Whittle's Edison Project (see right). Shoulda stayed in school, Benno.</p><p>Roger Altman, 49, former deputy at Treasury, had only to wait for Secretary Lloyd Bentsen to retire. Instead Whitewater caught the former Wall Street wonder boy in its headlights, and he was gone.</p><p>Chris Whittle, 47, Channel One's whiz kid had it all: a media empire worth roughly $200 million, wet-kiss press and big rep for vision. But shaky financing and bad follow-through took its toll. Now his once hot school project is sucking wind. But, hey, he still has the hair.</p><p>The party was allegedly a diplomatic event, something Michelle Obama called a “really neat dinner” at a walk-through press preview earlier in the day. But who cares about all that when there are snubs to tally (where were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and incoming World News anchor Diane Sawyer?) and curious inclusions to dissect (Tom Friedman? Really?).</p><p>“This is a big time to call in your chits,” said Washington doyenne Sally Quinn, wife of former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee. Ipso facto, anyone who didn’t show Tuesday night either didn’t have enough chits to call (Rep. Eric Cantor) or so many they thought it wouldn’t matter (cable queen Oprah Winfrey, who sent a gold-bedecked Gayle King in her stead).</p><p>• The most anticipated moment of the evening came when a member of the White House communications team emerged around 8 p.m. to brief the press on Michelle Obama’s outfit. “It’s a gold strapless dress,” the woman said, gesturing to her décolletage. “By Naeem Khan. N-A-E-E…” Khan, an Indian-born designer who started his own label in 2003, having thus been blessed with the Mobama fashion seal of approval, must have had a pretty good night.</p><p>“Michelle Obama is not following type,” said Wall Street Journal columnist Teri Agins, who predicted the strapless gown hours in advance. “We’ve seen her wear cardigans to meet Queen Elizabeth. We’ve seen her wear walking shorts on Air Force One. We’ve seen her wear Target and the Gap and White House Black Market; she’s just all over the place. And I just kind of think: I wonder if this has now set a new tone in Washington.”</p><p>The answer, as of Tuesday night, was… not really, or at least not yet. The women came dressed in conservative gowns; the men in standard penguin suits. There were no Balmain buckles, no Alexander Wang-style cutout dresses, not even a one-shoulder number by Obama favorite Jason Wu. It was the evening’s honoree, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who arrived in the most fashion-forward garb, wearing a lovely periwinkle turban very much like the ones Christian Lacroix showed for his Fall 2009 collection. Singh and the president cut chic figures side-by-side on stage, when they kicked off the evening with a toast “to the future that beckons all of us.”</p><p>Anyone who spent Tuesday night reading a fresh copy of Going Rogue would have found no surprises (and many signs of a coming apocalypse) in the night’s program. Dinner was vegetarian, including homegrown mint leaves and lemon verbena plucked from the first lady’s backyard “kitchen garden.” David Geffen brought his handsome younger boyfriend; Katie Couric brought hers. Two Emanuel brothers came, along with lifestyle guru Deepak Chopra and welfare economist Amartya Sen. Yes, they served arugula. “White House Arugula,” according to the menu—one more confirmation that liberal elitism has been institutionalized.</p><p></p><p>Every detail, down to the biography of guest chef Marcus Samuelsson, fit with the Obamas’ governing ethos of diversity, inclusion, and organic vegetables. Samuelsson, an Ethiopian-born New York restaurateur, cooked a healthy, sustainable feast: potato and eggplant salad to start, followed by red lentil soup with “fresh cheese” (one would hope), then an entrée choice of roasted potato dumplings with tomato chutney, chickpeas and okra or green curry prawns, caramelized salsify, smoked collard greens, and coconut aged basmati. Dessert was pumpkin pie, pear tatin, whipped cream and caramel sauce, as well as a selection of smaller treats, including cashew brittle and pecan pralines.</p><p>A typical exchange, involving a diplomat and a member of the media, went like this: “Is that a new tuxedo?” “It is a new tuxedo!” “Who made the tuxedo?” “I don’t recall.”</p><p>Absolutely nothing scandalous or dramatic happened, to the infinite chagrin of a hungry press.</p><p>“We all wait for some fabulous gaffe, somebody losing their dress or something of that sort, which occasionally happens,” said Judith Martin, a.k.a. “Miss Manners,” a former journalist who has attended her share of State Dinners. She recalled the Johnson years, when the president and his wife “did not stint on the wine and loved to stay up all night dancing”—so late that some of the more crotchety Supreme Court justices would leave early, even though the custom is to stay as long as the first couple does.</p><p>The guests this year seemed demure and press shy—just happy to be there. A typical exchange, involving a diplomat and a member of the media, went like this:</p><p>“Is that a new tuxedo?”</p><p>“It is a new tuxedo!”</p><p>“Who made the tuxedo?”</p><p>“I don’t recall.”</p><p>Energy Secretary Steven Chu arrived early, with his wife. When someone asked who she was wearing, she replied, “Bloomingdale's.”</p><p>Attorney General Eric Holder arrived with his wife, who wore a delicate pink strapless dress by Kay Unger. “I’m with Steven Spielberg, so my kids have given me a list of questions to ask,” he said before they ducked into the tent.</p><p>Spielberg was there along with both of his fellow DreamWorks SKG partners, Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, no doubt because of the troika’s joint venture with India’s Reliance ADA Group, a powerful Bollywood studio run by Anil Ambani, the sixth richest man in the world.</p><p>The guest list also included a who’s who of prominent Indian-Americans. CNN chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, came with his wife, Rebecca, who wore an ornate fuschia silk sari, an of which the would-be surgeon general threw up on Twitpic earlier in the evening. Film director M. Night Shyamalan turned up, so did Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. Then again, so did Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal—you remember him, from NBC’s 30 Rock.</p><p>After the opening toasts, guests settled down to dinner, and the press feed went dark. What was happening in there, with all those fabulous people, that the rest of America couldn’t see?</p><p>“Everybody stands around in little huddles and stares at the other famous people,” said Quinn. “The most fun part is getting invited in the first place.”</p><p>Rebecca Dana is a culture correspondent for The Daily Beast. A former editor and reporter for the Wall Street Journal, she has also written for the New York Times, the New York Observer, Rolling Stone and Slate, among other publications.</p>, former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, Barbra Streisand, Vera Wang, and Vogue Editor Anna Wintour. Michelle Obama channeled high glamour in a by Alexander McQueen.</p>Die Antwoord's leader Ninja talks with The Daily Beast about working with Alexander Wang, who he'd like to collaborate with and those dragon tattoo rumors.<p></p><p>When we celebrated the 25th anniversary of Woodstock in 1994, it felt like an important time to commemorate the era, because the '60s were being freshly revived at the time, in the form of headbands, clogs, bell bottoms, a baby boomer president and Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison. Outdoor festivals like Lollapalooza were just taking off, too, giving a new generation of teenyboppers a chance to flaunt their alternative, bohemian lifestyles. Now we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary, but it feels a little less significant this year. Maybe because '60s counterculture—the music, the fashion—has been played out. What felt like a new discovery in the '90s is beginning to look as weathered as Rachel Zoe. While there’s still a handful of girls running around in their Urban Outfitters-issued headbands and mukluks, most young designers are “more likely to wax nostalgic about Desperately Seeking Susan and '90s grunge,” acknowledges WWD in the introduction to a Woodstock anniversary-themed spread of sketches by designers like Alexander Wang. They looked like the results of a forced assignment you’d find in fashion school. Wang’s sketch, of a nude strategically covered by leaves, at least got the most important fact about '60s counterculture “fashion”—it was mostly anti-fashion: Clothing optional. Let’s see if Urban Outfitters can figure out a way to sell that.</p><p>Plus: .</p><p>Renata Espinosa is the New York editor of . She is also the co-founder of impressionistic fashion and art blog and a sometimes backup dancer for "The Anna Copa Cabanna Show."</p><p>A semi-scientific survey of the more than 180 brands that make appearances in the film, draped over one or another of the Fab Four (or, in a few cases, knotted like twine in their hair), reveals some surprising results. Although Halston, of which star Sarah Jessica Parker is now “creative director,” makes the highest-profile outfits, it is tried-and-true Chanel that actually has the most pieces on screen—followed by Christian Dior, followed by Roberto Cavalli. There is more Christian Louboutin than Manolo Blahnik; more Calvin Klein than YSL. There is an obscene quantity of spine-buckling necklaces made by “queen of bling” Solange Azagury-Partridge. There is absolutely no Gucci anywhere.</p><p>As with the first go-round, there are also pieces by a number of lesser-known designers whose entire businesses will likely be held up, Michelle Obama-style, by their inclusion in the film. Never heard of Jee Vice sunglasses or Triviál headgear? God help you, because the waitlists are probably already a mile long.</p><p>• The second film in the series, written by Michael Patrick King during the initial downward slope of the recession, takes our heroines on a fantastical journey to the Arab world, bedecking them in an array of non-traditional garb (much of it made by Cavalli) that would land a woman in jail in most of the real-life Middle East. The bulk of the action takes place in “Abu Dhabi,” but was actually filmed in Morocco after the government nixed filming locally on account of all the sex in Sex and the City. The setting provided new challenges—covering shoulders and knees; keeping Samantha’s breasts more or less concealed—and also new opportunities to expand into eclectic wardrobe items: jumpsuits, fans, jewel-encrusted crowns, sweatbands, turbans.</p><p>Much has already been made about the cost of the clothing worn in the film, which totaled more than $10 million when all was said and done. In a single scene, which has the gals blowing off a little steam with a few rounds of karaoke, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda managed to . One consequence of the economic downturn is that Carrie and Big must move to a new apartment, 12 floors lower to the ground, but still with a walk-in closet the size of a single-family home—filled floor-to-ceiling with couture by Net-a-Porter.</p><p>Patricia Field, the costume designer for Sex and the City, has said designers hoping to have pieces included in the film flooded her with samples before shooting began. There was a gymnasium filled with clothes, a room of shoes, a room of bags and two rooms for jewelry, one fine and one costume.</p><p>She whittled down this vast collection into a costume department that represented a vast swath of the fashion world.</p><p></p><p>The old heavies (Dior, Lanvin, Ralph Lauren) get the most play, but plenty of newer and younger designers (Alexander Wang, Rodarte, Brooklyn-based lingerie duo The Lake and Stars) get a piece or two in as well. The makers of Closed jeans, an Italian company that originally supplied uniforms for German postal workers, hit the jackpot as the primary denim purveyor for the film. A few mass-market brands make the cut, including Jordache jeans, Converse sneaks and one yellow T-shirt from Zara. But the vast majority of outfits look like they walked right off a runway, passed through a drag club, and landed in “Abu Dhabi.”</p><p>In a single scene, which has the gals blowing off a little steam with a few rounds of karaoke, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda managed to pile on $50,000 worth of duds.</p><p>The four women divide up designers pretty predictably: Carrie rocks a lot of vintage, some recent Balmain, and a series of consistently ridiculous hats. Samantha wears Rick Owens and Marc Bouwer, plus original nail art by designer Naomi Yasuda, and, in one scene, a $4.9 million diamond ring. In addition to the usual Chanel and Oscar de la Renta, Charlotte has a $32 apron from Anthropologie and a matching sweater-and-skirt set from Lilly Pulitzer. Ever-sensible Miranda wears a lot of Bottega Veneta and Hermès.</p><p>According to Sex and the City 2: The Stories. The Fashion. The Adventure.—an official published compendium of all the outfits —Miranda appoints herself fashion police while abroad, having “done a lot of research and [being] very up to speed on the social mores,” in the words of actress Cynthia Nixon. In that case, it is to her—and to Field—that we owe this current moment of clarity in fashion. If Miranda has her way, this will be the summer of shimmering Chanel skirts, bright silk turbans, and sunglasses by Jee Vice.</p><p>Plus: .</p><p>Rebecca Dana is a senior correspondent for The Daily Beast. A former editor and reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she has also written for The New York Times, The New York Observer, Rolling Stone, and Slate, among other publications.</p><p> <p>In Butter you play a freakishly talented butter carver in Iowa. Do you have any skills that are similarly impressive without being remunerative?</p> <p>I am not burdened with a skill set. Acting was my only way to make a living. Everything else had been eliminated through a long process of failure and firings.</p> <p>You grew up in a small town in Oregon. Did the characters in Butter seem real to you?</p> <p>My grandfather was a farmer in Oregon, and he's partly why we moved out to this town of 200 people. When you get out there, the things that people get...</p><p>(KABUL, Afghanistan) — Insurgents on Saturday killed two American troops in eastern Afghanistan, an area that has seen heavy fighting in recent months, the U.S. military said.</p><p>No other information about the deaths was disclosed, pending notification of family members.</p><p>But a U.S. military official said two U.S. special operations forces were killed by small arms fire in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul.</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose information about the deaths.</p><p>So far this year, 296 international troops, including at least 257 Americans, have been killed in Afghanistan.</p><p>In the south, an Afghan policeman was killed and another was wounded when a remote-controlled bomb planted on a motorbike was detonated in Sangin district of Helmand province, according to provincial spokesman Ahmad Zarak.</p><p>In neighboring Kandahar province, a roadside bomb killed another Afghan policeman in Kandahar city, said provincial spokesman Ahmad Jawed Faisal.</p><p>() — An extremist Egyptian-born preacher entered a U.S. courtroom Saturday for the first time to face multiple charges, complaining that his prosthetic hooks, medication and special shoes were taken away from him. The preacher was one of five terror defendants rounded up in Britain and extradited overnight to the U.S.</p><p>Abu Hamza al-Masri was surrounded by several marshals in a Manhattan courtroom as he faced charges he conspired with Seattle men to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon and helped abduct 16 hostages, two of them American tourists, in in 1998.</p><p>The 54-year-old, white-haired Al-Masri exposed both of his arms through his short-sleeved prison shirt. His court-appointed lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, asked that al-Masri, indicted under the name Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, have his prosthetics immediately returned &#8220;so he can use his arms.&#8221;</p><p>In the 1990s, al-Masri turned London&#8217;s Finsbury Park Mosque into a training ground for extremist Islamists, attracting men including Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and &#8220;shoe bomber&#8221; Richard Reid.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>Al-Masri — jailed since 2004 in Britain on separate charges — was flown overnight to New York from London along with four others accused of U.S. embassy bombings in Africa and with helping terror operations in Afghanistan and Chechnya. The men, who could all face life in prison, have been battling extradition for between eight to 14 years.</p><p>U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called the extraditions &#8220;a watershed moment in our nation&#8217;s efforts to eradicate terrorism.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;As is charged, these are men who were at the nerve centers of al-Qaida&#8217;s acts of terror, and they caused blood to be shed, lives to be lost, and families to be shattered.&#8221;</p><p>In New York&#8217;s federal court, Khaled al-Fawwaz and Adel Abdul Bary, entered not guilty pleas to charges that they participated in the bombings of embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. They were indicted in a case that also charged Osama bin Laden.</p><p>In New Haven, Conn., Syed Talha Ahsan, 33, and Babar Ahmad, 38, entered not guilty pleas to charges that they provided terrorists in Afghanistan and Chechnya with cash, recruits and equipment.</p><p>Al-Masri, a one-time nightclub bouncer, entered no plea, saying only &#8220;I do&#8221; when he was asked by U.S. Magistrate Judge Frank Maas whether he swears that his financial affidavit used to determine if he qualifies for a court-appointed lawyer was correct.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>Shroff told Maas that al-Masri needed use of his arms. &#8220;Otherwise, he will not be able to function in a civilized manner.&#8221;</p><p>She also asked for a dictating machine, saying he can&#8217;t take notes, the return of his diabetes medication and special shoes that prevent him from slipping. She said he will need a special diet and a full medical evaluation in prison.</p><p>Al-Masri peered through glasses as he consulted with Shroff and another court-appointed lawyer, Jerrod Thompson-Hicks, in a proceeding that lasted less than 15 minutes.</p><p>Al-Masri has one eye and claims to have lost his hands fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. His lawyers in England said he suffers from depression, chronic sleep deprivation, diabetes and other ailments.</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think he slept at all&#8221; on the overnight flight and hadn&#8217;t eaten since arriving in New York at 2:40 a.m., Shroff said outside court. Still, she added, &#8220;He seemed very much like a gentleman.&#8221;</p><p>Shroff and Thompson-Hicks also represented al-Fawwaz, 50, a citizen of Saudi Arabia. Thompson-Hicks said he was concerned whether his client would be properly treated for hypertension and high blood pressure. Attorney Andrew Patel, representing Bary, 52, an Egyptian citizen, said his client needed asthma medicine and treatment for other medical issues.</p><p>Patel, who declined to comment afterward, told Maas that Bary reserved the right to request bail in the future.</p><p>Four others who were tried in 2001 in the August 1998 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania are serving life sentences.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>Ahsan, 33, and Ahmad, 38, were kept detained while they await trial in Connecticut, where an Internet service provider was allegedly used to host a website. Their lawyers declined to comment.</p><p>Ahmad made efforts to secure GPS devices, Kevlar helmets, night vision goggles, ballistic vests and camouflage uniforms, prosecutors said.</p><p>Al-Masri is not the first Egyptian-born preacher to be brought to Manhattan for trial. A blind sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, is serving a life sentence after he was convicted in 1995 in a plot to assassinate then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and in another to blow up New York landmarks, including the United Nations and two tunnels and a bridge linking New Jersey to Manhattan. Abdel-Rahman has numerous health issues, including heart trouble.</p><p>The overnight trip to the United States came after a multiyear extradition fight that ended Friday, when Britain&#8217;s High Court ruled that the men had no more grounds for appeal and could be sent to the U.S. immediately.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m absolutely delighted that Abu Hamza is now out of this country,&#8221; British Prime Minister David Cameron said. &#8220;Like the rest of the public, I&#8217;m sick to the back teeth of people who come here, threaten our country, who stay at vast expense to the taxpayer and we can&#8217;t get rid of them.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m delighted on this occasion we&#8217;ve managed to send this person off to a country where he will face justice,&#8221; he added.</p><p>Al-Masri has been in a British jail since 2004 on charges of inciting racial hatred and encouraging followers to kill non-Muslims.</p><p>While al-Masri has been portrayed in the British media as one of the most dangerous men in the country, the case against Ahmad in Connecticut has raised concerns among legal experts and human rights advocates.</p><p>Some lawyers and lawmakers have expressed concerns because Britain agreed to extradite the London computer expert even though his alleged crimes were committed in Britain; British courts declined to prosecute him for lack of evidence. Ahmad and Ahsan are accused of running websites to support Afghanistan&#8217;s ousted Taliban regime, Chechen rebels and associated terrorist groups.</p><p>By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN and LARRY NEUMEISTER</p><p> <p>When trying to understand a strange action by the U.S. government, I have found it's usually best explained by incompetence rather than conspiracy. Republicans have claimed that the Obama Administration deliberately deceived the American public about the terrorist attack in Benghazi by describing it as a spontaneous mob uprising rather than a planned operation. But if the Administration knew from the start that it was a terrorist attack, did it really think that it could conceal this from the world? That the Libyan government would make no investigation? That there would be no eyewitnesses in a public place where hundreds had gathered? A far more plausible explanation is that in the chaotic aftermath of the attack, the Administration--too hastily and without proper analysis--put out the reports it was receiving. That's clumsy, but it's not treason.</p> <p>The larger issue that the attack raises, however, which is fair game for a campaign conversation, is what the events in Benghazi tell us about terrorist organizations, in particular al-Qaeda. After years of being in retreat, is al-Qaeda back?</p> <p>After 9/11, we all worried about the spread of al-Qaeda and its ideology. There were attacks in Bali, Madrid, London, Riyadh and Istanbul. But in fact, governments around the world had begun taking the group seriously, tracking its money, chasing its people and attacking its bases. Soon al-Qaeda was unable to carry out its signature operations--against high-value U.S. targets like ships and embassies and other government installations. So instead of striking where it wanted, al-Qaeda--or groups operating in its name--attacked where possible. This meant hitting nightclubs, caf&eacute;s, train stations and hotels. And that meant killing locals, not Americans. All of a sudden, Muslims, who had not been too exercised about al-Qaeda, began distancing themselves from it, especially in places like Saudi Arabia that had been critical sources of funding for the group.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the pressure intensified. The Obama Administration dramatically ramped up counterterrorism in Afghanistan--and more important, Pakistan--and destroyed the top leadership of the organization, including, of course, Osama bin Laden. Facing this onslaught, al-Qaeda has been shattered and has become less a coherent, centrally controlled group and more a brand, lending its name--and perhaps a little know-how--to militants in other countries. There is, however, a danger of overreacting to these new "al-Qaeda" offshoots. Remember bin Laden's words: "All that we have to do is to send two mujahedin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-qaeda in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses."</p> <p>The strongest of the new groups was al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen. Newer branches have sprung up in Somalia, Mali and now perhaps Libya. The group that appears to have planned the Benghazi attack seems to have a very tenuous connection to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) but not al-Qaeda central. In all these cases, however, the militants have followed a similar path: find a weak state and operate within that territory, claiming a link to al-Qaeda. The lesson of Libya is that as states fail, terrorists succeed.</p></p><p> <p>Re "Flash Point" &#91;Sept. 24&#93;: The blaming of the U.S. for the production of the Innocence of Muslims is symptomatic of an animosity toward a country that, while believing itself to be the bastion of democracy, has stirred up hatred among less developed countries. This hatred has many roots, chief of which are jealousy and intolerance. Were this amateur film produced in any other nation, the reaction would definitely not have been as strong, but it would still have confirmed the danger that religion poses to our planet. Jon Ralph, CAPE...</p><p> <p>Don't even think that you have a more difficult job than Tom Horton. Although some airline bosses can still seem besotted with this once glamorous business, at ground level it's an industry that has lost more than $60 billion in the past decade, erasing every penny earned in its 80-year existence. An industry whose combined market value, below $30 billion, is less than that of Starbucks, one of its vendors. One with irrational competition, uncontrollable fuel costs, a feckless regulator, and jets and airports filled with people who don't like you--and not just the passengers but your employees too. Beyond that,...</p><p> <p>One night in 1961, Andy Williams heard a ballad that Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini had written to be performed by Audrey Hepburn in the film Breakfast at Tiffany's. The singer loved the song, but his record label wouldn't release it as a single, fretting that homespun phrases like "my huckleberry friend" would baffle the kids. So Williams moved to Columbia Records and put the number on a 1962 album, Moon River and Other Great Movie Themes. The song won an Oscar, and the American midcentury's most amiable pop baritone, who died of bladder cancer Sept. 25 at 84 at his...</p><p> <p>Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger is most celebrated--and rightly so--for his decision in 1971 to publish the Pentagon Papers, an archive detailing how the government had lied to the American people about the Vietnam War from the start. Punch was not a gifted journalist or a great editor. He was, however, something out of a Frank Capra movie--a man with a deep sense of decency and profound common sense who also had guts. It took great courage to publish the classified documents in defiance of the government, which was a seminal moment for American journalism.</p> <p>Sulzberger, who died Sept. 29 at 86,...</p><p> <p>Raised in rural Kentucky and trained as a biologist, Barbara Kingsolver was perhaps destined to write Flight Behavior, her new novel about a young woman in backwoods Tennessee whose life is upended by ecological disaster.</p> <p>Why did you choose to make climate change such an important part of Flight Behavior?</p> <p>I live in southern Appalachia, and I'm surrounded by farms and coal mines. Our agriculture here has gone through one disaster year after another, so climate change is not some kind of abstract future threat. The people most affected by climate change already are people among whom I live: rural, conservative...</p><p> <p>"Dr. Commoner, are you a serious candidate, or are you just running on the issues?" So went a reporter's question to the biologist, environmentalist and chronic gadfly during his quixotic presidential campaign in 1980. Commoner, who died on Sept. 30 at 95, won just 234,000 votes, but he was never afraid of long odds and never shied away from the issues. His work on the dangers of atmospheric radiation helped spur the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and he was a key figure in the first Earth Day, in 1970. As a teacher and activist, he helped create the modern environmental...</p>Ai Weiwei helped inspire the geometrical design of the celebrated &quot;Bird&#039;s Nest&quot; that helped symbolize the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In background and bottom: images of the Olympic Stadium, 2005-08; from left to right, Divina Proportione, 2006; F-Size, 2011.<p> <p>Making serious movies for serious adults isn't a great business strategy. That's because there aren't that many serious adults left. Ben Affleck is one of the few directors who treat their audience like adults, figuring they're smart enough to follow along. Argo (in theaters Oct. 12) is very adult. The real-life story it tells is complicated: after the Iran hostage crisis erupted in 1979, the CIA financed a cheesy sci-fi movie as a cover to disguise six escaped U.S. diplomats as Canadian filmmakers and ferret them home. For this plot-heavy film, Affleck somehow uses far less exposition than I just did....</p><p> <p>If you ever wonder what kind of economic development might be accomplished in this country with more bipartisan cooperation, consider Columbus, Ohio. This low-key, Middle American metropolis of about 800,000 is becoming something of a celebrity city, talked up in a recent New York Times Magazine piece on the success of Ohio and visited more than a dozen times by presidential and vice-presidential candidates. No wonder. After taking a dive during the recession, Columbus has roared back, with the metro area creating more new jobs than any other city in Ohio over the past two years. In many ways, it's a...</p><p> <p>I don't think it's especially ungallant of me to have doubted J.K. Rowling. Like a hundred million or so other people, I have a genuine love for Harry Potter, but I wanted to be realistic: a lot of young-adult authors have tried their hands at literary fiction, and unless my literary sabermetrics are off, not a lot of them have succeeded. Not even Roald Dahl could switch-hit.</p> <p>But when I read Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, I was surprised not only by how good it was but also by the way in which it was good. I suppose I'd expected a kind...</p><p> <p>Imagine chick lit gone country, with cosmopolitans replaced by shots of rum, Louboutin shoes by muddied boots, and corporate ladders by regular ones that actually reach past the ceiling. It turns out that city girls are starting to love the idea, at least in Australia, where what's known as farm lit &#151; or chook lit, chook being Australian slang for a chicken &#151; is publishing's latest phenomenon, with rural romances outselling other fiction.</p><p>Farm lit is not entirely virgin territory. Colleen McCullough's 1977 antipodean saga, The Thorn Birds, sold 30 million books and birthed a miniseries....</p><p> <p>'The door may be closing, for good.'</p> <p>1. BAN KI-MOON, U.N. Secretary-General, warning that the continued growth of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory "seriously undermines efforts toward peace"</p> <p>'I can't get fined if I'm saying that the refs did a great job...so, they did a great job.'</p> <p>2. GREG JENNINGS, wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers, after a muddled referee call, now known as the touchception, cost his team a game against the Seattle Seahawks</p> <p>'You want to try it? Get in the ring.'</p> <p>3. ANN ROMNEY, addressing her husband Mitt's detractors in a much ballyhooed segment on Radio...</p><p> <p>I have a promise to break. Like any self-respecting writer visiting Bhutan, I solemnly swore on a stack of travelogues to avoid clich&eacute;d references to Shangri-la, the mountain paradise of James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon. So sue me: Bhutan, a nation of 700,000 souls in the lap of the Himalayas, is the closest thing to Shangri-la I've ever seen.</p><p>In a week of traveling through Bhutan, my wife and I have trekked up 3,100 m to an ancient Buddhist temple complex perched on the side of a mountain; we've shot arrows from...</p><p>(DAMASCUS, Syria) — A car bomb exploded Sunday near the police headquarters in central Damascus, killing at least one person and damaging nearby buildings, Syria&#8217;s state-run news agency said.</p><p>The blast is the latest in a series of bombings and suicide attacks targeting security personnel and government institutions as Syria plunges deeper into chaos. Damascus, in particular, has become a frequent target for car bombs and suicide blasts, but there have been several massive bombings in the northern city of Aleppo and others cities across the country as well.</p><p>Residents reported hearing a huge explosion that rattled the Syrian capital just after sundown Sunday. Another explosion was heard shortly after the first, but the nature of that blast was not immediately clear.</p><p>A Syrian government official told The Associated Press the first blast was caused by a car bomb in the Fahameh district near police headquarters. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government policy, said the explosion damaged nearby cars and buildings. He did not say whether the police headquarters was among them.</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>The official SANA news agency said one person was killed, and Syrian state TV described the blast as a &#8220;terrorist&#8221; attack. Syrian authorities deny there is an uprising in the country and blame the conflict on &#8220;terrorists&#8221; and &#8220;armed gangs&#8221; acting out a foreign conspiracy to destabilize Syria.</p><p>The Syrian opposition denies any links to terrorists, but a Sunni extremist group called Jabhat al-Nusra has claimed responsibility for bombings in the past.</p><p>Explosions in the capital have become increasingly common as Syria&#8217;s civil war escalates. On Aug. 18, rebels carried out a sophisticated bombing of a regime security building that killed four members of Assad&#8217;s inner circle.</p><p>Last week, four bombs tore through a government-held district in Syria&#8217;s commercial and cultural capital of Aleppo, killing more than 30 people and reducing buildings to rubble.</p><p>The uprising against Assad began in March 2011 and gradually became a bloody civil war. The conflict has killed more than 30,000 people, activists say, and has devastated entire neighborhoods in Syria&#8217;s main cities.</p><p>By ALBERT AJI</p><p>(ATLANTA) — Health officials say the death toll in a rare fungal meningitis outbreak across several states has risen to seven.</p><p>In updated figures posted to its website Saturday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the outbreak has spread to more than 60 people across nine states. The latest cases have been confirmed in Minnesota and Ohio.</p><p>The outbreak has been linked a steroid produced by a specialty pharmacy in Massachusetts. The steroid has been recalled, and health officials have been scrambling to notify anyone who may have been injected with it.</p><p>The New England Compounding Center has said it is cooperating with health investigators to determine the source of the infections.</p><p>(ATLANTA) — Health officials say they have now confirmed more than 90 cases of a rare fungal meningitis that has been linked to a steroid commonly used to ease back pain.</p><p>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted updated figures to its website Sunday. The death toll stood at 7, the same number as a day earlier. The outbreak is spread across nine states, the same states reported Saturday: Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Virginia.</p><p>The CDC figures show there are 91 cases in the U.S. altogether.</p><p>The steroid linked to the outbreak has been recalled, and health officials have been scrambling to notify anyone who may have received an injection of it. The Massachusetts pharmacy that made it has said it is cooperating with investigators.</p><p>MORE: </p><p>MORE: </p><p>(CARACAS, Venezuela) — President Hugo Chavez won re-election and a new endorsement of his socialist project Sunday, surviving his closest race yet after a bitter campaign in which the opposition accused him of unfairly using Venezuela&#8217;s oil wealth and his near total control of state institutions to his advantage.</p><p>A long wait for the results produced high tensions, including a Twitter hashtag called BitingNails that became the most popular in the country. Finally, fireworks exploded over downtown Caracas amid a cacophony of horn-honking by elated Chavez supporters waving flags and jumping for joy outside the presidential palace.</p><p>With 90 percent of votes counted, Chavez had more than 54 percent of the vote to 45 percent for challenger Henrique Capriles, an athletic 40-year-old former state governor who unified and energized the opposition while barnstorming across the oil-exporting nation.</p><p>But Capriles&#8217; promises to seriously address violent crime that has spun out of control, streamline a patronage-bloated bureaucracy and end rampant corruption proved inadequate against Chavez&#8217;s charisma, well-oiled political machine and a legacy of putting Venezuela&#8217;s poor first with generous social welfare programs.</p><p> (MORE: )<br></p><p>Chavez rallied thousands of supporters from a balcony of the presidential palace, holding up a sword that once belonged to 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar.</p><p>&#8220;The revolution has triumphed!&#8221; Chavez told the crowd, saying his supporters &#8220;voted for socialism.&#8221;</p><p>The crowd responded chanting &#8220;Chavez won&#8217;t go!&#8221;</p><p>Chavez will now have a freer hand to push for an even bigger state role in the economy and continue populist programs. He pledged before the vote to make a stronger push for socialism in the next term. He&#8217;s also likely to further limit dissent and deepen friendships with U.S. rivals.</p><p>A Capriles victory would have brought a radical foreign policy shift including a halt to preferential oil deals with allies such as Cuba, along with a loosening of state economic controls and an increase in private investment.</p><p>It was Chavez&#8217;s third re-election in nearly 14 years in office. It was also his smallest victory margin. In 2006, he won by 27 percentage points.</p><p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t describe the relief and happiness I feel right now,&#8221; said Edgar Gonzalez, a 38-year-old construction worker.</p><p>He ran through crowds of Chavez supporters packing the streets around the presidential palace wearing a Venezuelan flag as a cape and yelling: &#8220;Oh, no! Chavez won&#8217;t go!&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;The revolution will continue, thanks to God and the people of this great country,&#8221; said Gonzalez.</p><p>Voter turnout was an impressive 81 percent, compared to 75 percent in 2006. Chavez paid close attention to his military-like get-out-the-vote organization at the grass roots, stressing its importance at campaign rallies. The opposition said he unfairly plowed millions in state funds into the effort.</p><p>Chavez spent heavily in the months before the vote, building public housing and bankrolling expanded social programs.</p><p>&#8220;I think he just cranked up the patronage machine and unleashed a spending orgy,&#8221; said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank.</p><p>But Shifter also didn&#8217;t deny the affinity and gratefulness Venezuela&#8217;s poor feel for Chavez. &#8220;Despite his illness, I still think he retains a large emotional connection with a lot of Venezuelans that I think were not prepared to vote against him.&#8221;</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>Chavez spoke little during the campaign about his fight with cancer, which since June 2011 has included surgery to remove tumors from his pelvic region as well as chemotherapy and radiation treatment. He has said his most recent tests showed no sign of illness.</p><p>Capriles told supporters not to feel defeated.</p><p>&#8220;We have planted many seeds across Venezuela and I know that these seeds are going to produce many trees,&#8221; he told a hall of supporters.</p><p>Despite winning a February primary that unified the opposition, Capriles proved no match for Chavez&#8217;s electoral prowess.</p><p>David Valencia, a 20-year-old Capriles supporter, said he was disappointed but that he hadn&#8217;t lost hope despite the loss.</p><p>&#8220;There is still a sense in our hearts of wanting a better country,&#8221; he said.</p><p>One pro-Chavez voter, private bodyguard Carlos Julio Silva, said that whatever his faults, Chavez deserved to win for spreading the nation&#8217;s oil wealth to the poor with free medical care, public housing and other government programs. The country has the world&#8217;s largest proven oil reserves.</p><p>&#8220;There is corruption, there&#8217;s plenty of bureaucracy, but the people have never had a leader who cared about this country,&#8221; Silva said after voting for Chavez at a school in the Caracas slum of Petare.</p><p>At many polling places, voters began lining up hours before polls opened at dawn, some snaking for blocks in the baking Caribbean sun. Some shaded themselves with umbrellas. Vendors grilled meat and some people drank beer.</p><p>Chavez&#8217;s critics say the president has inflamed divisions by labeling his opponents &#8220;fascists,&#8221; &#8221;Yankees&#8221; and &#8220;neo-Nazis,&#8221; and it&#8217;s likely hard for many of his opponents to stomach another six years of the loquacious and conflictive leader.</p><p>Some said before the vote that they&#8217;d consider leaving the country if Chavez won.</p><p>Gino Caso, an auto mechanic, said Chavez is power-hungry and out of touch with problems such as crime. He said his son had been robbed, as had neighboring shops.</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know what planet he lives on,&#8221; Caso said, gesturing with hands blackened with grease. &#8220;He wants to be like Fidel Castro — end up with everything, take control of the country.&#8221;</p><p>by FRANK BAJAK and IAN JAMES</p><p>Associated Press writers Fabiola Sanchez, Christopher Toothaker, Jorge Rueda and Vivian Sequera contributed to this report.</p><p>It was the second launch of a Dragon capsule to the orbiting lab by the California-based SpaceX company. The first was last spring.</p><p>This time was no test flight, however, and the spacecraft carried 1,000 pounds of key science experiments and other precious gear. There was also a personal touch: chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream tucked in a freezer for the three station residents.</p><p>The company&#8217;s unmanned Falcon rocket roared into the night sky right on time, putting SpaceX on track to reach the space station Wednesday. The complex was soaring southwest of Tasmania when the Falcon took flight.</p><p>Officials declared the launch a success.</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>In more good news, a piece of space junk was no longer threatening the station, and NASA could focus entirely on the delivery mission.</p><p>NASA is counting on private business to restock the space station, now that the shuttles have retired to museums. The space agency has a $1.6 billion contract with SpaceX for 12 resupply missions.</p><p>Especially exciting for NASA is the fact that the Dragon will return twice as much cargo as it took up, including a stockpile of astronauts&#8217; blood and urine samples. The samples — nearly 500 of them — have been stashed in freezers since Atlantis made the last shuttle flight in July 2011.</p><p>The Dragon will spend close to three weeks at the space station before being released and parachuting into the Pacific at the end of October. By then, the space station should be back up to a full crew of six.</p><p>None of the Russian, European or Japanese cargo ships can bring anything back; they&#8217;re destroyed during re-entry. The Russian Soyuz crew capsules have limited room for anything besides people.</p><p> Technologies Corp., or SpaceX — owned by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk — is working to convert its unmanned Dragon capsules into vessels that could carry astronauts to the space station in three years. Other U.S. companies also are vying to carry crews. Americans must ride Russian rockets to orbit in the meantime, for a steep price.</p><p>Musk, who monitored the launch from SpaceX Mission Control in Hawthorne, Calif., called the capsules Dragon after the magical Puff to get back at critics who, a decade ago, considered his effort a fantasy. The name Falcon comes from the Millennium Falcon starship of &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; fame.</p><p>An estimated 2,400 guests jammed the launching center to see the Falcon, with its Dragon, come to life for SpaceX&#8217;s first official, operational supply mission.</p><p>It was no apparition.</p><p>&#8220;Just over a year since shuttle retirement, to be able to do that is, I think, what people are very excited about,&#8221; said NASA&#8217;s deputy administrator, Lori Garver.</p><p>Across the country at SpaceX headquarters, about 1,000 employees watched via TV and webcast.</p><p>SpaceX is shooting for its next supply run in January.</p><p>Another company looking to haul space station cargo, Virginia&#8217;s Orbital Sciences Corp., hopes to launch a solo test flight in December and a demo mission to the station early next year.</p><p> <p>I hate meetings like this!" illinois Congressman Joe Walsh shouted in frustration. A small-business man named Ted Kozlowski, a defense contractor, was explaining how he'd had to lay off nearly half his workforce because funding for one of his products, a machine-gun cradle, had been mysteriously suspended in February. "It's ridiculous what Washington is doing to you," Walsh went on to say. "They change the rules of the road every six months." A small problem here, though: Walsh, one of the more flagrant members of the Tea Party caucus, lives at ground zero of the congressional mess. He has proudly opposed every attempt at a budget compromise that would clarify the status of Kozlowski's funding. He told me he would continue to vote against any deal that raises tax rates. If he is re-elected.</p> <p>That could be a problem too. After he was elected in 2010, Walsh embraced the notion that he was a poster boy for the Tea Party, and there was a fair amount of truth to that: he had won a shocking victory over a Democratic incumbent in the Chicago suburbs, in the heart of blue-state Illinois. He proceeded to make a lot of noise, with an untoward candor that was less outrageous than that of another Tea Party poster child, Representative Allen West of Florida (who is also in trouble this year) but still offensive enough to women, homosexuals and Muslims to make national headlines. The question is, Will Walsh be a Tea Party exemplar of a different sort this year? If he and West and some other high-profile Tea Partyers lose, will the Republican Party take a moderating lesson from that--even if, as is likely, it retains control of the House?</p> <p>The deck is certainly stacked against Walsh. His district has been redrawn by the heavily Democratic Illinois legislature. It now includes a significant minority population. And he has a formidable opponent: Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq-war veteran who lost both her legs when the Black Hawk helicopter she was piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Walsh has continued to make a fool of himself during the campaign, at one point saying Duckworth wasn't a "true hero" because she talked about her service all the time and real heroes don't do that. He also warned that Muslim terrorists were in the district--he specified three towns--looking to kill Americans. He told me he was talking about a national problem, but there were several attacks on local Muslim sites in the days after he made his comments. "When you say radical things," Duckworth says, "radical things can happen."</p> <p>Walsh does have a few advantages, though. He has become a superstar of super PACs in this race, four of which have put up ads supporting him, and together they are outspending Duckworth significantly. He's also a natural politician, fearless and gregarious, with the courage of his extreme convictions--and a few policy surprises. He told me, for example, that while he would oppose any budget deal that raises tax rates, he does support the complete elimination of such popular tax loopholes as the mortgage-interest and charity deductions. He has also favored cutting the Pentagon budget and wants an immediate end to the war in Afghanistan. "He's a very charismatic and appealing guy," Duckworth told me.</p></p><p> <p>It might be counted as a minor miracle that Emma Donoghue sold more than a million copies of her disquieting 2010 novel Room, which is narrated by a 5-year-old boy held captive with his mother by her kidnapper and rapist. Donoghue's ambitious new collection, Astray, isn't exactly a beach read either. Its array of characters--a pet elephant cruelly sold off to the circus in 1882, an attorney taken for a ride by a con woman in 1735, a Texas slave who absconds with his master's wife in 1864--includes wanderers and bunglers, victims and outcasts. (The stories are all inspired by true...</p><p> <p>The next great plague is out there, probably in a chimpanzee or a chicken, waiting to make the leap to humans. In his new book, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, science writer David Quammen patrols the boundary between animal and human health, where microbial threats are emerging faster than ever</p> <p>TIME: Why are we so transfixed by the threat of emerging diseases?</p> <p>Quammen: Well, we know that previous big ones have been very big. There are so many humans on the planet now--7 billion of us--and we live interconnected with one another. If we're pressing ever more insistently...</p><p> <p>If Mitt Romney is to mount a robust comeback, he'll need a strong series of debate performances, starting Wednesday in Denver...He's spent a lot of time sparring in private with Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who has portrayed President Obama in debate practice sessions...A Romney revival would require many changes. Foremost, the candidate must improve his personal performance, both on the stump and in the debates; he needs to stop making errors, sharpen his message and deliver something more nourishing in TV interviews...Obama remains vulnerable on what he would do with a second term, but Romney hasn't filled in the details of his own plans...If Romney continues to claim his campaign is on track--or is not seen to be fighting for the job--his chances of victory will become even more remote...Increasing the number of campaign events per day would reach more voters and add a required sense of urgency. But Romney will also need some luck...Improving economic conditions and a rising confidence in Obama's ability to turn things around are compounding the Republican's problems...Romney's daily hopscotching from one message to another is baffling GOP pols...Meanwhile, large polling deficits in battleground states are leading many voters and Republican strategists to doubt that the challenger has any chance to win the race...Another headache for the GOP: weakness at the top of the ticket could mean the return of Nancy Pelosi to the House speakership, and Democrats could actually gain a seat or two in the Senate, with genuine prospects for victory in Massachusetts, Nevada, North Dakota, Virginia, Wisconsin, Indiana and Arizona.</p> <p>FIELD OPERATIONS</p> <p>Topical landscapers have combined two autumnal mainstays--the corn maze and the presidential election--to create a new rural attraction: waves of grain from Arkansas to Idaho (pictured above) sport the faces of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. "This year's such an important year that everybody go out and vote," says Teresa Summers Greenwood, who carved portraits into her 13-acre Maryland spread. "We're trying to remind everybody." It's certainly something to stalk about.</p> <p>MAZES WITH A MESSAGE</p> <p>&#91;The following text appears within a map. Please see hardcopy or PDF for actual map.&#93;</p> <p>Meridian, Idaho</p> <p>New Carlisle, Ohio</p> <p>Winterset, Iowa</p> <p>Frederick, Md.</p> <p>Springdale, Ark.</p> <p>THE TALLY</p> <p>AUG.</p> <p>SEPT.</p> <p>8</p> <p>Number of days the U.S. Senate has convened since Aug. 3. A slightly harder-working House has met on 10 days in that time. Legislators broke for another recess on Sept. 21, making this the longest pre-election hiatus since 1960</p> <p>URBAN AGRICULTURE</p> <p>Ready to taxi: Chicago's O'Hare airport plans to use goats, sheep or other grazing stock to consume heavy brush on part of the city's property</p> </p><p> <p>The rise and fall of Edwin Wilson, a former CIA agent and businessman who died Sept. 10 at 84, has all the makings of a spy thriller. The "ice-man" of the CIA, a nickname TIME reported in 1981, Wilson made a mint setting up businesses as covers for the agency's dealings and was accused of arranging the killings of prosecutors, witnesses and his own wife. Convicted of shipping explosives to Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and scheming to murder federal prosecutors in 1983, Wilson went from a life in luxurious villas to solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison. Then in 2003, Wilson obtained...</p><p> <p>Facebook. Amazon. Apple. Not too long ago, these were the companies upending the status quo--unleashing provocative business models that changed our daily lives even as they transformed entire industries. (See: bookstores, record labels.)</p> <p>Now it's their turn to face the newbies. Buoyed by rocketing investor enthusiasm--venture-capital funding hit $28.4 billion in the U.S. last year, up 22% from 2010--the next class of start-ups aims to disrupt the disrupters. "Are we worried about iTunes? Of course," says Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, a much hyped app that offers streams of songs legally and free. "But our goal is to be the best...</p><p>Sunday marks the beginning of the &#8216;s 12th year in .</p><p>It ain&#8217;t quite the , but 12 years is 20% of this particular Battleland correspondent&#8217;s life.</p><p>Eleven years ago today – October 7, 2001 &#8212; also was a Sunday. I was at the , along with scores of colleagues, gathering whatever scraps of news we could. We&#8217;ve been doing it ever since.</p><p>Four thousand and eighteen days. Two thousand and forty-four Americans , one every other day for 11 years straight. Historically, it&#8217;s not a lot, as wars go, unless it&#8217;s your son. About a dollars.</p><p>Two months after the war began, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld me this campaign marked the return of American military might to the world stage:</p><p>When I took this job I had a visit with the President shortly thereafter, and we talked about the situation that a lot of the people in the world had come to conclude that the United States was gun-shy. That we were risk-averse. And that there had been a series of things that had led people to believe that, and that the cumulative effect of it was to weaken the deterrent effect of the U.S. threat, if they do things that are harmful to our country&#8217;s interest, and that that was unhelpful to have that deterrent effect weakened, and that I wanted him to know and we discussed it and he and I concluded that whenever it occurred down the road that the United States was under some sort of a threat or attack, that the United States would be leaning forward, not back.</p><p>Less than a year later, 9/11 happened. President Bush and his war council met at Camp David the next weekend. Rumsfeld continued:</p><p>Tommy Franks, the general, the combatant commander, proposed a plan, it was discussed, it was agreed to, it was put in place, and it involved putting pressure on the Taliban and the al Qaeda and recognizing that some of what was going on would be visible, some would not be visible, and that we needed to be patient and that it would take some time, and that the world was expecting an explosion of cruise missiles on television and that they would have to have, that we would have to manage those expectations down. And we did do that.<br>As people started worrying about the fact that we were on a track where the Soviets had been, or that some people in neighboring countries were characterizing it as being bogged down, and people in the press were characterizing it as a quagmire, the President was very firm and very stiff and said, `Look, we&#8217;ve got a plan, it&#8217;s a good plan, we&#8217;ve agreed to it, leave it in place,&#8217; and General Franks encouraged him to do so, and that is exactly what happened.</p><p>Two months later, in February 2002, I asked Franks, an Army four-star general, about the challenge of waging war in Afghanistan as we sat in his office at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa., Fla. He responded with a recollection:</p><p>On the day of [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai&#8217;s inauguration…one of the opposition group leaders, with whom we had worked earlier in the fight, walked up to me from across the room, hugged me and said, `Who do you want me to fight now?&#8217; That&#8217;s instructive, because there&#8217;s a lot of that inside Afghanistan.</p><p>Despite such concerns, the U.S. would soon decide that kicking the Taliban out of power for providing the sanctuary al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden needed to plot the 9/11 attacks wasn&#8217;t sufficient. Washington concluded that nation-building was the way to go, in a faraway land of tribes and warlords, as Franks acknowledged. Afghanistan had never had a strong central government &#8212; or even a nation, as most Americans understand the word.</p><p>Rumsfeld and Franks have retired from running the war, where U.S. combat troops are slated to fight for another two years.</p><p>Surprisingly, the anniversary appeared to pass without notice on the websites of the , , or the U.S.-led running the war in Afghanistan.</p><p>The lone U.S. government-funded acknowledgement seemed to crop up in a Voice of America news  on the anniversary, which concluded:</p><p>Coalition troops have begun pulling out of Afghanistan. All foreign combat troops are scheduled to be gone by the end of 2014. The U.S. and NATO say Afghan forces will be capable of taking over the fight against the Taliban after 2014.  However, many analysts predict a bloody new multi-factional civil war.</p><p>The Taliban also took :</p><p>With the help of Allah, the valiant Afghans under the Jihadi leadership of Islamic Emirate defeated the military might and numerous strategies of America and NATO alliance. And now after eleven years of unceasing terror, tyranny, crimes and savagery, they are fleeing Afghanistan with such humiliation and disgrace that they are struggling to provide an explanation.</p><p>That may be a stretch. But you know what they say about who writes history. Check back in 11 years.</p><p> <p>When Eric Hobsbawm died on Oct. 1 at 95, he was eulogized even by his ideological foes as the greatest historian of his time. Though the Cambridge-educated Briton was an unrepentant Communist who refused to quit the party even after the horrors of Stalin became clear, his work showed little trace of dogma. As a historian, he was interested less in the actions of great men than in the lives of ordinary people. Their struggles are at the heart of his most famous work, the best-selling four-volume Ages series chronicling the period from the French Revolution to 1991. Hobsbawm's histories, always...</p><p> <p>Since the day he started at the National Football League as an office intern, no one has been more zealous about "protecting the shield" than Roger Goodell. The shield is marketing jargon for the NFL logo. On his way up the NFL ranks, Goodell worked relentlessly to make it a symbol of integrity, appointment television and sporting success. That's why, upon being named league commissioner in 2006, he took a hard line against player misconduct. That's also why, with science revealing that the NFL's relative ambivalence toward concussions was at best misguided and at worst negligent--as the more than 2,000 ex-players...</p><p> <p>I expect people to see the good in me even when there isn't any. So when I volunteered to become a founding parent of a charter school in Los Angeles, I imagined getting a lot of kudos for my effort to improve my community, which I planned to do mostly by naming things or making speeches. I didn't really know what a founding parent did.</p> <p>But I did know that being one meant my 3-year-old son Laszlo would get priority when we enroll him in kindergarten--my real motivation. Sending Laszlo to public school is important to me because private school is...</p><p>(MOBILE, Ala.) — Classmates and friends are questioning why a police officer fatally shot a University of South Alabama freshman who was naked and had been banging on a window at police headquarters.</p><p>Campus officials didn&#8217;t give any indication that Gil Collar, 18, of Wetumpka had a weapon when he was shot. A university spokesman said he was fatally wounded about 1:30 a.m. Saturday after an officer heard a bang on a window and went outside to investigate.</p><p>A statement issued by university spokesman Keith Ayers said Collar, who wrestled at Wetumpka High School before enrolling at South Alabama, assumed a &#8220;fighting stance&#8221; and chased an officer before being shot. The officer tried to retreat numerous times to defuse the situation before opening fire, the school said.</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>But sophomore Tyler Kendrick said campus authorities haven&#8217;t provided any satisfying answers about why Collar was killed.</p><p>&#8220;Really, it just upsets me that there&#8217;s no other way to apprehend an unarmed student rather than shooting him. I don&#8217;t understand that,&#8221; Kendrick said.</p><p>Student Joshua Frye said it seemed the officer could have used something other than a firearm to stop Collar.</p><p>&#8220;What I feel is that a cop has more than a gun,&#8221; he said.</p><p>The officer was placed on paid leave, and an autopsy will determine if drugs or alcohol were involved.</p><p>Campus officials said the confrontation was recorded by security cameras. The video and other information has been turned over to the district attorney and the Mobile County Sheriff&#8217;s Office, which will review the shooting.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>Colgan Meanor went to high school with Collar and then enrolled at the same college.</p><p>&#8220;He was a great, loving guy who always made people smile,&#8221; she said. &#8220;He&#8217;s not the kind of guy that people knew him and said he would do something like this.&#8221;</p><p>Collar was the second person killed on the South Alabama campus since last year.</p><p>A university freshman was charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of another teenager who was slain in an on-campus apartment in July 2011. The victim was a visitor to campus and was not enrolled, authorities said.</p><p>Ayers said South Alabama, located near downtown Mobile, was still &#8220;a very safe campus,&#8221; despite Collar&#8217;s death.</p><p> <p>Daniel Kiviat is a courteous and fastidious gentleman who designs clothing for the so-called forgotten woman. His specialty is comfortable garments, immune to the tastes of the day, that in his words "cover you everywhere you want to be covered." They're exactly the kind of ensembles one might expect to find on a home-shopping network. That was why Kiviat was one of the first people fired when Mindy Grossman took over HSN.</p> <p>Grossman, now 55, became CEO of the TV station cum mall in 2006. She was the eighth boss in 10 years and--despite the fact that the home-shopping customer base...</p><p> <p>Yemen Fights Back<br>I am amazed by your cover story's headline, "The End of al-Qaeda?" &#91;Sept. 17&#93;. If this were the title following Osama bin Laden's death, it would have made more sense. But eliminating an odd leader in Yemen means nothing at all. Al-Qaeda is more of a cult, and we in Pakistan are suffering directly because it helps any organization that can further its expansion.<br>A. Rahim Yousefzai,<br>Islamabad</p><p>Upon seeing "The End of al-Qaeda?" it struck me that TIME had a similar headline on its Dec....</p><p> <p>MAIL</p> <p>Glass Half Full</p> <p>Bill Clinton has a masterly way of making an issue clear without making it simplistic &#91;"The Case for Optimism," Oct. 1&#93;. I appreciated the information as well as the positive tone. Yes, we have much work to do, but it's not all gloom and doom.</p> <p>Ann Johnson, OAKLAND, CALIF.</p> <p>There was a great deal of talk in Bill Clinton's cover story about green energy, middle-class expansion and the empowerment of women. Nowhere was birth control mentioned. President Clinton's optimism may be unrealistic without significant advancement in third-world birth control.</p> <p>Andrew Colyer, BEL AIR, MD.</p> <p>Big Coal Fights...</p><p> <p>In 2009, shortly before the release of the xx's self-titled debut album, its management called the band in for a chat. It was a conversation aimed at preparing the painfully shy, strikingly young London trio for the reception that awaited its hip-yet-seemingly-uncommercial brand of understated electronic indie rock.</p><p>"They said, 'It's only your debut album,'" remembers singer-bassist Oliver Sim. "'Don't be disheartened if this record doesn't take you to a huge place.' "</p><p>Three years and over 1 million worldwide record sales later, such pessimism...</p><p> <p>MOST VIRTUOUS</p> <p>1 Andrew Weil</p> <p>TRUE FOOD: SEASONAL, SUSTAINABLE, SIMPLE, PURE</p> <p>Weil, the M.D. and best-selling health expert, is part owner of True Food Kitchen, which bills itself as one of the healthiest restaurants in America. Its namesake cookbook features global cuisine (citrusy tabbouleh, garlicky soup fortified with a medicinal herb) that derives flavor from spices, not fat.</p> <p>2 Magnus Nilsson</p> <p>FAVIKEN</p> <p>Just 28, Nilsson is routinely counted among the world's greatest chefs. He opened Faviken on a remote Swedish farm near the Arctic Circle in 2008. Primarily interested in vegetables, Nilsson creates recipes that are as strange, intricate and wonderful...</p><p>() — Israeli warplanes swooped low over Lebanese villages Sunday in a menacing show of force apparently aimed at the Hezbollah guerrilla group after a mysterious raid by an unmanned aircraft that was shot out of Israeli skies over the weekend.</p><p> was still investigating Saturday&#8217;s incident, but Hezbollah quickly emerged as the leading suspect because it has an arsenal of sophisticated Iranian weapons and a history of trying to deploy similar aircraft.</p><p>The Israeli military said the drone approached Israel&#8217;s southern Mediterranean coast and flew deep into Israeli airspace before warplanes shot it down about 20 minutes later. Israeli news reports said the drone was not carrying explosives and appeared to be on a reconnaissance mission.</p><p>Military officials would not say where the drone originated or who produced it, but they ruled out the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by , a group not known to possess drones. That left Hezbollah as the most likely culprit and suggested the drone may have flown with the blessing of Iran. Tensions are high between Israel and Iran over Tehran&#8217;s suspect nuclear program.</p><p>(VIDEO: )</p><p>&#8220;It is an Iranian drone that was launched by Hezbollah,&#8221; Israeli lawmaker Miri Regev, a former chief spokeswoman for the Israeli military, wrote on her Twitter feed. &#8220;Hezbollah and Iran continue to try to collect information in every possible way in order to harm Israel.&#8221;</p><p>She did not offer any further evidence and was not immediately available for comment.</p><p>Hezbollah officials would not comment on speculation that the group had launched the drone.</p><p>The Israeli dailies Yediot Ahronot and Maariv published maps based on military &#8220;estimates&#8221; that claimed to show the route taken by the drone.</p><p>The maps said the aircraft took off south of the Lebanese coastal city of Sidon, headed south and then turned east over the Gaza Strip and into Israel. Yediot also claimed the drone was made in Iran.</p><p>The Israeli military said it began tracking the aircraft over the Mediterranean but waited until it was over an empty, desert area to bring it down in order to avoid casualties on the ground.</p><p>Sunday&#8217;s Israeli air raids, buzzing over pro-Hezbollah villages in southern Lebanon, appeared to be aimed at reminding the guerrilla group of Israel&#8217;s air superiority.</p><p>At times of heightened tensions, the Israeli air force often carries out mock raids over Lebanese territory. Israel has U.S.-made F-15 and F-16 warplanes, but it was not clear exactly what type of planes were flown Sunday.</p><p>Lebanon&#8217;s national news agency said the planes flew low over the market town of Nabatiyeh and nearby villages.</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>With a formidable arsenal that rivals that of the Lebanese army, Hezbollah is already under pressure in Lebanon from rivals who accuse it of putting Lebanon at risk of getting sucked into regional turmoil. Confirmation that Hezbollah was behind the drone would put the group under further strain internally.</p><p>Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite group committed to Israel&#8217;s destruction, has long served as an Iranian proxy along Israel&#8217;s northern border. The two sides fought a brutal, monthlong war in mid-2006. Hundreds of people were killed, and Hezbollah fired several thousand rockets and missiles into Israel before the conflict ended in a stalemate.</p><p>Hezbollah has attempted to send unmanned aerial vehicles into Israel on several occasions dating back to 2004. Its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has claimed that the group&#8217;s pilotless aircraft were capable of carrying explosives and striking deep into Israel. The last known attempt by Hezbollah to use a drone took place during the 2006 war, when Israel shot down an Iranian-made pilotless aircraft that entered Israeli airspace.</p><p>Since the fighting ended, the sides have been locked in a covert battle against one another.</p><p>&#8220;The war between Hezbollah and Israel was not extinguished at any moment, be it in the media or at the intelligence level,&#8221; said Ibrahim Bayram, an expert on Shiite affairs who often writes about Hezbollah for Lebanon&#8217;s An-Nahar newspaper.</p><p>&#8220;Israel is always trying to breach Hezbollah&#8217;s security and in return Hezbollah is also working day and night to breach Israel&#8217;s security,&#8221; he added.</p><p>Hezbollah has accused Israel of assassinating a top Hezbollah operative in 2008 in Syria. The group and Lebanese officials say they have broken up several Israeli spy rings inside Lebanon over the past few years.</p><p>Israel, meanwhile, believes Hezbollah, with Iranian backing, is behind a string of attempted attacks on Israeli diplomatic targets in India, Thailand and the former Soviet republic of Georgia, plus a deadly bombing earlier this year that killed five Israeli tourists in a Bulgarian resort. Last week, Israel announced the arrest of an Arab citizen it accused of spying for Hezbollah, the latest in a string of such cases.</p><p>Many speculated that the aircraft was trying to gather intelligence on Israel&#8217;s secretive nuclear reactor in the southern desert town of Dimona. Foreign experts believe the facility houses an arsenal of nuclear weapons, a claim that Israel neither confirms nor denies.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s quite a long distance, indicating a high level of sophistication,&#8221; said Shlomo Brom, a retired Israeli general who is now an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank.</p><p>The drone flight also came against the broader backdrop of rising tensions between Israel and Iran.</p><p>Israel accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, which it believes would threaten its existence, given the repeated calls by Iranian leaders for the destruction of Israel. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.</p><p>Israeli leaders have repeatedly held out the possibility of attacking Iranian nuclear facilities if they conclude that international sanctions and diplomacy have failed to curb the Iranian program.</p><p>Iran, in turn, has threatened to retaliate if it is attacked, raising the possibility of Hezbollah unleashing more rockets and missiles into Israel. Hezbollah has not said how it will react to an Israeli attack on its benefactor.</p><p>Iran recently claimed it now has drones capable of carrying missiles as far as 2,000 kilometers, or 1,250 miles, putting much of the Middle East, including Israel, within distance. The aircraft appeared to be similar to the American RQ-170 Sentinel, one of which went down in Iranian territory last year. Iran said it was building a copy of the RQ-170 in April.</p><p>Iran frequently makes announcements about its strides in military technology, but it is virtually impossible to independently determine the capabilities of its weapons.</p><p>Yiftah Shapir, another analyst at the INSS, said Saturday&#8217;s incident may have been meant as a warning to Israel.</p><p>&#8220;The drone could be a message that they have the capability to pull this off, and do so perhaps with weapons,&#8221; he said.</p><p>He said Israel likely allowed the drone to fly so far into its airspace, instead of shooting it over the sea, in order to analyze its capabilities before taking it down.</p><p>By JOSEF FEDERMAN and ZEINA KARAM</p><p></p><p>(JERUSALEM) — Israeli jets scrambled to intercept a drone that crossed into Israeli airspace Saturday from the Mediterranean Sea, bringing it down without incident in the south of the country, a military spokeswoman said.</p><p>Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich said Israeli systems on the ground alerted the air force to the drone Saturday morning. She said it flew over the Gaza Strip but did not originate from the Palestinian territory. She said Israel didn&#8217;t know the drone&#8217;s starting point and an investigation was under way. Nobody was hurt in the incident.</p><p>Leibovich did not give more details, but Israel media reported that it might have been an intelligence gathering drone and was not carrying explosives.</p><p>(VIDEO: )</p><p>Leibovich said the operation was successful and the military was in control throughout.</p><p>&#8220;We had monitoring contact from the ground and from the air. We alerted jet planes that escorted the unmanned aerial vehicle and due to some operational considerations we decided to intercept the unmanned aerial vehicle in the northern Negev area, which has no population, Leibovich said.</p><p>It&#8217;s not the first time that Israel has shot down drones entering its airspace. The Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah has launched several into Israel over the past few years.</p><p>In the 2006 war, Hezbollah launched an Iranian-made drone capable of carrying explosives into Israel that was shot down. Another one launched two years earlier crashed in the Mediterranean.</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>Israel and Iran are bitter enemies and tensions are high over Tehran&#8217;s nuclear program, which the West believes is intended for atomic weapons. Tehran insists its atomic program is for peaceful purposes only.</p><p>Israel has hinted that military action should be taken to prevent Iran from getting nuclear bombs.</p><p>Leibovich would not elaborate how the unmanned vehicle was brought down. She said troops were searching for debris from the drone.</p><p>Defense Minister Ehud Barak congratulated the military.</p><p>&#8220;We view this incident of attempting to enter Israeli airspace very severely and we will consider our response later,&#8221; he said in a statement.</p><p>By IAN DEITCH</p><p></p><p>’Tis debate season, a time for cross-examination, tie-color analysis and — in the case of and Bill O’Reilly — lengthy discussion about how height affects a man&#8217;s ability to win arguments. The frenemy media personalities took to podiums Saturday night for the so-called Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium, a live-streamed, 90-minute debate in , D.C. The Daily Show host and the Fox News pundit had promised to engage in a substantive discussion about the state of the union, and they certainly did — in front of an enormous sign that read, &#8220;Yum, this banner tastes like freedom.&#8221;</p><p>In the days before Saturday&#8217;s unscripted showdown, reporters pondered their motives for holding the event, which people could pay $4.95 to watch online. Was it a foofaraw masking self-promotion, an elaborate scheme to get O&#8217;Reilly&#8217;s new book off the shelves or merely a means to secure free publicity for their shows? Was it being promoted as a night of satirical entertainment but in actuality designed to get people engaged in important civic discussion? Or was the whole thing just for funsies? By the end of the evening, it was clear that the answer to all of these was an emphatic yes.</p><p>(WATCH: )</p><p>Tickets for the auditorium at George Washington University, priced between $25 and $100, had quickly sold out. In the days leading up to the Rumble, people listed the hot commodities on resale sites like StubHub for up to $1,395. Those assembled booed the warm-up guy when they were told there could be no heckling. But by the time the moderator, CNN anchor E.D. Hill, started the show, the hall was awash in screams of delight.</p><p>The central disagreement between O&#8217;Reilly and Stewart — who served as essentially tacit surrogates for and President Obama, respectively — was made clear in their opening arguments. &#8220;About 20% of us are slackers, and it&#8217;s a growing industry,&#8221; O&#8217;Reilly said, echoing Romney&#8217;s infamous remark that 47% of Americans won&#8217;t take responsibility for their lives. Stewart responded: &#8220;My friend Bill O&#8217;Reilly is completely full of s&#8212;.&#8221; Stewart said that this deep divide, between exploited makers and parasitic takers, is a dangerous, reductive fantasy seen through the ideological equivalent of an empty toilet-paper roll. He called people who promote it &#8220;denizens of Bulls&#8212; Mountain&#8221; and said O&#8217;Reilly was the mountain&#8217;s mayor.</p><p>(WATCH: )</p><p>While many of the topics were the same as Romney and Obama&#8217;s first presidential bout — deficit, health care, government spending — Stewart and O&#8217;Reilly&#8217;s debate was more enjoyable, partly because the debaters weren&#8217;t busy dodging questions. The conversation was organic. They shouted over each other like a bickering couple, both scoring cheers from the audience as they made the points people had wanted to see the candidates make. &#8220;Why is it that if you take advantage of a tax break and you&#8217;re a corporation, you&#8217;re a smart businessman,&#8221; Stewart said when they were arguing about food stamps, &#8220;but if you take advantage of something that you need to not be hungry, you&#8217;re a moocher?&#8221; The crowd roared in catharsis.</p><p>Their debate was also more enjoyable because it was, of course, hilarious — and goofy. Stewart, standing a &#8220;hobbit-like&#8221; 5 ft. 7 in., looked strikingly short when he shook hands with O&#8217;Reilly, described as &#8220;yeti&#8221;-esque at 6 ft. 4 in. But that disadvantage was not to last: producers installed a mechanical platform behind Stewart&#8217;s podium that he could raise and lower like an elevator. &#8220;I can see why Obama did badly in the debate,&#8221; he said after going up. &#8220;The altitude really is rough up here.&#8221; During a sit-down portion, the two were asked about why they were able to come together when Congress couldn&#8217;t; Stewart moved to sit in O&#8217;Reilly&#8217;s giant lap. &#8220;And what would you like for Christmas, little boy?&#8221; the yeti said, to great guffaws. And when O&#8217;Reilly made the requisite Clint Eastwood joke, Stewart got up again and did an empty chair bit. &#8220;What?&#8221; Stewart said. &#8220;Tell them to do what?&#8221; It was good television, even if it technically wasn&#8217;t on TV.</p><p>(LIST: )</p><p>If the debate were scored on points well made, Stewart would have taken home the gold. He used a larger range — from dropping F-bombs to waxing poetic about the greatness of the U.S. — to outfox O&#8217;Reilly&#8217;s classic news-show style. But from a p.r. perspective, O&#8217;Reilly was the real winner. His willingness to engage and be ridiculous with Stewart serves as proof that the employees at Fox News aren&#8217;t all humorless conservative zombies, as Stewart and other liberals often paint them. He also likely reached many more new audience members. (The Daily Show host, unofficially, had top billing.) Half the proceeds are going to charities, which makes for more winners. And in a press conference after the showdown, Stewart cheekily said there was another: &#8220;America.&#8221;</p><p>During the Q&amp;A with reporters, Stewart resisted attempts to analyze the meaning and influence of the event. As after another D.C. venture, the Rally to Restore Sanity, he became almost humorlessly adamant that what they did was really just for entertainment. But the example they set by talking to someone they disagree with is a valuable one in these überdivided times, even if they joked that nothing was accomplished. When Hill asked them, at the end of the debate, what the two had learned, O&#8217;Reilly quipped, &#8220;Now I know I&#8217;m right.&#8221; Stewart returned to the trope that he opened with. &#8220;I have learned that Bulls&#8212; Mountain is tall,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and it&#8217;s deep.&#8221;</p><p>PHOTOS: </p><p>PHOTOS: </p><p>After she caught flak for sporting yet another &#8220;pantless&#8221; look to a recent culinary event in Culver City, Calif., Lena Dunham told critics to &#8220;get used it,&#8221; joking that she planned to live until 105 and would flash her thighs regularly until she died. The Girls creator, star and executive producer made the remarks during a panel discussion at this year&#8217;s New Yorker Festival, which ran from Oct. 5 to 7 in New York City. For the record, Dunham says she wasn&#8217;t pantless but had worn short shorts under the teal top. And she intimated that it wasn&#8217;t the outfit itself — but rather her figure — that seemed to really get critics heated. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think a girl with tiny thighs would have gotten that response,&#8221; she said.</p><p>Dunham, who sans pants on the set of Girls earlier this year, admits that television isn&#8217;t always good about portraying fuller-figured women in the flesh. But she hasn&#8217;t had qualms about getting nude on film and even said that her readiness and willingness to get naked could be used as a crutch. Dunham joked that while filming, she sometimes thinks: &#8220;This scene is not what it&#8217;s supposed to be, so I&#8217;m gonna take off my pants!&#8221;</p><p>(TRIPOLI, Libya) — Libya&#8217;s parliament on Sunday ousted the country&#8217;s newly elected prime minister in a no-confidence vote, the latest blow to hopes that the country&#8217;s factions could agree on a government charged with restoring stability after last year&#8217;s civil war.</p><p>Mustafa Abushagur was Libya&#8217;s first elected prime minister after last year&#8217;s overthrow of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. He represented an offshoot of the country&#8217;s oldest anti-Gadhafi opposition movement, and was considered a compromise candidate acceptable to both liberals and Islamists.</p><p>But his proposed Cabinet was struck down by a legislature representing dozens of divided tribes, towns, and regions across the country, many of whom feel they are owed the spoils of victory over Gadhafi. He was forced to withdraw his first ministerial line-up under pressure and his second attempt to submit one resulted in his ouster.</p><p>In a short statement on Libya al-Wataniya TV after the vote, Abushagur said he respected the decision made by the General National Congress as part of Libya&#8217;s democracy but warned of instability if it takes too long to elect his replacement.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>&#8220;There should be quickness in the election of the prime minister and formation of the government so the country does not slip into a vacuum,&#8221; he said.</p><p>He had 25 days from his Sep. 12 appointment by parliament to form a Cabinet and win the legislature&#8217;s approval, but that deadline expired on Sunday. The Congress voted 125 to 44 in favor of removing him as prime minister, with 17 abstaining from voting. He had just put forth 10 names for key ministerial posts Sunday when the no-confidence vote was held.</p><p>Until a replacement can be elected by the parliament, management of Libya&#8217;s government is in the hands of the legislature.</p><p>The Congress will have to vote on a new prime minister in the coming weeks. The incoming leader will be responsible for rebuilding Libya&#8217;s army and police force and removing major pockets of support for the former regime.</p><p>On Sunday, around 1,000 people protested in the capital Tripoli outside the congressional headquarters to demand that militias operating alongside the army end a partial siege of the town of Bani Walid, considered a major stronghold of former regime loyalists. They called for a peaceful solution to the standoff that has already sent families fleeing from the town in anticipation of a strike.</p><p>Perhaps the single greatest challenge facing any new Libyan leader is the proliferation of ex-rebel militias. One radical Islamist militia has been linked to the attack last month on the U.S. Consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi that killed the American ambassador and three others.</p><p>There has been a widespread popular backlash against militias since that attack, and the Libyan government has taken advantage of it to try to put some armed groups under the authority of military officers. But some militias have resisted any attempt to fully control them or disarm them.</p><p>Any prime minister who wants to impose his authority on the militias will need broad national support for his government — but such support is hard to get.</p><p>Some parliamentarians argued that Abushagur&#8217;s Cabinet list was not diverse enough and involved too many unknown individuals for key posts. His first proposed Cabinet makeup was also criticized for including too many names from the previous interim government, which was seen by some Libyans as weak and corrupt.</p><p>After 40 years of Gadhafi&#8217;s divide-and-rule tactics and the 2011 war, Libya&#8217;s towns, tribes and regions are highly polarized. Many feel entitled to high government positions because of their losses in the war against Gadhafi, and are wary of any power wielded by their rivals.</p><p>In an indication of the charged atmosphere, Abushagur withdrew the initial line-up for government after the parliamentary chamber was stormed on Thursday by protesters from the city of Zawiya — one of several cities that took the brunt of Gadhafi&#8217;s attacks during the war — demanding representation. Lawmakers left the General National Congress floor, saying they would not vote under pressure.</p><p>Before the vote of no-confidence, Abushagur said he was aiming to create a government of national unity that did not appoint ministers according to &#8220;quotas.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;The government I proposed is not perfect and was marred by some mistakes, so I changed it for the purpose of national unity,&#8221; he said.</p><p>Independent lawmaker Nizar Kawan, who is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, said the group&#8217;s party and a liberal coalition led by former rebel prime minister Mahmoud Jibril had been holding talks about replacing Abushagur with an independent figure who has no political background. The candidate would then be tasked with forming a government that is run by well-known professionals and is politically balanced and geographically representative.</p><p>Abushagur had taught engineering at the University of Alabama for about 17 years before leaving in 2002. He was active in the opposition abroad against Gadhafi prior to last year&#8217;s uprising.</p><p>According to Libya&#8217;s transition plan, after the formation of a government a new constitution is to be written and voted upon in a national referendum.</p><p>PHOTOS: </p><p> <p>Viraj Puri climbs three floors of a gritty industrial building in Brooklyn to the daily grind of his early-stage start-up--negotiating deals with big customers, keeping up with new technology, meeting with investors and making plans to expand. But Puri's 20 employees aren't trying to build the next big social-media or clean-energy company. Instead, on a rooftop in the Greenpoint neighborhood, they run a small urban farm, Gotham Greens, a sleek and sunny oasis of leafy lettuces and herbs.</p> <p>At the company's 15,000-sq.-ft. hydroponic greenhouse Gotham Greens grows plants in mineral-infused water instead of dirt, using software that closely controls temperature, irrigation...</p><p> <p>A year ago, he came home a hero.</p> <p>But that was a year ago.</p> <p>Then, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian National Authority President, stood at the green marble rostrum of the U.N. General Assembly and asked for something he knew he could not get--full membership in the U.N. for a country, Palestine, that did not yet exist--and the room went wild.</p> <p>A year later, on Sept. 27, Abbas stood in the same place and asked for something he can quite easily get--not full membership but a status packing similar legal power. Yet in downtown Ramallah, the West Bank city where trucks mounted...</p><p> <p>DIED</p> <p>Griffith Edwards, 83, British psychiatrist and addiction specialist who helped pioneer the science of addiction medicine and the treatment of substance abuse.</p> <p>RULED</p> <p>By the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is immune from liability for flood damage from 2005's Hurricane Katrina.</p> <p>OPENED</p> <p>The Barclays Center in Brooklyn, new home of the Brooklyn Nets; its opening week featured shows by hip-hop star (and Nets co-owner) Jay-Z.</p> <p>DIED</p> <p>Henry Champ, 75, Canadian journalist who covered wars and Washington for more than 40 years for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and NBC News.</p> <p>WON</p> <p>The Emmy for...</p><p> <p>Mormon bishop Robert Nelson of Chevy Chase, Md., isn't exactly sure how to handle the casserole question. You see, his church is run by volunteers, and every member has a calling: teaching Sunday school, managing church finances, organizing food drives, visiting the sick. So when I asked Nelson who would bring the requisite casserole to Ann Romney if she were to get the flu in the White House, he paused and chuckled. "I can imagine wanting to bring the casserole, but then you have to go through security, and at some point you go, The casserole just isn't worth it. Call...</p><p> <p>In The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail--But Some Don't, the election-forecasting savant (of the New York Times' FiveThirtyEight blog) looks at how to separate good guesses from bad in an information-saturated world.</p> <p>What's the most common misperception about prediction?</p> <p>People sometimes think that when you make a prediction with a percentage attached to it, it means you're hedging your bets--like I'm 80% confident in it, which is not what it means. If 80% were just a euphemism for "Obama's the big favorite, but I don't want to say it's in the bag yet," then I would have the...</p><p>(SEOUL, South Korea) — A North Korean soldier killed two of his superiors Saturday and defected to South Korea across the countries&#8217; heavily armed border in a rare crossing that prompted South Korean troops to immediately beef up their border patrol, officials said.</p><p>The soldier shot his platoon and squad leaders before crossing the western side of the Demilitarized Zone at around noon, a Defense Ministry official said, citing the soldier&#8217;s statement after he was taken into custody by South Korean border guards.</p><p>The official, who declined to be named because questioning by authorities was ongoing, had earlier said one of the killed North Korean troops was a company commander but later corrected it, saying the information was mishandled in the first couple of hours of the development.</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>He said South Korean guards heard six gunshots before the North Korean soldier crossed the border. He also said the soldier used a loudspeaker to let South Korean guards know his intention to defect after the killings. The official said the motive behind the defection was unclear.</p><p>No unusual military movement was detected from the North Korean side of the border after the crossing, but South Korea immediately instructed its border troops to step up their guard, a South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff official said. He also declined to be named, citing office rules.</p><p>There was no immediate comment from communist North Korea&#8217;s state-run media.</p><p>Defections across the land border are rare, though North Koreans occasionally come to the South by boat. Last year, a North Korean civilian defected to the South across the land border. The last defection across the Demilitarized Zone by a North Korean soldier occurred in 2010, officials said. Another soldier and an officer also defected to the South across the border in two separate crossings in 2008.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>The vast majority of North Koreans fleeing their homeland travel through China and Southeast Asia before arriving in the South.</p><p>More than 24,000 North Koreans have arrived in the South since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.</p><p>The area where Saturday&#8217;s defection took place is along the route to a South Korean-financed industrial complex in the North Korean border town of Kaesong, officials said.</p><p>Border security has been tighter than usual along the border in the past few years as military and political tensions between the rival Koreas soared. In 2010, a South Korean naval ship sank and 46 of its sailors died in an incident blamed on North Korea, though Pyongyang denies involvement. Later that year, North Korea bombarded a South Korean front-line island, killing two marines and two civilians.</p><p>By HYUNG-JIN KIM</p><p>MORE: </p><p> <p>A glamorous model clumps down the runway. Photographers snap. Fashion editors applaud. And for a moment, it seems as if all eyes in the couture world are on ... Knoxville, Tenn.?</p> <p>Such is the burgeoning business of smaller-town fashion weeks. For decades, the world's clothing trends stemmed from seasonal spectacles in just four cities: New York, London, Milan and Paris. But in recent years, Dallas, Istanbul, Knoxville and others have launched alternatives to hype local models and retailers--and secure a fraction of the $865 million that New York Fashion Week generates for the Big Apple each year, according to Mayor Michael...</p><p> <p>This is going to be a rocky path," Barack Obama told 60 Minutes, referring to the turmoil in the Middle East. "There are going to be bumps in the road." The President was talking about the long-term struggle to move a region of historically repressed and undereducated people toward freedom, but long-term thinking is impermissible in presidential campaigns, and Mitt Romney called him on his bumps: "We had an ambassador assassinated. We had a Muslim Brotherhood member elected to the presidency of Egypt. Iran is that much closer to having the capacity to build a nuclear weapon." For good measure, the Romney campaign chided the President for appearing on The View but not meeting with foreign leaders during U.N. General Assembly week. These pokes, along with a smooth appearance on 60 Minutes, were part of a micro-renaissance Romney was experiencing as a candidate--several days without a goof--that perhaps only the press noticed as the Republican's poll numbers plummeted in crucial states.</p> <p>Obama's response to the Romney jabs came in an address to the General Assembly, one of the better speeches of his presidency. He celebrated the life of Ambassador Chris Stevens, by all accounts an exemplary man whose relentless humanity, as the President said, represented the exact opposite of the values embraced by his murderers. This was a "teachable moment," and Obama used it to explain what free speech--an absolute necessity for democracy--is all about. "As President of our country and Commander in Chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day," he said, to laughter, "and I will always defend their right to do so." He also condemned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's annual Holocaust-denying clown show and warned the Iranians about their nuclear program in a way that even neoconservatives might consider acceptable.</p> <p>Obama's path through the Arab Spring has indeed been bumpy; any President's would have been. The days when the U.S. could manage events in the region through a network of local autocrats are over. But I found myself thinking that while Romney's nostalgia for a hegemonic past was clearly implausible, the President's patient hope for democracy might be overly optimistic as well. There is another possibility: regional chaos and, ultimately, a redrawing of the national borders that were imagined by Europeans at the end of World War I.</p></p><p>(WASHINGTON) — There were all the trappings of a high-octane presidential debate: the over-the-top declarations, the pre-practiced zingers and the schmaltzy appeals to America&#8217;s truest values. But the presidential candidates were nowhere to be found.</p><p>In their place Saturday were two celebrity gabbers who have claimed their stakes to the polar opposite ends of the political spectrum: Bill O&#8217;Reilly and Jon Stewart. The political odd-couple came to Washington ready to tangle in an event mockingly dubbed &#8220;The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium.&#8221;</p><p>Choice words not suitable for the faint of heart dotted the 90-minute exchange between the Fox News anchor and the star of Comedy Central&#8217;s &#8220;The Daily Show,&#8221; who bantered aggressively but good-naturedly over birth control, President George W. Bush and the so-called &#8220;War on Christmas.&#8221;</p><p>(WATCH: )</p><p>Stewart came prepped with a mechanical pedestal he used to elevate himself in the air, making the height-challenged comedian appear taller than the lanky O&#8217;Reilly when he wanted to drive a point home.</p><p>&#8220;I like you much better that way,&#8221; O&#8217;Reilly quipped at one point as he gazed up at his ideological foe.</p><p>The political feud between the two caffeinated TV personalities dates back more than a decade. Much like family members who just can&#8217;t resist pushing each other&#8217;s buttons over Thanksgiving stuffing, Stewart and O&#8217;Reilly love to disagree, but appear to hold nothing against each other once the latest spat has run its course. The two have appeared on each other&#8217;s programs since 2001, but the face-off Saturday at The George Washington University marked their first head-to-head debate.</p><p>Appearing wholly presidential in dark jackets and face makeup under a sign reading &#8220;Yum, this banner tastes like freedom,&#8221; the two quickly turned to talk of government spending and the 47 percent of Americans that Republican Mitt Romney said in a video are dependent on government.</p><p>Stewart, defending government involvement in health care and social programs, said the U.S. has always been an entitlement nation.</p><p>(WATCH: )</p><p>&#8220;We are a people that went to another country, saw other people on it and said, &#8216;Yea, we want that,&#8221; Stewart said. &#8220;Have you ever seen &#8216;Oprah&#8217;s favorite things&#8217; episode?&#8221;</p><p>Asked who he&#8217;d like to see as president, O&#8217;Reilly dead-panned: &#8220;I&#8217;d have to say Clint Eastwood.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Well why don&#8217;t we ask him,&#8221; said Stewart, mocking the Hollywood actor&#8217;s widely panned speech in August at the Republican National Convention by getting out of his chair and staring at it while the crowd erupted in laughter.</p><p>In an apparent show of bipartisanship, Stewart even got on O&#8217;Reilly lap at one point. &#8220;And what would you like for Christmas, little boy?&#8221; O&#8217;Reilly said slyly.</p><p>&#8220;The display that you saw tonight is why America is America. Robust, creative, no holds barred,&#8221; O&#8217;Reilly told reporters after the debate. &#8220;You can call it whatever you want, but you wouldn&#8217;t see this in a lot of other countries. That&#8217;s for sure.&#8221;</p><p>Organizers said about 1,500 people attended the event, but the main audience was intended to be online, where the event was live-streamed for $4.95. On Twitter, viewers complained they missed the event when the video servers crashed. Organizers said video will be available for download and that those who experienced errors will be eligible for a refund.</p><p>(TANK, ) — The Pakistani military blocked a convoy carrying thousands of Pakistanis and a small contingent of U.S. anti-war activists from entering a lawless tribal region along the border with Afghanistan on Sunday to protest American drone strikes.</p><p>The group, led by star turned politician Imran Khan and his political party, was turned back just miles from the border of South Waziristan. After an hour of fruitless negotiations, Khan announced that the caravan would backtrack to the city of Tank, about 15 kilometers (nine miles) away. There, he delivered a speech to the crowd of about 10,000.</p><p>Khan has harshly criticized the Pakistani government&#8217;s cooperation with Washington in the fight against Islamist militants. He has been especially outspoken against U.S. drone strikes targeting militants and has argued that the country&#8217;s alliance with Washington is the main reason Pakistan is facing a homegrown insurgency. He has suggested before that militant activity in Pakistan&#8217;s tribal areas will dissipate when the U.S. ends the war across the border in Afghanistan.</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>&#8220;We want to give a message to America that the more you carry out drone attacks, the more people will hate you,&#8221; Khan told the crowd.</p><p>The anti-American sentiment, always high in Pakistan, was evident in the crowd that waved banners saying &#8220;Down with America,&#8221; and &#8220;The friend of America is the traitor of the nation.&#8221;</p><p>Pakistan&#8217;s tribal regions, such as North and South Waziristan, border Afghanistan and serve as bases for militant groups such as the Taliban to stage raids across the border into Afghanistan.</p><p>The protest convoy of about 150 cars set out on Saturday from the capital Islamabad, traveled 400 kilometers (250 miles) and then stopped overnight in the city of Dera Ismail Khan. The plan for the second and final day was to travel another 120 kilometers (70 miles) to reach Kotkai in South Waziristan. But the military stopped the convoy in the town of Kawar.</p><p>Khan told the rally that they wanted to continue their journey to Kotkai, but the army said it was too late, and going inside South Waziristan at night was dangerous. Khan said he didn&#8217;t want to put his supporters in danger, so he turned the rally around to Tank.</p><p>Regardless of whether he was able to enter the tribal region, Khan portrayed the two-day motorcade as a success.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>&#8220;We have taken the voice of the people of Waziristan to the world,&#8221; he said.</p><p>Thousands of supporters had turned out along the route to cheer on the convoy, which stretched about 15 kilometers (9 miles), including accompanying media. Some of those packed into the vehicles waved flags for Khan&#8217;s political group and chanted: &#8220;We want peace.&#8221;</p><p>Video on Pakistani media showed barricades with hundreds of police in riot gear, a sign of concerns that the motorcade would be attacked or become unruly.</p><p>Around three dozen Americans from the U.S.-based anti-war group CODEPINK joined Khan for the march. The American protesters say the U.S. drone strikes, contrary to the claims of American officials, have terrorized peaceful tribes living along the border and killed many innocent civilians — not just Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.</p><p>The convoy aimed to throw a spotlight on the drone attacks, which many Pakistanis oppose as violations of the country&#8217;s sovereignty that often kill civilians. The U.S. says its drone strikes are necessary to battle militants that Pakistan has been unable or unwilling to control.</p><p>Critics denounced the rally as a piece of cheap theater designed to drum up votes for Khan&#8217;s political party ahead of next year&#8217;s elections.</p><p>&#8220;A made-for-TV dog and pony show that will be high on drama and low on substance will resonate with Khan&#8217;s base,&#8221; wrote Pakistani newspaper columnist Cyril Almeida in the English-language newspaper Dawn Sunday.</p><p>The rally was originally intended for South Waziristan, a tribal region where the Pakistani military has been battling a violent uprising by the Taliban, and factions of the Taliban threatened to attack the march. On Saturday, a statement from a Taliban faction said to be based in eastern Punjab province warned that militants would target the protesters with suicide bombings.</p><p>The main faction of the Pakistani Taliban, which is based in South Waziristan, issued a statement Friday calling Khan a &#8220;slave of the West&#8221; and saying that the militants &#8220;don&#8217;t need any sympathy&#8221; from such &#8220;a secular and liberal person.&#8221;</p><p>The former cricket star long had a reputation as a playboy, but in recent years he has said he has grown stronger in his Muslim faith. He also has used attacks on the U.S. drone program as a means of gaining attention and esteem in Pakistan. His popularity surged in recent years in Pakistan, where the government, led by the Pakistan People&#8217;s Party of Asif Ali Zardari, has disappointed many.</p><p>By ISHTIAQ MAHSUD</p><p>(MANILA, ) — Philippine President Benigno Aquino III announced Sunday that his government has reached a preliminary peace deal with the nation&#8217;s largest Muslim rebel group in a major breakthrough toward ending a decades-long insurgency.</p><p>Aquino said the &#8220;framework agreement&#8221; — a roadmap for a new autonomous region for minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation&#8217;s south — was an assurance the Moro Islamic Liberation Front insurgents will no longer aim to secede from the country.</p><p>The agreement, to be signed Oct. 15 in Manila, spells out general principles on major issues, including the extent of power, revenues and territory of the Muslim region. If all goes well, a final peace deal could be reached by 2016, when Aquino&#8217;s six-year term ends, officials said.</p><p>&#8220;This framework agreement paves the way for final and enduring peace in Mindanao,&#8221; Aquino said, referring to the southern Philippine region and homeland of the country&#8217;s Muslims. &#8220;This means that the hands that once held rifles will be put to use tilling land, selling produce, manning work stations and opening doorways of opportunity.&#8221;</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>He cautioned, however, that &#8220;the work does not end here,&#8221; and that the two sides still need to work out the accord&#8217;s details. Those talks are expected to be tough but doable, officials and rebels said.</p><p>Rebel vice chairman Ghadzali Jaafar said the agreement provides a huge relief to people who have long suffered from war and are &#8220;now hoping the day would come when there will be no need to bear arms.&#8221;</p><p>The deal marks the most significant progress in 15 years of on-and-off negotiations with the 11,000-strong Moro group on ending an uprising that has left more than 120,000 people dead, displaced about 2 million others and held back development in the south. Western governments have long worried that rebel strongholds could become breeding grounds for al-Qaida-affiliated extremists.</p><p>&#8220;The parties agree that the status quo is unacceptable,&#8221; the 13-page agreement says. It calls for the creation of a new Muslim autonomous region called &#8220;Bangsamoro&#8221; to replace an existing one created in 1989 which Aquino characterized as a &#8220;failed experiment,&#8221; where poverty and corruption have forced many &#8220;to articulate their grievances through the barrel of a gun.&#8221;</p><p>The accord also calls for the establishment of a 15-member &#8220;Transition Commission&#8221; to work out the details of the preliminary agreement and draft a law creating the new Muslim autonomous region in about two years.</p><p>Rebel forces would be deactivated gradually &#8220;beyond use,&#8221; the agreement says, without specifying a timetable.</p><p>The Philippine government would continue to exercise exclusive powers over defense and security, foreign and monetary policy in the new autonomous region, where Muslims would be assured of an &#8220;equitable share of taxation, revenues, and the fruits of national patrimony &#8230; and equal protection of laws and access to impartial justice,&#8221; according to Aquino.</p><p>Philippine officials said the preliminary accord would be posted on the government&#8217;s website for public scrutiny, and would be signed in Manila in the presence of Aquino, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and Moro rebel chief Al Haj Murad Ibrahim.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s been a long journey and this is an important milestone in our search for lasting peace,&#8221; presidential peace talks adviser Teresita Deles told AP.</p><p>The United States, Britain, and other countries welcomed the accord.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>&#8220;This agreement is a testament to the commitment of all sides for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the southern Philippines,&#8221; U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement. &#8220;The next steps will be to ensure that the framework agreement is fully implemented.&#8221;</p><p>The new Muslim region would be built upon an existing five-province autonomous territory, among the country&#8217;s poorest and most violent, with more than 4 million people.</p><p>The Moro rebels earlier dropped a demand for a separate Muslim state and renounced .</p><p>Their negotiator, Mohagher Iqbal, earlier said his group would not lay down its weapons until a final peace accord is concluded. He said the insurgents could form a political party and run in democratic elections to get a chance at leading the autonomous region for which they have been fighting.</p><p>In Kuala Lumpur, Philippine government negotiator Marvic Leonen said both sides face the enormous task of working out the details. &#8220;We are not naive to say that there would be no obstacles. But the Philippine government will defend the agreement,&#8221; Leonen said.</p><p>The challenges are many.</p><p>In 2008, the planned signing of a similar preliminary pact was scuttled when opponents went to the Supreme Court, which declared the agreement unconstitutional. Fighting erupted when three rebel commanders attacked Christian communities, and an ensuing military offensive killed more than 100 people and displaced about 750,000 villagers before a cease-fire ended the violence.</p><p>One of the hardline rebel commanders, Ameril Umbra Kato, broke off from the Moro rebels last year and formed a new group opposed to the talks. Kato&#8217;s forces launched attacks on several army camps and outposts in August, prompting another army offensive that killed more than 50 fighters in the 200-strong rebel faction.</p><p>The Moro Islamic Liberation Front itself broke away in the 1980s from the Moro National Liberation Front, which signed a 1996 autonomy deal with the government. That peace accord did not lead to disarming of the group and many of the rebels have simply laid low in the south, still demanding that the government fulfill its commitments, including jobs, security and economic development.</p><p>Some former guerrillas also formed a small but brutal al-Qaida-linked group called the Abu Sayyaf, which became notorious for bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings until U.S.-backed Philippine military offensives routed many of its militants. They are mostly based in the southern provinces of Sulu and Basilan, where about 400 gunmen remain.</p><p>by EILEEN NG and JIM GOMEZ</p><p>Ng reported from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Associated Press writer Hrvoje Hranjski in Manila and Matthew Pennington in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.</p><p> <p>When it comes to politics, believing is seeing. Partisan Republicans see Barack Obama as dishonest; partisan Democrats see Mitt Romney the same way. Voters see candidates they support as truth tellers; they regard candidates they oppose as shadier. We are suffering from a national case of confirmation bias, the idea that we lend credence to information that confirms our opinions and ignore evidence that doesn't--even in the face of facts.</p> <p>Michael Scherer's smart and insightful cover story on the fact wars suggests that truth in the 2012 campaign is in the eye of the beholder. To say that the candidates are...</p><p> <p>EMMY EDITION</p> <p>GOOD WEEK/BAD WEEK</p> <p>Mandy Patinkin</p> <p>Got a "holla" during Homeland co-star Claire Danes' acceptance speech</p> <p>Jon Hamm</p> <p>Was denied Best Actor honors for Mad Men--for the fifth time</p> <p>BOOKS</p> <p>Food Porn</p> <p>Mustard spanked chicken! Dripping thighs! Holy hell wings! No, we're not talking dirty to you. We're naming actual recipes from Fifty Shades of Chicken, a cookbook parody of E.L. James' hit trilogy (out Nov. 13). Spatula whip, colander chains and cheese-grating handcuffs sold separately.</p> <p>HIDDEN TREASURE</p> <p>At Amsterdam's inaugural Unseen photo fair, low profiles reigned supreme: emerging artists displayed their work alongside lesser-known prints by masters like Edward...</p><p> <p>Enda Kenny is due to attend the Sept. 20 opening of the new premises of Arvato Finance, a German-owned billing and payment-services company, in Dublin's docklands, but has delayed his convoy to take a call. Conversations with Ireland's Prime Minister are often pleasantly discursive; if words were money, Kenny could have easily cleared the national debt since coming to power in February 2011. And so, at the appointed hour, he finds himself gridlocked in traffic, facing the skeleton of a building that was to have housed the headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank, the country's third largest lender until red...</p><p>Ai Weiwei is . As such, he is constantly at odds with the government of his homeland, the People’s Republic of . The contentiousness has been highlighted by Beijing’s refusal to return Ai’s passport to him, making it impossible for him to travel to the U.S. for the Oct. 7 opening of a major retrospective on his art at the Hirshhorn Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. It was confiscated — illegally, he says — after he was during a crackdown on dissent. The government has also rejected his appeals against $2.4 million in back taxes and penalties levied on Ai’s company, Beijing Fake Design Cultural Development. After submitting a $1.33 million deposit, Ai says he won’t pay anything more. The artist spoke to TIME’s Austin Ramzy about his upcoming show, his political activism and how the closely the government is watching him.<br></p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>What things would you like to do when you get your passport?<br>If a person has any freedom, then freedom to travel is part of it. If you have nothing to charge me with, you have to give it back to me. The police also said we understand this is not legal.</p><p>If you were given your passport and allowed to travel, do you worry about being able to return?<br>There are so many cases of people being blocked from returning. I always prepare for the worst, but I also try to act according to what is possible. I always think: Why should [the government] do that? It is not good for them, it is not good for anybody. I think maybe they would change. Every decision I make, I always try to say the [government] has the possibility to change. Otherwise, why would you still fight? So that would bring me into many, many difficult circumstance. Because I’m always willing to test and to say: What could happen? Or say: just because it happened last time, does that mean it will happen again? So I can’t say what will or will not happen.</p><p>There are many cases where there are things that you fought for and that your side ended up having a victory of sorts. There were the Green Dam censorship software that the government wanted to install on Chinese computers and the research into the names of students who died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Green Dam was blocked, and eventually, the government was forced to release a total of the student deaths. Looking at that, do you see any potential for, if not exactly change in the system, at least movement or response by the government to the interests of the public?<br>I think so. Gradually, under pressure from not just me but from different points. I think the pressure is getting stronger, you can see it every day. I always jump to the other side, to think about it from the view of the government. You can see the Internet discussion. So far, it is the strongest force to deliver the pressure to the government and make people’s voice be heard. It happens everywhere. Sometimes it doesn’t have an immediate effect. Like the Beijing flood this summer, to name those names [of the dead], it was quite difficult, but they had to do it. If they didn’t do it, people will start to research on their own. That will cause the government much more problems.</p><p>The government [knows] &#8230; many issues need to be faced and answered. And they know the sooner they answer, the less cost and less damage. But who is going to do it? I think the pressure still need to come from the civil movement. After 63 years, [the government] cut out all the possible interests groups or different kind of discussions. They don’t exist. The whole nation becomes very simple. The master gives the order ruthlessly. The civilians just have to obey it. There’s no space for discussion, no structure, etcetera. No way to even to evaluate the damage. There is no true communication.</p><p>Like my case, it is so politicized. They can just tell you’ve been arrested or you are released or you’re free now or you cannot have the passport. I said: Can I have any communication of what is going on? Can you ask me some questions or I ask you any questions? Most cases in China are handled this way, not just my case. If you look at the case or his wife’s case or the case of Wang Lijun, there are so many holes in the whole procedure, but none of them will be answered. How can they maintain a society with no sense of trust or justice? This is the question, How come in such [a] large civilization and one-fifth of the human population, [there is] no sense of justice, &#8230; no clear measurement of right or wrong? It [is] a very primitive &#8230; level, nobody can give you a clear definite answer. Nobody can clearly say that they have to protect the constitution of China. According to constitution, these are violations by government, but can anybody openly discuss those?</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>You recently posted some photographs of the anti-Japan demonstrations. You were also a photojournalist for a while in your U.S. days, photographing the Tompkins Square Park riots among other things. I actually never stopped. So many things are worth recording. It’s worth it to see it twice. It’s worth paying attention and looking at something twice. It is an intelligent act. So I think that it is very important, just a simple few seconds. I turned on the video because there was a demonstration in front of the U.S. embassy, which surprised me.</p><p>The slogans [declared] that the U.S. is behind the Japanese [claim to disputed islands in the East China Sea]. And they said, “Return our money.” The U.S. never borrowed money, China bought the bonds from the U.S. But you can see this kind of hatred. That tells you about the kind of rationality of the [regime] old-timers, who are trying to integrate people’s anger into modern foreign affairs. It is a pity because we all know if [the] government wants, it will not allow you to take one step outside your door. There are so many people still living in detention. To have large demonstrations in 50 cities, you don’t have to say who it is organized by. Then I see the [U.S.] ambassador’s car; it was very obvious, it had the flag in front. I was very surprised because I had been to that area for a year and never seen the ambassador’s car at that gate. The people started to stop the car, [pulling] the flag. That was interesting, so I put it on the Internet.</p><p>When you say it is clear that the protests were organized, you mean by the government?<br>Oh, yeah. There is nobody in this whole society would question that. This is a society fully surveilled and regulated by the police. Our conversation, whoever comes in here, it will all be recorded. I mean I can’t step out without being noticed.</p><p>In the catalog for the Hirshhorn exhibition, there are things I had not seen before: the Sichuan rebar piece and also the crabs. Can you tell me a little bit about them?<br>Both works are being shown for the first time to the public. The rebar comes very obviously from [the 2008 Sichuan earthquake]. When I started, we had the investigation [into the number of students who died in collapsed ], there was such frustration. It was such a tragedy and so many lives have disappeared. We never had a moment of explanation or just some regret from the official side. It is always very harsh, very bitter. I was beaten and almost lost my life. The names we found out, you can also see them in the show at the Hirshhorn. When you go up the elevator, the whole wall [is] covered by 5,200 names of students. We have [the] sound of those names pronounced by people [over the] Internet. Over 10,000 people participated in this sound piece.</p><p>I used that as the beginning of the show and the end of the piece is the Sichuan rebar. The rebar is from the ruins and took us a long time to take back. We bought it secretly, and then we didn’t know what to do with it. It really becomes so [emotionally] heavy because it was from those ruins and there are still so many people under the ruins. They didn’t touch Beichuan [a town buried in the 2008 earthquake]. And we didn’t touch it. I thought, How can I still [raise] the same questions [about the government’s refusal to acknowledge the earthquake victims] but not disturb the form [of the rebar], which reflects or continues the demand for the facts? So we gradually just spread it out and bent it. We made it like the ones [fresh] out of the factory, and it took a lot of people years to clean [the rebar] off because it was all so curved. To make it straight took hundreds of blows to straighten. Then at last it becomes a pile of rebar exactly like what comes out of factory. It has no history to it. You could never tell that it comes from the ruins. Everything has been cleaned up. The effort itself makes that a stronger question.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>Can you tell me a little bit about the pattern of the rebar?<br>I had a map, a Chinese map, the borderline, the pattern a little bit reflects that. Because the metal is of different thickness and lengths, so we have to put it in order, otherwise you will not have a pattern. So the pattern automatically come out from the arrangement of the order.</p><p>That is a last piece of exhibition. Over 40% of the works are new. Another new work is about river crabs. It is about how the Shanghai government destroyed the studio that they invited me to build [for the 2010 Expo]. At last I said it has to be destroyed. For China to destroy a house is not a big deal. You shouldn’t dramatize it, just [accept] it. But I said I would [throw] one party. So many people wanted to see the work; it is [a] beautiful architecture piece. We had over a thousand people register to come from different parts of China, about 20 different provinces. They brought their children or husband or wives or even parents. That was in the season you eat river crabs. And you know [the word for] river crabs is hexie. [NOTE: hexie is a pun on the word harmonious, which has become a synonym for censorship, part of the government’s goal of a “harmonious society.”] That party was forbidden, so I made the crabs for the show.</p><p>You lived in U.S. for 12 years before returning in 1993. How did the U.S. change you and how did it affect your art?<br>It is very strange. When I was there, I desperately trying just to survive, and of course, I experienced and learned so much through art on the Lower East Side or demonstrations or even the Iran Contra scandal. All those things I watched. I never [thought] there was an influence &#8230; until I was in detention and the police asked me the same question. Because they had have to find out why this man relentlessly criticized the government. He’s psycho, why is he doing this? What is the fundamental change? &#8230; At the beginning, when I talked with them, they said, ‘Ha ha, you must watch too many Hollywood movies.’ I said, ‘Yes, I love Hollywood movies.’ I still can be touched if I watch movies. I started to realize I have changed. The American experience quite influenced my understanding of individuality, about basic human rights, about the rights of freedom of expression and the rights and responsibility of citizens.</p><p>Then later I learned everything from the Internet. I learned to discuss, to communicate, to make a point through modern technology. So maybe there are three parts in my life — earlier background living in exile in Xinjiang in a very political circumstance, then later the United States from 24 to 36 years old. I was quite equipped with liberal thinking. Then the Internet. If there is no Internet, of course, I cannot really exercise my opinion or my ideas.</p><p>You said that after you arrived in New York, you began to understand the work of Jasper Johns. What did you take from him?<br>When I just started to study art, a very well-known Chinese translator Yang Xianyi, who translated almost every top piece of Chinese literature for the West, gave me a book of Jasper Johns’ paintings and I could not understand it. The painting is about red, yellow and blue and some brushes and some containers. So I threw it away. I gave it to friends and they also [didn’t] want it. Then after I went to Parsons [School of Design], I looked at Andy Warhol, because he is so easy to understand. And then I realized Andy Warhol made some points about Johns and [Robert] Rauschenberg, because he always wanted to be accepted by Johns. He would always pop up and Johns [would be] very cool to him. And he didn’t recognize Warhol that much.</p><p>So I looked at Johns and realized he is really an artist for the artist. He is really concerned about very essential language and the meaning of interpretation and the way really to look at [Ludwig] Wittgenstein and [Marcel] Duchamp. So Johns allowed me to take another step to look at what Duchamp did, which is the intellectual part of art, concept and language. That is why I do feel quite grateful for what Jasper Johns did, and that is why the title [of the Hirshhorn retrospective] uses one of his one of his works, “According to What.”</p><p>In the Hirshhorn show, there is a quote: “This so-called contemporary art is not a form but a philosophy of society.” What do you mean by that?<br>I think very often we see art as artwork or art objects but [do not] emphasize the mind of the people or the movement behind it. I think that can very much lead to misunderstanding and it can be misdirected to the commercial side of art. Today we see changes at all levels, politics and economics and culture. We can see a new definition and new possibilities to give a new look to art and a new understanding of why we need art in today’s society.</p><p>MORE: </p><p>MORE: </p><p>In his last movie role, Sacha Baron Cohen ridiculed the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. For his next project, he might be portraying Hong Kong&#8217;s most notorious, homophobic playboy.</p><p>Cohen and his production company Four by Two Films have signed an agreement with Paramount Pictures to develop a project inspired by Cecil Chao Sze-tsung, Hong Kong&#8217;s version of both Hugh Hefner and Donald Trump, on Thursday. The movie, tentatively titled &#8216;The Lesbian&#8217;, would be inspired by Chao&#8217;s public refusal to acknowledge his daughter&#8217;s same-sex partnership and his pledge to give a $65 million dowry to any man who would marry her.</p><p>Deadline said that the British comedian was tapped to play the 77-year old Hong Kong billionaire. No writers have yet been chosen for the project, .</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>Cecil Chao, the son of a shipping magnate, has gained celebrity status in Hong Kong for parading his riches and bedtime partners across the pages of local tabloids for decades. His public boasting of having had 10,000 girlfriends and an alleged, disputed marriage with a model thirty years his junior have made him a perennial conversation topic in local cha chaan teng cafes.</p><p>Last year, as reported by the , the real estate tycoon — who lives in Villa Cecil, uses the car number-plate &#8217;Cecil&#8217; and shuttles to his yacht by helicopter — had himself photographed for a local magazine while surrounded by bikini-clad models in a bid to irk a rival tycoon who had himself published a similar pose in another magazine.</p><p>Homosexuality, among men, was legalized in Hong Kong in 1991. But the city, autonomous from the Chinese mainland in legal matters, does not allow civil unions or marriages for same-sex couples. Earlier this year, the first member of the Hong Kong parliament that he was gay, but only after election night. According to a Hong Kong government , 51.7 percent said they considered homosexuality within their own families &#8220;unacceptable&#8221; or &#8220;strongly unacceptable&#8221;.</p><p>&#8220;I hate to be the one bursting his daydream bubble, but hello, it&#8217;s 2012,&#8221; Cecil Chao&#8217;s daughter Gigi said in a prominent .</p><p> <p>The stories we read to frighten ourselves say a lot about what we want and what we fear. What the big horror books of the moment imply is that we hope for long relationships with fictional characters, especially if they're teenage girls; we prefer evil to be uncomplicated and unspeakably awful in familiar ways; and above all, we long to go to the movies.</p> <p>Two of this season's paranormal novels--Maggie Stiefvater's The Raven Boys (the first of a four-volume series of young-adult books) and Justin Cronin's The Twelve (the second volume of a trilogy, following 2010's The Passage) are built on...</p><p>VOICEOVER: &#8220;President Obama continues to distort Mitt Romney’s economic plan. The latest? Not telling the truth about Mitt Romney’s tax plan. The AP says doesn’t add up. ABC News: mostly fiction. Even the Obama campaign admitted it wasn’t true.&#8221;</p><p>STEPHANIE CUTTER: &#8220;Well, okay, stipulated, it won&#8217;t be near $5 trillion.&#8221;</p><p>VOICEOVER: &#8220;Obama’s plan? $4,000 more in taxes on the middle class. We can’t afford four more years.&#8221;</p><p>MITT ROMNEY: “I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message.”</p><p>MELANIE MCNAMARA: “I’m disappointed in Barack Obama as my president. Because he promised to bring us all together and we’re all going to be able to prosper. I don’t see the prospering. In 2008, I voted for Barack Obama. He doesn’t have my vote this time. Why Mitt Romney? Being a woman, you think about your children and you think about their future. And what I want to think about is a future that has jobs. That our economy’s growing again. That’s important to women and it’s important to me.”</p><p>MITT ROMNEY: “I’m Mitt Romney and I approved this message.”</p><p>(HARRISBURG, Pa.) — should be sent to prison for life when a judge sentences him Tuesday, according to several of the jurors who convicted the former assistant coach of molesting several boys over a period of years.</p><p>None of the jurors interviewed by The Associated Press said they have had second thoughts about their June verdict, and several plan to attend the sentencing.</p><p>&#8220;There isn&#8217;t a sentence that I believe is harsh enough for what he has done and how it has affected the university,&#8221; said Joan Andrews, a juror who has worked for Penn State for 41 years and held football season tickets since 1969. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s been one individual in this entire campus that has not been affected by this.&#8221;</p><p>(LIST: )</p><p>Four jurors said they plan to be in the courtroom when Sandusky, 68, learns the penalty for sexually abusing boys he met through a charity for at-risk children. Sandusky&#8217;s own attorney expects his client to be handed a long sentence from Judge John Cleland after conviction on 45 counts.</p><p>Although a list of jurors has not been released by Cleland, the AP was able to contact five of them. They said they recently received a letter from the court informing them about the sentencing and offering to have a court official meet them outside the courthouse.</p><p>A court system spokesman said the jurors are guaranteed a seat but won&#8217;t necessarily be sitting together.</p><p>Only one of the five, retired Penn State soil sciences professor Daniel D. Fritton, said he would not attend.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;d just like to stay out of the limelight, for one thing,&#8221; Fritton said. &#8220;I figure I could read in the paper what happens.&#8221;</p><p>Gayle Barnes, a homemaker and former school district employee, said she thinks a lot about the victims, particularly the eight who testified against Sandusky and provided what she considers the critical evidence of guilt. She said he deserves life in prison.</p><p>&#8220;I do still feel good, what we as jurors did,&#8221; Barnes said. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t go there saying off the bat he&#8217;s guilty. I needed to listen to every single thing that was said.&#8221;</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>Barnes said she has been in touch with a fifth juror and an alternate juror who also plan to attend the sentencing.</p><p>High school science teacher Joshua Harper, who has bachelor&#8217;s and master&#8217;s degrees from Penn State, said that he takes pride in having served on the jury, and that the guilty verdict was not a close call. He wants Sandusky &#8220;put away for the rest of his life, really.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;This is what prisons are for, you know,&#8221; Harper said. &#8220;I mean, I don&#8217;t think you let a guy loose like that.&#8221;</p><p>He also felt the victim testimony was pivotal.</p><p>&#8220;It was such a consistent pattern of behavior,&#8221; Harper said. &#8220;It was just so solid. The defense was just so thin. There was no evidence that these kids were lying. Even the minor inconsistencies that the defense tried to bring up — and did bring up — that made it more convincing.&#8221;</p><p>Through a relative, juror Ann T. Van Kuren said she also plans to attend.</p><p>Barnes and Harper both said they hoped to learn more about what Penn State officials did or did not do in 1998 and 2001 after getting complaints about Sandusky showering with boys. That was a major theme of the report issued to Penn State this summer by Louis Freeh, the former FBI director, and is likely also to arise during civil litigation by Sandusky&#8217;s victims against the university.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t know the whole story to this whole thing yet,&#8221; said Barnes, a Nittany Lions fan who felt so strongly that &#8216;s statue should remain in place that she went to the scene outside Beaver Stadium the day it was removed in July, about a month after the verdict. &#8220;I just felt like they jumped ship, they didn&#8217;t do the right thing, that they needed more information. What&#8217;s going to happen if Curley and Schultz are found not guilty?&#8221;</p><p>Tim Curley, the school&#8217;s athletic director on leave, and Gary Schultz, a retired vice president, are awaiting trial on charges they did not properly report suspected abuse and lied to the grand jury that investigated Sandusky. Paterno, the school&#8217;s Hall of Fame coach, was fired after Sandusky was arrested in November and died of lung cancer in January.</p><p>The names of Curley, Schultz and even Paterno did not come up in deliberations, Andrews said.</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know what to think about Curley and Schultz,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I think Joe Paterno was and is and has been falsely accused of many things. I don&#8217;t think the man was informed of the detail for him to understand how serious this was.&#8221;</p><p>Sandusky&#8217;s sentencing on Tuesday will begin with Cleland determining whether he qualifies as a sexually violent predator, a status that would require lifetime registration if he is ever paroled.</p><p>By MARK SCOLFORO</p><p> <p>Fifteen-year-old Taylor Santos let a classmate copy her homework, and she learned the hard way never to do it again. Santos, a student at Springtown High School in Texas, was punished by a vice principal with a swift swat to her bottom using a wooden paddle. The spanking left blisters and forced her to sleep on her side that night.</p> <p>As upset as Santos' mother was, however, it wasn't the spanking, which she had consented to, that led her to complain to the school board. It was the severity of the punishment and the fact that it was delivered by a...</p><p> <p>The serial Novel--fiction delivered in installments instead of a single volume--harks back to Charles Dickens, who popularized the format in 1836 with The Pickwick Papers. The tradition survives today as the e-serial: a story broken into episodes, downloaded to a digital reader and retailed for usually about $2 per hit. But if you ask e-serial publishers to describe the lure of the format, chances are they'll invoke the likes of Walter White or Tyrion Lannister over Samuel Pickwick.</p> <p>Byliner, a prestigious source of short-format e-books, is publishing Margaret Atwood's dystopian Positron under its Byliner Serials imprint; editor in chief Mark Bryant...</p><p>(NEW YORK) — As the tally from a deadly meningitis outbreak rose Friday, health officials identified the medical clinics across the country that received steroid shots for back pain now linked to the illnesses.</p><p>Authorities took the step to help identify everyone who may have gotten sick — or may still get sick — in the outbreak.</p><p>&#8220;All patients who may have received these medications need to be tracked down immediately,&#8221; said Dr. Benjamin Park of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</p><p>&#8220;It is possible that if patients with infection are identified soon and put on appropriate antifungal therapy, lives may be saved,&#8221; he said in a statement.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>The CDC said the number of cases of the rare fungal meningitis reached nearly 50 cases, and spread to a seventh state Friday. The number of deaths in the outbreak remained at five.</p><p>Investigators have focused on a steroid medication made by a specialty pharmacy in Massachusetts. All the outbreak patients had gotten shots of the steroid for back pain, a common treatment, and inspectors found at least one sealed vial contaminated with fungus.</p><p>On Friday, officials said they have found fungal infections in nine sick patients. They weren&#8217;t able to identify what types of fungus in every one of those patients, but did distinguish at least two types — Aspergillus and Exserohilum.</p><p>In all, 47 people have contracted fungal meningitis, the CDC said. Michigan became the seventh state to report cases, with four. Tennessee&#8217;s cases now total 29; Virginia, six; Indiana, 3; two each in Maryland and Florida and one in North Carolina.</p><p>Three people have died in Tennessee and one in Virginia and Maryland.</p><p>The first known case in the meningitis outbreak was diagnosed about two weeks ago in Tennessee, and the steroid was recalled last week by the pharmacy, New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass.</p><p>About 17,700 single-dose vials of the steroid were covered in the recall. On Friday, the government released the names of about 75 facilities in 23 states that got recalled doses between July and September.</p><p>(Q&amp;A: )</p><p>It&#8217;s not clear how many were sent to clinics, how many were used, or even whether everyone who got one will get sick. Once infected, it can take as long as a month for symptoms to appear.</p><p>At the prompting of government officials, clinics are notifying all the patients who got shots from the recalled lots.</p><p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a massive effort to contact all the patients,&#8221; said Marsha Thiel, the chief executive officer of MAPS, a company that owns surgery center clinics in Minnesota.</p><p>She added, &#8220;If there&#8217;s any question at all, they&#8217;re being directed to go to their physician.&#8221;</p><p>As a precaution, the Food and Drug Administration urged doctors not to use any of the company&#8217;s products, and released a list Friday that included other steroids, anesthetics and a blood pressure medicine. The company, which is now closed, said in a statement Thursday that despite the FDA warning, &#8220;there is no indication of any potential issues with other products.&#8221;</p><p>The steroid is known as preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate, which the compounding pharmacy creates by combining a powder with a liquid.</p><p>There are FDA-approved versions of the drug, sold by the brand name Depo-Medrol, in good supply. So patients who need the medicine should not encounter a shortage, the FDA said Friday.</p><p>Most of the anxiety now involves patients who got steroid shots for back pain and are worried about becoming seriously ill.</p><p>&#8220;Our phone is ringing off the hook this morning. Patients are calling. Of course, they&#8217;re concerned,&#8221; said Paulette Fry, practice manager at Wellspring Pain Solutions in Columbus, Ind., about 40 miles south of Indianapolis. She said the clinic was sending out letters to about 300 patients who received spinal injections with the drug.</p><p>Meningitis is an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms include severe headache, nausea, dizziness and fever.</p><p>Fungal meningitis is not contagious like the more common forms. The types of fungus linked to the outbreak are all around, but very rarely causes illness. Fungal meningitis is treated with high-dose antifungal medications, usually given intravenously in a hospital.</p><p>By MIKE STOBBE</p><p>MORE: </p><p> <p>Cosmic Comics</p> <p>A quartet of graphic novels explore song craft, soldiers and a sinister future</p> <p>1 C. Tyler</p> <p>YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, BOOK THREE: SOLDIER'S HEART</p> <p>Soldier's heart is what people used to call PTSD, and the final volume of Tyler's exquisitely painted trilogy explores how her father's World War II experiences have reverberated in her family. The book is as much about empty spaces--in history and on the page--as it is about the details she can fill in.</p> <p>2 Chris Ware</p> <p>BUILDING STORIES</p> <p>This is more than a book; it's a profusion of printed paper: a box full of pamphlets, comic...</p><p>7:05 am ET</p><p>: &#8220;Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises&#8221;</p><p>: &#8220;Capitol Assets: Congress&#8217;s Wealthiest Mostly Shielded from Effects of Deep Recession&#8221;</p><p>: &#8220;Romney Shows Softer Side; Obama Raising More Cash&#8221;</p><p>: &#8220;Boehner Wary of Lame-Duck Deficit Deal&#8221;</p><p>: &#8220;Mitt Romney Seizes Momentum with 30 Days Left Before Election&#8221;</p><p> <p>The Washington nationals entered the late-September stretch run with the best record in baseball. That means the nation's capital will host postseason play for the first time since 1933, when FDR was tossing first pitches. But in the tradition of Washington's tortured baseball history--the Nationals have struggled since arriving from Montreal in 2005; the old Washington Senators stank for decades before leaving D.C., twice--success comes with a cruel twist.</p> <p>The Nats will enter the playoffs without one of their star players--by choice. Starting-pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg was benched in early September, having neared his preassigned limit of 180 innings of work...</p>Taking on the Debates<p>In this week&#8217;s cold open, SNL alum Chris Parnell (who you might also know as 30 Rock&#8216;s Dr. Leo Spaceman) returns to play PBS&#8217;s Jim Lehrer, moderator of Wednesday&#8217;s presidential debate. SNL&#8216;s debate spoof hinges on what seems to have emerged as the general consensus: Lehrer was inarticulate. Obama seemed distracted. Romney won. This sketch, however, delves into the key reasons for Obama&#8217;s aloofness: he forgot to get the First Lady a gift for their 20th anniversary, and the slip was seriously stressing him out. Also, the thin Colorado air was making him a bit woozy.</p><p>While new resident POTUS Jay Pharoah once again nails Obama&#8217;s timbre and verbal tics, one could argue that Mitt Romney (played by Jason Sudeikis) quietly overshadows &#8212; much like in the real debate. When Pharoah speaks early on &#8212; in his perfectly Obama-esque way &#8212; Sudeikis&#8217;s subtly hilarious facial expressions and eyebrow movements somehow manage to steal the show.</p><p></p><p>Saturday night was our &#8220;family dinner&#8221; at our suicide-survivors&#8217; in San Diego.TAPS provided us with fried chicken (I was one happy Texan!) and several other comfort foods.</p><p>We sat at tables with friends both new and old and everyone had the same precious look on their faces- exhausted yet grateful. I was feeling tired, emotionally stretched, excited, comforted, and thrilled to hear our key note speaker Marine Corps Sergeant Major Brian , the senior enlisted adviser to the Chairman of the of Staff. In that role, his mission is to keep the nation&#8217;s top military officer &#8212; Army General Martin Dempsey &#8212; keenly aware of how the nation&#8217;s young men and women in uniform are faring and feeling. It&#8217;s a vital job after &#8212; as of Sunday &#8212; 11 straight years of war.</p><p>I first met Sergeant Major Battaglia in June at the Department of Defense-VA suicide prevention conference. He sat in the front row during our panel of survivors&#8217; stories, and served as a grounding force for me while I my heart out.</p><p>I had no idea who he was, but was compelled to go thank him for giving me an encouraging smile when I struggled to grasp words. I soon learned that he played a very important within our military, specifically working on suicide prevention. So, you can imagine my delight when I found out he would be speaking at the TAPS Suicide Survivor Seminar.</p><p>Saturday night, Sergeant Major Battagia spoke to our gathering of survivors, and encouraged us to continue sharing our stories. He honored our loved ones and affirmed what I, too, believe: they all died heroes.</p><p>He spoke of the love and support we all now have in TAPS and of his personal appreciation and awe of such a passionate and precious organization.</p><p>Lastly, he addressed the fiercest survivors among us, the children.</p><p>As a teacher, I was so incredibly moved by what came next. Sergeant Major Battaglia invited the children to come to the stage. He told them that that they were safe among their new TAPS family, and that they had a new family and set of friends who would do anything to help them.</p><p>Then, the not-so-musically-talented military hero led the group of tiny heroes in song. They sang , and brought the audience to tears.</p><p>The lyrics to the song ring so true to the heart of TAPS:</p><p>Keep smilin&#8217;, keep shinin&#8217;<br>Knowin&#8217; you can always count on me, for sure,<br>That&#8217;s what friends are for.<br>For good times and bad times<br>I&#8217;ll be on your side forever more,<br>That&#8217;s what friends are for.</p><p>Hearing this giant of the military community sing to those children and promise his support touched me. It opened my eyes to a new kind of military, one that recognizes the problem and is working to solve it.</p><p>After I lost my husband, I felt that I had no support within the military &#8212; that his death would go unnoticed, and that others would join him.</p><p>I feared that the only people trying to change the suicide rate among our troops were those on the outside of the military. After tonight, I can testify that this is not true. We have a friend, an ally, and a warrior within the military named Sergeant Major Brian Battaglia.</p><p>TAPS&#8217; mission was so obvious Saturday night. l and have spent countless days working to build strong links to the military. It would be easy for them to have written off the military, seen it as the problem, and gone on.</p><p>But that is not how it works in TAPS. This organization constantly works cooperatively with the military to find solutions to frustrating and devastating issues, including &#8212; but not limited to &#8212; . That is both powerful and amazing.</p><p>I was encouraged and inspired by the night&#8217;s events.</p><p>I want to speak to those who may be feeling like no one cares about the suicide loss of your loved one. I would like to offer you the promise of hope. You have the TAPS community, ably reinforced by Sergeant Major Battaglia and his team, working unrelentingly on behalf of you and your loved one. That&#8217;s what I learned Saturday night.</p><p>Rebecca Morrison of Texas was one of two widows Time featured in its July cover on the surge in Army suicides. Her husband, Captain Ian Morrison, an AH-64 helicopter pilot, died in March.</p><p> <p>Bookish dilemmas, solved in handy chart form</p> <p>&#91;The following text appears within a chart. Please see hardcopy or PDF for actual chart.&#93;</p> <p>START</p> <p>DO YOU OWN A DOG?</p> <p>YES</p> <p>HAS YOUR DOG REACHED HIS GOLDEN YEARS?</p> <p>YES</p> <p>Jessica Pierce's THE LAST WALK is a heart-wrenching yet practical-minded guide to easing your pet's journey to the great dog park in the sky</p> <p>NO</p> <p>The heart of J.R. Ackerley's darkly enchanting WE THINK THE WORLD OF YOU (newly reissued by New York Review Books) is a German shepherd named Evie</p> <p>NO</p> <p>DO YOU OWN A CHILD?</p> <p>YES</p> <p>IS THIS CHILD MYSTERIOUS TO YOU?</p>...</p><p>5:05 pm ET</p><p>In a total reversal of what prevailed for the entirety of the last six months, now it is clear what message Mitt Romney wants to run on until Election Day, but/and it is not clear what the President wants to say.</p><p>Romney: Why would anyone expect the next four years to be better than the last four years if Obama wins re-election?</p><p>Obama: Big Bird? Romney&#8217;s a liar? Romney is out of touch? Romney put his dog on the roof of his car?</p><p>This dynamic could, of course, change again. But one of Chicago&#8217;s biggest advantages for months was message clarity, while Romney slipped and slid from one theme to another.</p><p>Not to overstate the case, but, post-debate, advantage Romney on this vital score.</p><p>Tinseltown&#8217;s most iconic landmark is having some work done.</p><p>The legendary, if faded, white Hollywood sign set in the hills of Los Angeles is getting its first makeover in roughly 35 years this week as crews have started an eight to 10 week effort to completely spruce up the most famous nine letters in Southern California.</p><p>(LIST: )</p><p>The sign gets repainted periodically — the last time was in 2005 — but this project is far more ambitious. Workers will strip off all the old paint and add a protective layer consisting of 110 gallons of acrylic primer and a sparkling coat of 275 gallons of white exterior paint.</p><p>A local Los Angeles commercial painting crew will handle the job, sponsored by Sherwin-Williams and the Hollywood Sign Trust — not quite as exciting as when mules hauled the original 43-foot-tall metal letters up Mount Lee as an advertisement for a real estate development called Hollywoodland in 1923.</p><p>In its initial heyday, 4,000 20-watt bulbs kept the “holly,” “wood” and “land” portions of the sign blinking in true look-at-me-now fashion. In 1949 the “land” portion came down, leaving the &#8220;Hollywood&#8221; that we know today. The sign sank into disrepair for the next three decades, , losing almost an entire “O” and much of the “D.” Termites gnawed away at the rest.</p><p>In 1978, Hugh Hefner stepped in and convinced celebrities to sponsor the refurbishment of the sign, at $27,500 per letter, and after three months and 194 tons of concrete, enamel and steel later, the current sign was finished.</p><p>In the current sprucing up, crews will pressure-wash the corrugated metal, sanding and stripping it of all the weather-beaten paint before a glimmering coat of paint makes the old sign look new again. How fitting. This is Hollywood, after all.</p><p>PHOTOS: </p><p> <p>For all of history, humor has been wielded by unattractive, skill-less men in their desperate effort to reproduce. Do you think there were any handsome court jesters who were also really good jousters and lute soloists? To answer that question, try to remember the guys from high school who could juggle.</p> <p>But now everyone has to be funny. The new vocabulary of texts, tweets, Facebook updates, Instagram pictures and YouTube videos--the entire reductive discourse of the information era--seems to require that all information be conveyed in jokes. That's because jokes are the most memorable packet of information we have that doesn't...</p><p> <p>On the eve of America's bicentennial in 1976, a leading authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rose to speak at the Mormons' biannual General Conference in Salt Lake City. "Can we maintain our basic freedoms, peace and prosperity for another 200 years?" he asked, rhetorically, before continuing, "The answer to this question is yes, if we shall individually repent and conform to the laws of the God of this land, who is Jesus Christ."</p> <p>The sermon that followed was titled "America's Destiny." Its preacher was Marion G. Romney, a member of the Mormon elite and cousin of...</p><p> <p>What appeared to be an almost certain Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate a year ago is now in serious doubt as Democrats in red and purple states, along with suddenly safer incumbents in Ohio and Florida, look to hold their thin majority in the upper chamber. Republicans must net four new seats to gain control if Obama wins or three if Romney prevails.</p> <p>VIRGINIA</p> <p>Former governor TIM KAINE (D.) vs. former governor and Senator George Allen (R.)</p> <p>Two popular men with encyclopedic familiarity with their state face off in the new Old Dominion. The battle to replace retiring Democrat Jim Webb has been as closely fought as it has been expensive, but Kaine's fortunes in state polls have risen of late, along with Obama's.</p> <p>MONTANA</p> <p>Senator JOHN TESTER (D.) vs. Congressman Denny Rehberg (R.)</p> <p>The Democrat was targeted early on as an endangered species--a member of Barack Obama's party in a super-red state. But as the race has gotten nastier, with negative TV ads and barbed rhetoric, Tester has proved to be a survivor who has created enough distance from the Beltway to hold on.</p> <p>MISSOURI</p> <p>Senator CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D.) vs. Congressman Todd Akin (R.)</p> <p>Once given up for dead by many Democrats, McCaskill got 2012's biggest political gift when Akin made inexplicable remarks about rape that sent most national Republicans fleeing. Akin declined to step down and has kept the race closer than expected, but McCaskill remains the solid favorite.</p> <p>WISCONSIN</p> <p>Congresswoman TAMMY BALDWIN (D.) vs. former governor Tommy Thompson (R.)</p> <p>Baldwin's bid to keep the seat now held by retiring Democrat Herb Kohl is infused with history: she would be the nation's first openly gay Senator. Thompson's years away from the campaign trail (and time as a D.C. influence peddler) have equalized a race once regarded as a GOP cinch.</p> <p>NORTH DAKOTA</p> <p>Former state attorney general HEIDI HEITKAMP (D.) vs. Congressman Rick Berg (R.)</p> <p>Berg should be walking away with the race to replace Democratic Senator Kent Conrad, who defied the state's red tilt with a frank and confiding down-home style. But the well-liked Heitkamp has campaigned hard and well and been buttressed by winning TV spots and some Berg missteps.</p> <p>CONNECTICUT</p> <p>Congressman CHRIS MURPHY (D.) vs. businesswoman Linda McMahon (R.)</p> <p>In the rare race that is moving in the GOP's direction this year, pro-wrestling executive McMahon has done well in her second bid to take a Nutmeg State Senate seat. The fight to replace the retiring Joe Lieberman may come down to McMahon's deep pockets vs. the state's deep blue leanings.</p> <p>INDIANA</p> <p>Treasurer RICHARD MOURDOCK (R.) vs. Congressman Joe Donnelly (D.)</p> <p>In a nightmare for Republicans, a once safe seat held by retiring GOP wise man Richard Lugar is very much in play. The disciplined Donnelly has pulled even or ahead in polls, and Republicans are pouring in cash to try to save Tea Party darling Mourdock.</p> <p>MASSACHUSETTS</p> <p>Senator SCOTT BROWN (R.) vs. Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren (D.)</p></p><p>9:55 pm ET</p><p>Meet the Press — . .</p><p>Face the Nation — . .</p><p>This Week — . .</p><p>Fox News Sunday — . .</p><p>State of the Union — . .</p><p> <p>There has never been a shortage of&#8232;bereaved mothers in the sprawling, violent Caracas barrio known as Catia. But these days the sidewalks seem haunted by legions of women like Luz Marina Mor&oacute;n. In recent years, Mor&oacute;n has seen her brother-in-law, niece and 23-year-old son Roger murdered on Catia's streets &#151; the latter shot in the face by a gangbanger who wanted Roger's New Balance tennis shoes. "Have you seen our homicide statistics?" Mor&oacute;n, 53, a nurse, asks me as we sit down for a guayoyo, a Venezuelan-style cup of coffee. "We might as well be in...</p><p>(SANTA CLARITA, Calif.) — Authorities say a commuter train carrying more than 200 passengers struck a semi that was stalled on the tracks in northern Los Angeles County, leaving three people with minor injuries.</p><p>The Los Angeles County Sheriff&#8217;s department says the crash involving a Metrolink train and the truck hauling automobiles occurred about 9:30 p.m. Saturday in Newhall near Santa Clarita.</p><p>Sheriff&#8217;s spokesman Lt. Bill Weiss says the semi driver was able to get out of the truck before the crash.</p><p>The department says three of the train&#8217;s 220 passengers had minor injuries and were treated at a hospital. No one else was hurt.</p><p>Weiss wasn&#8217;t sure how fast the train was going, but says the truck was heavily damaged and spilled diesel fuel. The train did not derail but remained at the scene.</p><p>The rail line provided buses for the passengers to continue their journeys.</p><p>MORE: </p><p>(AKCAKALE, Turkey) — An Associated Press video journalist says Turkish artillery fired toward Syria minutes after a Syrian shell landed on Turkish territory.</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>The Syrian shell landed some 200 meters (200 yards) inside Turkey, near the border town of Akcakale. A short time later, at least six mortars could be heard fired from Turkey. It was the fifth day in a row that Turkey returned fire.</p><p>Abdulhakim Ayhan, the mayor of Akcakale, confirmed that Turkish artillery immediately returned fire.</p><p>The Turks have been returning fire since Wednesday when Syrian shelling killed five civilians in a Turkish border town.</p><p>(SEOUL, ) — The United States has agreed to allow South Korea to possess longer-range missiles that could strike all of , officials said Sunday, a development expected to draw an angry response from the North.</p><p>Under a 2001 accord with , South Korea has been barred from developing and deploying ballistic missiles with a range of more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) and a payload of more than 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) because of concerns about a regional arms race.</p><p>The restriction has made South Korea&#8217;s missile capability inferior to that of rival North Korea, and some key military installations in the North have been out of South Korea&#8217;s missile range.</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>South Korea announced Sunday that the U.S. accord has been altered to allow the South to have ballistic missiles with a range of up to 800 kilometers (500 miles) to better cope with North Korea&#8217;s nuclear and missile threats.</p><p>Under the new agreement, South Korea will continue to limit the payload to 500 kilograms for ballistic missiles with an 800-kilometer range, but it will be able to use heavier payloads for missiles with shorter ranges, senior presidential official Chun Yung-woo told a news conference. The heavier a payload is, the more destructive power it can have.</p><p>&#8220;The most important objective for our government in revising the missile guideline is to contain North Korea&#8217;s armed provocation,&#8221; Chun said.</p><p>The Defense Ministry said in a statement that it will greatly increase its missile capability under the new accord, adding that South Korea will be able to &#8220;strike all of North Korea, even from southern areas.&#8221;</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>U.S. Defense Department press secretary George Little said the agreement resulted from a South Korean-requested discussion on ways to respond to North Korean missile activities.</p><p>&#8220;These revisions are a prudent, proportional, and specific response to the (North Korean) ballistic missile threat,&#8221; he said.</p><p>The deal also will allow South Korea to operate drone aircraft carrying payloads of up to 2,500 kilograms (5,510 pounds) with a range of more than 300 kilometers (186 miles). It places no restriction on payloads for drones with a flying distance of less than 300 kilometers, officials said.</p><p>South Korea can also possess cruise missiles with an unlimited range as long as their payload is less than 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds). Media reports say the South has deployed cruise missiles with a range of more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) but defense officials have refused to confirm that.</p><p>Cruise missiles fly at a lower altitude and slower speed than ballistic missiles, making them easier to intercept, although they are considered more accurate.</p><p>North Korean state media didn&#8217;t immediately respond to the announcement, but analysts expected they would issue a harsh statement.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>&#8220;North Korea will say South Korea&#8217;s missile development is a preparation for war. It will likely warn that South Korea cannot avoid a nuclear disaster if it moves to attack North Korean missile bases,&#8221; said analyst Baek Seung-joo of the state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul.</p><p>North Korea has missiles that can hit South Korea, Japan and the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, according to Seoul&#8217;s Defense Ministry. In April, the country conducted a long-range rocket test that Washington, Seoul and others called a cover for a test of long-range missile technology. North Korea says the rocket, which broke apart shortly after liftoff, was meant to launch a satellite.</p><p>North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, but experts don&#8217;t believe it has yet mastered the technology needed to mount a nuclear weapon on a missile.</p><p>The Korean Peninsula remains officially at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea as deterrence against possible aggression from North Korea.</p><p>By HYUNG-JIN KIM</p><p>(UNITED NATIONS) — The U.N. Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against al-Qaeda removed a Saudi businessman from its blacklist Friday.</p><p>The committee chairman, Germany&#8217;s U.N. Ambassador Peter Wittig, said that Yasin al-Qadi had been de-listed, following a recommendation by the blacklist&#8217;s ombudsman to remove him.</p><p>Al-Qadi filed a lawsuit in 2009 in Washington, D.C. to be removed from a U.S. list of people accused of financing al-Qaeda.</p><p>Al-Qadi&#8217;s charitable Muwafaq foundation was identified by the U.S. Treasury department as an al-Qaida front and placed on a terror list in October 2001. Al-Qadi, 57, has denied the accusations and has said that the foundation was closed even before the hijackings.</p><p>The U.S., European Union, Switzerland and Turkey all took action against al-Qadi. Over the past several years, a team of lawyers has worked successfully to overturn the decisions against al-Qadi in Turkey and Europe.</p><p>In 2009, the Security Council established an independent ombudsman to deal with requests to get off the U.N. blacklist.</p><p>Last year, the council strengthened the role of the ombudsman, presently Canadian lawyer Kimberly Prost. If the ombudsman recommends delisting, the person or entity will be taken off the sanctions list in 60 days unless the sanctions committee agrees by consensus to maintain sanctions.</p><p>PHOTOS: </p><p>Paolo Gabriele, the former butler to who was convicted Saturday of leaking the pontiff&#8217;s personal papers, has been sentenced to year and half in prison&#8211;but he&#8217;s unlikely to serve any time. Minutes after prosecutors declared Gabriele guilty of aggravated theft, Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, told journalists assembled for the trial that a pardon by the Pope was a &#8220;likely hypothesis.&#8221; He added, &#8220;I can say this without fear of being contradicted.&#8221;</p><p>It was a trial in which the pontiff was at the same time the victim, the person in whose name the crime had been committed, the authority under which the proceedings were being held—the judgment was delivered &#8220;in the name of His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, gloriously reigning&#8221; — and the ultimate arbiter of whether the sentence will be carried out.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>With Gabriele having confessed, the outcome of the case was never really in doubt; expectations of a conviction followed by a papal pardon were widespread even before the trial began. Dressed in a light suit, the former butler showed little emotion during the last day of the week-long proceedings. &#8220;Nobody knows what he&#8217;s feeling inside, but externally he was impassive,&#8221; said one of the eight journalists who were admitted to courtroom on behalf of the assembled press corps, on the condition that they remain in their personal accounts. At the end of the trial, the president of the court asked the former butler whether he felt innocent or guilty. Gabriele responded, &#8220;The thing that I feel strongly inside me is the conviction of having acted out of exclusive—I&#8217;d say visceral—love for the church of Christ and its visible head [the Pope]. &#8230; I don&#8217;t feel like a thief.&#8221;</p><p>In his closing arguments, the Vatican prosecutor Nicola Picardi urged that Gabriele be sentenced to three years in prison and banned for life from employment in any office where he could commit a similar crime. In her response, Gabriele&#8217;s attorney Cristiana Arru sought to cast doubt on the rigor of Vatican investigators. The butler, she argued, had only photocopied documents—he hadn&#8217;t removed them from the control of their rightful owners—and thus could not be guilty of theft. But the real mitigating factor, she argued, was that Gabriele had been acting in good faith. &#8220;You could see that his motivation was to do something positive for the church, not damage it&#8221; she said. &#8220;He thought that the holy father wasn&#8217;t sufficiently informed.&#8221; She closed by requesting that the charges be reduced to misappropriation or that failing that, that Gabriele be given the minimum sentence. &#8220;What he did is condemnable,&#8221; she added.&#8221; But he was compelled by the evil that he saw.&#8221;</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>Speaking to journalists after the trial, Lombardi twice stressed that despite statements by Gabriele before his arrest that &#8220;at least 20 people&#8221; were involved in the scandal, Picardi had found no evidence that the butler had acted in concord with others. &#8220;The important thing is that there was no proof of accomplices,&#8221; said Lombardi. Only one other person is currently facing charges in relation to the case, a computer specialist employed by the Vatican named Claudio Sciarpelletti, who stands accused of harboring documents and giving them to the butler. Lombardi said he expected his trial would take place in November.</p><p>The judges deliberated for two hours before returning with the sentence: three years in prison, reduced to one and half. Among the mitigating factors cited was Gabriele&#8217;s clean record, his years of previous service and his motivation for acting, which &#8220;though erroneous,&#8221; contributed to the reduction in his sentence. Gabriele was also ordered to pay the court costs.</p><p>Gabriele is to remain in house arrest during the three days in which his lawyer can appeal the ruling. In closed circuit footage piped into the room in the Vatican where journalists were watching the sentencing, Gabriele could be seen being led from the courtroom. As he passed in front of the camera, there was a moment when he seemed to turn towards the public and smile.</p><p>MORE: </p><p>Tensions rose in the bitterly divided country while an undetermined number of voting stations remained open after the official 6 p.m. closing time, with not a single result announced nearly three hours later.</p><p>Chavez, a socialist who has ruled for nearly 14 years, called on Venezuelans to await results patiently, speaking briefly Sunday night by phone during a news conference held by his campaign chief.</p><p>Electoral officials gave no indication of when they might begin releasing first returns. Exit polling is forbidden in Venezuela.</p><p>The electoral council&#8217;s president, Tibisay Lucena, said any stations where voters had not cast ballots would remain open. Meanwhile, bands of red-shirted pro-Chavez motorcyclists, honking horns, roved central Caracas ensuring that such stations stayed open.</p><p>While not accusing the government of an intentional delay, challenger Henrique Capriles complained via Twitter that most voting stations lacked lines and that the government should get on with the vote-counting.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>Capriles spokesman Armando Briquet demanded that all motorcycle traffic be banned. In the past, gangs of red-shirted motorcyclists chanting pro-Chavez slogans have intimidated people.</p><p>Chavez&#8217;s campaign manager, Jorge Rodriguez, told reporters there were no such plans. &#8220;This country has freedom of circulation,&#8221; he said at a news conference.</p><p>Capriles has united the opposition in a contest between two sides that distrust each other so deeply that some expressed concerns whether a close election result would be respected.</p><p>If Chavez wins, he gets a free hand to push for an even bigger state role in the economy, further limit dissent and continue to befriend rivals of the United States.</p><p>With a Capriles win, an abrupt foreign policy shift can be expected, including halting preferential deals with allies such as Cuba, along with a loosening of state economic controls and an increase in private investment. A tense transition would likely follow until the January inauguration because Chavez&#8217;s political machine thoroughly controls the wheels of government.</p><p>&#8220;We will recognize the results, whatever they are,&#8221; Chavez told reporters after casting his vote in Caracas. He said he was pleased by the &#8220;massive turnout.&#8221;</p><p>The stakes in the country with the world&#8217;s largest known oil reserves couldn&#8217;t be higher.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>Just as polls closed, one of several dozen young red-shirted Chavistas on motorcycles said they were ready to begin celebrating.</p><p>&#8220;Let them accept defeat,&#8221; one of them, Kleiver Gutierrez, said of the opposition.</p><p>One pro-Chavez voter, private bodyguard Carlos Julio Silva, said that whatever his faults, Chavez deserves to win for spreading the nation&#8217;s oil wealth to the poor with free medical care, public housing and other government largess..</p><p>&#8220;There is corruption, there&#8217;s plenty of bureaucracy, but the people have never had a leader who cared about this country,&#8221; Silva said after voting for Chavez at a school in the Caracas slum of Petare. &#8220;That&#8217;s why the people are going to re-elect Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias.&#8221;</p><p>At many polling places, voters started lining up hours before polls opened at dawn, some snaking blocks in the baking Caribbean sun. Some shaded themselves with umbrellas. Vendors grilled meat and some people drank beer.</p><p>Maria Leonis was selling CDs of Chavez&#8217;s campaign theme music on a sidewalk next to a polling center. &#8220;Today I&#8217;ve sold about 100 CDs, just Chavez&#8217;s song,&#8221; Leonis said, adding that she supported Chavez because &#8220;I want to keep seeing change.&#8221;</p><p>(PHOTOS: )</p><p>Chavez&#8217;s critics said the president has inflamed divisions by labeling his opponents &#8220;fascists,&#8221; &#8221;Yankees&#8221; and &#8220;neo-Nazis,&#8221; while Chavez&#8217;s loyalists alleged Capriles would halt generous government programs that assist the poor.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m really tired of all this polarization,&#8221; said Lissette Garcia, a 39-year-old clothes seller and Capriles supporter who voted in the affluent Caracas district of Las Mercedes. &#8220;I want to reconnect with all my friends who are &#8216;Chavistas.&#8217;&#8221;</p><p>Violence flared sporadically during the campaign, including shootings and rock-throwing during rallies and political caravans. Two Capriles supporters were shot to death in the western state of Barinas last weekend.</p><p>Troops guarded thousands of voting centers across the country.</p><p>Defense Minister Henry Rangel Silva said as he voted that all had been calm and he hoped that would continue. He said if any groups try to &#8220;disturb order, they should know there is an armed force prepared and equipped and trained &#8230; to put down any attempt at disturbances.&#8221;</p><p>He didn&#8217;t identify the groups to which he was referring.</p><p>Chavez&#8217;s opponents mounted a noisy protest in Caracas and other major cities Saturday night, beating pots and pans from the windows of their homes to show displeasure with the president — and also their hopes for change. Drivers on downtown streets honked horns, joining the din.</p><p>The 40-year-old Capriles, a wiry former governor affectionately called &#8220;Skinny&#8221; by supporters, infused the opposition with new optimism, and opinion polls pointed to him giving Chavez his closest election.</p><p>Some recent polls gave Chavez a lead of about 10 percentage points, while others put the two candidates about even.</p><p>Chavez spoke little during the campaign about his fight with cancer, which since June 2011 has included surgery to remove tumors from his pelvic region as well as chemotherapy and radiation treatment. He has said his most recent tests showed no sign of illness.</p><p>&#8220;Chavez is going to fight until his last breath. He doesn&#8217;t know how to do anything else,&#8221; said Antonio Padron, a bank employee backing the president. Padron expressed optimism that the 58-year-old Chavez would win but predicted a close finish: &#8220;It&#8217;s a tough fight. The opposition has never been this strong.&#8221;</p><p>Chavez won the last presidential vote in 2006 with 63 percent of the vote.</p><p>A former army paratroop commander first elected in 1999, Chavez has presided over an oil boom and has spent billions of dollars on social programs ranging from cash benefits for single mothers to free education.</p><p>But he has suffered declining support due to one of the world&#8217;s highest murder rates, 18 percent inflation, a deteriorating electrical grid and a bloated government accused of endemic corruption and mismanagement.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>While his support has slipped at home, Chavez has also seen his international influence ebb since he emerged in the mid-2000s as leader of a like-minded club of newly elected Latin American leftist presidents.</p><p>Chavez accumulated near-absolute power over the past decade thanks to his control of the National Assembly, pliant institutions such as the Central Bank and friendly judges.</p><p>Capriles said Chavez has stirred up hatred, hobbled the economy by expropriating private businesses and squandered oil wealth. He criticized Chavez&#8217;s preferential deals supplying oil to allies, including one that lets Cuba pay with the services of Cuban doctors.</p><p>At one voting center in western Zulia state, in the municipality of Santa Rita, voters said some people had actually formed two separate lines — one with Chavez supporters and the other with Capriles supporters. Elsa Gutierrez, a housewife and Capriles supporter, said it was wrong to have two lines and feared it could lead to conflicts.</p><p>&#8220;This situation can&#8217;t be permitted,&#8221; Gutierrez said, adding that she voted for Capriles &#8220;because I want this division in my country to end.&#8221;</p><p>Political analyst Ricardo Sucre said he expected the election to show &#8220;two halves, more or less even.&#8221; Regardless of the result, he said, Venezuelans are likely to remain deeply divided by politics for years to come.</p><p>By FRANK BAJAK, IAN JAMES<br>Associated Press writers Fabiola Sanchez, Christopher Toothaker, Jorge Rueda and Vivian Sequera contributed to this report.<p>A San Francisco-area Boy Scout says he has been denied the organization’s most prestigious award because he is gay,  </p><p>Seventeen-year-old Ryan Andresen&#8217;s troop leader informed him that despite completing the requirements to be an Eagle Scout, he could not earn the honor because of his sexual orientation, Andresen’s mother told Yahoo. Andresen said his troop leader was aware of his orientation before he began applying for the rank.</p><p>“He had been telling me all along that we’d get by the gay thing,” Andresen told Yahoo. “It was by far the biggest goal of my life. It’s totally devastating.”</p><p>Andresen joined the Boy Scouts when he was six years old, but on Monday he will turn 18—the cut-off age for receiving the Eagle Scout award.</p><p>In order to earn the distinction, scouts must reach five ranks, obtain 21 merit badges, maintain a leadership position for six months and complete a service project.  For his project, Andresen worked with students to construct an anti-bullying “Tolerance Wall” at his local middle school, which comprises 288 ceramic tiles depicting acts of kindness, Yahoo notes.</p><p>(MORE: )</p><p>Andresen’s mother launched a petition on Change.org to convince her son’s scoutmaster to change his decision before Andresen’s birthday. The petition has over 150,000 signatures as of Friday afternoon.</p><p>“It hurts me so much to watch Ryan suffer for being who he is, because to me, he’s perfect,” she wrote on the website. “Ryan has worked for nearly 12 years to become an Eagle Scout, and nothing would make him more proud than earning that well-deserved distinction.”</p><p>Deron Smith, the national spokesman for the Boy Scouts, said on Thursday that Andresen does not abide by the organization’s religious principles.</p><p>&#8220;Recently, a Scout proactively notified his unit leadership and Eagle Scout Counselor that he does not agree to Scouting&#8217;s principle of ‘Duty to God’ and does not meet Scouting&#8217;s membership standard on sexual orientation,&#8221; Smith wrote in a statement to Yahoo News. &#8220;While the BSA did not proactively ask for this information, based on his statements and after discussion with his family he is being informed that he is no longer eligible for membership in Scouting.&#8221;</p><p>In July, a committee of BSA leaders concluded unanimously that the organization  of excluding homosexuals. The policy was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2000, but many companies have cancelled donations in protest.</p><p>(WATCH: )</p><p>Andresen came out to his troop in a letter he wrote in July to address a bullying incident because he “thought he could help,” . Andresen himself had been bullied, and after he left the Boy Scouts for a few months because of the vicious teasing, his scoutmaster, Rainer Del Valle, encouraged him to return and complete his service project. Now, however, Del Valle will not provide the final signature for Andresen’s award, ABC News reports.</p><p> <p>At around 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 24, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's bespectacled visage popped up in the Twitter feeds of his 231,902 followers. "In a growing economy, there is enough space for big and small to grow," his missive read. He was touting his government's recent decision to pave the way for more foreign investment in retail, a long-awaited move that its supporters say promises to create millions of jobs, increase farmers' profits and decrease prices for consumers. Minutes later, Singh got his first reply: "@PMOIndia: can we also have clean toilets...</p><p>Over at CNET, Casey Newton and Roger Cheng have a good story on .</p><p>Every few months, it seems, we hear a new version of an old story: the maker of an expensive smartphone announces it won&#8217;t be upgraded to the latest version of Android, and consumers cry foul.</p><p>But this one is different. First, Motorola told customers they would upgrade the phones for 18 months after they came out, a statement that drove sales of the devices. Second, Google owns both Android and Motorola, making it all the more puzzling why the business units didn&#8217;t work together to make an upgrade happen.</p><p>Finally, there are signs that for some Android devotees, Motorola&#8217;s abandonment of its year-old phones is the last straw.</p><p>To me, the interesting part of this isn&#8217;t Motorola breaking its promise &#8212; although I&#8217;d be plenty steamed if I&#8217;d bought a phone based on it &#8212; but the obvious technical difficulty of updating a phone that uses one version of Android to a new version. If it were easy, we wouldn&#8217;t have the .</p><p>Google has gone from saying that to to . But for now, when you buy an Android phone, you shouldn&#8217;t assume anything at all about when, or if, you&#8217;ll get an upgrade. And most of the time, most new phones aren&#8217;t running the latest version of the software. (At the moment, that&#8217;s Jelly Bean &#8212; if Motorola had gotten its 2011 phones to run Ice Cream Sandwich, they&#8217;d still be out of date.)</p><p>I understand that getting an operating system to run on hundreds of phones from a bevy of manufacturers is far tougher than making it run only on hardware you build yourself. That&#8217;s why iPhone buyers know they&#8217;ll get updates the moment a new version of iOS is ready, while Android buyers don&#8217;t know what to expect. But as I , I don&#8217;t think that Google and phone makers have the option of ignoring the problem. The longer it festers, the more often it&#8217;ll come back to bite them, and their customers.</p><p>I mean, it can&#8217;t be good for Motorola to tick off customers so badly that they go out of their way to avoid its products in the future, can it?</p><p> <p>In the 13 months that Mohammed Abdel-Rahman has been protesting outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo, he has become so familiar to American officials that they sometimes stop at his small open-air sit-in to exchange pleasantries with him.</p> <p>Never mind that he is the son of Omar Abdel-Rahman, better known as the Blind Sheik, jailed in North Carolina for his role in a plot to bomb several targets in the U.S., or that Mohammed himself was captured in Afghanistan 10 years later and imprisoned in Egypt until the fall of 2010, or even that he is a prominent member of the...</p><p> <p>Beeshu has issues. the neglected son of a megalomaniacal dictator, trapped in a presidency he never wanted, surrounded by sycophants, loathed by his people, afflicted with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder and a debilitating lisp &#151; it's enough to make you feel sorry for the guy. And that's the point. Beeshu, the paranoid finger puppet that stars in the underground online parody series Top Goon: Diaries of a Little Dictator, is a caricature of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria. With his outsize ears, ill-timed giggles and penchant for bad jokes, Beeshu invokes laughter, anger and pity. But never fear. "For so long,...</p><p> <p>Can the People Beat the Militias?</p> <p>1 LIBYA</p> <p>The Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, which led to the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens, exposed the fragile reality of Libya a year after the fall of the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi. The fledgling democratic Libyan state is at the mercy of numerous armed militias, many of which subscribe to extremist ideologies at odds with the government. Across the country, both secular and Islamist militias have taken over buildings, confiscated private and public property and routinely clashed with rival brigades.</p> <p>Ten days after the attack, though, the citizens...</p><p> <p>To find the origins of Yale university, don't go to New Haven, Conn., the New England city where this hallowed American institution of higher learning sits. Instead, head to the old British redoubt of Fort St. George in Chennai, India. This was where, in the late 17th century, a certain Elihu Yale made his fortune as a top official of the East India Co. His riches enabled him to eventually donate a carton of books and cloth in 1718 to an obscure college across the oceans in colonial Connecticut. Those items, summarily sold for the kingly sum of &#163;562,...</p><p> <p>I am amazed by your cover story's headline, "The End of al-Qaeda?" &#91;Sept. 17&#93;. If this were the title following Osama bin Laden's death, it would have made more sense. But eliminating an odd leader in Yemen means nothing at all. Al-Qaeda is more of a cult, and we in Pakistan are suffering directly because it helps any organization that can further its expansion. <br> A. Rahim Yousefzai, ISLAMABAD<br></p><p>Upon seeing "The End of al-Qaeda?" it struck me that TIME had a similar headline on its...</p><p>$50 million worth of moviegoers can&#8217;t be wrong. The critics gave Taken 2 a ferocious pummeling — a 20% score on the Rotten Tomatoes aggregate-review site, meaning that four-fifths of them dumped on the film — but Liam Neeson rose from the beating to kick beaucoup d&#8217;ass where it counts at the box office. The PG-13-rated action film earned a slam-bang $50 million, according to early studio projections, to win the weekend at North American theaters. If that conveniently round number holds, Taken 2 will be the first movie to hit the $50-million weekend mark since The Dark Knight Rises opened in July.</p><p>And what was the first $40-million opener since the caper-capper? That came last week, with Hotel Transylvania. Hollywood has shaken the late-summer blahs and lured audiences back to theaters by offering, what else?, what has worked before: an animated comedy voiced by brand-name actors (Adam Sandler, Kevin James) and a revenge drama with a 60-year-old Irishman who, for now, is the movies&#8217; top action star. This sequel to Neeson&#8217;s 2009 hit, which earned $145 million at the domestic box office and another $82 million abroad, succeeded by attracting a broad swath of moviegoers — 52% male, 65% over the age of 25 — who gave the film an OK B-plus rating as polled by the CinemaScore survey firm.</p><p>(READ: Corliss&#8217;s )</p><p>In the first installment, an ex-CIA operative (Neeson) came to to track down the white slavers who had kidnapped his daughter (Maggie Grace). The new chapter moves the location to and makes the spy and his ex-wife (Famke Janssen) the captives, while the daughter tosses grenades on Istanbul rooftops and drives madly through the streets. It&#8217;s not much of a SPOILER ALERT to mention that Grace has a boyfriend to whom Neeson eventually warms up — virtually guaranteeing a Taken 3 with the kidnapping of the daughter and her beau. Maybe they&#8217;ll have a baby by then, which could make Taken the Fockers of action-movie franchises.</p><p>(READ: )</p><p>As hostile as most reviews for Taken 2 were, that&#8217;s how supportive the critical response (85% favorable) was for Frankenweenie, Tim Burton&#8217;s stop-motion expansion of a 29-min. live-action film he made in 1984, when he was a young animator at Disney. The brass shelved the movie — about a boy who brings his dead pit bull terrier back to life, Frankenstein-style — and fired Burton, who did plenty well on his own. The director returned to the studio a quarter-century later to make Alice in Wonderland and earn Disney a billion dollars at the worldwide box office.</p><p>(READ: Corliss&#8217;s )<br>Frankenweenie might not rack up a twentieth of that bonanza. The black-and-white 3-D feature — Burton&#8217;s third stop-motion movie, after The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride, and the third set in a cemetery — opened to a moribund $11.5 million. That&#8217;s less than half of what Hotel Transylvania, another animated comedy about the undead, grossed in its second weekend. Parents and kids chose bright colors and broad humor over artful atmospherics and subtler wit.</p><p>(READ: Corliss&#8217;s )</p><p>The Frankenweenie opening was weak even for a stop-motion movie — well below the $19.3 million for Burton&#8217;s Corpse Bride in 2005 and the $14.1 million for the recent ParaNorman, and just about even with the $11.1 million cadged this April by Aardman Studio&#8217;s The Pirates! Band of Misfits. The CinemaScore rating for Burton&#8217;s movie was B-plus — suitable for an action film like Taken 2 but abysmal for an animated feature, which is usually awarded a more generous A-minus (Transylvania, Ice Age 4, Puss in Boots), a full &#8220;A&#8221; (Brave, The Lorax, Madagascar 3) or even an A-plus (Tangled). Disney is unlikely to fire Burton again, but they may discourage him from making stop-motion cartoons set in graveyards.</p><p>(READ: Mary Pols&#8217;)</p><p>Elsewhere, the college musical — one of this week&#8217;s rare top-10 movies in which no human or pet dies or is already dead — earned a harmonious $14.7 million in its first weekend of wide release. In Indieland, , a lubricious heap o&#8217; Southern grits starring Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey and Nicole Kidman, snatched a hot $110,000 on 11 screens. , in which Leighton Meester cuddles up with a man Hugh Laurie) old enough to be her best friend&#8217;s father — in fact, he is — opened in 10 times as many theaters as The Paperboy but took in just $180,000, for a pathetic $1,636 per-screen average. Andrea Arnold&#8217;s rough-hewn version of  (her Heathcliff is black) found a chilly reception: $8,800 on a single Manhattan screen.</p><p>Here are the Sunday estimates of this weekend’s top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by :</p><p>1. Taken 2, $50 million, first weekend</p><p>2. Hotel Transylvania, $26.3 million; $76 million, second week</p><p>3. Pitch Perfect, $14.7 million; $21.6 million, second week</p><p>4. Looper, $12.2 million; $40.3 million, second week</p><p>5. Frankenweenie, $11.5 million, first weekend</p><p>6. End of Watch, $4 million; $32.9 million, third week</p><p>7. Trouble With the Curve, $3.9 million; $29.7 million, third week</p><p>8. House at the End of the Street, $3.7 million; $27.5 million, third week</p><p>9. The Master, $1.8 million; $12.3 million, fourth week</p><p>10. Finding Nemo, $1.6 million; $39 million, fourth week of rerelease</p><p>Today, I am tired of suicide.</p><p>I ache in my bones and muscles and soul for all the suffering that continues to occur.</p><p>I am tired of learning about people who reached out for help, sometimes screaming for help, and they were dismissed by the military.</p><p>I am tired of hearing widows who not only blame themselves unfairly, but are also blamed by the military (in writing) as the trigger for their husband&#8217;s suicide.</p><p>I am tired of an endless problem that seems to have no clear solution.</p><p>My heart breaks for each of us.</p><p>The moms, dads, siblings, widows and children. If we aren&#8217;t asking why any more (and many of us have learned to stop asking that question) we are asking what can we do?</p><p>Today, I am tried and frustrated that the number of suicides keeps going up and more and more families are in need of support from .</p><p>I don&#8217;t have the solution. But, I refuse to give up. We all have to refuse to give up.</p><p>Saturday one of the presenters, Franklin Cook &#8212; who is a suicide survivor himself &#8212; said: &#8220;You can survive anything if you keep showing up.&#8221;</p><p>And so, though at times today I was tempted to retreat to my room to process my fatigue and frustration, I kept showing up. And I will keep showing up until the path is clearer on what we can do to help our men and women in the military, and their families.</p><p>In the meantime, I&#8217;m going to process my grief (and too many others) the best way that I can. As TAPS says, I will Remember the love, Celebrate the life and Share the journey.</p><p>Thank you for sharing this journey with me for a while. I hope that together we can make it really count.</p><p>Leslie McCaddon of Massachusetts was one of two widows Time featured in its July cover  on the surge in Army suicides. Her husband, Dr. Michael McCaddon, an Army captain, died in March.</p><p>Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.</p><p>SOURCE Badgeville</p><p>Executives from Barnes & Noble and Digital Interscope Records join other esteemed speakers from Oracle, VMware, Microsoft and many more at gamification leader&#39;s inaugural Summit</p><p> <p>SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Badgeville, The Behavior Platform and global gamification leader, today announced the full agenda for its inaugural Summit: Engage 2012. The company, which has garnered more than 175 global customers in under two years since its launch, presents a full two-day event of educational content on how to apply game mechanics, reputation mechanics and social mechanics for business leaders across B2C and B2B audiences.<br><br>The company also announced that Marc Parrish, VP Loyalty &amp; Reputation, Barnes &amp; Noble, and Lee Hammond, VP Digital, Interscope Records, will join its packed lineup of esteemed speakers over the two-day event. Previously announced speakers include executives from Autodesk, EMC, VMware, Oracle, Opower, Microsoft, The Active Network, Bazaarvoice, and more.<br><br>"Engage 2012 will feature a diverse collection of speakers across marketing, sales, communities, HR, training, IT, and services," said Kris Duggan, CEO, Badgeville. "Barnes &amp; Noble and Interscope Records each have a unique story around using game mechanics to power modern customer loyalty, adding to our existing announced speakers covering topics such as the intersection of social and gamification, using game mechanics for mobile audiences, and finding the value within enterprise gamification programs."<br><br>Engage 2012 Agenda at a Glance<br><br>The Secret Sauce for Building Digital Relationships<br>Sarah Rotman-Epps, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research<br><br>Fireside Chat: Fan Loyalty Gets Gamified<br>Bill Hanifin, Managing Director, Hanifin Loyalty    <br>Lee Hammond, VP Digital, Interscope Records<br><br>Case Study: Autodesk Gamifies Software Trial Marketing<br>Dawn Wolfe, Sr. Manager of Integrated Marketing Programs, Autodesk<br>Scott Sawicki, Associate Director of Client Management, Resource Interactive<br><br>Panel: The Intersection of Social and Gamification<br>Jason Rupp, Sr. Director of Product Management, Ask.com<br>Matthew Price, Product Manager of Technology Partnerships, Bazaarvoice<br>Jodee Rich, CEO Peoplebrowsr<br><br>Gamifying Retail Loyalty Strategies with America&#39;s #1 Book Retailer<br>Marc Parrish, VP of Membership and Customer Retention Marketing, Barnes &amp; Noble</p><p>Gamification for Good: Changing the World, One Behavior at a Time<br>Marshall Alexander, VP of Engineering, KarmaWell<br>Justin Ramers, Director of Social Media, The Active Network<br>Wayne Lin, Product Management Director, OPower<br>Jamie Kennedy, Director of Social Media, O2 Media<br><br>Keynote: Proving the Value of Gamification in the Enterprise<br>R "Ray" Wang, CEO &amp; Principal Analyst, Constellation Research<br><br>Fireside Chat with Oracle: Gamifying a Global Business<br>Nick Giannasi, VP of Life Sciences Product Strategy, Oracle<br><br>Mobile Gamification Around the Globe<br>Stephen Duke, Co-Founder, George Mobile<br>Koji Fukada, CEO &amp; Co-Founder, Yumemi<br><br>Insights &amp; Analytics: The Big Data Side of Gamification<br>Martin Schneider, Research Manager, 451 Research<br><br>Baking Gamification into Your Core Product<br>Neil Gandhi, Senior Software Engineer, Sneakpeeq<br>Rite Ferrari, Marketing Manager, Premier Healthcare Exchange (PHX)<br>Sal Partovi, Sr. Mgr. CloudSpokes Community &amp; Social Marketing, Appirio<br>Giles House, VP of Marketing, CallidusCloud<br><br>Case Study: EMC Gamifies Global ECN Community<br>Tyler Altrup, Sr. Social Media Engagement Manager, EMC<br><br>The Importance of Reputation in Online Communities<br>Bill Platt, VP of Operations, Engine Yard<br>Alex Maier, Community Manager, VMware<br>Annie Fox, General Manager Buzznet, BuzzMedia     <br>Sean O&#39;Driscoll, CEO &amp; Co-Founder, Ant&#39;s Eye View<br><br>Keynote: The Future of Gamification<br>Tim Chang, Managing Partner, Mayfield Fund<br><br>For more information and to join Badgeville at Engage 2012, visit .</p><p>About Badgeville<br>Badgeville (), The Behavior Platform, is the leading provider of gamification and social engagement solutions for world-class businesses, enabling companies in virtually every industry to influence and measure user behavior. Companies and organizations from across the globe are using our award-winning Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution to increase customer loyalty, user engagement and employee performance. With 175 customers, Badgeville brings Game Mechanics, Reputation Mechanics, and Social Mechanics to world-class companies including Deloitte, EMC, Universal Music, Samsung, CA Technologies, Dell, Bell Media, NBC, The Active Network, and Recyclebank. Founded in 2010, Badgeville is based in Menlo Park, Calif. And has offices in New York and Europe.  Follow @Badgeville to learn more.</p><p>&#169;2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved.<br><br></p><p>Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.</p><p>SOURCE Dwell Media</p><p>NEW YORK, Sept. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Dwell Media and New York Magazine have partnered to create City Modern, a collaboration celebrating architecture and design in New York with presenting sponsor Audi. The partnership includes the creation of a joint design publication, modern home tours in Manhattan and Brooklyn (Oct 6 &amp; 7), and a week of design and architecture programming (Oct 1-7). City Modern is the official media sponsor of the AIANY&#39;s Archtober Festival, and looks to elevate the level of discussion and awareness about great New York design across platforms and disciplines. New York&#39;s talented design community will populate what promises to be an amazing week of panels, discussions and parties, culminating in a weekend of home tours in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Dwell President Michela O&#39;Connor Abrams and New York Magazine Publisher Larry Burstein will kick-off the week at the New York Design Center with a press preview of the Design Through the Ages installation and a cocktail party to follow, sponsored by Audi.</p><p>(Photo: )</p><p>(Logo: )</p><p>City Modern programs will be led by New York Magazine&#39;s Design Editor Wendy Goodman and Dwell&#39;s Editor-in-Chief Amanda Dameron. Celebrated panelists include: designers Nate Berkus and Thom Filicia, restaurateur Andrew Tarlow, Jerry Helling of Bernhardt Design, Marion Weiss of Weiss/Manfredi, architecture critic Alexandra Lange, architect Hugh Hardy, the Guggenheim&#39;s David van der Leer, artist Mary Ellen Carroll, architect Michael Arad, lighting artist Leni Schwendinger, Philippe Vergne, Director of the Dia Art Foundation, designer Dror Benshetrit and design duo Leong Leong. Ten celebrated architectural firms are featured on the New York Home Tours, and a dozen internationally acclaimed industrial designers based in Brooklyn will open the doors to their studios.</p><p>SCHEDULE OF EVENTS<br>VISIT for details and registration.</p><p>Monday, October 1<br>Opening Celebration sponsored by Audi<br>Design Through the Ages Exhibition sponsored by NY Design Center  (By Invitation)  <br>5:30 Press Preview 6 – 8pm Reception 200 Lexington Avenue <br>(invite requests to )<br>The best in modern design from the last half century - celebrated interior designers including Nate Berkus and Thom Filicia will create design vignettes from the mid-20th century through today. Nods to the old masters and inspiring design ideas for the future will be on full display at the New York Design Center 15th floor showroom for the full week. The space will open up at 6pm for the City Modern Opening Night VIP Party sponsored by Audi. <br> </p><p>Tuesday, October 2<br>Emerging Designer Open Studio Tours 2 - 5pm Various locations throughout Brooklyn<br>City Modern will open the doors to emerging designers&#39; studios in Brooklyn. Designers on the self-guided tours include: Snarkitecture, hOmE, Chen Chen &amp; Kai Williams, Um Project, DMFD, Hellman Chang, Egg Collective, Todd Bracher, Olga Guanabara, Uhuru Design, TOKEN and Fort Standard.  Check out their profiles here:<br></p><p>Emerging Designers Panel Discussion sponsored by Silestone 6 to 8pm Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) 2 Columbus Circle<br>Jerry Helling, CEO of Bernhardt Design, has made a career out of discovering new talent. This panel looks at trends and challenges facing young and emerging designers who are trying to find a foothold in the competitive design market. Wendy Goodman, New York Magazine Design Editor, will moderate a panel with Helling and emerging Bernhardt designers.<br></p><p>Wednesday, October 3<br>New Face of Affluence Presentation sponsored by Miele 10 - 12pm NYDC, 200 Lexington Avenue<br>Michela O&#39;Connor Abrams, President of Dwell Media, presents Dwell&#39;s popular New Face of Affluence study highlighting emerging trends, shifting attitudes, and changing consumer behaviors of the "new affluents." The results illustrate the reach and influence of the affluent design-centric consumer and the impact their purchasing power has on making or breaking brands across all industries. <br></p><p>Women in Design Panel Discussion sponsored by Vitra followed by Cocktail Party 6:30 - 8pm Panel Discussion 8 - 9 pm Reception Vitra, 29 Ninth Avenue<br>This panel will discuss the role of women in the design industry and how a female perspective helps to define modern design today. Design critic Alexandra Lange will moderate a panel of award-winning female architects on their experiences in a male-dominated field.<br></p><p>Brooklyn Design Panel Discussion with Andrew Tarlow and Friends at the Wythe Hotel, followed by Cocktail Party 6:30 – 7:30 Panel Discussion 7:30 - 8:30 Reception 80 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn<br>Restaurateur Andrew Tarlow, architect Morris Adjmi and designer Stefanie Brechbuehler of Workstead discuss the changing face of Brooklyn. The minds behind the Wythe, the first boutique hotel this side of the East River, examine the gentrification of the neighborhood of Williamsburg and how it has paved the way for a new breed of design-centric high-end developments in Brooklyn. Moderated by Wendy Goodman, New York Magazine Design Editor.<br></p><p>Thursday, October 4 <br>Leading Lights Panel Discussion sponsored by Legrand 4 - 6pm NYDC, 200 Lexington Avenue<br>This panel delves into the lighting experience. We&#39;ll learn what role lighting takes in the creative process for lighting architects, industrial lighting designers, and those who use light as an artistic medium. Panelists include World Trade Center Architect Michael Arad, lighting artist Leni Schwendinger and Philippe Vergne, Director of the Dia Art Foundation. <br></p><p>Sound &amp; Acoustics Panel Discussion sponsored by Audi 6:30 - 8:30pm Orchestra of St. Luke&#39;s, 450 West 37th Street <br>Moderated by David van der Leer, associate curator of architecture and urban studies at The Guggenheim. Bringing together Richard M. Olcott of Ennead Architects, Hugh Hardy of H3, sound engineer Raj Patel of Arup, and artist Mary Ellen Carroll, we will delve into the sound of city spaces. Learn what designers consider when creating acoustically-sound architecture, and how they design for performing arts venues, religious spaces, and civic locations. Bonus: These insiders will share some of New York&#39;s best-kept sonic secrets. <br></p><p>Friday, October 5<br>Designing for Retail Spaces sponsored by Flexform 6:00 - 8:00 pm Flexform Showroom, 155 East 56th Street<br>Architects will talk about designing for retail, with input from the cutting-edge fashion designers whose brand they build in the three-dimensional space. Hear from the designers of iconic New York boutiques, like Alexander Wang, Phillip Lim, and Steven Alan. Moderated by Dwell editor Kelsey Keith, brothers Christopher and Dominic Leong of Leong Leong, designer Dror Benshetrit and Shohei Shigematsu, the director of OMA New York discuss the process of creating rigorous design for a very tailored purpose.<br></p><p>Meet the Architects Cocktail Reception sponsored by Arhaus 7 - 10pm Arhaus, 410 West 13th Street <br>On the eve of the Home Tours, meet the architects behind the most innovative architecture design in New York City, including 1100 Architects, pulltab design, Alex Scott Porter Design, Julian King Architect, Resolution: 4 Architecture, MADE Architects, DDG Design, dlandstudios, Robert Kahn Architect and Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture. After presenting the design philosophy behind the homes being showcased, design enthusiasts will have the opportunity to mix with the architects over cocktails.<br></p><p>Saturday, October 6<br>Manhattan Home Tours sponsored by Grohe 10 - 4pm Various locations throughout Manhattan<br>REGISTER: </p><p>Closing Night Reception sponsored by Grohe 6 - 8pm Grohe Roof deck, 160 5th Avenue (Open to Home Tour Ticket Holders and By Invitation)</p><p>Sunday, October 7<br>Brooklyn Home Tours sponsored by Modular-R  10 - 4pm Various Brooklyn locations<br>REGISTER: </p><p>&#169;2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved.<br><br></p><p><p>BEIJING, July 4 /PRNewswire/ -- At the inaugural Global Think Tank Summit organized by the China Center for International Economic Exchanges ("CCIEE") in Beijing today, Gerson Lehrman Group, the global marketplace for expertise, collaborated with CAIJING Magazine, China's leading business and financial publication to host a unique forum that brings the world's leading economic experts and policy makers together to discuss the state of the global economy. </p><p>As part of the summit, CAIJING Magazine organized a one-day forum that promoted trade liberalization and international investment—sponsored by Gerson Lehrman Group. The forum featured a leaders luncheon with keynote speaker Jesse Wang, Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer, China Investment Corporation. Gerson Lehrman Group manages a network of more than 200,000 experts worldwide -- including more than 25,000 across Asia -- who educate clients on critical issues related to their industries and provide insights that help them make more informed business decisions. </p><p>The Global Think Tank Summit was organized to address critical global economic issues, including the state of the economic crisis, the establishment of a new international financial order, and the impact of globalization. The summit provided a high-level platform for an exchange of ideas between Chinese and international think tanks and leading global thought leaders. Participants at the Summit included Li Keqiang, the Vice Premier of the PRC State Council; Zeng Peiyan, Chairman of CCIEE and a former vice premier of the PRC State Council; and Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the People's Bank of China. International leaders, including Henry Kissinger, Former Secretary of State of the United States, and Muhammad Yunus, Founder of Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, also spoke at the summit. </p><p>"Gerson Lehrman Group's participation in this conference indicates our commitment to China, and we are excited about this opportunity to connect with China's leading experts through such an influential platform," said Alexander Saint-Amand, CEO of Gerson Lehrman Group. "CAIJING Magazine is a well respected and influential publication. We are extremely proud to support its effort to draw opinion leaders together to discuss critical economic issues in China that affect the global economy." </p><p>CAIJING Magazine worked with Gerson Lehrman Group during the CAIJING Annual Conference held at the Brookings Institute in Washington D.C. in January 2009. "We are delighted to work with Gerson Lehrman Group again at the CAIJING Sub-forum of the Global Think Tank Summit," said CAIJING Magazine. "The collaboration between CAIJING Magazine and Gerson Lehrman Group reflects our common objective to bring global thought leaders together to drive informed decisions."</p><p>Gerson Lehrman Group has operated in China since 2004, and it has offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It has built an expert network of more than 10,000 experts in China, from a variety of sectors, to serve the growing demand for China expertise from Gerson Lehrman Group's global institutional clients. Experts in the Gerson Lehrman Group network are organized into Councils based upon their individual expertise, including: Accounting and Financial Analysis; Consumer Goods and Services; Energy and Industrials; Financial and Business Services; Healthcare; Legal, Economic and Regulatory Affairs; Real Estate; and Technology, Media and Telecommunications.</p><p>About Gerson Lehrman Group</p><p>Gerson Lehrman Group provides technology and services to support a marketplace for expertise. Since 1998, its platform for consultation and collaboration has helped the world's leading financial services firms, consultancies, corporations, and nonprofits find, engage, and manage experts in a broad range of industries and disciplines. Gerson Lehrman Group's unparalleled network of the world's leading expert consultants, known as the Gerson Lehrman Group Councils, includes more than 200,000 subject-matter experts who educate and provide insight to decision makers through a wide range of consulting methods, including telephone consultations, expert surveys, and seminars. Gerson Lehrman Group has invested in one of the world's most sophisticated infrastructures for expert recruiting and compliance. For more information about Gerson Lehrman Group, please visit www.glgroup.com.</p><p>About CAIJING Magazine</p><p>Founded in 1998, the fortnightly CAIJING Magazine has firmly established itself as a news authority and leading voice for business and financial issues in China. CAIJING Magazine closely tracks the most important aspects of China's economic reforms, developments and policy changes, as well as major events in the capital markets. It also offers a broad international perspective through first-hand reporting on international political and economic issues. CAIJING Magazine is China's most widely read business and finance magazine, with a circulation of 225,000 per issue. It boasts top-level readers from government, business, and academic circles.</p><p>About China Center for International Economic Exchanges</p><p>The China Center for International Economic Exchanges ("CCIEE") is a comprehensive association established with the mission of promoting international economic research and exchanges and providing consulting service. The CCIEE boasts experienced economic researchers and close connection with economic research resources in a variety of fields. It operates under the guidance and supervision of the National Development and Reform Commission and the Chairman of CCIEE is Mr. Zeng Peiyan, former Vice-Premier of the State Council of China. </p><p>SOURCE Gerson Lehrman Group</p></p><p>Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.</p><p>SOURCE Reportlinker</p><p>NEW YORK, Aug. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue: </p> <p>http://www.reportlinker.com/p092499/Global-Bridalwear-Industry.html#utm_source=prnewswire&amp;utm_medium=pr&amp;utm_campaign=Clothing_ </p><p>This report analyzes the worldwide markets for Bridalwear in US$ Million. The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Australia, Latin America, and Rest of World. Annual estimates and forecasts are provided for the period 2009 through 2017. Also, a six-year historic analysis is provided for these markets. The report profiles 120 companies including many key and niche players such as Alfred Angelo, Inc., Creations Bridal &amp; Fabric Boutique, David&#39;s Bridal Inc., Harrods Ltd, Helen Rodrigues, Justin Alexander Limited, JLM Couture Inc, Macy&#39;s, Inc., Paloma Blanca, and Pronuptia De Paris S.A. Market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research. Company profiles are primarily based upon search engine sources in the public domain.</p><p>I. INTRODUCTION, METHODOLOGY &amp; PRODUCT DEFINITIONSStudy Reliability and Reporting Limitations I-1Disclaimers I-2Data Interpretation &amp; Reporting Level I-3Quantitative Techniques &amp; Analytics I-3Product Definitions and Scope of Study I-3II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY </p><p>1. INDUSTRY OVERVIEW II-1</p><p>Cost-Consciousness - The Riding Theme in the Wedding Circuit II-1</p><p>Trends for 2012 II-1</p><p>Industry Slows Down During Recession, Eases in 2010 II-2</p><p>Table 1: Dissection of Wedding Spends Per Wedding in US (2006 &amp;</p><p>2010): Dollar Breakdown by Categories - Photography/Video,</p><p>Attendants&#39; Gifts, Wedding Rings, Bouquets/Other Flowers,</p><p>Wedding Attire (Brides&#39; and Grooms&#39;),and Engagement Rings.</p><p>(In US$ Thousands) (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-3</p><p>Brides Prefer New, Haute Couture Wedding Gown Designs in Year</p><p>2009 II-3</p><p>Table 2: Annual Number of Marriages Per 1000 People by</p><p>Geographic Regions (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-4</p><p>Bridal Wear: A Synopsized Sketch of Industry Scenario II-4</p><p>Year 2009 II-4</p><p>Table 3: Global Spend on Wedding (2011): Percentage</p><p>Breakdown by Areas - Hall &amp; Catering, Wedding Ring, Bridal</p><p>Attire, Photos &amp; Video, Wedding Gown, DJ Entertainment and</p><p>Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-5</p><p>Noteworthy Trends II-5</p><p>"The Dawn of the Millennials" II-5</p><p>Enduring Fashion Trends in Bridal Wear Through 2010: Lessons</p><p>Learnt Along the Way II-6</p><p>Sounds of Sweetly Chiming Wedding Bells Fill the Air II-6</p><p>Designers of Bridal Wear Scurry to the Drawing Board II-7</p><p>Bridal Magazines: A Prime Advertising Medium II-7</p><p>Purchasing Trends of Young Couples II-8</p><p>Craving for More: The Gen-X Bride II-8</p><p>The Modern Informed Bride: No Longer an Easy Prey II-8</p><p>Bridal Magazines: Sharpening Views II-9</p><p>Manufacturers&#39; Trap: Catching them Young II-9</p><p>Appeasing the Information Savvy Bride: An all-time Cliché for</p><p>Soaring Sales II-9</p><p>Dynamics of the Bridal Industry II-10</p><p>Highly Competitive II-10</p><p>Capsulated Trends II-10</p><p>Bridal Shops II-11</p><p>Bridal Boutiques II-11</p><p>Promotional Strategies II-11</p><p>A Psychographic Profile of Bridal Jewellery Shoppers II-11</p><p>Innovation that Goes into Earning that "Fast Buck" II-12</p><p>Bridal Registry Industry: Break Free Lifestyles Stir up Sales II-12</p><p>Bridal Business: Selling Beyond the Bridals II-13</p><p>Snippets from Across the Globe II-13</p><p>Bridal Watches: Overcoming Saturation II-13</p><p>UK: A Highly Polarized Market II-14</p><p>English Brides Revert Back to Tradition II-14</p><p>Choice of Wedding OutfitsWide as the Ocean II-15</p><p>China: The Dragon Breathes Fire II-15</p><p>Japan: Western Winds Overwhelm Oriental Weddings II-16</p><p>An Intriguing Insight Into Japan&#39;s Transition from Arranged</p><p>Marriages to the Love Union II-16</p><p>Spain-Second Largest Exporter of Bridal Gowns II-17</p><p>Indian Brides Shift Gears to Cruise the Trendy Road II-17</p><p>India Sweats It Out With the Pakistani Designers II-18</p><p>Indian Weddings Make the Cash Registers Ring II-18</p><p>Iceland: Icy Cold Business Conditions! II-18</p><p>Scandinavia: Faring Pretty Well? II-19</p><p>2. FLAMBOYANT TRENDS IN BRIDAL WEAR II-20Top Wedding Dress Trends for 2009-2010: Ranked by Popularity II-20Sizzling With Artistic Innovation II-20Sleek &amp; Sinuous Figure Hugging Designs: Extending a Touch ofSpice II-20Scanty Gossamer Gowns: For Today&#39;s Cheeky Woman II-20Whites: No Longer the Lone Symbol of Purity II-21Bare Shouldered Gowns Heightening the Need for Jewelry&amp; Finery II-21Embroided Dresses Hit the Spotlight II-21The Sweetheart Neckline: Flirtatiously Feminine II-21Short is Trendy II-21Fabrics: Now Lighter than the Gossamer Summer&#39;s Breeze II-22Period Dresses &amp; Bridal Hats Yet to Come Full Circle II-22Slim Fits for That "Perfect Shape" II-22Ball Gowns: Feather Light for Greater Movement II-23"Fairy-Tale" Wedding Gowns for December Weddings II-23Fleeting Colors of Love II-23Diamond Studded Tiaras: A Perfect Fit for the Reigning Queenof the Evening II-23The Rebounding Fashion of Legwear II-24Comfort Overtakes Fashion II-24Lending Charm and Romance to the Bride II-24Dare-to-be-Different Brides Risk It All II-24Recycled Gowns for the Environmentally Concerned Bride II-25Celebrities Set Trends II-25Noteworthy Trends in Bridal Accessories II-25Bridal Accessories: The Crowning Glory of a Bride&#39;s Attire II-25Lace: Reining Supreme As a Popular Material for Accessories II-26Crystal, Crystal Glittering Bright II-26Bridal Jewellery II-26Bridal Jewellery: A Tantalizing Headway to Branding II-26Jewellery: Essence of the Bride II-27Return of the Classics: Old Wine in a New Bottle II-27The Urban Classy Bride Prefers Color II-27Brides Succumb to the Charms of Platinum II-28A Peek into What Makes Platinum So Irresistible II-28Bridal Footwear II-29Hey! What&#39;s On Your Feet? II-29Bridal Flowers/Bouquets II-29Botanicals: Infusing their Sweet Fragrance II-29Trends in Bridesmaid Dresses II-30Bridesmaids: Getting a Fair Share of the Spotlight II-30What&#39;s the Perfect Gift for the Bridesmaids? II-31 </p><p>3. BRIDAL WEAR: FREEZE FRAME II-32</p><p>Bridal Wear: A Sneak Preview II-32</p><p>Mother of the Bride&#39;s Gown II-32</p><p>Bridesmaid&#39;s Gown II-32</p><p>Flower Girl&#39;s Gown II-32</p><p>Mystifying Romance of Beauty and Culture II-32</p><p>Spicing Up the Wedding Season II-33</p><p>The Changing Romanticism of Bridal Attire II-33</p><p>Clothes &amp; Finery Maketh a Bride? II-34</p><p>Contemporary Brides Break Loose from the Shackles of "TRADITION" II-34</p><p>The Modern Bride Bares it All II-35</p><p>Splashing Color All Around II-35</p><p>Beauty &amp; Mettle Underplay Conservatism II-35</p><p>Bridal Salons: A Propitious Niche II-36</p><p>Discount Bridal Service: Bridal Salons go Wired II-36</p><p>Off the Rack Bridal Gowns: A Runaway Success Among Cost</p><p>Conscious Brides II-37</p><p>4. PRODUCT INTRODUCTIONS/ INNOVATIONS II-38Fall 2010 Wedding Collection by Vera Wang II-38Antonia Paris Haute Couture Launches New Bridal Wear Collection II-38Urban Outfitters to Roll Out Wedding Dresses and Accessories II-38Nalia Bridal Creations Rolls Out 2010 Bridal Collection in Spain II-38Lunar to Introduce New Bridal Collection II-38RDML Launches New Bridal Wear Collection II-39Vera Wang Launches New Bridal Collection II-39East Introduces Mughal Wedding Collection II-40Lancôme Launches Lotus Bridal Make-up Collection II-40Vivienne Westwood Launches Exclusive Wedding Gowns II-40TACORI Launches Bridal.Evening Collection of Apparel andAccessories II-40Layne Corban Introduces Butterfly, the Handcrafter BridalJewels Collection II-40Nayomi Launches Fairouz Bridal Wear Collection II-41 </p><p>5. PRODUCT INTRODUCTIONS - A HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE BUILDER II-42</p><p>Evans Introduces New Bridal Collection II-42</p><p>Alfred Sung Launches New Bridal Collection II-42</p><p>Van Cleef &amp; Arpels Launches French Kiss Bridal Collection of</p><p>Apparel and Jewellery II-42</p><p>Xterity Bridal Launches New Bridal Collection II-43</p><p>Lingerie Oasis Introduces Bridal Lingerie Collection II-43</p><p>Amanté Introduces New Bridal Lingerie Collection II-43</p><p>Damas Launches Majestic Bridal Jewellery Collection II-44</p><p>Damas Launches New Bridal Jewellery Collection II-44</p><p>Topearl.com Introduces New Pearl Jewellery Collection which</p><p>Includes Bridal Jewellery II-44</p><p>Sia Art Jewellery Introduces New Bridal Jewellery Collection II-45</p><p>JP Diamonds.co.uk Introduces Diamond-Studded Wedding Bands II-45</p><p>Cygnus Fine Jewellery Introduces New Wedding Jewelry Collection II-45</p><p>Disney Introduces New Wedding Dress II-46</p><p>Julien Macdonald to Launch Star Bridal Collection Targeted at</p><p>the High-end Market II-46</p><p>Evans Unwraps New Bridal Wear Collection II-46</p><p>Stanislaus Introduces Online Magazine II-46</p><p>EGC Traders Launches Online Saree Shopping II-47</p><p>Martha Stewart With Wedgwood Unveils New Tabletop Collection</p><p>For Nuptial-Bound Couples II-47</p><p>Max Mara Forays into Bridal Category II-47</p><p>David&#39;s Bridal Launches Online Bridal Dress Collection II-47</p><p>Maternity Bride Unveils 15 Latest Maternity Wedding Gowns II-48</p><p>White Clover Introduces 2007 Line of Bridal Crinolines II-48</p><p>Milano Formal Launches New Website for Wedding and Prom Attire II-48</p><p>Marks &amp; Spencer Unveils its Initial Wedding Collection II-48</p><p>Monique Lhuillier to Launch Gowns II-48</p><p>Priscilla of Boston Group Introduces New Bridal Range II-49</p><p>Disney to Unveil New Range of Bridal Gowns II-49</p><p>Badgley Mischka&#39;s Bridesmaids Arrive in Australia II-49</p><p>6. RECENT INDUSTRY ACTIVITY II-50The Dessy Group Enters into Partnership with Cynthia Rowley II-50Alliance Data Systems and David&#39;s Bridal Ink Multi-Year Agreement II-50Macy&#39;s to Establish Two New Stores in California II-50David&#39;s Bridal Launches a New Store in Manhattan II-51 </p><p>7. STRATEGIC CORPORATE DEVELOPMENTS - A HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE BUILDER II-52</p><p>Bloomingdale&#39;s to Launch Three New Stores II-52</p><p>ITOCHU Divests Stake in Affiliate Company II-52</p><p>Vera Wang Inaugurates its First Bridal Outlet in</p><p>Australia II-52</p><p>Federated Divests David&#39;s Bridal and Priscilla Businesses II-52</p><p>Littlewoods to Expand Online Bridal Wear Range II-53</p><p>Macy&#39;s Divests After Hours Formalwear Business II-53</p><p>JCPenney Partners with David&#39;s Bridal II-53</p><p>Tommy Consolidates Karl Lagerfeld Operations II-53</p><p>8. FOCUS ON SELECT GLOBAL PLAYERS II-54Alfred Angelo, Inc. (USA) II-54Creations Bridal &amp; Fabric Boutique (USA) II-54David&#39;s Bridal Inc. (USA) II-54Harrods Ltd (UK) II-55Helen Rodrigues (Australia) II-55Justin Alexander Limited (USA) II-55JLM Couture Inc (USA) II-56Macy&#39;s, Inc. (USA) II-56Paloma Blanca (Canada) II-57Pronuptia de Paris SA. (France) II-57 </p><p>9. GLOBAL MARKET PERSPECTIVE II-58</p><p>Table 4: World Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Analysis for</p><p>Bridal Wear by Geographic Region - US, Canada, Japan, Europe,</p><p>Australia, Latin America, and Rest of World Markets</p><p>Independently Analyzed with Annual Sales Figures in US$</p><p>Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes corresponding</p><p>Graph/Chart) II-58</p><p>Table 5: World Historic Review of Bridal Wear by GeographicRegion - US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Australia, Latin America,and Rest of World Markets Independently Analyzed with AnnualSales Figures for the Years 2003 through 2008 in US$ Million(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-59 </p><p>Table 6: World 15-Year Perspective for Bridal Wear by</p><p>Geographic Region - Percentage Breakdown of Dollar Sales for</p><p>US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Australia, Latin America, and Rest</p><p>of World Markets for the Years 2003, 2011 &amp; 2017 (includes</p><p>corresponding Graph/Chart) II-60</p><p>III. MARKET </p><p>1. THE UNITED STATES III-1</p><p>A.Market Analysis III-1</p><p>Wedding Trends in a Capsule III-1</p><p>Recession Induced Trends the US Wedding Industry III-2</p><p>Bridal Wear Braves Recession While the Larger Wedding</p><p>Industry Suffers III-2</p><p>Wedding Planners and Related Businesses Witness Slowdown III-2</p><p>Designers and Retailers with Low Cost Bridal Collections</p><p>Stand Better Survival Prospects III-2</p><p>Table 7: The US Online Wedding Market: Percentage Breakdown</p><p>by Top Purchased Wedding Related Products and Services</p><p>(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-3</p><p>Some Interesting Marriage Facts (Year 2008) III-3</p><p>A look at Wedding Statistics in 2007: Historic Review III-3</p><p>Table 8: Number of Marriages in the United States:</p><p>Breakdown by State for the Year 2007 (includes</p><p>corresponding Graph/Chart) III-5</p><p>Table 9: Average Wedding Costs in the United States: A</p><p>Comparison for the Years 1990, 1999, 2002, 2005, and 2010</p><p>(In US$ 000) (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-6</p><p>Table 10: Breakdown of Wedding Costs by Wedding RelatedActivities (In %) (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-6 </p><p>Table 11: Family Member&#39;s Contribution at the Time of</p><p>Wedding (In %) (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-7</p><p>Bridal Jewelry Industry III-7</p><p>Table 12: US Men&#39;s Jewelry Market (2011): Percentage Sales</p><p>Breakdown by Jewelry Type - Ring, Wedding Jewelry,</p><p>Necklace, Bracelet, Cufflinks, Tie tack/bar, and Others</p><p>(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-7</p><p>Table 13: US Bridal Jewelry Market (2011): PercentageBreakdown of Revenues from Wedding Related Jewelry-Engagement Rings (Diamond only and Non-diamond), WeddingsRings (Diamond and Non-diamond) and Other Bridal Jewelry(Diamond and Non-diamond)- Ranked in terms of Volume (InMillions) and Value (In US$ Billion) (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-8Bridal Watch: An Emerging Category in the Bridal Market III-8Engagement-A Golden Period for the Couple III-9Bridal Magazines Provide Guidance III-9Key US Players III-9B.Market Analytics III-10Table 14: US Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Market Analysisfor Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$ Million forYears 2009 through 2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-10 </p><p>Table 15: US Historic Review of Bridal Wear with Annual</p><p>Sales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003 through 2008</p><p>(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-11</p><p>2. CANADA III-12A.Market Analysis III-12Weddings Solemnized in Canada - A Historic Review III-12Table 16: Number of Marriages in Canada: Breakdown byState/Province for the Years 2000 - 2003 (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-12Key Player III-13B.Market Analytics III-13Table 17: Canadian Recent Past, Current &amp; Future MarketAnalysis for Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-13 </p><p>Table 18: Canadian Historic Review of Bridal Wear with</p><p>Annual Sales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003</p><p>through 2008 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-14</p><p>3. JAPAN III-15A.Market Analysis III-15Japan Succumbs to the Charms of Western-Styled Weddings III-15A Peek into Japan&#39;s Transition from Arranged Marriages tothe Love Union III-15Japanese &amp; their Changing Ideologies on Marriage in the 21stCentury III-15Rental Wedding Outfits in Japan- Not So Uncommon III-16Rise in Overseas Weddings III-16B.Market Analytics III-17Table 19: Japanese Recent Past, Current &amp; Future MarketAnalysis for Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-17 </p><p>Table 20: Japanese Historic Review of Bridal Wear with</p><p>Annual Sales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003</p><p>through 2008 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-18</p><p>4. EUROPE III-19Market Analytics III-19Table 21: European Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Analysisfor Bridal Wear by Geographic Region - France, Germany,Italy ,The UK, Spain, Scandinavia, and Rest of EuropeMarkets Independently Analyzed with Annual Sales Figures inUS$ Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-19 </p><p>Table 22: European Historic Review of Bridal Wear by</p><p>Geographic Region - France, Germany, Italy ,The UK, Spain,</p><p>Scandinavia, and Rest of Europe Markets Independently</p><p>Analyzed by Annual Sales Figures in US$ Million for the</p><p>Years 2003 through 2008 (includes corresponding</p><p>Graph/Chart) III-20</p><p>Table 23: European 15-Year Perspective for Bridal wear byGeographic Region - Percentage Breakdown of Dollar Sales forFrance, Germany, Italy ,The UK, Spain, Scandinavia, and Restof Europe Markets for Years 2003, 2011 &amp; 2017 (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-21 </p><p>4a. FRANCE III-22</p><p>A.Market Analysis III-22</p><p>Key Player III-22</p><p>B.Market Analytics III-22</p><p>Table 24: French Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Market</p><p>Analysis for Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$</p><p>Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes corresponding</p><p>Graph/Chart) III-22</p><p>Table 25: French Historic Review of Bridal Wear with AnnualSales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003 through 2008(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-23 </p><p>4b. GERMANY III-24</p><p>Market Analytics III-24</p><p>Table 26: German Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Market</p><p>Analysis for Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$</p><p>Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes corresponding</p><p>Graph/Chart) III-24</p><p>Table 27: German Historic Review of Bridal Wear with AnnualSales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003 through 2008(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-25 </p><p>4d. ITALY III-26</p><p>A.Market Analysis III-26</p><p>A Quick Primer III-26</p><p>Key Italian Wedding Statistics - A Historic Review III-26</p><p>B.Market Analytics III-27</p><p>Table 28: Italian Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Market</p><p>Analysis for Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$</p><p>Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes corresponding</p><p>Graph/Chart) III-27</p><p>Table 29: Italian Historic Review of Bridal Wear with AnnualSales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003 through 2008(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-28 </p><p>4d. THE UNITED KINGDOM III-29</p><p>A.Market Analysis III-29</p><p>Wedding Industry in the UK Buckles under the Effect of</p><p>Recession III-29</p><p>Bridal Wear Sees no Cutbacks Even in the Face of Global</p><p>Slowdown III-29</p><p>Effect of Recession more on Mid-market Bridal Wear than on</p><p>the high-end market III-29</p><p>Second-hand Gowns and Rings in Vogue III-30</p><p>UK Bridal Wear Industry Heads towards a Prolonged Consolidation III-30</p><p>Too Notoriously Fragmented for Player Comfort III-30</p><p>A Journey through the Maze of Wedding Outfit Styles III-30</p><p>What&#39;s Hip &amp; Happening in British Bridal Fashions? III-31</p><p>Key Player III-31</p><p>B.Market Analytics III-32</p><p>Table 30: UK Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Market Analysis</p><p>for Bridal wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$ Million for</p><p>Years 2009 through 2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-32</p><p>Table 31: UK Historic Review of Bridal Wear with AnnualSales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003 through 2008(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-33 </p><p>4e. SPAIN III-34</p><p>A.Market Analysis III-34</p><p>Spain - A Major Market for Bridal Wear III-34</p><p>Marriage - An Expensive Venture III-34</p><p>Export Scenario III-34</p><p>Key Player III-34</p><p>B.Market Analytics III-35</p><p>Table 32: Spanish Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Market</p><p>Analysis for Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$</p><p>Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes corresponding</p><p>Graph/Chart) III-35</p><p>Table 33: Spanish Historic Review of Bridal Wear with AnnualSales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003 through 2008(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-36 </p><p>4f. SCANDINAVIA III-37</p><p>A.Market Analysis III-37</p><p>Bridal Wear in Scandinavia Boots a Turn for the Better III-37</p><p>B.Market Analytics III-38</p><p>Table 34: Scandinavian Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Market</p><p>Analysis for Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$</p><p>Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes corresponding</p><p>Graph/Chart) III-38</p><p>Table 35: Scandinavian Historic Review of Bridal Wear withAnnual Sales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003through 2008 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-39 </p><p>4g. REST OF EUROPE III-40</p><p>A.Market Analysis III-40</p><p>Bridal Wear Market in Iceland Freezes Over III-40</p><p>B.Market Analytics III-40</p><p>Table 36: Rest of Europe Recent Past, Current &amp; Future</p><p>Market Analysis for Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in</p><p>US$ Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes</p><p>corresponding Graph/Chart) III-40</p><p>Table 37: Rest of Europe Historic Review of Bridal Wear withAnnual Sales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003through 2008 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-41 </p><p>5. AUSTRALIA III-42</p><p>Market Analytics III-42</p><p>Table 38: Australian Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Market</p><p>Analysis for Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$</p><p>Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes corresponding</p><p>Graph/Chart) III-42</p><p>Table 39: Australian Historic Review of Bridal Wear withAnnual Sales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003through 2008 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-43 </p><p>6. LATIN AMERICA III-44</p><p>Market Analytics III-44</p><p>Table 40: Latin America Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Market</p><p>Analysis for Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$</p><p>Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes corresponding</p><p>Graph/Chart) III-44</p><p>Table 41: Latin American Historic Review of Bridal Wear withAnnual Sales Figures in US$ Million for the Years 2003through 2008 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-45 </p><p>7. REST OF WORLD III-46</p><p>A.Market Analysis III-46</p><p>Focus on Select Regions III-46</p><p>China III-46</p><p>A Sneak Preview into the Chinese Bridal Market III-46</p><p>Chinese Weddings Catching Fervor III-46</p><p>Haute Couture Sizzles in Chinese Bridals III-47</p><p>Marriages- An Adventurous Tour III-47</p><p>Beijing-A Diamond Mine for Chinese Bridal Market III-47</p><p>India III-47</p><p>Indian Brides Go Trendy III-47</p><p>You Have it, Flaunt it III-48</p><p>Table 42: Average Wedding Expenditure along with Wedding</p><p>Activities (In Percentages) (includes corresponding</p><p>Graph/Chart) III-48</p><p>Innovation and Weddings Go Hand in Hand III-48</p><p>Augmented number of Weddings-Delight for Florist III-48</p><p>Pakistani Bridal Collections Gain Laurels in Indian Bridal</p><p>Wear Market III-48</p><p>Philippines III-49</p><p>Philippines, a Cheap Destination for Weddings III-49</p><p>Gowns-Vital Couture in Philippines III-49</p><p>The Middle East III-49</p><p>Recession could Cause no Dent in the UAE Wedding Industry III-49</p><p>Middle East Bridal Market Faces Boom III-49</p><p>B.Market Analytics III-50</p><p>Table 43: Rest of World Recent Past, Current &amp; Future Market</p><p>Analysis for Bridal Wear with Annual Sales Figures in US$</p><p>Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includes corresponding</p><p>Graph/Chart) III-50</p><p>Table 44: Rest of World Market Historic Review of BridalWear with Annual Sales Figures in US$ Million for the Years2003 through 2008 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-51IV. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE </p><p>Total Companies Profiled: 120 (including Divisions/Subsidiaries - 122)</p><p>------------------------------------------Region/Country Players------------------------------------------The United States 72Canada 5Europe 36France 2Germany 2The United Kingdom 13Italy 8Spain 7Rest of Europe 4Asia-Pacific (Excluding Japan) 6Africa 1Middle East 2------------------------------------------To order this report:: More  Check our  </p><p>CONTACT<br>Reportlinker<br>Email: <br>US: (805)652-2626<br>Intl: +1 805-652-2626  <br></p><p>&#169;2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved.<br><br></p><p>By Valli Herman<br><br><br><br>This spring is full of exciting new choices in tops, bottoms and accessories. <br><br>We all have our warm-weather fashion wish list . . . and the limits of a real-life shopping budget. To find a happy meeting place between those two when revising your spring wardrobe, begin by reviewing the pieces you bought last year to decide which ones will still look fresh this year, and which items need to sit out a season or two.<br><br>We did a lot of prep work for you by polling some leading fashion experts. Here are their current assessments of five of last spring&#39;s hottest fashion trends.<br><br><br>1. Trench Coats<br><br>"A trench is always a classic piece, so keep it," say Katie Maco and Lindsey Steede, a Los Angeles styling team known as the Fashion Addicts LA. <br><br>The coat&#39;s usually roomy fit makes it a natural for layering, particularly with spring&#39;s abundant nautical-stripe and &#39;70s-inspired-paisley printed tops. <br><br>If you don&#39;t already own a trench, the most fashion-forward styles -- including those from Phillip Lim, Chico&#39;s and J. Crew -- strip away extraneous details to create trench vests, sheer overcoats and knee-length toppers that look more like quasi-military dresses than rain gear.<br><br><br>2. Gladiator Sandals<br><br>The multi-strapped flats were maxed-out bundles of straps last year, but spring&#39;s minimalist streak has streamlined the gladiator into a sleek new version that is more graceful, and often, more colorful. <br><br>"Gladiators have been done a few seasons now," says Maco. "If you want to stick with them, you might consider trying the flatform." <br><br>Popular with New York designers such as Alexander Wang, Michael Kors and Derek Lam, the flatform still has a platform sole to give height, but it features a lower heel than the 5-inch ones women have been falling from these past few seasons.<br><br><br>3. Skinny Jeans<br><br>"They still have a little bit of life in them," New York fashion stylist Edda Gudmun says of super-slim denim. "But I would cuff them and wear with pointy kitten heels like Brigitte Bardot." <br><br>If you&#39;re going to buy new jeans this season, invest in retro &lsquo;70s wide leg, high-waisted silhouettes, advise Maco and Steede. The Gap, Guess, Joe&#39;s and J Brand are among the denim brands cutting wider and higher.<br><br><br>4. Open-toe Ankle Boots<br><br>"We are both cringing," say the Fashion Addicts LA. "That was just a bad trend. It doesn&#39;t flatter anyone." <br><br>If you have them, stow them or give them away. If you didn&#39;t buy these last year, consider yourself lucky and don&#39;t do it now.<br><br><br>5. Military Jackets<br><br>With so many other luscious choices in spring jackets, the heavy artillery of the khaki military jacket can seem a bit heavy. <br><br>Keep it in your rotation, but add some other day and night options, like a tuxedo jacket, oversized boyfriend jacket and Chanel-inspired cropped boxy jacket.<br><br><br>Spring&#39;s New Wardrobe Essentials:</p><p></p><p>Valli Herman has covered international fashion, beauty and travel for the Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News and other print and online publications.<br><br>Copyright (c) 2011 Studio One Networks. All rights reserved.</p><p>Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.</p><p>SOURCE Moda Operandi</p><p>Online luxury retailer to support Costume Institute&#39;s Spring 2013 Exhibition which Continues Legacy of Preeminent Research and Analysis of Fashion</p><p>NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Moda Operandi announced today its support of The Costume Institute&#39;s PUNK: Chaos to Couture exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum; on view from May 9th through August 11th, 2013.  </p><p>"The Costume Institute is the greatest celebration of fashion as art," said Aslaug Magnusdottir, Co-Founder &amp; CEO of Moda Operandi. "We are honored to support the institution because of its peerless ability to produce exhibits that inspire and galvanize. The spirit of the institute reflects the core reason we launched Moda Operandi to connect women worldwide to designers and the special pieces in their collections that evoke emotion and resonate with them like all great pieces of art." </p><p>PUNK: Chaos to Couture will examine punk&#39;s long lasting and continued impact on fashion from its origins in the 1970&#39;s to today, and will feature approximately 100 pieces from such designers as  Azzedine Alaia, Christopher Bailey (Burberry), Hussein Chalayan, Christophe Decarnin (Balmain), Ann Demeulemeester, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana (Dolce and Gabbana), Jean Paul Gaultier, Nicolas Ghesquiere (Balenciaga) , Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren (Viktor and Rolf), Marc Jacobs, Christopher Kane, Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garcons), Karl Lagerfeld (Chanel), Helmut Lang, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Franco Moschino, Thierry Mugler, Kate and Laura Mulleavy (Rodarte), Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, Jeremy Scott, Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi (Preen), Riccardo Tisci (Givenchy), Gianni Versace, Alexander Wang, Junya Watanabe, Yohji Yamamoto, Vivienne Westwood, and many more.  The exhibition will be an immersive experience for visitors with video and audio elements. </p><p>"The Costume Institute has a proud legacy of producing the world&#39;s most thought provoking and ambitious exhibits on fashion shaped by their transcendent vision and unrivaled vast collection," said Lauren Santo Domingo, Co-Founder &amp; Creative Director of Moda Operandi and Contributing Editor of Vogue.  "We are thrilled to be supporting this exhibition and look forward to the institution&#39;s analysis of punk and its long lasting impact on fashion today." </p><p>The exhibition and the benefit for The Costume Institute are made possible by Moda Operandi.  Additional support is provided by Conde Nast. Recent exhibitions of the Costume Institute include last year&#39;s Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations which was made possible by Amazon and Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty which was supported by Alexander McQueen, both with additional support from Conde Nast.</p><p>About Moda Operandi<br>Moda Operandi launched in February 2011 with an innovative retail model that enables customers the ability to pre-order from entire unedited designer collections. Moda Operandi is the first online luxury fashion retailer to allow customers to pre-order tomorrow&#39;s styles today. Working closely with the world&#39;s top designers such as Marc Jacobs, Alexander Wang, Proenza Schouler, Fendi, Missoni, and many more, Moda Operandi provides customers with access to complete collections from the finest brands - including exclusive ready-to-wear, accessories and jewelry - immediately following their runway show. With shopping perks that include recommendations from top stylists, access to a personal shopping assistant, and tools to review looks from every angle, Moda Operandi puts its customers in the front row at the runway, from the comfort and privacy of home. Moda Operandi is the outgrowth of a passion shared by founders Aslaug Magnusdottir and Lauren Santo Domingo: to help designers build successful brands by directly connecting them to women worldwide. For more information visit </p><p>&#169;2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved.<br><br></p><p><p>WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA researchers will present new findings on a wide range of astrophysics topics during the 213th American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting. The meeting runs from Sunday, Jan. 4, through Thursday, Jan. 8, at the Long Beach Convention &amp; Entertainment Center, 300 East Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, Calif.</p><p>(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)</p><p>News briefings held during the meeting will feature the latest results from NASA missions. In addition, NASA scientists and their colleagues using NASA research capabilities will present noteworthy findings during scientific sessions that are open to registered media representatives. NASA also will hold two town hall meetings open to all AAS attendees.</p><p>The AAS Press Office will be located in Room 202C of the Long Beach Convention Center. Press room phone numbers are: 562-628-8401, 8402 and 8405. Press conferences will be held in Room 204. The press room will open at 8 a.m. PST daily.</p><p>Monday, Jan. 5, beginning 9:20 a.m. PST (12:20 p.m. EST)</p><p>SESSION: NASA SCIENTISTS DETECT HYDROCARBON IN COLD DUST BETWEEN STARS</p><p>NASA Ames' Jean Chiar and Alexander Tielens and their colleagues will present the first clear detections of a feature associated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from the Spitzer Space Telescope Infrared Spectrometer in the cold space between stars. PAHs are normally observed near an exciting source, such as stars, rather than in the cold interstellar medium dust. The observations yield crucial information on PAHs and carbon in cold interstellar dust. (Session 412: Dust II, Exhibit Hall A)</p><p>Monday, Jan. 5, at 9:30 a.m. PST (12:30 p.m. EST)</p><p>PRESS BRIEFING: EXOPLANETS AND EXOPLANETARY SYSTEMS</p><p>Results from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope will be presented, including new observations of shredded asteroids around dead stars and evidence for rapidly forming planets. Participants include Michael Jura, University of California, Los Angeles; and Thayne Currie, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. (Related Session: 333)</p><p>Monday, Jan. 5, at 10:45 a.m. PST (1:45 p.m. EST)</p><p>SESSION: NASA TO LAUNCH NEW WEB DATABASE FOR ASTROCHEMISTRY</p><p>NASA Ames' Lou Allamandola and Charles Bauschlicher and their colleagues will unveil a new online database of the hundreds of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) spectra that will be made publicly available in 2009. For more than 18 years, scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center have worked to assemble the database that now contains the spectra of approximately 600 theoretically computed and 60 experimentally measured PAHs in different forms. This database will enable astronomers to fully analyze the infrared emission that comes from many astronomical objects. (Session 305: Dust I, Category 17, Room 104A)</p><p>Monday, Jan. 5, at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST)</p><p>PRESS BRIEFING: BROWN DWARFS</p><p>An upcoming NASA mission, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, is expected to find brown dwarfs, or "failed" stars, closer to Earth than our nearest stars. Researchers will discuss the mission and present current information from a multi-year survey of brown dwarfs, exoplanets, and stars within about 33 light years of the sun. Participants include Amanda Mainzer, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; and Todd Henry and Sergio Dieterich, Georgia State University, Atlanta. (Related Sessions: 459, 407)</p><p>Monday, Jan. 5, at 12:30 p.m. PST (3:30 p.m. EST) </p><p>PRESS BRIEFING: MILKY WAY </p><p>Scientists will make the first public presentation of a new mosaic image of the center of the Milky Way galaxy from the Hubble Space Telescope. Participants include Q. Daniel Wang, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Elizabeth Humphreys and Mark Reid, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.</p><p>Monday, Jan. 5, at 12:45 p.m. PST (3:45 p.m. EST)</p><p>TOWN HALL: NASA ASTROPHYSICS </p><p>Senior representatives from NASA's Science Mission Directorate and Astrophysics Division will discuss NASA's science program and outlook. Topics will include the status of the research program, highlights of operating missions, the upcoming decadal survey, progress of missions in development, and anticipated opportunities for both non-flight basic research awards (grants) and flight mission investigations. (General Session Hall B, Session: 206)</p><p>Monday, Jan. 5, at 7:15 p.m. PST (10:15 p.m. EST)</p><p>TOWN HALL: JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE</p><p>The James Webb Space Telescope team passed several major milestones in 2008 toward an expected launch in 2013. Reporters will hear from astronomers whose science is enabled by Webb, the senior engineers who will describe the most up-to-date design features, and project leaders who will discuss the status of the program. A reception precedes the Town Hall. (Regency Ballroom ABC, 4th Floor, Hyatt Regency Long Beach)</p><p>Tuesday, Jan. 6, at 9 a.m. PST (noon EST)</p><p>PRESS BRIEFING: CASSIOPEIA A - NEWS FROM CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY</p><p>A new movie of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows changes in time never seen before in a supernova remnant. An unprecedented and dramatic three-dimensional visualization of the same famous remnant -- based on data from Chandra, Spitzer, and ground-based telescopes -- will be displayed. Participants include Daniel Patnaude, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass.; Tracey Delaney, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.; and Alyssa Goodman, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (Related Sessions: 321.07, 359.01)</p><p>Tuesday, Jan. 6, at 11:30 a.m. PST (2:30 p.m. EST) </p><p>PRESS BRIEFING: BRIGHT FLASHES IN THE UNIVERSE </p><p>This briefing presents a first-ever observation from a star-forming region in a distant young galaxy made possible by NASA's Swift gamma-ray observatory and the Keck I Telescope, as well as the discovery of an unusual transient optical source by the Hubble Space Telescope. Participants include Jason X. Prochaska, University of California, Santa Cruz; Yaron Sheffer of the University of Toledo, Ohio; and Kyle H. Barbary, University of California, Santa Barbara.</p><p>Tuesday, Jan. 6, at 1 p.m. PST (4 p.m. EST) </p><p>PRESS BRIEFING: NEWS FROM FERMI AND SWIFT</p><p>This briefing highlights new results from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Swift gamma-ray burst mission on pulsars and quasars, respectively. Participants include Roger Romani, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.; and Alice Harding and Richard Mushotzky from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.</p><p>Wednesday, Jan. 7, 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST)</p><p>PRESS BRIEFING: REMARKABLE DISCOVERY</p><p>All details are under wraps about this unexpected find in images from one of the most powerful telescopes. Raghvendra Sahai, principal research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. (Related Session 485)</p><p>Wednesday, Jan. 7, at 12:30 p.m. PST (3:30 p.m. EST)</p><p>PRESS BRIEFING: EXTRAGALACTIC BACKGROUND</p><p>New findings from a NASA balloon mission. Participants include Michael Seiffert, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Alan Kogut, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.</p><p>For information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov</p><p>SOURCE NASA</p></p><p>Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.</p><p>SOURCE Nine West</p><p>Brand Taps Style Influencer Kate Ciepluch to Direct New Collection</p><p>NEW YORK, Sept. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Nine West announces the expansion of The Nine West Vintage America Collection into a fully realized fashion brand supported by its first stand-alone specialty store in New York&#39;s chic Soho neighborhood.  In addition to the store, the collection will be supported by a comprehensive digital and social media campaign and collaborations with world class talent such as Kate Ciepluch, former fashion director of Shopbop for 12 years. The collection of American-inspired modern footwear and accessories will launch in stores and online September 2012.</p><p>To view the multimedia assets, please click: </p><p>(Photo: )</p><p>ABOUT NINE WEST VINTAGE AMERICA COLLECTION STORE<br>Nine West collaborated with esteemed design partner Stefan Beckman, who has created numerous sets and stores for luxury brands worldwide. Beckman&#39;s uncanny ability to reinterpret the modern sensibility of the Nine West brand and marry it with the fresh hipness of the Nine West Vintage America Collection will result in a space that not only sells, but also showcases the new collection and vintage curated items.  </p><p>Following the renovation, the new space will reflect the modern bohemian ethos of the brand.  Inspired by the turquoise blue of the ocean in Southern California and the beautiful palette of desert terrain of the American West, the store will be outfitted in sensual metallic, feminine antiques and unique finds from inspirational road trips across the country.  While incorporating elements of New York, the Nine West Vintage America Collection store will also serve as a romantic sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the city streets.  Simultaneously luxe vintage and eclectically gypsy, the store will be a destination for every global style nomad.</p><p>THE COLLECTION<br>The Nine West Vintage America Collection store will also include collaborations with some of the most highly coveted brands; handbags by Monica Botkier, Dudine and Cynthia Dugan along with scarves and jewelry by Theodora &amp; Callum.  Each will offer a co-designed collection of high-quality, high-design products that will perfectly complement the new boho chic aesthetic.  The newly conceived collection launches in early September 2012 exclusively at the Nine West Vintage America Collection Soho store, as well as the Nine West Vintage America Collection site .  Prices will range from $125 to $600.</p><p>The Soho shop will introduce Kate&#39;s Kartel, an exclusive product offering and curation by Kate Ciepluch, former Shopbop Fashion Director and ultimate "it" girl. All styles encompass a modern and chic street aesthetic, reminiscent of the type of kind, cool girl that&#39;s truly Kate Ciepluch.</p><p>Ciepluch is a fashion veteran, starting her career at the original Bop store in Madison, Wisconsin as a freshman at the local university.  Upon graduation she moved to New York, buying for the retail location as it developed into the iconic ShopBop.com, and helping to launch the footwear, swim, jewelry, and handbag categories for the retail web destination.  Kate&#39;s keen editorial eye as Fashion Director evolved the site from primarily a denim store to a full collection, selling an array of apparel and accessories from some of the most coveted brands including Alexander Wang, Rag &amp; Bone, Elizabeth &amp; James, Haute Hippie and Thakoon.  Her unique ability to forecast trends and select what will be the most talked about item in a room has made her a style maven who is in demand for every growing brand.</p><p>"Working with Nine West has been great.  Its dedication to style and search for true inspiration has enabled me to travel the U.S. to see how American style has evolved. The journey to create a coherent, unique aesthetic we will call our own has been exciting and illuminating," explained Kate Ciepluch, Nine West Vintage America Collection Style Director-at-Large.</p><p>Stefani Greenfield, Chief Creative Officer at The Jones Group, noted, "The Nine West Vintage America Collection is an exciting new dimension of the Nine West brand and will become an integral part of the global brand strategy."</p><p>For more from Nine West:<br> for exclusive discounts &amp; giveaways<br> for the latest from Nine West<br> for updates directly from Nine West&#39;s PR team</p><p>About The Jones Group Inc.<br>The Jones Group Inc. () is a leading global designer, marketer and wholesaler of over 35 brands with product expertise in apparel, footwear, jeanswear, jewelry and handbags.  The Jones Group has a reputation for innovation, excellence in product quality and value, operational execution and talent.  The Company also markets directly to consumers through branded specialty retail and outlet stores and through its e-commerce sites.</p><p>The Company&#39;s internationally recognized brands and licensing agreements (L) include: Nine West, Jones New York, Anne Klein, Kurt Geiger, Rachel Roy (L), Robert Rodriguez, Robbi&amp; Nikki, Stuart Weitzman, Brian Atwood (L), Boutique 9, Easy Spirit, Carvela, Gloria Vanderbilt, l.e.i., Bandolino, Enzo Angiolini, Nine &amp; Co., GLO, Joan &amp; David, Miss KG, Jones Wear, Kasper, Energie, Evan-Picone, Le Suit, Mootsies Tootsies, Grane, Erika, Napier, Jessica Simpson (L), Sam &amp; Libby, Givenchy (L), Judith Jack, Albert Nipon, Pappagallo, Rafe (L) and C&amp;T Costello Tagliapietra (L). </p><p>&#169;2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved.<br><br></p><p>Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.</p><p>SOURCE Shopbop</p><p><p> <p> <p>NEW YORK, July 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Shopbop celebrates the arrival of its Pre-Fall collections with an exclusive on site editorial feature highlighting the season&#39;s key trends and how to wear them including: The Finest Reds, Metallic Finish, Noteworthy Collars, Unexpected Leather, and Bold Prints.</p><p>Red made a real splash for Pre-Fall on everything from slouchy trousers at to chic dresses and sweaters at and the classic clutch at .   </p><p>Metallic was seen all over the runways in a variety of accents and details from the silver studs at to cap toe shoes at . </p><p>Collars made a stunning comeback with the chic sequin details on dresses, to the fun colored tips at . </p><p>Leather popped up in unexpected places form accented collars, pockets and side panels at and to the half suede half leather bootie at . </p><p>Bold print is worn in slick silhouettes, perfectly versatile for daily urban wear.  shows fun comic like graphics on clothing and accessories and works a strong print on slim trousers and dresses. </p><p>Beginning July 13, Shopbop will reveal new inspirational fashion stories, with styling options to incorporate these new trends into daily wardrobes. </p><p>About Shopbop: <br> is the premier online shopping destination for what&#39;s new and what&#39;s next in fashion and style, offering women around the world the best selection from both established and emerging designers. Working with over 500 international , Shopbop.com offers women in fifty-two countries a selective and nuanced fashion forward assortment of ready to wear and accessories with fast free global shipping.</p><p>For more information please contact: Stephanie Horton, 212-625-6229,  </p><p>(Logo: )</p><p>&#169;2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved.<br><br></p><p>Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.</p><p>SOURCE Texas Alliance for Patient Access</p><p>AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a statement by Michael Speer, M.D., President, Texas Medical Association:</p><p>It&#39;s clockwork. Nine years ago this month, Texas voters approved our desperately needed . Just like every other year at this time, the trial lawyers&#39; propaganda machine is once again trying to convince Texans to ignore the improvements they&#39;re seeing all around them.</p><p>I&#39;m pleased to report on some new research that soundly contradicts the naysayers&#39; rhetoric.</p><p>In 2003, the Texas Legislature passed sweeping liability reforms to combat healthcare lawsuit abuse, reverse physicians&#39; skyrocketing professional liability insurance premiums, and help ensure sick and injured Texans can see a doctor when they need one. The centerpiece of those reforms was a $750,000 stacked cap on noneconomic damages assessed against physicians and healthcare facilities (hospital systems, nursing homes, and such) in a liability judgment. There is no cap on economic damages.</p><p>On Sept. 12, 2003, Texas voters approved , a constitutional amendment that ratified the legislature&#39;s authority to establish these important reforms.</p><p>The reforms have worked. They&#39;ve lived up to their promise. Texans today have more physicians to deliver the care they need, particularly in high-risk specialties like emergency medicine, obstetrics, neurosurgery, and pediatric intensive care.</p><p>Just ask George Rodriguez of Corpus Christi, who walks today thanks to tort reform. Newly established Corpus Christi neurosurgeon Matthew Alexander, MD, urgently operated on Mr. Rodriguez&#39; spinal abscess, relieving the pressure on his spinal cord and sparing him life in a wheelchair. Without the state&#39;s lawsuit reforms, Dr. Alexander wouldn&#39;t have relocated to Texas, and Mr. Rodriguez would not have found a doctor to perform the emergency neurosurgery in Corpus Christi.</p><p>The plaintiffs bar&#39;s assault tactics tend to rely on two faulty arguments:</p><p>1.  There was no crisis to begin with, and/or</p><p>2.  The reforms really haven&#39;t worked.</p><p>A just-released study by noted economics professor refutes both those allegations.</p><p>The trial lawyers, for example, fudge the timelines and scrounge up certain sets of statistics that support their point of view. They brush aside the well-documented evidence of how the threat of unfounded lawsuits was forcing emergency departments to reduce their trauma services, forcing obstetricians to stop delivering babies, and forcing Texas physicians to look elsewhere to practice.</p><p>Professor Magee&#39;s data show that the impact of our lawsuit epidemic stretched from 2000 to 2005 - about two years after passage of the reform law. During that period, he found, the number of doctors who left active practice more than doubled.</p><p>What does that mean for us?</p><p>Just ask the former patients of Jackelinne Villalobos, DO, who was one of the few bilingual physicians working at a New York City clinic for pregnant women. New York has no medical liability reforms. Although Dr. Villalobos had never lost a case, her liability insurance company hiked her premiums up to $168,000 a year. By 2010, she could no longer keep her practice alive and, as she says, "the legal climate forced me to pack my bags and move to Texas." That&#39;s exactly what was happening here a decade ago.</p><p>Sometimes, the trial bar&#39;s spin-masters try to wash away the significance of the huge influx of physicians Texas has enjoyed since the end of the lawsuit crisis. They casually dismiss the record year after record year of new physician licenses issued by the Texas Medical Board. Just last month, the medical board closed its books on fiscal year 2012, in which it licensed a record 3,630 .</p><p>Professor Magee found all those new licenses indeed translated directly into more physicians caring for Texans after the crisis ended in 2005.</p><p>"Essentially, the number of doctors that treat patients flattened during the crisis but then took an upward trajectory four years after the passage of reforms," he said. "The delayed physician growth response is consistent with what we see in other tort reform states."</p><p>The plaintiffs lawyers frequently allege that Texas&#39; rapid population growth is responsible for all of the increase we&#39;ve seen in physicians practicing here. They obviously can&#39;t count fast enough to keep up.</p><p>Had we merely stayed on the 2003 trend line and adjusted for population growth, Texas would have added 7,054 physicians. Instead we added 13,773. Put another way, population growth may well account for 51 percent of the state&#39;s new physicians. The other 49 percent above the trend was produced by some other factor. We believe that factor is a more hospitable legal climate, which has been a magnet for attracting physicians from other states.</p><p>Professor Magee&#39;s research looked much deeper than just the raw totals of new physicians. For example, he found:</p><p>All of those numbers, however, aren&#39;t what matter to C.O. Farmer of Austin. He&#39;s just glad that cardiologist Stan Wang, MD, came home to practice here because of the liability reforms. Here&#39;s how Mr. Farmer tells what happened right after his seriously blocked coronary arteries caused a severe heart attack ... and how we all should remember it:</p><p>"Had it not been for the fact that I could see Dr. Wang immediately," he said, "logic would show us that the event would have been catastrophic."</p><p>Every new physician drawn to practice in Texas since the reforms passed represents hundreds, if not thousands, of catastrophes averted. The reforms have worked.</p><p>Michael E. Speer, M.D., of Houston, is the president of the Texas Medical Association and full-time neonatologist and medical director of the Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Program at Texas Children&#39;s Hospital.</p><p>&#169;2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved.<br><br></p>New York -<p>NEW YORK (AP) - The fashion world will pay one more tribute to late designer Alexander McQueen when the Council of Fashion Designers of America holds its annual awards ceremony in New York City in June.</p><p>McQueen died in an apparent suicide in London last month. The CFDA announced McQueen&#39;s special board of directors honor on Wednesday as it also named the nominees for best designer of womenswear, menswear and accessories.</p><p>Donna Karan, Marc Jacobs and last year&#39;s pick for up-and-coming talent, Alexander Wang, will compete in the womenswear category, considered the big prize of the night.</p><p>The emerging talent nominees this year are Joseph Altuzarra, Prabal Gurung and Jason Wu. Michael Kors will get the lifetime achievement award.</p><p>Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.</p><p><p>NEW YORK (AFP) - Alexander Wang thrilled his guests with futuristic outfits that glow in the dark as he reaffirmed his flair for the theatrical at New York fashion week.</p><p>As if on cue, menacing dark clouds swirled over the spartan Pier 94 warehouse on the Hudson River just around the moment Wang&#39;s Saturday afternoon show began inside, but you didn&#39;t have to be outdoors to pick up a sense of drama.</p><p>Cutout stripes featured prominently in Wang&#39;s latest creations, one of which was modeled by Liberty Ross, spurned wife of Rupert Sanders, the director who notoriously canoodled this summer with "Twilight" star Kristen Stewart.</p><p>Ross sported a white hoodie with pencil skirt and strappy white high heels.</p><p>Models with hair pulled severely back and parted down the middle with an alien-like stripe stepped out in monochrome looks that included tailored shirt dresses and an generously sized biker jacket.</p><p>For the surprise finale, eight blond models posed in formation on the runway. Out went the lights, and on came the dresses, literally, glowing florescently in the darkness.</p><p>"I loved the futuristic vibe, the color palette ... and I loved the volume of the clothes," editorial hair stylist Omar Lopez told AFP, dodging raindrops from those big dark clouds on his way out of the show.</p><p>"It was strong; it was urban," added Rajni Jacques, fashion features editor of Glamour magazine.</p><p>Wang, 28, who this year is opening more than a dozen boutiques in East Asia in a bold expansion drive, is one of the biggest attractions of New York fashion week, which wraps up Thursday.</p><p>His A-list guests Saturday included Justin Theroux, fiance of actress Jennifer Aniston, and Yo-Landi Vi$$er of the South African hip-hop crew Die Antwoord, who turned up in a white netted mask and black hoodie.</p><p>In other shows Saturday, brave souls in dizzying heels trekked bravely to another gloomy warehouse by the Hudson River to catch Nepalese-American wunderkid Prabal Gurung&#39;s looks for spring-summer 2013.</p><p>He drew from a wide range of fabrics, including organza, tulle, silk and ostrich feathers, in gleaming white or vivid red, with frequent frilly details to create a particularly feminine look.</p><p>Backstage, Gurung -- who cited celebrated British sculptor Anish Kapoor as a source of inspiration this season -- said he was shifting away from body-hugging silhouettes in favor of looser, more fluid lines.</p><p>"The idea of giving freedom and ease to women seemed appealing, and that was the starting point," he said in an interview, explaining how his latest dresses were "gentler, softer" and a little bit cascading.</p><p>Earlier in the day, Felipe Oliveira Baptista revisited the heyday of Lacoste with a New York fashion week show collection Saturday that mixed sporty lines with a sense of fun.</p><p>With the crocodile-logo sportswear label marking its 80th anniversary next year, its Portuguese designer told AFP he wanted to "pay homage" to its founder, French tennis legend Rene Lacoste, with a "chic, graphic aesthetic."</p><p>The resulting street-savvy silhouettes that Baptista sent onto the runway at Lincoln Center -- with basketball stars Chris Bosh and Kris Humphries among the front-row celebrity guests -- were in turns elegant and athletic.</p>First out were polar white looks, including loose-fitting men&#39;s blazers and oversized parkas, but then came welcome splashes of bright orange and dark blue, with witty graphic prints inspired by the classic Lacoste T-shirt.</p><p> Alexander Wang’s New York Fashion Week show after-party reportedly ended in a fight.</p><p>The designer showcased his collection on the runway on Saturday, with Erin Wasson and Liberty Ross both strutting the runway.</p><p>Afterwards everyone headed to the Emigrant Bank Building in New York to celebrate – but unfortunately the party didn’t go to plan.</p><p>“A fight broke out at designer Alexander Wang’s after-party…when, sources say, Milk Studios founder Mazdack Rassi was sucker-punched by an unknown man,” New York Post reports.</p><p>“A witness told us that Busta Rhymes was on stage when Rassi ‘got clocked in the face.’ Our source said that Rassi had stepped on the slugger’s foot and the unknown man ‘freaked out’.”</p><p>Rassi was reportedly taken to hospital, where he was given stitches.</p><p>The show earlier in the day luckily went without a hitch. </p><p>The collection consisted of largely monochrome pieces in geometric leather shapes, with many featuring daring slits.</p><p>It was the beauty looks which really surprised though, with electrical tape stuck to the models’ hair partings.</p><p>“It’s severe and simple-looking,” hair stylist Guido Palau explained to style.com. “It looks more futuristic and takes [the style] to another level so it’s not too simple.” </p>© Cover Media<p>If any New York designer is setting the agenda in modern fashion it is Alexander Wang, whose latest collection was a surgically re-constructed interpretation of the modern urban uniform that managed to be beautiful and gutsy, bizarre yet plausible - all at the same time. </p><p>Sent out on a catwalk in an industrial pier on the Hudson River on Saturday, Sept. 8, this spring 2013 was as hyper rich in novel cutting and seaming as it was restrained in its choice of color. Entirely devoid of prints, the palette was just three colors - black, white and silver - albeit taking in with ecru, cream, onyx and anthracite. </p><p>"Exotic and animalistic!" trumpeted Wang in the post-show backstage, after a finale where an octet of blond models all in white stood like chic sentries before a sudden change of lighting rendered all the outfits fluorescent. </p><p>Throughout, Wang dissected active sports clothes - T-shirts, board shorts and parkas - giving them a wonderful paneled finish that had cool architectural volume, yet never looked stiff. </p><p>"We wanted the garments almost to feel like they were floating on the body, but still holding a very strong volume," Wang told FWD, explaining that he had used fishing lines to hold all the separate pieces together. </p><p>The show opened with arty combination of Bermuda shorts topped by tailored tuxedos and mini fracks in leather, all anchored by sexy centurion's boots. It climaxed with a pair of beautiful halter dresses - one in aluminum crocodile, the other in black - with huge front slashes and dissected necklines. Talk about flawlessly cut. </p><p>Through the clothes won applause and even cheers when veteran model Liberty Ross appeared in windbreaker and pencil skirt, before rising to a roaring crescendo for the spectroscopic finale. </p><p>"We wanted at the end for all the girls to look other worldly. Starting with a uniform and then go futuristic," added the designer, dressed in his own typical uniform of loose black T-shirt and pants. </p><p>Wang is not one of those designers who get their inspiration from art movements or foreign travel or research into historical periods. Instead, his ideas emerge from his imagination, and his canny observation of urban lifestyle. There is no more contemporary designer in America today.</p><p>China will become the world’s largest online retail market by 2015, according to a report by The Boston Consulting Group, with sales expected to hit US$350 billion.</p><p>The report added that by 2015, China will also become the world’s largest luxury market.</p><p>With such huge potential for growth, it’s no wonder Chinese luxury online retailers, also known as e-tailers, are jumping onto the e-commerce bandwagon. </p><p>Here is a guide to some of the leading online retailers in China and the services they provide.</p><p>Xiu.com</p><p>This e-commerce website is the only Chinese online retailer that is listed on Business Insider magazine’s 2012 ‘Digital 100’ list.</p><p>Eighty percent of Xiu.com’s sales are driven by demand for high-end imported products such as Burberry apparel, Cartier watches and Gucci handbags. The retailer sells more than 200,000 products from over 400 imported brands, including new arrivals such as Havaianas flipflops, Henri J.Sillam jewellery and Babakul womenswear from the US.</p><p>Meanwhile, the online store is continuing its efforts to strengthen its offerings. It just announced a partnership with Italian fashion brand Salvatore Ferragamo to retail the group’s luxury products from October 11.</p><p>Xiu.com charges for deliveries with rates starting from RM15 (US$2.35). The website accepts credit card payment, cash on delivery, or payment through e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Alipay, a third-party online payment service.</p><p></p><p>Shangpin </p><p>This e-tailer started in 2010 as a discount fashion website and proclaims itself China’s first members-only authorized retailer of top luxury brands. Boasting a clientele base of over 2.4 million, it currently offers over 80 brands which it says are not available elsewhere in China such as Cynthia Rowley, Diane Von Furstenberg, Stuart Weitzman, Charlie Jade and Aryn K.</p><p>Shangpin also says it has the highest average transaction price in China of RM 3,000 (US$470) for a Chinese online retailer compared with average transaction price of online purchases in China at RM 200 (US$31).</p><p>The online store publishes its own digital magazine to keep members informed about the newest trends in fashion and lifestyle.</p><p>The website provides free two-day FedEx delivery nationwide and a no-questions-asked 7-day return policy. Shangpin.com accepts payment by credit card, Lakala e-billing, Alipay and cash on delivery barring the purchase of jewelry, watches or other valuables. </p><p></p><p>Omei</p><p>Omei.com, which also touts itself as “the first luxury e-commerce website in China,” is a newly established online retailer which sells in-season fashion goods ranging from shoes and watches to handbags and dresses. It carries a wide range of brands ranging from Diesel and Calvin Klein to BCBG Max Azria, Kenzo and Prada.</p><p>It recently partnered with US department store Macy's to allow Chinese shoppers to buy the American brand’s merchandise via its website as Macys.com is only available in English. The items will be shipped to Chinese customers via Omei’s warehouses in China, rather than shipping the goods direct from the US. The link-up with Macy’s on omei.com is expected to debut in spring 2013.</p><p>Returns are allowed within 7 days of delivery and exchanges can be done within 8 to 15 days of purchase. The website accepts payment with Chinese bank cards, Alipay, cash on delivery or 99bill.com, another third-party payment platform. </p><p></p><p>The Corner</p><p>This multi-brand online store, owned by Milan-based retail giant YOOX, stocks mostly top-end luxury brands such as Dolce &#38; Gabbana, Salvatore Ferragamo, Alexander McQueen and Z Zegna, Maison Martin Margiela and Alexander Wang.</p><p>The website is also a proud supporter of homegrown design talents. Last year, it launched on its site the collections of five emerging Chinese designers — Uma Wang, Christine Lau, Manchit Au, Shangguan Zhe and Zou You.</p><p>Delivery fees vary according to desired delivery times, starting from RM 50 (US$8), using FEDEX. There is a 7-day return policy. Payment can be made via Alipay.</p><p></p><p>Jiapin</p><p>Jiapin.com, founded by VIPStore in 2009, has two sections – one is a flash sales section that sells luxury items at a discount for limited periods of time and the other webpage sells full-price items. This online retailer focuses mostly on women’s accessories, selling anything from Guess handbags and Clinique makeup to Versace perfumes, even French wines.</p><p>This website has a 7-day return policy. It supports payment using Alipay or 99bill.com. Cash upon delivery is also accepted.</p><p></p><p>Glamour Sales</p><p>Glamour Sales is a flash sales website, where online members can shop for discounted items for a limited period of time. Glamour Sales sells anything from Christofle table ware and Clarins makeup to La Perla lingerie and Kipling luggage.</p><p>The e-commerce operator says it is the only high-end website in Asia which operates directly as a partner for international brands in luxury, fashion and lifestyle, and reportedly has 1 million members in China.</p><p>Glamour Sales has a 7-day return policy. It supports payment using Chinese bank debit cards, credit cards, Alipay, 99bill.com. Cash upon delivery is also accepted.</p><p> </p>Anna Dello Russo On Victoria Beckham Proving Herself As A Fashion Designer: EXCLUSIVEGrazia&ndash; was so clever, she has such a good eye. This is the way women are dressing now in Milan in her simple but beautiful dresses. Everyone loves her in Italy."<br><br>A final mention went to Alexander Wang whose collection Anna described as "Precise and focused. And also really cool." So what will be on Anna's Spring Summer 2013 shopping list? "I cannot tell you," she says, "there are already far too many things!" We feel your pain Anna, we really do.<br><br></p><br><br><br><br><p></p><p>New Model on the block Juliana Schurig walked at Alexander Wang in New York this season, before coming over to Blighty and taking London fashion week by storm, Taking on Sass & Bide, Preen, Matthew Williamson and Christopher Kane to cut a long list short.  We caught up with her backstage at Matthew Williamson, where she revealed exactly what she keeps in her fashion week makeup bag.</p><p>Grazia Daily: What are your Fashion Week skincare must-haves? </p><p>Juliana: Well I'm really into natural skincare because my skin is very sensitive.  I have this wierd Swedish organic scrub which I used at night after the shows to refresh my skin.  I really love Aveeno too.  I have a delicious face cream from them which contains honey, cocoa bean and naturally active soy.</p><p>Grazia Daily: And what about makeup?</p><p>Juliana: I dont really wear much makeup at all. Except I really love Dior Extase Mascara - It's the best.</p><p>It's alright for some huh?</p><br><br><br><br><p>Amongst the chaos and humidity backstage at the Alexander Wang show during New York Fashion Week, we grabbed a chat with one of Grazia Beauty's favourite Brit models, Ms Jourdan Dunn, to find out what products she can't live without...</p><p></p><p>1. Bobbi Brown Foundation in 6.5 is the best because it gives the best coverage and Bobbi Brown offers the best range of foundation shades out there for dark skin. </p><p>2. Sisley Black Rose Mask. I'm obsessed with it, especially at this time, during fashion weeks. It's a skin life saviour.</p><p>3. I'm obsessed with brows, so it has to be my eyebrow brush that I use to brush up my brows.  It's actually a Rimmel brow pencil with a brush on one side so I use the pencil to fill in my brows and then I can use the brush on the end too.</p><p>We'll be bringing you more exclusive NYFW coverage so stay tuned to our Shows section andon Twitter</p><br><br><br><br><p> Beth Ditto would spend all her cash on "cheap jersey knit dresses" if she could.</p><p>The fashion conscious star of the Gossip loves shopping for thrift store bargains. Her passion for purchasing bargain items has turned into a costly pastime.</p><p>"If I added up all the money I spent on cheap jersey knit dresses I could have bought Alexander Wang's entire collection for the past year or so!" Beth exclaimed to British magazine Time Out. "I always feel like a lot of reasonable goes a longer way than just a tiny bit of fancy."</p><p>The American singer continued to talk about her love of clothes and shopping. The trend setting star, who has designed her own range of plus sized clothing, says that UK city London is her favourite destination for style inspiration.</p><p>"London is my home away from home," Beth revealed. "[When I'm in London] I shop at Primark, Beyond Retro and Liberty." </p>© Cover Media<p> Carine Roitfeld was joined by the likes of Kate Moss and Karl Lagerfeld as she celebrated her make-up collection for MAC this week.</p><p>The former Vogue editor collaborated with the cosmetic giant to produce a range of products that help recreate her signature smoky eye look.</p><p>The fashion mogul partied in style at the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild in Paris on Tuesday night.</p><p>The dress-code was kept strictly "black tie, smoky eye", and even many of the male guests – such as Emilio Pucci’s artistic director Peter Dundas – obliged.</p><p>"Poppy [Delevingne] did them," he revealed to Style.com.</p><p>"I'm in the wrong job. I should be a make-up artist,” British model Poppy joked.</p><p>MAC artists were on hand to provide guests with black star make-up ‘tattoos’, using stencils from Roitfeld’s collection.</p><p>Entertainment included ballet dancers dressed in black performing on podiums, and a three-song set from British musician Paloma Faith.</p><p>Among the famous guests were Haider Ackermann, Alexander Wang, Azzedine Alaïa, Riccardo Tisci, and Nicolas Ghesquière. </p>© Cover MediaCopyright © 2012 Yahoo! Asia Pacific Pte Ltd (Co. Reg. No. 199700735D). All Rights Reserved. Yahoo! News Network<p><p>NEW YORK (AFP) - There&#39;s nothing glamorous about ironing your own collection before a show at New York fashion week, but if that&#39;s what it takes for Jie Jessie Liu to break into the business, she&#39;ll do it.</p><p>Liu was among nine jury-selected master&#39;s degree graduates -- all women -- from San Francisco&#39;s Academy of Art University fashion school whose creations Friday got the kind of runway exposure usually reserved for top designers.</p><p>Five of the newly-minted designers hailed from Asia, underscoring the region&#39;s rise as a fashion power, and Friday&#39;s well-attended show was a prized opportunity to be spotted by international buyers, talent scouts and journalists.</p><p>"This is a way for them to be seen across the globe," said university spokeswoman Edith Mead Barker.</p><p>Backstage at Lincoln Center, ground zero for the ongoing spring-summer 2013 collections, 32-year-old Liu reflected on her long and winding journey from her seaside hometown of Penglai, in China&#39;s eastern Shandong province, to New York.</p><p>"I was just like most women when I was young. I loved to dress Barbie dolls," she told AFP during a break from steaming out the creases of the silk outfits she created with Belgrade-born textile design classmate Tanja Milutinovic.</p><p>"When I was grown up I was still obsessed by fashion ... and after I worked as an accountant for three years (in Toronto, Canada, where she got a first degree in accounting), I just realized that I would enjoy doing it every day."</p><p>The eight distinctly modern looks Liu sent out Friday, with their sharp lines and angular silhouettes, drew inspiration from London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor and Beijing&#39;s "bird&#39;s nest" Olympic stadium, she said.</p><p>Liu&#39;s ambition? Her own label, like those now firmly established by pioneering young designers of Asian origin like Alexander Wang and Jason Wu, with a firm hand on every aspect from initial design to final distribution.</p><p>"That&#39;s my long-term goal," she said. "In the short term, I&#39;m looking for suitable position (in New York next year), maybe an associate designer position, just to sharpen my design skills."</p><p>From Taiwan, Ginie C.Y. Huang, 28, let the hypercolorful floral still lifes of Japanese photographer Ninagawa Mika inform skirt-and-jacket combinations that strolled down the runway in lime, red, orange and fuchsia.</p><p>"Actually, my whole collection is really tailored, but I added feathers to make it crazier, but not by too much," the Taipei native told AFP. "I design for the woman who is really willing to take a risk, who knows what she is doing."</p><p>Also a fashion devotee since childhood, Huang faced stiff resistance from her banker father and teacher mother when she first aspired to break into the business -- resistance that eased only after she first got a business degree.</p><p>"I just held out and finally they understood," she said, and indeed the entire family was on hand for Friday&#39;s show.</p><p>Jarida Karnjanasirirat, from Bangkok, had no such problem with her next of kin. In fact, she said, she enlisted them to send over "hundreds and hundreds" of swatches of Thai silk, of which she picked a handful, some of them antique.</p><p>The result seen Friday comprised silk tunics, dresses, shorts and jackets in shades of champagne, silver, rose and white, with three-dimensional lapels and pleats inspired by relief sculptures at a church near her San Francisco home.</p><p>"I kept looking at it for three years," Jarida said. "I took that as my inspiration because I liked it so much."</p><p>A big fan of Calvin Klein creative director Francisco Costa&#39;s designs ("I want them all, even the menswear"), she too dreams of having her own label in Thailand, and teaching as well.</p><p>But for the immediate future, her sights are on New York: "The fashion industry in Thailand is not as developed as here. I want to get experience and then I can go back home and develop."</p>Other Asians participating in Friday&#39;s graduate show were Jisun Lee from Seoul, who reinterpreted men&#39;s suits from the 1920s as women&#39;s wear for today, and Yanfei Fan, from Shijianhuang, Hebei province, China, whose silk and organza looks were inspired by the windows of modern buildings.</p><p>There's nothing glamorous about ironing your own collection before a show at New York fashion week, but if that's what it takes for Jie Jessie Liu to break into the business, she'll do it.</p><p>Liu was among nine jury-selected master's degree graduates -- all women -- from San Francisco's Academy of Art University fashion school whose creations Friday got the kind of runway exposure usually reserved for top designers.</p><p>Five of the newly-minted designers hailed from Asia, underscoring the region's rise as a fashion power, and Friday's well-attended show was a prized opportunity to be spotted by international buyers, talent scouts and journalists.</p><p>"This is a way for them to be seen across the globe," said university spokeswoman Edith Mead Barker.</p><p>Backstage at Lincoln Center, ground zero for the ongoing spring-summer 2013 collections, 32-year-old Liu reflected on her long and winding journey from her seaside hometown of Penglai, in China's eastern Shandong province, to New York.</p><p>"I was just like most women when I was young. I loved to dress Barbie dolls," she told AFP during a break from steaming out the creases of the silk outfits she created with Belgrade-born textile design classmate Tanja Milutinovic.</p><p>"When I was grown up I was still obsessed by fashion ... and after I worked as an accountant for three years (in Toronto, Canada, where she got a first degree in accounting), I just realized that I would enjoy doing it every day."</p><p>The eight distinctly modern looks Liu sent out Friday, with their sharp lines and angular silhouettes, drew inspiration from London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor and Beijing's "bird's nest" Olympic stadium, she said.</p><p>Liu's ambition? Her own label, like those now firmly established by pioneering young designers of Asian origin like Alexander Wang and Jason Wu, with a firm hand on every aspect from initial design to final distribution.</p><p>"That's my long-term goal," she said. "In the short term, I'm looking for suitable position (in New York next year), maybe an associate designer position, just to sharpen my design skills."</p><p>From Taiwan, Ginie C.Y. Huang, 28, let the hypercolorful floral still lifes of Japanese photographer Ninagawa Mika inform skirt-and-jacket combinations that strolled down the runway in lime, red, orange and fuchsia.</p><p>"Actually, my whole collection is really tailored, but I added feathers to make it crazier, but not by too much," the Taipei native told AFP. "I design for the woman who is really willing to take a risk, who knows what she is doing."</p><p>Also a fashion devotee since childhood, Huang faced stiff resistance from her banker father and teacher mother when she first aspired to break into the business -- resistance that eased only after she first got a business degree.</p><p>"I just held out and finally they understood," she said, and indeed the entire family was on hand for Friday's show.</p><p>Jarida Karnjanasirirat, from Bangkok, had no such problem with her next of kin. In fact, she said, she enlisted them to send over "hundreds and hundreds" of swatches of Thai silk, of which she picked a handful, some of them antique.</p><p>The result seen Friday comprised silk tunics, dresses, shorts and jackets in shades of champagne, silver, rose and white, with three-dimensional lapels and pleats inspired by relief sculptures at a church near her San Francisco home.</p><p>"I kept looking at it for three years," Jarida said. "I took that as my inspiration because I liked it so much."</p><p>A big fan of Calvin Klein creative director Francisco Costa's designs ("I want them all, even the menswear"), she too dreams of having her own label in Thailand, and teaching as well.</p><p>But for the immediate future, her sights are on New York: "The fashion industry in Thailand is not as developed as here. I want to get experience and then I can go back home and develop."</p><p>Other Asians participating in Friday's graduate show were Jisun Lee from Seoul, who reinterpreted men's suits from the 1920s as women's wear for today, and Yanfei Fan, from Shijianhuang, Hebei province, China, whose silk and organza looks were inspired by the windows of modern buildings.</p><p> Franca Sozzani says Alexander Wang's Spring/Summer 13 collection has "established his talent" as a designer.</p><p>The iconic editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia praised the new collection Alexander showcased during the current New York Fashion Week. The respected industry figure predicted more cutting edge collections will emerge from the 28-year-old design talent in the future.</p><p>“Alexander Wang has definitely established his talent," Franca explained on her Stylelist blog, "and is one of the designers it's worth being in New York for."</p><p>Franca explained Alexander's Spring/Summer 13 collection in more detail. He crafted garments that add lightness and are at one with the body, through carefully chosen cuts of fabric joined with sheer threads. </p><p>As well as experimenting with different materials, Alexander played with cut-out shapes including ovals and obliques. Franca also notes the use of layering in his latest looks.</p><p>Colour wise Alexander stuck to monochrome with almost everything being in black, white and silver to complement and enhance the graphic cuts.</p><p>"It was a beautiful collection, as it was well thought-out, well-considered and created," Franca finished.</p><p>The editor also passed her comments on the collections unveiled by Prabal Gurung and Diane von Furstenberg. </p><p>Franca praised Prabal's continued research on lightness and femininity which produced a Spring/Summer 13 collection that was soft. However, she was critical of the lack of spontaneity she witnessed from the runway showcase. Franca claims the collection seemed to give in to the market rather than break free as an individual entity.</p><p>Diane's offerings were heralded by Franca for producing a feel-good factor. The colour combinations and rich detailing combined to make a line of clothing that enhances women's beauty and sexiness in a subtle way. Franca summarised the collection as a youthful, charming and positive one.</p><p>Tomorrow's fashion showcases include collections from Katie Holmes's label Holmes & Yang, Proenza Schouler and Michael Kors. </p>© Cover MediaFROW Families: Jennifer Lopez, Solange Knowles And Victoria Beckham Are Fashion Week MummiesGrazia&ndash;<br><br>Inside Carine Roitfeld&#39;s MAC Ball: Smokey Eyes, Kate Moss & Anna Dello Russo Doing Karaoke!Grazia&ndash;<br><br><p> </p><p><p>NEW YORK-That fashion editors tend to go bonkers for Marc Jacobs should be obvious by now. You could peel them off the floor of the armory on Lexington Avenue, where he stages his shows, so many have fallen at his genius feet.</p><p>There is a reason for all this madness: Nobody but nobody does it better than Jacobs. Even when he is bad, he is often better than most. He simply puts his chips out there in a way that others, lacking in talent or zeal, do not. And while he may not be comparable in avant-garde stamina to Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons, or in mood to the late, great Alexander McQueen, he has enormous feeling for what is contemporary.</p><p>Of course, there are designers who make contemporary-looking clothes, like Olivier Theyskens at Theory, or Wes Gordon, a young New Yorker who has grown in ability and on Monday presented sleek separates, like pants and vivid scarf-print tops and a patent-leather coat in petrol blue. Donna Karan is certainly contemporary. Her show contained many beautiful things, especially skirts in airy oyster-gray linen worn with pared-down cutaways or vests, and a slim suit in pale blue stretch linen that defined modern comfort.</p><p>But the difference with Jacobs is that he has no aspirations to make nice or luxurious clothes, though they might be that. Rather, he is interested in breathing meaning into fashion-about sex, art, celebrity, the past or just something personal to him-and doing so in a way that produces a nerve-tingling connection with his audience.</p><p>From the very first, his show Monday pointed to a cleaner look than in recent seasons. It opened with a girl in a T-shirt and black briefs. She was followed by a spree of suits with below-the-knees skirts pulled low on the hips, so the midriff and hipbone were often well exposed.</p><p>Many of these outfits came in wide stripes, black, maroon and taupe, with matching purses and dippy little shoes with low heels. Conventional office attire. The models&#39; hair was ratted at the crown and pulled into a low ponytail, while their eyebrows were penciled thick.</p><p>The show hit on three fronts at once. It had great synergy with the 1960s-all those optic stripes and Edie heads-without looking like a &#39;60s farce. It was very funny; with the skirts dropped low, the silhouette seemed oddly pulled, as if in a fun-house mirror. And it was sexy. The &#39;60s were obviously the decade when sex became more open, thanks to the pill and other freedoms, but that wouldn&#39;t account for sexiness on a 2012 runway.</p><p>You think that nothing can be truly sexy nowadays because everything has been exposed. And yet, for the first time in a while, a designer has successfully pushed the sex button in a compelling way. Remember McQueen&#39;s bumster trousers from the mid-&#39;90s? That was a frankly raw style that eventually set in motion the near-universal trend of low-riding jeans.</p><p>Jacobs has done something perverse with the straight office suit, a symbol of conservatism and get-ahead careerism. That you can easily wear these suits, or break them up, is a bonus.</p><p>But, as the painter John Currin said backstage, after he and his wife, the artist Rachel Feinstein, greeted Jacobs, &#34;You don&#39;t expect sexiness to come in such an outfit.&#34; No, you don&#39;t.</p><p>It was great to see Ralph Rucci loosen his aesthetic, strip away the embellishment (apart from cheeky feathers) and discover a sexier attitude. He freely used hot shades of pink and yellow, with cool white, and kept the shapes crisp. Simple day dresses have always been a hidden strength of Rucci&#39;s. He should do more.</p><p>Vera Wang brought her clothes back to more familiar ground Tuesday, with spare sheaths glazed in Indian embroidery and her favorite slim shorts worn with floaty tops or long fitted vests.</p><p>Phillip Lim created a mash-up of dark botanical prints and grunge plaid, with those resonating urban girl pieces like raspberry suede overalls and a faded floral jumpsuit.</p><p>The Rodarte collection was surprisingly klutzy. Kate and Laura Mulleavy have worked with hard-edge materials in the past, but that wasn&#39;t the problem. Despite a solid hand with leather pieces, like studded lace-up pants, many of their looks verged on Proenza Schouler&#39;s style. (NYT)</p><p> </p><p>NEW YORK (AP) — While Kristen Stewart promoted a new film in Toronto, her romantic rival took to the runway.</p><p>Liberty Ross, the wife of "Snow White and the Huntsman" director Rupert Sanders, walked the catwalk during the Alexander Wang show on Saturday at New York Fashion Week wearing a white wind-breaker with a pencil skirt.</p><p>Ross, 33, has mostly retired from modeling and most recently appeared in "Snow White and the Huntsman" as Stewart's mother.</p><p>Stewart and Sanders issued public apologies following tabloid reports they had a brief affair while Stewart was dating her "Twilight" co-star Robert Pattinson.</p><p>Stewart appeared in public for the first time since the scandal broke on Thursday for the premiere of "On the Road" at the Toronto International Film Festival. Hundreds of "Twilight" fans came out to show support for the 22-year-old actress.</p><p>Meanwhile, Alexander Wang's show is one of the hottest tickets at fashion week and he's made a splash before using models who aren't regular runway walkers. Last season it was Gisele Bundchen, Shalom Harlow and Karolina Kurkova.</p><p>While Kristen Stewart promoted a new film in Toronto, her one-time romantic rival took to the catwalk in New York.</p><p>Liberty Ross, the wife of Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders, walked the catwalk during the Alexander Wang show on Saturday at New York Fashion Week wearing a white wind-breaker with a pencil skirt.</p><p>Kristen and Rupert issued public apologies following tabloid reports they had a brief affair while Kristen was dating her Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson.</p><p>Liberty, 33, has mostly retired from modelling and most recently appeared in Snow White and the Huntsman as Kristen's mother.</p><p>Kristen appeared in public for the first time since the scandal broke on Thursday for the premiere of On the Road at the Toronto International Film Festival. Hundreds of Twilight fans came out to show support for the 22-year-old actress.</p><p> Liberty Ross is “wavering on the idea” of whether or not to break ties with her husband Rupert Sanders.</p><p>It was revealed in July that Rupert had an illicit romance with his Snow White and the Huntsman star Kristen Stewart. Since then Liberty has been posing on the red carpet without her wedding ring.</p><p>The supermodel is reportedly unsure about taking Rupert back.</p><p>“Liberty is still completely undecided with what to do with her marriage,” a source told Radar Online.</p><p>“At the moment she is concentrating on work, most recently returning to the catwalk for the Alexander Wang show last weekend at New York Fashion Week.</p><p>“But until she feels that she can forgive Rupert for cheating on her, the wedding ring stays off – she is wavering on the idea of taking him back.”</p><p>Liberty and Rupert share two children together.</p><p>Family is of primary importance to Liberty currently.</p><p>“She feels that he needs to put in a lot of effort in rebuilding her trust,” the source explained.</p><p>“She’s keeping him on his toes, not punishing directly for his actions, but making sure he could be a model husband and father to their kids.” </p>© Cover Media<p></p><p>Model Rose Smith in great demand of late and looking at that sultry stare of hers, it’s easy to understand why. A fave of Karl Lagerfeld and regular at Chanel and Alexander Wang, this awesome Aussie is clocking up literally hundreds of catwalk meters.  We caught up with her at New York Fashion Week to talk about the beauty staples that she just cant live without.</p><p></p><p>1. Jurlique Rosewater Balancing Mist,- I love this and use it every day. I always take it with me when I’m flying to keep my skin hydrated.<br> <br> 2. MAC Studio Fix Lash, – I’ve been using this mascara for about 2 years. It lasts all day without crumbling, and washes off so easily at the end of the day with water.<br> <br> 3. Sephora Foundation Brush - I can't go into Sephora in New York without buying something new. This is my latest purchase. I use it for moisturiser and foundation.<br> <br> 4. Clinique Superbalanced Makeup, - An all-round good foundation! I don’t use it every day, just when I’m going out or when I want my skin to look perfect!<br> <br> 5. YSL Radiant Touche Eclat, - This is perfect for under the eyes if you havedark circles. I think everyone should own this!<br> <br> 6. Boscia Oil-free Nightly Hydration, - I only use this once a day either morning or night depending how my skin feels, It’s preservative free and full of natural ingredients which is important to me.<br> <br> 7. Chanel Gentle Eye Make Up Remover, - This is perfect after shoots or shows, its take off everything really easily. It’s an essential in my bag during fashion week!</p><br><br><br><br><p>KUALA LUMPUR, 23 Sept (Bernama) -- Walaupun pasangan Malaysia Mohd Assri</p><p>Merzuki dan Syed Mohd Agil Syed Naguib, mungkin sukar mengalahkan pemain pilihan</p><p>utama Mariusz Frystenberg dan Marcin Matkowski dalam perlawanan beregu kejohanan</p><p>tenis Jelajah Dunia ATP: Terbuka Malaysia 2012, namun mereka gembira kerana</p><p>mendapat peluang untuk menentang pasangan handalan dari Poland itu.</p><p>Mohd Assri, 17, dan Syed Mohd Agil, 18, akan menentang pasangan tersebut di</p><p>Stadium Putra Bukit Jalil dekat sini, esok.</p><p>Kejohanan ini, yang bermula semalam dan berakhir pada 30 Sept, akan menjadi</p><p>medan bagi pasangan itu, yang mendapat ''wild card'' dalam pengundian semalam,</p><p>untuk mengumpul pengalaman dan mengasah kemahiran dalam sukan berkenaan.</p><p>"Saya gembira dan amat berterima kasih kepada penganjur, IMG (International</p><p>Management Group) dan LTAM (Persatuan Tenis Rumput Malaysia) kerana memberi</p><p>peluang ini kepada kami.</p><p>"Kami tak begitu tertekan kerana kami bermain menentang pilihan utama, tapi</p><p>akan berusaha bersungguh-sungguh untuk memberi tentangan sengit," kata Syed Mohd</p><p>Agil.</p><p>-- LAGI</p><p>SUKAN-TENIS 2 (AKHIR) KUALA LUMPUR</p><p>Mohd Assri juga berjanji akan melakukan yang terbaik dalam perlawanan itu.</p><p>Seorang lagi pemain Malaysia yang akan beraksi dalam acara beregu ialah Si</p><p>Yew Ming.</p><p>Si, yang akan berpasangan dengan penerima wild card dan pemenang pusingan</p><p>pertama Terbuka Amerika, Jimmy Wang dari Taiwan, akan menentang pasangan pilihan</p><p>ketiga Alexander Peya dan Bruno Soares, masing-masing dari Austria dan Brazil.</p><p>Sementara itu, pasangan pemain Poland berkenaan, yang muncul juara pada</p><p>kejohanan 2009 dan beraksi pada perlawanan akhir 2010, akan menjadi tumpuan</p><p>utama pada kejohanan kali ini, di samping pasangan pilihan kedua, Daniele</p><p>Bracciali dari Itali dan Marcelo Melo dari Brazil.</p><p>Pemain lain yang akan bersaing untuk merebut hadiah US$850,000 (RM2.59 juta)</p><p>pada kejohanan ini termasuk pasangan Austria-Slovakia Julian Knowle/Filip</p><p>Polasek, Juan Monaco dari Argentina yang berpasangan dengan Jurgen Melzer dari</p><p>Austria dan pasangan dari Amerika Brian Baker/Rajeev Ram. </p><p>-- BERNAMA</p><p>AHS HK SP NH</p><p>KUALA LUMPUR, 30 Sept (Bernama) -- Pemain utama Argentina Juan Monaco </p><p>muncul juara pada Terbuka Malaysia 2012 selepas menumpaskan Julien Benneteau</p><p>dari Perancis pada perlawanan akhir di Stadium Putra Bukit Jalil, di sini hari</p><p>ini.</p><p>Pada perlawanan yang berlangsung sengit kira-kira tiga jam dalam acara</p><p>perseorangan lelaki itu, pemain nombor 11 dunia tersebut terpaksa bekerja keras</p><p>sebelum mengenepikan cabaran Benneteau 7-5, 4-6, 6-3. </p><p>"Saya terkejut kerana beliau (Benneteau) memenangi set kedua kerana saya</p><p>menjangkakan beliau kepenatan dan terpaksa mendapatkan rawatan. Pada set ketiga</p><p>saya bermain lebih agresif dan gembira dapat memenangi perlawanan tersebut,"</p><p>kata pemain berusia 28 tahun itu.</p><p>Kejayaan itu membolehkan Monaco membawa pulang wang tunai USD153,440</p><p>(kira-kira RM469,311).</p><p>Sebelum ini, Monaco mengalahkan pemain Kanada Vasek Pospisil di peringkat</p><p>suku akhir sebelum menumpaskan pemain nombor satu Asia dari Jepun, Kei Nishikori</p><p>di separuh akhir.</p><p>-- LAGI</p><p>SUKAN-TENIS 2 (TERBUKA M''SIA) 2 (AKHIR) KUALA LUMPUR</p><p>Monaco atau lebih dikenali sebagai ''Pico'' berhasrat menjadi pemain serba</p><p>boleh dan bukan hanya hebat beraksi di gelanggang tanah liat.</p><p>"Sebab itu, saya sentiasa mengingati kejohanan ini. Ia kejohanan pertama</p><p>saya beraksi di gelanggang tertutup selain ia adalah kali pertama saya ke sini,"</p><p>kata Monaco yang berjanji akan beraksi pada kejohanan itu tahun depan.</p><p>Bagi Benneteau yang merupakan pemain ke-34 dunia, beliau berkata dia telah</p><p>memberikan yang terbaik pada perlawanan itu, namun tidak mencukupi untuk</p><p>mengalahkan Monaco.</p><p>"Saya merasa sakit di bahagian siku pagi ini semasa sesi memanaskan badan</p><p>dan keadaan itu menjejaskan permainan saya. Saya juga tidak dapat melakukan</p><p>servis yang baik," kata pemain berusia 30 tahun itu.</p><p>Sementara itu, pemain Austria Alexander Peya dan Bruno Soares dari Brazil </p><p>menjuarai acara beregu lelaki selepas menumpaskan pasangan Great Britain, Colin</p><p>Fleming dan Ross Hutchins 5-7, 7-5, 10-7 pada perlawanan akhir hari ini.</p><p>Kemenangan pasangan Peya-Soares itu membolehkan mereka meraih wang tunai</p><p>USD46,620 (kira-kira RM142,591).</p><p>-- BERNAMA</p><p>AHS ERE</p><p>As New York Fashion Week comes to a close, Isabelle Lefort, our expert in all that is luxe, officially declares the era of bling over. It's all about the low profile these days.</p><p>Tempers were flying throughout New York fashion week, the first of four. French fashion magazine editor Jennifer Eymere grabbed headlines by slapping a prominent PR person just before the Zac Posen show; the most powerful man in the world of luxury, LVMH boss Bernard Arnault, responded to a front page insult on leftist French daily Libération with a lawsuit; while Angela Arhendts, who helms the Burberry group, shared her pessimistic take on the future of the luxury market -- especially in China -- and saw her brand's stock plummet... As the Spring/Summer 2013 shows were taking to the runway, the world of fashion was in a state of high pressure.</p><p>The actual ambiance on Gotham's catwalks, however, was one that seemed aimed at soothing tempers and ignoring reality. Glamorous atmospheres were teamed with the sounds of violins and pianos. In the birthplace of chic causual wear, everything is easy to wear. The key words are femininity, elegance, narrow belts, high waistes, low necklines, fluidity, softness, smoothness, demure knee-length hemlines or sexy mini-dresses and saucy shorts... Even the most daring designers played a subdued tune, as if awaiting the storm. Marc Jacobs offered a clever take on nautical stripes while Tommy Hilfiger safely riffed on feel-good striped jackets and dresses inspired by the Hamptons. Olivier Theyskens defused his concerns about the future of our planet by mixing up synthetic fabrics and natural cotton with fluid cuts. As for Diane Von Furstenberg, her gilded youth between Marrakesh and Jaipur -- where in the 1960s the carefree socialite went from one fabulous party to another -- inspired her protégé, Yvan Mispelaere, the label's young artistic director, to turn out a colorful and light-spirited collection. The party's going to end soon so let's dance on the tables.</p><p>To create consumer demand, designers have understood that they have to do more and better for the same price. Which explains the numerous designs seen with embroidery. Jason Wu, for instance, went for a finale of fully embroidered gowns, while Alexander Wang, fashion's darling of the moment, worked with leather, reembroidering it to better enhance his models' silhouettes. Some pieces used artistic references, such as the Joan Miró collages seen on Thakoon's prints or the reference to the Bauhaus by former eccentric Thom Browne.</p><p>The recession is not all bad; some good comes out of it: it incites -- demands? -- greater innovation and higher standards. In a world where social inequality is creating tension in Asia, America and Europe, the luxury industry has to redefine its values. Porno chic and bling are officially out, low profile looks and the supremacy of creativity and craftsmanship are back at the forefront. After years of spectacular and continued growth particularly in Asia with strings of new shops, is the fashion world finally coming to the end of the années folles? Maybe, but nothing is certain except one thing: the upcoming season will be fascinating, because designers are like sponges -- they soak up what's going on around them.</p><p>Isabelle Lefort has worked as chief editor for publications including Jalouse, BIBA, La Tribune &#38; Moi, and Air France Madame. She currently works with several outlets, notably Buybuy, BFM Business and We Demain.</p><p>Twitter volume about , which ended Thursday, was up a third from Fashion Week in February and double compared to the number of tweets sent during Fashion Week in September of last year, according to New York-based social media agency Whispr Group.<p>Total tweets numbered above 670,000. It was largely an American affair: 72% of tweets originated in the U.S., followed by the U.K. with 5%.</p><p>[More from Mashable: ]</p><p>Victoria Beckham, who showed in New York for the first time this season, captured the most attention with 17,173 tweets, followed by Marc Jacobs, whose livestream was hosted by popular fashion blogger Leandra Medine. Diane von Furstenberg, who surprised audiences by trotting Google Glass down the runway, took the third spot above Alexander Wang.</p><p>Beyond Twitter, New York Fashion Week attendees were frequently uploading pictures to Instagram. For every Fashion Week-related check-in to Foursquare, 24 images were uploaded to Instagram.</p><p>[More from Mashable: ]</p><p>How was the data derived? According to a Whispr spokesperson, content was pulled in using Radian6, which has access to the full Twitter firehose. Analysts built language models to identify content related to New York Fashion Week, then parsed the data into individual themes and topics. They then used secondary language models to determine volume and sentiment.</p><p></p><p></p><p>This story originally published on Mashable .</p><p>A riot of color may have engulfed the clothes on the runway, but most New York Fashion Week designers opted for über-minimal makeup. Lash overload and lip color were largely absent. For next spring, barely-there base is de rigueur.</p><p>MAC Cosmetics' Tom Pecheux used the US cosmetics giant's face and body foundation, keeping lips nude and fingerpainting lids with the subtlest dab of pastel shadow. At the Joseph Altuzarra show, the no makeup look was inspired by "Catherine Deneuve in 1975 meeting Mr. Yves Saint Laurent." <br><br>In the same vein, skin-kind mineral powder foundations are gaining ground on the runway. MAC Mineralize satin finish is a backstage favorite, while American women in the US "go crazy for" Bareminerals' best-selling "ultra-pure, loose foundation," claims Marie Claire UK magazine. <br><br>Chiseled cheeks cropped up at the Victoria Beckham show, where Diane Kendal sought to create a natural face using two-tone blush. Makeup artist Dick Page for drew inspiration from the models in the secondhand-inspired clothes, because they looked so "cool and fun." A really basic look was achieved with a hint of powder and no trace of bronzer, says Page. "I wanted the eyes to look scrubby but sexy." Shiseido Shimmer Cream shadow in Black and Sable mixed together and with some grease on top was how he achieved the look. "The easiest thing to use would be a black pencil, super simple. No mascara. There's a lip color, but in a way so that you don't even see the color. It's just a little bit of something with a home-made feeling," revealed the makeup maestro.<br> <br>As Dick Page puts it, "nails are an accessory, like jewelry." The Big Apple is home to the world's wackiest manicurists and New York Fashion Week yet again lived up to its reputation for wildly creative nail art. Venturing way beyond the widely adopted nude look, for his S/S 13 collection Jeremy Scott sent manicurist Pattie Yankee a picture of 1980s embossed gold nails via his cell phone. The nail artist answered the designer's prayers with the "amazing luxurious urban gold" Dashing Diva, soon to be a part of the Designfx range of nail appliqués.</p><p>CND's Tropic Coral, Flamingo Feather, Rouge Red and Blackjack interspersed with pearl for a 3-tier look made it onto the Diego Binetti runway. <br><br>In the words of Karl Lagerfeld, "there is no beauty without strangeness." At the Oscar de la Renta show models' hair was teased, streaked and swept up into a bouffant. Orlando Pita styled the models' tresses with white streaks and colored extensions for a Keith Haring cum Holly Golightly updo.</p><p>This season also saw the return of bouffant hair. A 1960s-inspired bouff was the focus for the part party girl, part put-together beauty at Marc Jacobs. Makeup artist François Nars' goal was to create "an updated Edie Sedgwick" and the high hairdos emphasized the overall look. At the Marchesa show, hair stylist Renato Campora reached for Fekkai Coiff Bouffant Lifting and Texturizing Spray to create a statement ponytail. Hairpieces, intertwining braids and plaits shifted the focus to the back of the head while a center parting kept things simple around the face. Also working the pony/middle-parting combo, Guido Palau at the show declared New York "king of the ponytail."</p><p>In keeping with this minimalist theme, Jill Stuart, Thakoon and Prabal Gurung worked low-maintenance hair ranging from slick and poker straight to sleek and slightly wavy.</p><p>At Tommy Hilfiger, the inspiration had "one foot in being minimal, and the other in feeling quite natural, fresh and sexy," said hair pro Eugene Souleiman. Subtlety was key, he said, "but a very beautiful, minimal but wearable look."<br><br>CJL</p><p>Big-Apple based designers are bidding good riddance to Fall's Gothic darkness as eye-popping brights step into the spotlight for next spring.</p><p>The lights went out at the close of king of edgy urban-grunge Alexander Wang's show to reveal models dressed in glow-in-the-dark dresses, shirts and shorts. Runway hair was styled with equally luminous barrettes to make the outfits pop all the more. While highly entertaining, whether the finale's fluo fizz provided the perfect foil to Wang's sliced-up predominantly monochrome collection is debatable.<br><br>High fashion's last "glow stick" moment dates back to SS11 London Fashion Week when Christopher Kane served up acid-bright neon lace, inspired by construction worker vests. As usual it was Karl Lagerfeld who kicked off the utility chic trend when he modeled a fluorescent yellow reflector vest in 2008.<br><br>"It's yellow, it's ugly, it doesn't match anything, but it can save your life," proclaimed Chanel and Fendi's head honcho in a bid to raise Road Safety Awareness. While Alexander Wang's glow-in-the-dark creations for next Spring are anything but ugly, they are likely to grant instant immunity to fashion faux-pas.</p><p>NYFW's grand dame Diane Von Furstenberg peppered up her billowy poolside silhouettes: neon green, electric coral and day-glo pink accents wowed a star-studded crowd including Sarah Jessica Parker and Jessica Hough.</p><p>Models at the Custo Barcelona show ditched the dark shades and donned tangerine-tinted sunglasses to accentuate the Spanish fashion label's "highlighter penned" collection.</p><p>But it seemed that such shades are yet to convince former French Vogue Editor Carine Roitfeld who hid behind huge welding-visor-style face furniture at the Alexander Wang show. Or was she trying to avoid neon overload?<br><br>Sea-foam blue, aqua green and playful splashes of day-glo pink and orange were spotted at MM6 by quirky luxe brand Maison Martin Margiela. The Paris-based fashion house's second line, which brand owner Renzo Rosso claims is "a little more accessible, a little less intellectual" proved true to form.<br><br>It is safe to say that the neon color-blocking trend of past seasons is a no-go, a touch of day-glo won't go amiss. If in doubt, you heard it from the runway.</p><p>CJL</p><p></p><p></p><p>New York is no stranger to making ultra wearable clothes sure to fly off the hangers and this season was no exception.</p><p>Midriff-baring silhouettes aside, the runway was awash with desirable workwear. NYFW newcomer Katie Holmes and Jeanne Yang of Holmes &#38; Yang summed up the mood with their "easy, timeless pieces that could carry from day to night". Boxy jackets, smart separates, shift dresses and slouchy trousers were designed to lend more consumer appeal than sex appeal - generally Milan Fashion Week's domain. Marc Jacobs sought to give "brutally basic clothes, like the t-shirt a lot of power." Sightings of flat sandals at Carolina Herrera, Ruffian and Victoria Beckham also highlighted this step in a new, less complicated fashion direction.</p><p>Fall's crisp-edged collars still featured heavily this season on buttoned up shirts and sporty shirt dresses. Designer Philip Lim reinterpreted the trend with colorful patchwork for a look that works from 9-5 and beyond. Edun, Jason Wu, Alexander Wang and Lacoste shows all put a new spin on the white shirt by splicing it with inserts and mesh panels or reworking the proportions, while Peter Som maintained a simple white-collar on a pastel blue shirt dress.</p><p>Stripes were everywhere. In every imaginable shape and form. Paris-based brand Celine kicked off the trend many moons ago and stripes have still clearly got plenty of mileage left. Marc Jacobs led the way with a collection of heavily striped ensembles. 1960s style, Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol's factory were the designer's inspirations for this collection. 'Beetlejuice gone wild' could describe some of his designs next to Diane Von Furstenberg's boho glam take on the trend: shift dresses featured undulating striped motifs to accentuate the body's curves. They may have had their share of bad press over the years, but horizontal stripes are back in a big way. Classic black/white or navy/white combinations made an appearance in collections by Tory Burch and J.Crew while Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger opted for brighter bands of colour.</p><p>Fall's moody palette paled into insignificance as designers filled their collections with bright and breezy florals. At Tory Burch and Bibhu Mohapatra vibrant nature-inspired digital prints enlivened the runway while orange was the hottest colour at Narcisco Rodriguez, Carolina Herrera, Alice + Olivia and Jenny Packham. From sunset, coral through to apricot... the sunny hue is shaping up to be the new bordeaux.</p><p>A kaleidoscopic season indeed! While skirt hemlines yo-yoed at alarming rates, long shorts and the short suit were permanent fixtures on the Spring runway. At NYFW where women's and menswear habitually feature together in the same show, the long and the short of it is that this trend is as big for girls as it is for guys. Oversized and sharply tailored designs respectively sat above and fell below-the-knee at Vera Wang and Richard Chai, while lime, jade green and corn yellow 'short' shorts with turn ups and A-line hotpants ruled at Diane Von Furstenberg, Oscar de la Renta, Rachel Zoe and Tory Burch. Who said NY couldn't do sexy?<br><br>CJL</p><p>KUALA LUMPUR, 24 Sept (Bernama) -- Pemain Taiwan, Jimmy Wang yang beraksi</p><p>menerusi penyertaan wildcard, akan berdepan pemain nombor 11 dunia, Juan Monaco</p><p>dari Argentina selepas mara ke pusingan kedua acara perseorangan pada Kejohanan</p><p>Tenis Terbuka Malaysia di Stadium Putra Bukit Jalil, di sini hari ini.</p><p>Berada pada ranking ke-151 dunia, Jimmy, 27, bakal berdepan tugas getir</p><p>apabila dijadual bertemu dengan pemain pilihan kedua kejohanan tersebut.</p><p>"Saya tidak pernah bertemu beliau (Monaco). Saya telah melihatnya bermain</p><p>dan beliau pemain yang hebat. Saya akan membuat persediaan dan tidak mahu</p><p>memikirkan tentang beliau...fokus saya hanya kepada permainan," katanya.</p><p>Terdahulu, Jimmy mengenepikan cabaran Riccardo Ghedin dari Itali 6-3, 6-3</p><p>pada saingan pusingan pertama hari ini.</p><p>"Saya bermain baik pada set pertama namun pada set kedua, fokus saya sedikit</p><p>terjejas. Saya gembira kerana berjaya melepasi pusingan pertama," kata Jimmy</p><p>yang tersingkir pada pusingan kelayakan kedua kepada Michael Yani dari Amerika</p><p>Syarikat pada kejohanan itu tahun lepas.</p><p>-- LAGI </p><p>SUKAN-TENIS 2 (AKHIR) KUALA LUMPUR</p><p>Jimmy yang bakal berganding dengan pemain Malaysia, Si Yew Ming dalam acara</p><p>beregu akan berdepan pasangan pilihan ketiga, Alexander Peya dari Austria dan</p><p>Frank Moser dari Brazil. </p><p>Sementara itu, pemain Malaysia yang beraksi menerusi tiket wildcard, Ariez</p><p>Elyaas Deen Heshaam, mengakhiri cabarannya pada kejohanan itu selepas tumpas</p><p>kepada Igor Sijsling dari Belanda 2-6, 1-6.</p><p>Bagaimanapun, pemain berusia 19 tahun itu berpuas hati dengan prestasinya</p><p>dan percaya permainan beliau telah meningkat sejak tahun lepas.</p><p>"Saya mulai yakin dan berupaya memberi tentangan pada awal permainan tetapi</p><p>beliau (Sijsling) pemain yang lebih berpengalaman dengan pukulan-pukulan yang</p><p>tepat.</p><p>"Saya berpendapat permainan saya tidaklah begitu teruk. Prestasi saya telah</p><p>meningkat sejak tahun lepas dan saya kurang gementar," katanya.</p><p>Ariez Elyaas yang beraksi dalam undian utama acara beregu, berganding dengan</p><p>rakan sepasukan Ahmad Deedat Abdul Razak tahun lepas, berkata beliau telah</p><p>banyak mempelajari bahawa tiada yang mustahil apabila berdepan dengan</p><p>pemain-pemain terkemuka.</p><p>"Yang penting perlu ada kekuatan dari segi fizikal dan mental," katanya.</p><p>-- BERNAMA</p><p> AHS NAK ERE</p><p>London, Sept 21 (ANI): Victoria Beckham gained over 57,000 new Twitter followers during the New York Fashion Week, topping every other designer at the fashion event.</p><p>The former Spice Girl's line was the most talked about collection (17,173 mentions) on the social media site, the Daily Mail reported.</p><p>Marc Jacobs followed, but not closely, with 8,813 mentions, while designers Diane Von Furstenberg, Alexander Wang and Michael Kors took the remaining three popularity spots respectively.</p><p>New York-based social media agency Whisper Group analyzed layers of Twitter algorithms during the fashion week to identify the most popular designers, trends, and hashtags associated with the last week's spring 2013 collections.</p><p>Hosted a runway show rather than her usual small presentation for the first time, the footballer's wife successfully slaughtered all other designers in the social media marketing arena during the week.</p><p>This may have had something to do with her tweet of Harper Seven, her toddler daughter, waddling down the runway just hours before the designer's show started. </p><p>The number of tweets associated with New York Fashion Week, or #nyfw, doubled since last year's spring collections, with a total of 671,028 Fashion Week mentions.</p><p>The top five designers mentioned on Twitter during NYFW are:</p><p>1.Victoria Beckham - 17,173</p><p>2.Marc Jacobs - 8,813</p><p>3.Diane von Furstenberg - 8,608</p><p>4.Alexander Wang - 6,767</p><p>5.Michael Kors - 6,214 (ANI)</p><p> </p> <p>With over 2 million followers, is 's biggest beauty blogger. We got a chance to chat with her after Fashion Week in New York to hear about her favorite shows, celebs she's met and her five must-have products.</p><p> What were some of your favorite shows? </p><p> Nanette Lepore and Whitney Eve, both shows I was able to hang out backstage. This is my first fashion week we're I'm kind of sitting back a bit, which is nice. Usually it's really chaotic.</p><p> What's it like being backstage? </p><p>Energy is high. It's actually scary at first because everyone is rushing to get stuff done. Very little space and you always feel like you're in the way. Once you've gone to a few shows, you'll start to know how to navigate backstage and get all the things you need in and out.</p><p> What are some big beauty trends for next season? </p><p>I love that strong brows are coming back. I think last spring it was more corals and very whimsical, flirty colors. I think next year it's going to be more ocean-inspired colors.</p><p> How do you transfer the runway looks to wearable everyday looks? </p><p> I have to translate it to my viewers who are experimenting with beauty. You don't want to make it too "out there"… I think it was Alexander Wang where they wore this tribal head piece and I thought, "Wow, that's gorgeous looking. Would I wear? Probably not. But maybe we can incorporate it into an eyeliner in some way."</p><p> Who's the coolest person you've met backstage? </p><p>I think it was Mick Jagger at L'wren Scott.</p><p> Is there a beauty icon you'd love to meet? </p><p>Pat McGrath. She's just so incredible and amazing at what she does.</p><p> So you're here at Fashion Week. What do you pack? </p><p>Well, the first time I went I was a newbie from Florida, and wow - I didn't know! Carry a big tote with you. I had a little purse and I couldn't fit all of my things. For me, I'm all about comfortable shoes. When I'm on the run I take off my stilettos…. Two or three years ago I used to bring a digital camera with me but I think now mobile devices are becoming more sophisticated.</p><p> What about beauty products? What are your five must-have products? </p><p> Pressed powder for sure. Here, when you're running around it gets really humid! Lash curler to re-curl your lashes unless you're blessed with great lashes. Lip liner - it's easy to use . And sometimes since I use fake lashes I carry portable lash glue with me in case they fall off. And eyeliner.</p><p> Now that you're away, how do you create videos on the road? </p><p>Since I'm going to be away for three weeks, I produced 10 videos last week…On my channel I do two videos a week, so I'm constantly editing. When I was flying here I was editing on the plane.</p><p> Tell me a little about Myglam.com </p><p>I know a lot of my subscribers are young girls and they want to try and play around with beauty but they can't really afford $80 lipsticks. So My Glam was introduced. For $10 a month, you get a really cute "glam" bag…and inside the bag are sometimes $40-90 worth of beauty products, full-sized to deluxe sized beauty products, handpicked from all around the world…Not only that, but we produce content and show them how to use it….I think at the moment we have over 100,000 subscribers.</p><p>With Paris Fashion Week kicking off September 25, international fashion consultant Muriel Piaser shares her take on upcoming trends and the savoir-faire of Asian designers.</p><p>Relaxnews: How are the Asian designers preparing for the spring-summer 2013 shows?<br>Muriel Piaser: "Paris, Fashion Capital" is a label that has made the city's international reputation, and one that becomes even more meaningful when designers take to the catwalk during Fashion Week. Recently, we've seen an increasing number of designers from Asia who who deserve their spots at this prestigious event. This season, at least five designers from Asia will come to Paris to show their new collections: Moon Young Hee, Shiatzy Chen, Masha Ma, Lie Sang Bong, Sacai. These designers all bring their own creative energy to the table, exploring their own traditions and redefining the framework of contemporary fashion while emphasizing an Asian sensibility. As for NYC's Fashion Week, it included 20 Asian American designers, including some household names from the "New Gen"-- Alexander Wang, Thakoon, Jason Wu, Richard Chai.</p><p>R: What will be the three main trends among these designers for spring/summer 2013?<br>MP: They will draw inspiration from their cultural roots and deep-rooted traditions while also playing with their codes and displaying a truly contemporary sensibility. For the spring-summer 2013 collections this will translate into an aesthetic that is optimistic, bright, and ultra-colorful, in contrast with neutral hues dominated by white. Their designs share a casual-chic feel, minimalism with a twist using simple, structured shapes, sparkling glamour ruled by geometrically-patterned and retro-styled prints.</p><p>R: In what ways are Asian designers different from their French and British counterparts?<br>MP: Cultural influences have an impact on every level of creation, whether it be the development of the collection, its general atmosphere, inspirations, setting, staging, or marketing. Asian designers use a clever and subtle mix of cultural influences and traditions with contemporary fashion. Which results either in a sterile, minimalist, surgical approach, or in a baroque, kitsch, bling universe where everyone focuses on adding their own personal take on established conventions. To sum up, these designers stand out in the crowd, just like French designers, who distinguish themselves with their "French Touch" and their British counterparts who stand out with their eccentric designs.</p><p> Riccardo Tisci’s latest show was “sharp, sophisticated, and focused”, says Anna Dello Russo.</p><p>The creative director of Givenchy showed the label’s Spring/Summer 13 line at Paris Fashion Week on Sunday.</p><p>The collection referenced the label’s heritage as it featured taffeta, duchess satin and radzimir, with huge ruffles also a major look.</p><p>Fashionista Anna was amazed by what she saw.</p><p>“Ricky did such a fantastic show. Really sharp, sophisticated, and focused,” she said.</p><p>The star was speaking at an after-party to celebrate the presentation. It was held at a nightclub called L’Arc, with Erin Wasson and Lea T both in attendance. Designer Alexander Wang and stylist Rachel Zoe were also there and hit the dance floor together.</p><p>Riccardo is pleased with what he created and hopes his inspiration shone through.</p><p>“I hope those who saw it felt the same emotion that I did when making it, which is purity, simplicity,” he told Style.com. </p>© Cover Media<p>New York, Sep 11 (IANS) Model Liberty Ross said she didn't leave her house for seven weeks as she tried to deal with her husband Rupert Sanders's affair with actress Kristen Stewart.</p><p>The 33-year-old appeared on the catwalk to showcase Alexander Wang's Spring 2013 collection at New York Fashion Week and looked confident on the catwalk, reports contactmusic.</p><p>"I hadn't actually been out of my house for seven weeks so I was really anxious. But it felt amazing," she said at the after party.</p><p>Ross did not dump Sanders after learning of his affair with the actress and is believed to be prepared to work to save their marriage for the sake of their children Skyla, seven, and five-year-old Tennyson.</p><p>"It's still too early to tell what will happen. She is talking to and seeing Rupert now for the kids, but as far as the marriage she's still processing everything that happened.</p><p>"No decisions have been made. It's been very hard on her dealing with this but she is very strong and keeping private about it," said a source.</p>Saks Fifth Avenue Shakes Up New Contemporary Shops and offers Contemporary WeekPRWeb&ndash; with expanded merchandise and a Mont Blanc shop, as well as the addition of new vendors in sportswear including Brioni Sportswear, Sand, Altea ,Valentino and CARR, designed by Houston local George Carr. Additionally, the men&#8217;s accessories area has been expanded of men&#8217;s bags, accessories, and sunglasses. </p></p><p>Additionally, Saks Fifth Avenue Men&#8217;s Collection has expanded with designs and styles from our best Italian designers. To enhance the shopping experience, the new bar, 12, also opened by men&#8217;s shoes on level three which offers a full bar, snack options and coffee. With the new shops, the 12 bar and accessory additions, Saks Fifth Avenue Houston shakes up the shopping experience for men allowing for a stylish and fun environment all focused on bringing great looks with simplistic ease. Come find your place to shop with events beginning September 29th to build your fall wardrobe. </p></p><p>The Women&#8217;s Contemporary shops continue to carry favorites such as , Tory Burch, DVF, Theory and Alexander Wang. The Women&#8217;s Contemporary Week offers free yoga classes by Define Yoga Studios on Saturday and Sunday, Sean Hurley of Hurley denim, and an on-site demin alteration station as well as the free AG Adriano Goldschmied iPhone 4/4S case as a free gift with purchase. Find all the fall looks from all the Contemporary favorites offered at Saks Fifth Avenue Houston. While shopping, enjoy Beauty Week elements all week long and learn how to complete your fall looks with all the best beauty and cosmetic lines available at Saks with product demonstrations,</p></p><p>As the changes at welcome in the change to the fall season, find all of your best Contemporary designers and looks during Contemporary Week starting Thursday, September 27th through Saturday, September 29th.</p></p><p>About Saks Fifth Avenue</p><p><br>Saks Fifth Avenue, one of the world&#8217;s preeminent specialty retailers, is renowned for its superlative American and international designer collections, its expertly edited assortment of handbags, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics and gifts, and the first-rate fashion expertise and exemplary client service of its Associates. Today, Saks operates 45 full-line stores in 20 states, 2 licensed stores in the Middle East and 2 licensed stores in Mexico City, 61 Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH stores and saks.com, the company&#8217;s online store. </p></p><p>Saks Fifth Avenue is proud to be named a J.D. Power and Associates 2012 Customer Service Champion and is only one of 50 U.S. companies so named.</p></p><p>Chad Carpenter<br>Saks Fifth Avenue<br>713-843-5606<br><br></p>Saks Houston: Contemporary Week Begins with ISAIA and Bar 12 EventPRWeb&ndash; continue to carry favorites such as Marc by Marc Jacobs, Tory Burch, DVF, Theory and Alexander Wang. The Women&#8217;s Contemporary Week at Saks in Houston offers free yoga classes by Define Yoga Studios on Saturday and Sunday, a personal appearance by Sean Hurley of Genetic denim, and an on-site demin alteration station as well as the free AG Adriano Goldschmied iPhone 4/4S case as a free gift with purchase. With all the new Fall fashions now in the contemporary shops, and the personal attention only found at Saks Fifth Avenue Houston, being stylish and fitted for Fall will only leave deciding what to wear first.</p></p><p>While you are enjoying the Saks Fifth Avenue shopping experience, step into on level one to receive your free tote with any $100 beauty purchase as well as dozens of additional gifts with purchases from lines including David Yurman, Guerlain, and Estee Lauder. It is a perfect time to complete your fall looks with all the best beauty and cosmetic lines available at Saks with product demonstrations and pampering.</p></p><p>The new Saks Fifth Avenue Houston Men&#8217;s Contemporary department features the first Ferragamo shop of its kind, a new with expanded merchandise and a Mont Blanc shop, as well as the addition of new vendors in sportswear including Brioni Sportswear, Sand, Altea ,Valentino and CARR, designed by Houston local George Carr. Additionally, the men&#8217;s accessories area has been expanded of men&#8217;s bags, accessories, and sunglasses. Be the sharp and stylish man this Fall, experience the new way for men to shop in the on level 3.</p></p><p>Additionally, Saks Fifth Avenue Houston Men&#39;s line has expanded with designs and styles from our best Italian designers. To enhance the shopping experience, the new bar, 12, also opened by men&#8217;s shoes on level three which offers a full bar, snack options and coffee. With the new shops, the 12 bar and accessory additions, Saks Fifth Avenue Houston shakes up the shopping experience for men allowing for a stylish and fun environment all focused on bringing great looks with simplistic ease. Get a taste of 12 by 51fifteen and celebrate the Grand Opening of the bar also on Thursday with the Saks and HOUSTON Modern Luxury ISAIA cocktail event from 6:30pm-8:30pm on level three of the store. Come find your place to shop with events beginning September 27th to build your fall wardrobe. </p></p><p>As the changes at welcome in the change to the fall season, find all of your best Contemporary designers and looks during Contemporary Week starting Thursday, September 27th through Saturday, September 29th.</p></p><p>About Saks Fifth Avenue</p><p><br>Saks Fifth Avenue, one of the world&#8217;s preeminent specialty retailers, is renowned for its superlative American and international designer collections, its expertly edited assortment of handbags, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics and gifts, and the first-rate fashion expertise and exemplary client service of its Associates. Today, Saks operates 45 full-line stores in 20 states, 2 licensed stores in the Middle East and 2 licensed stores in Mexico City, 61 Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH stores and saks.com, the company&#8217;s online store. </p></p><p>Saks Fifth Avenue is proud to be named a J.D. Power and Associates 2012 Customer Service Champion and is only one of 50 U.S. companies so named.</p></p><p>Chad Carpenter<br>Saks Fifth Avenue<br>713-843-5606<br><br></p>Sandra Of 5 Inch And Up Designs A Collection For Nelly! EXCLUSIVE Q&AGrazia&ndash; (as in heel height!) - and we liked it very much. Fast forward two years and she’s not only one of the most popular presences on the web planet of fashion, constantly contacted for style features online and in magazines. She’s set up her own street style blog, been snapped up to front campaigns and now the latest string to her (probably Alexander Wang) bow is to design her very own range for online Scandi superstore . We caught up with the girl of the moment…</p><p></p><p>Style Hunter's snap of Sandra from 2010</p><p>Grazia Daily: We’re knee deep in LFW - what are your fashion week survival essentials?</p><p>Sandra: High and comfortable heels, dry shampoo and my camera! </p><p>What have you designed that you’ll be wearing to fashion week?</p><p>The 'Cross' wedge boots that have a comfortable plato for running around, the 'Tasha' kimono coat for cool and effortless layering and the 'Blink' neoprene varsity jacket for a touch of sports luxe - all from my 5 inch and up x Nelly collection that we launched this week!</p><p></p><p>The 5 Inch And Up x Nelly line up!<br></p><p>What was it like to be able to design your own clothes?</p><p>Absolutely amazing, most of the items were my ideal wardrobe staples that are timeless. I tried to bring together my design vision with my personal style of dressing as the collection was designed to reflect the style of my blog. I have been so pleased with Nelly, who gave me free reign to design everything myself. They have been guiding and supporting me throughout, basically been an ideal partnership for someone in my position!</p><p>Have there been certain items you’ve wanted to get hold of, couldn’t find, and can now create them youself?</p><p>Definitely. I am quite a short girl so there are a lot of items that I've been trying to find for ages. Like the 'Pine' pants that are drop crotch but with a skinny leg and tailored look. The pants work with the most type of shoes. The cut-out 'Ringa' dress as well, I wanted a modern, classy dress with cut-outs… without it being too revealing.</p><p>Which piece is your favourite?</p><p>Gosh, I love the 'Tasha' kimono as it's quite a special piece, then I like the Ringa dress for it's versatility and the 'Stella' shorts for easy layering. </p><p>  <br></p><p>Two of Sandra's recent street snapped looks<br></p><p>What items do you think street style photographers are always drawn to?</p><p>I think they look for surprising mixes, right now maybe a comic print tee with showy jewellery or colourful print combinations. Keep the focus on the accessories and fine details. The close-up shots are the most popular during fashion week!</p><p>Who is your style icon?</p><p>Style icon currently is stylist Ada Kokosar. She nails the whole effortless smart casual look, and always plays with contrasts which makes her style something to be inspired by!</p><p>What has been your top fashion moment so far?</p><p>I would have to say launching my signature collection for Nelly. The whole process of planning and designing, to finally seeing the garments take shape and go up for sale. The next stage is to se how it will be received and how people would incorporate the pieces in to their own style. It's been exciting on so many levels.</p><p>What advice would she keep to aspiring bloggers? And how long has it taken to get to this point?</p><p>I would say stay focused. You don't have to write about everything, it can even be better if you find your own genre - it might be what will separate you from the crowd. Focus on what your good at and you might have a change to collaborate with brands and publications. So if it's writing, stay professional or if it's the photography, invest in the right equipment. And lastly think outside the box! Copying others will not get you noticed. I have been blogging for two years and find that my readers love to hear about my home county Finland and my studies, so it's all about adding a personal touch to everything you do.</p><br><br><br><br>Shopience 2.0 is Here: Personalized Social Shopping Delivering Thousands of Style and Fashion Product RecommendationsPRWeb&ndash;), a social shopping website, launched in beta early summery 2012, announced today that its version 2.0 of personalized shopping website is available to public. The new website can be accessed at and it features more brands and variety of curated fashion, in many categories such as dresses, shoes &#38; jewelry.<br><br>(PRWEB) September 14, 2012 </p> Shopience is leading provider of social driven product discovery. Specifically focused around women fashion, Shopience is developing tools to better discover products that consumers will love to own, through a combination of patent pending algorithms and human curation. </p></p><p>Shopience was launched when the founders realized that it was hard to find big brands, and local boutique fashion in one place. If you wanted to pair your chic Alexander Wang dress, with a unique chunky piece of accessory from a local designer you would be struggling between multiple sites. Shopience brings products from big stores, small e-tailers, craftsmen in one platform. On Shopience women can shop, love and recommend dresses, shoe and accessory brands from stores like Nordstrom, Macys to unique boutiques like NastyGal all in one place. </p></p><p>Shopience is unique among fashion shopping websites because on Shopience, the shoppers are determining what is in and hot for the season. Shopience provides products on its website from a wide range of designers and price points, and lets shoppers create style inspiration by tagging, curating items into list, sharing with their friends. These meta-tags are then churned by Shopience&#8217;s behavioral algorithm to create recommendation lists, for different persona&#39;s and events.</p></p><p>Shopience lets shopper refine their discovery by following stores, and other shoppers. Women can also browse lists created by other users and register to receive email updates when these lists that they follow have new products. </p></p><p>Research has found that we humans love products that are recommended by people we aspire, and follow. By combining this social proof with algorithms, Shopience 2.0 is driving the next generation of social shopping that is both intuitive and immensely personalized!</p></p><p>About Shopience</p><p><br>Shopience () is the online website that brings amazing products from different stores &#38; brands in once place. On Shopience women can shop thousands of apparel, shoe and accessory brands from big stores to unique boutiques all in once place. Through social driven trend forecasting, and behavioral recommendation, Shopience delivers personalized shopping.</p></p><p>Ana Miele<br>Shopience<br>650-485-1071<br><br></p><p>NEW YORK (AP) — Bikini season may be over, but this is no time to tone down the workout. Many of the styles on the runway at New York Fashion Week flash a bit of skin here or there: bare midriffs, cutout backs, keyhole necklines.</p><p>The silhouettes in spring previews that entered a fourth day Sunday aren't necessarily skin tight, but it's not a season of full-on floaty frocks, either.</p><p>"We've gone so far away from overt sexiness, but the reality is, sex sells. At some point the shopper wants to be sexy," said Hal Rubenstein, fashion director of InStyle magazine. "Illusion fabric on a shoulder or a little skin showing on a midriff gives you a hint without giving it all away."</p><p>Many of Alexander Wang's looks were seemingly held together by fishing wire. Rag & Bone flashed some skin with strategic cutouts and at Peter Som, midriff-baring cutouts were carved into ladylike sheath dresses. Designers including Jason Wu, Rebecca Taylor and Richard Chai showed bra-style tops.</p><p>ALEXANDER WANG</p><p>The audience at Alexander Wang is trained to know the best is coming last.</p><p>The mostly inventive black-and-white, pieced-leather looks, many seemingly held together by fishing wire, that filled the first part of Saturday's show would have held Wang's place as one of the princes of cool. There were sporty parkas, tops inspired by hockey jerseys and even some more refined halter dresses.</p><p>Wang could have called it a collection and be done with it.</p><p>However, the final parade of nine models — all wearing a cream color — had their embroidered tank tops, pencil skirts, crewneck dresses and Bermuda shorts turn into glow-in-the-dark lightsticks when they assumed a final pose on the runway and the lights went out.</p><p>Wang also created a stir by having model Liberty Ross — the wife of the director Kristen Stewart had an affair with — walk the runway, along with the likes of Erin Wasson. Jennifer Aniston's fiance actor Justin Theroux sat in the front row along with rapper A$AP Rocky.</p><p>"In such a short time, Alex has redefined urban utility," said Laura Brown, Harper's Bazaar features and special projects director, who picked a cut-out silver dress as her favorite. "There's always a sexiness to his clothes, but this season he brought a glamour, too."</p><p>JOSEPH ALTUZARRA</p><p>It was a rainy Saturday night in Manhattan, and getting a taxi was murder. But fashionistas lined up patiently under umbrellas, undeterred, to catch one of the most buzz-worthy spring previews of Fashion Week: that of rising star Joseph Altuzarra.</p><p>Inside the Industria Superstudio in the chic meatpacking district, the excitement was palpable. Actress Kate Bosworth, a big Altuzarra fan, kissed acquaintances and greeted Mamie Gummer, the actress daughter of Meryl Streep. The NBA's Tyson Chandler posed for photos not for from actress Jessica Chastain.</p><p>The looks that greeted them on the runway were a combination of the very casual — navy-and-white striped cotton jackets and overcoats, for example, evoking kids' overalls — and the glamorous, in the form of gold fringes on everything from skirts to tanks, and crystal-encrusted garments like dramatic scarves draped high around the neck. Workday looks of simple cotton graduated to looks that suddenly shimmered and glistened under the lights, occasionally perhaps a bit blindingly.</p><p>"He's going sky-high," said Nina Garcia, the "Project Runway" judge. "A real original."</p><p>MONIQUE LHUILLIER</p><p>The red carpet during the upcoming Hollywood awards season could be a sea of ocean-inspired gowns if Monique Lhuillier has anything to do with it.</p><p>Lhuillier, a favorite source for celebrity gowns, presented a bright aqua lace gown draped with a tulle overlay that gave the illusion of rippling waves — and so did a one-shoulder tiered gown in crepe. A sea-glass green gown was embroidered with sparkly beads and had a low, sheer illusion back, and a textured jacquard strapless gown with a trumpet hemline was an underwater kaleidoscope of colors, including blues, greens and purple.</p><p>"The inspiration this season came from a wonderful trip I had in Turkey and I was on a boat and I was looking at the beautiful landscape and water and I was like, that's it. This is the feeling I want for spring," Lhuillier said backstage.</p><p>"The Emmys are coming up and some of the looks have been selected so they're on hold," said Lhuillier. Bet the gold, coral-embellished sculpted gown that served as the finale is one them.</p><p>___</p><p>AP National Writer Jocelyn Noveck contributed to this report.</p><p>___</p><p>Follow AP Fashion on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AP_Fashion</p>Copyright © 2012 Yahoo! Asia Pacific Pte Ltd (Co. Reg. No. 199700735D). All Rights Reserved. Yahoo! News Network<p> </p><p><p>The world of design is ever so often glamorized, with finish products often taking the attention from the grueling processes that go with it. Design is not an easy task yet some people are drawn to it, some people revel in. But what kind of designer would one be? </p><p>A person who has a vision for style and an eye for fabrics and structures of the human body would do well in the fashion industry, while a person who has the talent in creating thought-provoking visuals, creative images and trendy graphics would be able to secure a place among graphic designers. There are those who could turn the simplest of rooms into an elegant livable space.</p><p>Top design school Raffles Design Institute, Manila thus gives the following tips to those aspiring to be fashion designers, graphic designers and interior designers:</p><p>Fashion Design</p><p>&#8226;Aspiring fashion designers should try to understand fashion trends, color groups, and clothing ranges. A designer cannot simply design a t-shirt and expect to make it big especially when fashion is known to be a fickle industry.</p><p>&#8226;It is important for a fashion designer to be familiar with fabrics man-made, synthetic or natural. Acquiring this knowledge is essential in creating unique patterns and layers that are aesthetically pleasing and comfortable.</p><p>A fashion designer must be able to consider a clientele&#39;s lifestyle, culture and background. Famous designers are able to create different sets of collections based on those.</p><p>Know who you are designing for and what designs you do best. Are you the type who&#39;s more likely to design wedding gowns like Vera Wang? Are you most likely to cater to the rebellious youth lifestyle and create a clothing line just for them like what Vivienne Westwood did? Or do you design clothes like an art installation form like Alexander McQueen?</p><p>Of course, fashion designing is not simply sketching. The fashion designer must be knowledgeable in the processes involved in the conception and creation of the clothes. They must know how to use the tape measure, hand needles, pins, tailor&#39;s chalk and they must know how to create basic patterns.</p><p>Graphic Design</p><p>&#8226;Find your niche in the graphic design industry. It&#39;s good to find out early if you&#39;re good at interface design, printmaking, page layout, typography, or visual arts so you can focus and hone your skills on them.</p><p>&#8226;It&#39;s always good to create a portfolio of your designs whether it is online or on print. It shows people what you have done and what you&#39;re capable of. It can be a collaboration of different forms of graphic designs or designs in a particular niche.</p><p>&#8226;Learn how to market your designs. Learn how to apply your art and designs in the business world as there are many designers who are overflowing with creativity but lacking the knowledge to use that creativity in a business environment. Graphic designers should be able to make a living out of their designs.</p><p>&#8226;Learn how to use your designs to create powerful messages that can incite emotions your client wants you to tap.</p><p>&#8226;Continue learning and keep your eyes open. Inspiration can come in all forms so it&#39;s better to see things in different point-of-views.</p><p>Interior Design</p><p>&#8226;Learning the basics of interior design is one of the most important aspects before anything else. Similar to fashion design, an eye for color, shapes and textures is what&#39;s important in the interior design industry.</p><p>&#8226;Another thing fashion and interior design have in common is that interior design must also take into consideration the clientele&#39;s location, lifestyle and surrounding area so that the design is maximized in the client&#39;s lifestyle.</p><p>&#8226;Interior design and architecture go hand-in-hand. So even if architecture is not your forte it&#39;s still important to learn the basics.</p><p>&#8226;Go out and travel a lot. Learn the designs of different cultures and incorporate it into your designs and arrangements. </p><p>&#8226;As with any design work, build a portfolio of what you have done. Clients will most likely go to designers that have samples of what they can do.</p><p>To help aspiring designers get ahead in their chosen fields then choosing the right school is very essential to a designer&#39;s growth and success. Raffles Design Institute, Manila (RDIM) is a top international design school throughout Asia-Pacific which operates 33 colleges in 30 cities across 13 countries. RDIM&#39;s courses are internationally recognized with an academic team or professional practitioners hailing from all over the globe.</p><p>RDIM is a subsidiary of RafflesEducationCorp. (REC), the largest private education group in the Asia-Pacific region. For more information on RDIM and its programme offerings, log on to http://www.raffles-design-institute.com.ph, or contact RDI Manila at 846-2888 and rdi-manila@raffles-design-institute.com.</p><p> </p><p>KUALA LUMPUR, 25 Sept (Bernama) -- Pemain nombor lima dunia David Ferrer</p><p>dari Sepanyol mengharapkan tuah menyebelahinya pada penampilan ketiganya dalam</p><p>kejohanan tenis terbuka Malaysia 2012 di Stadium Putra di Bukit Jalil, di sini</p><p>minggu ini. </p><p>Pilihan pertama itu, bagaimanapun, tidak memandang rendah kepada barisan</p><p>pemain yang beraksi tahun ini.</p><p>"Saya bermain pada 2009 dan 2010, jadi saya memang ingin sangat menang kali</p><p>ini. Namun begitu kali ini ada ramai pemain yang bagus -- Monaco (Juan Monaco</p><p>dari Argentina) ialah seorang daripadanya, Feliciano Lopez (dari Sepanyol), Kei</p><p>Nishikori (Jepun), Dolgopolov (Alexandr Dolgopolov dari Ukraine), jadi</p><p>saingannya nanti pasti sengit," katanya.</p><p>Terkenal sebagai pakar gelanggang tanah liat, pemain berusia 30 tahun itu</p><p>mencatat pencapaian yang baik tahun ini dengan beraksi pada dua acara separuh</p><p>akhir (Terbuka Perancis dan Amerika Syarikat) di samping melangkah ke final</p><p>Piala Davis pada November ini bersama pasukan kebangsaannya.</p><p>"Setakat ini, tahun ini adalah yang terbaik bagi karier saya. Saya rasa saya</p><p>bermain dengan begitu baik. Saya gembira tapi sekarang masa untuk beri tumpuan</p><p>kepada kejohanan ini dan cuba untuk menang," katanya.</p><p>-- LAGI</p><p>SUKAN-TENIS (TERBUKA M''SIA) 2 (AKHIR) KUALA LUMPUR</p><p>Ferrer dijadual berdepan pemenang perlawanan antara Dominic Inglot dari</p><p>Great Britain dan Alex Jr. Bogomolov dari Rusia dalam pusingan kedua pada</p><p>Khamis.</p><p>Sementara itu, Monaco, pemain nombor 11 dunia dan pilihan kedua pula</p><p>merancang untuk mengharungi kejohanan itu peringkat demi peringkat.</p><p>Dalam pusingan pertama perseorangan lelaki hari ini, tiga lagi pemain</p><p>melayakkan diri ke pusingan kedua, iaitu Albert Ramos dari Sepanyol, Matthew</p><p>Ebden dari Australia dan pilihan ketujuh Julien Benneteau dari Perancis.</p><p>Sementara itu, dalam acara beregu lelaki, gandingan dari Malaysia Si</p><p>Yew-Ming dan Jimmy Wang dari Taipei tumpas kepada pilihan ketiga Alexander Peya</p><p>dari Austria dan Bruno Soares dari Brazil, 2-6, 2-6.</p><p>Pusingan pertama perseorangan Lelaki</p><p>------------------------------------</p><p>Albert Ramos (ESP) mn Julian Knowle (AUT) 6-1, 6-4,</p><p>Julien Benneteau (FRA) mn Carlos Berlocq (ARG) 7-6(2), 6-3,</p><p>Matthew Ebden (AUS) mn Philip Davydenko (RUS) 6-0, 7-6(3).</p><p>Pusingan pertama beregu Lelaki</p><p>------------------------------</p><p>Colin Fleming/Ross Hutchins (GBR) mn Alejandro Falla (COL)/Igor Sijsling</p><p>(NED) 6-3, 6-2, </p><p>Nikolay Davydenko (RUS)/Dick Norman (BEl) mn Mikhail Elgin (RUS)/Denis</p><p>Istomin (UZB) 6-3, 6-0,</p><p>Daniele Bracciali (ITA)/Marcelo Melo (BRA) mn Brian Baker/Raheev Ram (USA)</p><p>6-4, 6-3,</p><p>Alexander Peya (AUT)/ Bruno Soares (BRA) mn Si Yew Ming (MAS)/Jimmy</p><p>Wang(TPE) 6-2, 6-2.</p><p>-- BERNAMA</p><p>AHS MAM JRL ROS</p><p> </p><p><p>Buff security guard. Heavy black curtain. Mingling, angling VIPs.</p><p>These are staples now not just at nightclubs, but backstage at fashion shows, which cosmetics companies are increasingly turning not only into theater on par with the runway shows themselves, with every cloud of hairspray and swipe of Brigitte Bardot eyeliner breathlessly tweeted and Tumblr&#39;d, but into a sort of territorial battleground.</p><p>&#34;Our backstage activities are absolutely critical to our brand,&#34; said Carolyn Holba, senior vice president for marketing of Maybelline New York, a headlining sponsor of Fashion Week since February 2009. &#34;It&#39;s where all the creative collaboration and energy happens.&#34;</p><p>&#34;Fashion week is an optimal time to debut new shades and innovation,&#34; Julia Goldin, chief marketing officer of Revlon, wrote in an email from Hong Kong.</p><p>&#34;Being part of Fashion Week demonstrates our authority in makeup,&#34; said Louis Desazars, CEO of Nars, which is owned by Shiseido.</p><p>For many years, though, the leading authority backstage has been MAC Cosmetics, whose parent company is Estee Lauder. Led by Gordon Espinet, the beauty brand (known for its black packaging, wide color range and frequent limited-edition releases) appears at nearly 850 shows globally, 47 weeks a year. MAC has a 25-person division dedicated to organizing Fashion Week activities, including designer relations and logistics, and flies in-house &#34;senior makeup artists&#34; to New York, London, Milan and Paris each season.</p><p>The corporate stranglehold on backstage activities was not always so tight. &#34;Once upon a time, you would work on the show and the models would do their makeup - there was no continuity,&#34; said Espinet, MAC&#39;s senior vice president for makeup artistry, referring to the late 1970s and early &#39;80s. &#34;Whatever Pat Cleveland thought was her best look, that&#39;s what you got. Models were your assistants basically, and I would run around fixing any mistakes.&#34;</p><p>The first fashion show that MAC officially worked on, Espinet said, was &#34;a total fluke.&#34; In the fall of 1995, a Japanese label called Matsuda reached out to the company, which was based in Toronto at the time, intrigued by a MAC look book that had been passed around. &#34;There was a whopping 12 of us in the office,&#34; Espinet said. &#34;We got the call and we thought it would be cool. And maybe we would make a lipstick for the show, a product to put on the seats for the editors.&#34; Called Haku, the lipstick, which looked sea-foam green in the tube but went on pink, became a cult favorite.</p><p>There were a few more shows and accompanying limited-edition products, but no organized strategy until 1998, when Estee Lauder, which had been an equity stakeholder, took over the brand and appointed John Demsey president and managing director of MAC. (He has since been promoted to group president at Estee Lauder, where he oversees MAC and many other brands.)</p><p>&#34;Originally, it was just about sponsoring talent-getting these creative, freelance makeup artists on board-and getting product backstage,&#34; Demsey said.</p><p>&#34;We wouldn&#39;t be doing this many designers if it were just a money game,&#34; he said. &#34;Anybody can write a check. It&#39;s developed into something part of MAC&#39;s essential core.&#34;</p><p>MAC uses backstage as a laboratory, testing samples of product in development. With no television advertising, and limited print, Fashion Week is also crucial to the company&#39;s marketing strategy. Over the years, MAC has sponsored Fashion Week at Bryant Park. In September 2009, it headed downtown, teaming up with Milk Studios for a few seasons; it is no longer the exclusive makeup brand backstage, but it still provides makeup to 75 percent of the designers showing there.</p><p>MAC likes to establish a relationship with up-and-coming designers early, with Demsey often taking cues from Anna Wintour and Glenda Bailey about ones to watch, he said. In the case of Prabal Gurung, the designer reached out himself. &#34;It was before I was anybody,&#34; said Gurung, who has also worked with Sally Hansen nail color.</p><p>&#34;With MAC, you get the big name and the access to the top makeup artists,&#34; he said. &#34;And then that may bring along the better models. All of a sudden, it puts you in a more similar field as the top designers. It&#39;s a huge deal.&#34;</p><p>Having saturated the New York, London, Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks, Espinet said, MAC is turning its attention to newer markets like Sao Paulo, Sydney and Tokyo. In New York, that has left wiggle room for other brands.</p><p>This season, Maybelline New York scored a huge coup when a request from Victoria Beckham came in at the last minute, Holba said. That put the company at 11 shows this season, including Rachel Zoe and Lacoste.</p><p>Revlon, meanwhile, has the asset of the global artistic director Gucci Westman, the wife of David Neville, the designer at Rag & Bone. She &#34;helps elevate our presence during fashion week,&#34; Goldin said. Aside from Rag & Bone, Westman and Revlon were assigned to backstage duties at Oscar de la Renta, J. Mendel and Giulietta.</p><p>But perhaps Nars has benefited most from MAC&#39;s step back in New York. Also known for color, texture and sleek black packaging, Nars this season claimed the Alexander Wang show, usually a MAC staple, for the first time, as well as Creatures of the Wind, Thakoon, 3.1 Phillip Lim and Rodarte.</p><p>It doesn&#39;t hurt that the brand&#39;s founder, Francois Nars, is himself an expert makeup artist. He took a decade off backstage before returning in 2009 for Marc Jacobs, a friend whose show he personally works on. Other designers are matched with the company&#39;s 40 makeup artists, who agree to work exclusively with the product backstage.</p><p>If there is a memorable makeup look from New York Fashion Week, however, there is still a good chance MAC created it. The brand was affiliated with 80 shows for this New York Fashion Week and is exploring other categories like nail polish, which it provided backstage for the first time last season for the fall 2012 collections.</p><p>Beauty backstage is a full-service operation, Demsey said, much like a wedding. &#34;You have the dress,&#34; he said. &#34;But if they mess up your hair and makeup, forget about it.&#34; (NYT)</p><p> </p>The Healthy Benefits of Texas Medical Liability ReformPR Newswire&ndash;. Just like every other year at this time, the trial lawyers' propaganda machine is once again trying to convince Texans to ignore the improvements they're seeing all around them.</p><p>I'm pleased to report on some new research that soundly contradicts the naysayers' rhetoric.</p><p>In 2003, the Texas Legislature passed sweeping liability reforms to combat healthcare lawsuit abuse, reverse physicians' skyrocketing professional liability insurance premiums, and help ensure sick and injured Texans can see a doctor when they need one. The centerpiece of those reforms was a $750,000 stacked cap on noneconomic damages assessed against physicians and healthcare facilities (hospital systems, nursing homes, and such) in a liability judgment. There is no cap on economic damages.</p><p>On Sept. 12, 2003, Texas voters approved , a constitutional amendment that ratified the legislature's authority to establish these important reforms.</p><p>The reforms have worked. They've lived up to their promise. Texans today have more physicians to deliver the care they need, particularly in high-risk specialties like emergency medicine, obstetrics, neurosurgery, and pediatric intensive care.</p><p>Just ask George Rodriguez of Corpus Christi, who walks today thanks to tort reform. Newly established Corpus Christi neurosurgeon Matthew Alexander, MD, urgently operated on Mr. Rodriguez' spinal abscess, relieving the pressure on his spinal cord and sparing him life in a wheelchair. Without the state's lawsuit reforms, Dr. Alexander wouldn't have relocated to Texas, and Mr. Rodriguez would not have found a doctor to perform the emergency neurosurgery in Corpus Christi.</p><p>The plaintiffs bar's assault tactics tend to rely on two faulty arguments:</p><p>1.  There was no crisis to begin with, and/or</p><p>2.  The reforms really haven't worked.</p><p>A just-released study by noted economics professor refutes both those allegations.</p><p>The trial lawyers, for example, fudge the timelines and scrounge up certain sets of statistics that support their point of view. They brush aside the well-documented evidence of how the threat of unfounded lawsuits was forcing emergency departments to reduce their trauma services, forcing obstetricians to stop delivering babies, and forcing Texas physicians to look elsewhere to practice.</p><p>Professor Magee's data show that the impact of our lawsuit epidemic stretched from 2000 to 2005 — about two years after passage of the reform law. During that period, he found, the number of doctors who left active practice more than doubled.</p><p>What does that mean for us?</p><p>Just ask the former patients of Jackelinne Villalobos, DO, who was one of the few bilingual physicians working at a New York City clinic for pregnant women. New York has no medical liability reforms. Although Dr. Villalobos had never lost a case, her liability insurance company hiked her premiums up to $168,000 a year. By 2010, she could no longer keep her practice alive and, as she says, "the legal climate forced me to pack my bags and move to Texas." That's exactly what was happening here a decade ago.</p><p>Sometimes, the trial bar's spin-masters try to wash away the significance of the huge influx of physicians Texas has enjoyed since the end of the lawsuit crisis. They casually dismiss the record year after record year of new physician licenses issued by the Texas Medical Board. Just last month, the medical board closed its books on fiscal year 2012, in which it licensed a record 3,630 .</p><p>Professor Magee found all those new licenses indeed translated directly into more physicians caring for Texans after the crisis ended in 2005.</p><p>"Essentially, the number of doctors that treat patients flattened during the crisis but then took an upward trajectory four years after the passage of reforms," he said. "The delayed physician growth response is consistent with what we see in other tort reform states."</p><p>The plaintiffs lawyers frequently allege that Texas' rapid population growth is responsible for all of the increase we've seen in physicians practicing here. They obviously can't count fast enough to keep up.</p><p>Had we merely stayed on the 2003 trend line and adjusted for population growth, Texas would have added 7,054 physicians. Instead we added 13,773. Put another way, population growth may well account for 51 percent of the state's new physicians. The other 49 percent above the trend was produced by some other factor. We believe that factor is a more hospitable legal climate, which has been a magnet for attracting physicians from other states.</p><p>Professor Magee's research looked much deeper than just the raw totals of new physicians. For example, he found:</p><p>All of those numbers, however, aren't what matter to C.O. Farmer of Austin. He's just glad that cardiologist Stan Wang, MD, came home to practice here because of the liability reforms. Here's how Mr. Farmer tells what happened right after his seriously blocked coronary arteries caused a severe heart attack ... and how we all should remember it:</p><p>"Had it not been for the fact that I could see Dr. Wang immediately," he said, "logic would show us that the event would have been catastrophic."</p><p>Every new physician drawn to practice in Texas since the reforms passed represents hundreds, if not thousands, of catastrophes averted. The reforms have worked.</p><p>Michael E. Speer, M.D., of Houston, is the president of the Texas Medical Association and full-time neonatologist and medical director of the Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Program at Texas Children's Hospital.</p><p>SOURCE Texas Alliance for Patient Access</p>The ultimate fashion pack party! Get inside Carine Roitfeld&#39;s Parisian ball with 20 twitpicsGrazia&ndash;<br><br><p>NEW YORK (AP) — While Kristen Stewart promoted a new film in Toronto, her one-time romantic rival took to the runway.</p><p>Liberty Ross, the wife of "Snow White and the Huntsman" director Rupert Sanders, walked the catwalk during the Alexander Wang show on Saturday at New York Fashion Week wearing a white wind-breaker with a pencil skirt.</p><p>Stewart and Sanders issued public apologies following tabloid reports they had a brief affair while Stewart was dating her "Twilight" co-star Robert Pattinson.</p><p>Ross, 33, has mostly retired from modeling and most recently appeared in "Snow White and the Huntsman" as Stewart's mother.</p><p>Stewart appeared in public for the first time since the scandal broke on Thursday for the premiere of "On the Road" at the Toronto International Film Festival. Hundreds of "Twilight" fans came out to show support for the 22-year-old actress.</p><p>Meanwhile, Alexander Wang's show is one of the hottest tickets at fashion week and he's made a splash before using models who aren't regular runway walkers. Last season it was Gisele Bundchen, Shalom Harlow and Karolina Kurkova. On Saturday, runway graduate Erin Wasson also returned to his catwalk.</p>(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Click For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Click For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Click For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Click For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp<p>KUALA LUMPUR, 27 Sept (Bernama) -- Berikut adalah keputusan pusingan kedua</p><p>perseorangan lelaki dan suku akhir beregu lelaki Kejohanan Tenis Terbuka</p><p>Malaysia ATP 2012 yang berlangsung di Stadium Putra Bukit Jalil di sini hari</p><p>ini;</p><p>Pusingan kedua perseorangan lelaki</p><p>----------------------------------</p><p>Juan Monaco (ARG) mn Jimmy Wang (TPE) 6-4, 7-5</p><p>Nikolay Davydenko (RUS) mn Denis Istomin (UZB) 7-5, 6-4</p><p>Alejandro Falla (COL) mn Alexandr Dolgopolov (UKR) 6-3, 3-6, 6-3</p><p>Igor Sijsling (NED) mn Feliciano Lopez (ESP) 7-6(0), 7-6(2)</p><p>Kei Nishikori (JAP) mn Albert Ramos (ESP) 6(5)-7, 6-2, 6-1</p><p>David Ferrer (ESP) mn Alex Bogomolov (RUS) 6-4, 6-2</p><p>Suku akhir beregu lelaki</p><p>------------------------</p><p>Colin Fleming/Ross Hutchins (GBR) mn Julian Knowle (AUT)/Filip Polasek (SVK)</p><p>6-3, 2-6, 10-4</p><p>Mariusz Fyrstenberg/Marcin Matkowski (POL) mn Vasek Pospisil (CAN)/Sanam</p><p>Singh (IND) 4-6, 6-3, 10-5</p><p>Alexander Peya (AUT)/Bruno Soares (BRA) mn Nikolay Davydenko (RUS)/Dick</p><p>Norman (BEL) 6-3, 6-3</p><p>Daniele Bracciali (ITA)/Marcelo Melo (BRA) mn Michael Kohlmann/Frank Moser</p><p>(GER) 7-6(3), 6-4 </p><p>-- BERNAMA</p><p>AHS AHS SN</p>Alexander Wang Remains The King Of Casual Chic

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<p>Pale shades were highly dramatic on Rooney Mara (Givenchy couture), Gwyneth Paltrow (white Tom Ford), Cameron Diaz (Gucci premiere) and Jennifer Lopez.</p>Getty <p>Oscar nominee Michelle Williams caused jaws to drop when she stepped on the 2006 Oscar red carpet wearing a mustard yellow Vera Wang gown with her then-boyfriend, the late actor Heath Ledger. The color -- initially panned, practically reviled -- became the hottest hue in Hollywood and she was then annointed a fashion-forward It Girl for her brave choice.</p>our editor recommendsOscar Fashion: Jessica Chastain Rules the Red Carpet in Alexander McQueen (Poll)

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グッチ 通販 激安 | 2013/10/09 09:38

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グッチ 財布 レディース 二つ折り | 2013/10/09 08:12

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CHLOE 財布 激安 | 2013/10/09 06:01

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ルイヴィトン 激安 財布 | 2013/10/09 06:00

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CHANEL 財布 2つ折り | 2013/10/09 05:01

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フェンディ 財布 | 2013/10/09 00:59

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ルイヴィトン キーケース ヴェルニ | 2013/10/09 00:57

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ルイヴィトン ダミエ バッグ | 2013/10/09 00:56

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MCM リュック | 2013/10/09 00:56

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ルイヴィトン タイガ 新作 | 2013/10/09 00:55

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ルイヴィトン 新作 | 2013/10/09 00:55

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ルイヴィトン バッグ トート | 2013/10/08 22:42

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カルティエ 時計 | 2013/10/08 10:27

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gucci 財布 メンズ 激安 | 2013/10/08 05:16

A Corey Stanley kick into the corner for Kenny Everson compensated off for Wellington they usually led 106 ahead of a bullocking 20m operate by Darren Toomey resulted with the aged prop scoring beneath the posts and CYMS have been in front 1210.
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ルイヴィトン メンズ 財布 | 2013/10/08 05:15

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