We also think Marc Jacobs silhouette and top/skirt set is going to be one of the hottest new styles of clothing. Check out our hand-picked roundup of amazing polka dot finds below. Scoop a piece up today and be one step ahead of the trends.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Fashion Trend : Polka Dots
We couldn't help but notice the huge surge of polka dots on the fall 2011 runways. We've deemed them this year's stripe and we just had to share our polka love with you. Check out just eight of the shows where the dots made an appearance above. We love the LBD at Stella McCartney and Diane von Furstenberg got it totally right with her gorgeous piece.
We also think Marc Jacobs silhouette and top/skirt set is going to be one of the hottest new styles of clothing. Check out our hand-picked roundup of amazing polka dot finds below. Scoop a piece up today and be one step ahead of the trends.
We also think Marc Jacobs silhouette and top/skirt set is going to be one of the hottest new styles of clothing. Check out our hand-picked roundup of amazing polka dot finds below. Scoop a piece up today and be one step ahead of the trends.
Naughty Alice
Coming soon; The fictional adventures of our very own in company fashionista and mascot ‘Naughty Alice’.
Watch this space as Alice storms into the office clad in, as she details ‘ Intimidating wedges by Nine West, an Ironic smock by Balenciaga and Vermillion lip gloss’, no doubt fresh back from the Bar Mitzvah of John Galliano with Diane Von Furstenberg, to tell us the months low down from the style and party circuit.
Watch this space as Alice storms into the office clad in, as she details ‘ Intimidating wedges by Nine West, an Ironic smock by Balenciaga and Vermillion lip gloss’, no doubt fresh back from the Bar Mitzvah of John Galliano with Diane Von Furstenberg, to tell us the months low down from the style and party circuit.
Rafael Nadal Unveils Armani Underwear Campaign in New York
You've got to hand it to him, the guy's got balls...on and off the court.
Tennis champion, Rafael Nadal, has been stripping down once again for his second campaign with Emporio Armani.
The 25-year-old made an appearance at Macy's Herald Square in New York on Thursday 25 August, where he saw the new campaign photos for the first time.
The sports heart-throb was dressed head to toe in Armani as swarms of female fans chanted 'Rafa, Rafa', but the tennis ace wasn't bemused at all.
'It has happened a few times,' he said. 'It is nothing new for me.'
The tennis ace, who disappointed fans by keeping his top on, spoke proudly of working with the Italian designer label and how it had changed his style: 'Now that I’m working with Armani [it] is a new experience. It’s a different world that is very positive for me. I enjoy it a lot.'
The two new shots of the AW/11 campaign shows a polished Nadal wearing nothing but a pair of tight briefs and a smouldering stare in one photograph, and an unbuttoned pair of jeans in another.
He first modelled for the label back in January, but the news came as a shock to his fans who knew him for his shy and reserved attitude.
However, Nadal was quick to point out that he hasn't become fashion-obsessed, nor does his girlfriend, Maria Francisca Perello, offer him style advice. 'If I see something I like, I get it,' the Spanish player said.
His contract with Armani sees him follow in the footsteps of football players, David Beckham and Christiano Ronaldo.
But it's not just fashion that Nadal's interested in. With the start of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships being just days away, the sportsman has been busy practising on a daily basis, but he has also found time to catch a Broadway show in the form of Mamma Mia: 'The music was fabulous,' he said.
The champion is currently staying in a hotel near Central Park and has admitted he loves 'being around all the people' in the busy city, which is great as it means he can stand and admire his 20ft billboard all day long amongst the hustle and bustle of Manhattan. Perfect.
Tennis champion, Rafael Nadal, has been stripping down once again for his second campaign with Emporio Armani.
The 25-year-old made an appearance at Macy's Herald Square in New York on Thursday 25 August, where he saw the new campaign photos for the first time.
The sports heart-throb was dressed head to toe in Armani as swarms of female fans chanted 'Rafa, Rafa', but the tennis ace wasn't bemused at all.
'It has happened a few times,' he said. 'It is nothing new for me.'
The tennis ace, who disappointed fans by keeping his top on, spoke proudly of working with the Italian designer label and how it had changed his style: 'Now that I’m working with Armani [it] is a new experience. It’s a different world that is very positive for me. I enjoy it a lot.'
The two new shots of the AW/11 campaign shows a polished Nadal wearing nothing but a pair of tight briefs and a smouldering stare in one photograph, and an unbuttoned pair of jeans in another.
He first modelled for the label back in January, but the news came as a shock to his fans who knew him for his shy and reserved attitude.
However, Nadal was quick to point out that he hasn't become fashion-obsessed, nor does his girlfriend, Maria Francisca Perello, offer him style advice. 'If I see something I like, I get it,' the Spanish player said.
His contract with Armani sees him follow in the footsteps of football players, David Beckham and Christiano Ronaldo.
But it's not just fashion that Nadal's interested in. With the start of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships being just days away, the sportsman has been busy practising on a daily basis, but he has also found time to catch a Broadway show in the form of Mamma Mia: 'The music was fabulous,' he said.
The champion is currently staying in a hotel near Central Park and has admitted he loves 'being around all the people' in the busy city, which is great as it means he can stand and admire his 20ft billboard all day long amongst the hustle and bustle of Manhattan. Perfect.
Angelina Jolie Models For Louis Vuitton's 'Core Values'
After months of rumours and speculation, Angelina Jolie has been unveiled as the new face of Louis Vuitton’s Core Values campaign.
The image, shot by acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz shows the Hollywood star sitting barefoot in a wooden boat on a river in Cambodia, wearing everyday pieces from her own wardrobe, with her long dark locks in natural waves and her own weathered, monogrammed Louis Vuitton Alto bag slung over her shoulder.
The au natural look reflects the unspoilt setting of the Siem Reap province in Cambodia, where Jolie reportedly took her gorgeous brood of children to the photoshoot.
The campaign image, which was released today, is set to run for at least 18 months as part of the French fashion house’s Core Values initiative, which aims to promote travel and an awareness of global issues. Other stars who have posed for the cause include Bono, Catherine Deneuve and Sean Connery.
The image reaffirms Angelina’s long-standing love affair with Cambodia. The star fell in love with the South-East Asian country whilst filming the first Tomb Raider movie in 2000. She later adopted son Maddox from the country and she and partner, Brad Pitt set up the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which helps community development and conservation in the country.
The image, shot by acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz shows the Hollywood star sitting barefoot in a wooden boat on a river in Cambodia, wearing everyday pieces from her own wardrobe, with her long dark locks in natural waves and her own weathered, monogrammed Louis Vuitton Alto bag slung over her shoulder.
The au natural look reflects the unspoilt setting of the Siem Reap province in Cambodia, where Jolie reportedly took her gorgeous brood of children to the photoshoot.
The campaign image, which was released today, is set to run for at least 18 months as part of the French fashion house’s Core Values initiative, which aims to promote travel and an awareness of global issues. Other stars who have posed for the cause include Bono, Catherine Deneuve and Sean Connery.
The image reaffirms Angelina’s long-standing love affair with Cambodia. The star fell in love with the South-East Asian country whilst filming the first Tomb Raider movie in 2000. She later adopted son Maddox from the country and she and partner, Brad Pitt set up the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which helps community development and conservation in the country.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Matthew Terry For Vogue Hommes Japan F/W 2011
The Vogue Hommes Japan F/W 2011 cover featuring Ford Men’s Matthew Terry (Photographed by Branislav Jankic) surfaced early this week, reinforcing the buzz surrounding the 20-year-old Garden State native and VMAN 23 cover model.
The young male model who walked exclusively for the Versace Menswear P/E 2012 collection show in June claims his second cover, this time wearing gold chains and bracelet by, wait for it, Mugler and headpiece by Marianna Harutunian.
That’s already two magazine covers and neither have yet to even hit the newsstand. VMAN 23 will be available Thursday, 1 September and Vogue Hommes Japan F/W 2011 Saturday, 10 September.
The young male model who walked exclusively for the Versace Menswear P/E 2012 collection show in June claims his second cover, this time wearing gold chains and bracelet by, wait for it, Mugler and headpiece by Marianna Harutunian.
That’s already two magazine covers and neither have yet to even hit the newsstand. VMAN 23 will be available Thursday, 1 September and Vogue Hommes Japan F/W 2011 Saturday, 10 September.
 |
| Matthew Terry | Vogue Hommes Japan F/W 2011 (Photography: Branislav Jankic) |
Best Dressed Celebrity Of The Week
This week, it's hats' off to Catherine, Dutchess of Cambridge who remained consistant in her safe but classical element.
The future queen-in-waiting appeared sharp and elegant wearing Alexander McQueen during an opening ceremony at Summerfield Comminuty Centre, Birmingham, England.
Coco Chanel : Nazi Agent?
She was one of the most remarkable women of the 20th Century, but Coco Chanel's reputation is again under scrutiny over allegations that she was a Nazi agent in World War II France.
To millions of people around the globe Chanel stands for style, opulence and understated elegance, from haute couture worn by the few to ready-to-wear treasured by the masses.
Her achievements are undeniable. Chanel's instantly recognisable suits have been sported by stylistas from the Duchess of Windsor to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
Jackie Kennedy was wearing a pink version when JFK was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.
Did the creator of the little black dress have a little black secret?
And, the "little black dress", that byword for elegant simplicity as worn by Audrey Hepburn in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, has regularly topped polls for the most iconic of all items of clothing.
But there is another side to the story of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, and it concerns her actions in occupied France during World War II.
Like many luminaries, including the singers Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier, the writer Jean Cocteau and the late president Francois Mitterrand, Chanel remained in her native country following its occupation by German forces in the summer of 1940.
And since the war's end, rumours have abounded about the real nature of her association with the Nazis.
Now according to Hal Vaughan, author of the new book, Sleeping with the Enemy, Chanel is revealed as having actually worked for German military intelligence during the war.
Being a Nazi agent was "part of her daily life" in Paris during the occupation, he says.
"Chanel was a consummate opportunist. The Nazis were in power, and Chanel gravitated to power. It was the story of her life. "Chanel didn't believe in anything, except fashion. Chanel believed in beautiful clothes, she believed in her business and rightly so; she didn't care about Hitler or politics or Nazism."
Ensconced in the luxury of the Hotel Ritz, a privilege permitted to few non-Germans, Chanel, who had closed her shops in France at the outbreak of war, was in constant contact with the country's new Nazi overlords.
Key to the new allegations is her affair with the dashing 44-year-old German officer Baron Hans Guenther von Dincklage who, Vaughan says, "has been treated by every biographer as a kind of playboy tennis man".
"He wasn't. He was a professional Abwehr [German military intelligence] officer, who had been operating in France since the late 1920s.
"He manipulated Chanel, and Chanel manipulated him."
It was von Dincklage who arranged the 57-year-old Chanel's stay in the Ritz and who managed her business relations with the occupation authorities.
In return, Vaughan says, the Abwehr signed Chanel up as Agent F-7124, codenamed "Westminster" after a former lover, the second duke.
In a gavotte-like relationship, the feisty Chanel manoeuvred for the release of her nephew, Andre Palasse, from a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.
Beyond this, the Abwehr dangled before her the enticing prospect of taking control of the highly profitable Chanel perfume business, which she had licensed to the Jewish Wertheimer brothers in 1924.
Indeed, she did make a claim to the company under Nazi "Aryanisation" laws, not realising that the Wertheimers, by then safely in the United States, had handed control of the firm to a Christian.
While agreeing that Vaughan's book adds some new detail to Chanel's war years, the writer Justine Picardie, whose biography, Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life, was published last year, believes that Chanel's motives were "a bit more subtle and nuanced".
"Everything she did was a paradox. She was so contradictory. On the one hand, she did make anti-Semitic remarks. But then some of her best clients were Jewish, like the Rothschilds, and indeed her business partner was Jewish, and he continued to be her business partner after the war."
But what did Chanel really do as an agent? Well, after having been promised that her nephew would be released, it seems that she travelled to Madrid in August 1941 with the special dispensation of the Germans, in order to use her contacts to gain political intelligence.
According to a document cited by Vaughan, though, this visit only saw her exchanging banalities with a British diplomat who reported that: "the Germans cannot understand the French and this is making them hate them to the point that she, Mlle Chanel, is afraid of what will happen."
Vaughan readily accepts that Chanel was never a spy. "Espionage - you take photographs, you take documents. Chanel never did that," he says.
"She was a facilitator. She knew everybody in Spain, she knew everybody in England, and she helped out the Nazis." At the war's end Chanel, who fled to Switzerland, was spared from being tried as a collaborator. Vaughan says due to Churchill's intervention, others say because of the British royal family.
Returning to Paris in 1954, her re-establishment in the couture business was financed by none other than Pierre Wertheimer, one of the men she had sought to dispossess during the war.
Coco Chanel died, aged 87 in January 1971, appropriately enough in her wartime home, the Hotel Ritz in Paris.
War and conflict always reveals the survival instinct. Coco Chanel, who had risen from a Catholic orphanage to become the mistress of all she surveyed, was a born survivor.
To millions of people around the globe Chanel stands for style, opulence and understated elegance, from haute couture worn by the few to ready-to-wear treasured by the masses.
 |
| Coco Chanel at 42 years of age |
Her achievements are undeniable. Chanel's instantly recognisable suits have been sported by stylistas from the Duchess of Windsor to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
Jackie Kennedy was wearing a pink version when JFK was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.
Did the creator of the little black dress have a little black secret?
And, the "little black dress", that byword for elegant simplicity as worn by Audrey Hepburn in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, has regularly topped polls for the most iconic of all items of clothing.
But there is another side to the story of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, and it concerns her actions in occupied France during World War II.
 |
| Did the creator of the little black dress have a little black secret? |
Like many luminaries, including the singers Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier, the writer Jean Cocteau and the late president Francois Mitterrand, Chanel remained in her native country following its occupation by German forces in the summer of 1940.
And since the war's end, rumours have abounded about the real nature of her association with the Nazis.
Now according to Hal Vaughan, author of the new book, Sleeping with the Enemy, Chanel is revealed as having actually worked for German military intelligence during the war.
Being a Nazi agent was "part of her daily life" in Paris during the occupation, he says.
"Chanel was a consummate opportunist. The Nazis were in power, and Chanel gravitated to power. It was the story of her life. "Chanel didn't believe in anything, except fashion. Chanel believed in beautiful clothes, she believed in her business and rightly so; she didn't care about Hitler or politics or Nazism."
Ensconced in the luxury of the Hotel Ritz, a privilege permitted to few non-Germans, Chanel, who had closed her shops in France at the outbreak of war, was in constant contact with the country's new Nazi overlords.
Key to the new allegations is her affair with the dashing 44-year-old German officer Baron Hans Guenther von Dincklage who, Vaughan says, "has been treated by every biographer as a kind of playboy tennis man".
"He wasn't. He was a professional Abwehr [German military intelligence] officer, who had been operating in France since the late 1920s.
"He manipulated Chanel, and Chanel manipulated him."
It was von Dincklage who arranged the 57-year-old Chanel's stay in the Ritz and who managed her business relations with the occupation authorities.
In return, Vaughan says, the Abwehr signed Chanel up as Agent F-7124, codenamed "Westminster" after a former lover, the second duke.
In a gavotte-like relationship, the feisty Chanel manoeuvred for the release of her nephew, Andre Palasse, from a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.
Beyond this, the Abwehr dangled before her the enticing prospect of taking control of the highly profitable Chanel perfume business, which she had licensed to the Jewish Wertheimer brothers in 1924.
 |
| Audrey Hepburn's LBD by Givenchy sold for 410,000 pounds. |
Indeed, she did make a claim to the company under Nazi "Aryanisation" laws, not realising that the Wertheimers, by then safely in the United States, had handed control of the firm to a Christian.
While agreeing that Vaughan's book adds some new detail to Chanel's war years, the writer Justine Picardie, whose biography, Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life, was published last year, believes that Chanel's motives were "a bit more subtle and nuanced".
"Everything she did was a paradox. She was so contradictory. On the one hand, she did make anti-Semitic remarks. But then some of her best clients were Jewish, like the Rothschilds, and indeed her business partner was Jewish, and he continued to be her business partner after the war."
But what did Chanel really do as an agent? Well, after having been promised that her nephew would be released, it seems that she travelled to Madrid in August 1941 with the special dispensation of the Germans, in order to use her contacts to gain political intelligence.
 |
| Coco Chanel in 1929 |
According to a document cited by Vaughan, though, this visit only saw her exchanging banalities with a British diplomat who reported that: "the Germans cannot understand the French and this is making them hate them to the point that she, Mlle Chanel, is afraid of what will happen."
Vaughan readily accepts that Chanel was never a spy. "Espionage - you take photographs, you take documents. Chanel never did that," he says.
"She was a facilitator. She knew everybody in Spain, she knew everybody in England, and she helped out the Nazis." At the war's end Chanel, who fled to Switzerland, was spared from being tried as a collaborator. Vaughan says due to Churchill's intervention, others say because of the British royal family.
Returning to Paris in 1954, her re-establishment in the couture business was financed by none other than Pierre Wertheimer, one of the men she had sought to dispossess during the war.
Coco Chanel died, aged 87 in January 1971, appropriately enough in her wartime home, the Hotel Ritz in Paris.
War and conflict always reveals the survival instinct. Coco Chanel, who had risen from a Catholic orphanage to become the mistress of all she surveyed, was a born survivor.
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