Kirsty Hume's Fashion Comeback

Kirsty Hume is making a fashion return. The model - who was shooting Chanel campaigns when many current catwalk faces were shooting, well, nothing but baby snaps - is back with a vengeance, and this time she has even bigger plans.

"This career just sort of happened back then, so I was like, 'OK' and did it. I think that happens to a lot of girls who have another plan; mine was art," the Ayrshire-born, LA-based beauty told us. "Now, I would love to develop a knitwear line. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time actually. I studied permaculture in northern California and I feel that I can combine that interest in sustainability - as well as my arty side, I've always painted - with my fashion experience. Plus, I'm a big knitter. I have lots of plans in the pipeline."

Famous for noting that the most exciting part of her modelling life was "the money", Hume has always been - to all intents and purposes - a reluctant supermodel, but the next decade will be anything but, she asserts. Famous by 18 and expecting her daughter at 27, she was credited as having "retired" after a decade in the business, but explains that she actually never consciously removed herself from fashion - she just slowly begun saying "no" to more jobs than she said "yes" to; a concept that many a previously career-driven new mother can relate to. But, now that Hume's daughter Violet is 10 - and is securing her own modelling work with brands like Zara thanks to her inherited good looks - it's time to turn her attention back to her career.

Kirsty Hume

"I think being in LA, just from a very practical point of view, contributed to the perception that I was 'retiring' from fashion because I was just that much further away from the hub and everything that was happening," she said. "But also, I had my daughter. I spent 10 years very focused on her and now I've begun thinking, what do I want the next 10 years to look like? What do I want to do?"

At 38, Hume still retains the same sense of otherness that set her apart as a model in the Nineties. The only Scot on the New York scene; the only long-haired, fairy-pure wood nymph in a sea of grungy club kids; the only 19-year-old emanating wisdom to rival your grandmother, she has always been different. She shifts uncomfortably at any suggestion she is special - any mention of her beauty makes her visibly cringe - but one topic makes her eyes sparkle: her homeland.

"I've always missed Scotland," she nodded. "I grew up on the beach. I miss the cold, fresh air, and the wind! I have a picture on my desk in LA of me and my mum and my brother on Ayr beach, with jackets up to our eyes, smiling away. It's the first thing I do when I get home; just go to the beach and breathe some fresh air. I was standing outside my dad's house a few nights ago and the wind was amazing. Just having my feet planted on the earth in Scotland, it feels like I'm home. My dad thinks I'm crazy!"

She has a quality of the Scottish literary heroine about her - calling to mind Sunset Song's Chris Guthrie with her talk of "the land" - and how alien she feels in LA is almost palpable, slight California twang notwithstanding. Hume's memories of Scotland often describe her mother - windswept and smiling, who she lost as a teenager - and err on the wholesome and affectionate side, as only someone who left their hometown before boredom and disaffection set in can do. Her daughter, with soon-to-be ex-husband Donovan Leitch, is as American as apple pie, however, and it's clear that the thought of removing her from her native country in order that Hume can begin the next phase of her life weighs heavy on the model's mind.

"I'm really ready to leave LA," she admitted. "Violet's dad is from there, and she has lived there for the past 10 years, but I definitely think a lot about coming home to Scotland. My dad is 80 now... and I'm sad that my daughter is growing up with no sense of my culture."

Flipping through images of Hume - who was walking in the Victoria's Secret show alongside Gisele Bündchen and Stephanie Seymour, or for Gianni Versace at the Ritz in Paris, while many fashion names were still at school - provokes awe for many; obsessed with the stories, relationships and memories that must have been forged in such a seminal time, but Hume retains a down-to-earth absence of nostalgia about the era.

"I didn't really understand why  Victoria´s Secret wanted me.¨she shrugged. "I'm not exactly a classic lingerie girl, I didn't think. I'm quite a quiet person and not really someone who relishes being dressed up and put on a stage... I became a face of Chanel beauty when I was 19 and it feels like another life when I think about it now, but in many ways it felt like another life even then! 'Where am I?! What am I doing?!' I never really made a decision to leave fashion, but this definitely feels like a conscious return. I'm ready to embrace my life, in several different ways, and stepping back into modelling and fashion is a big part of that. I'm back!"

Valentino's Couture Road Trip

Valentino is taking its couture show on the road - and the label's designers, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, are in for a busy couple of months as a result. The Paris-based brand will travel to New York in December to present the offering as it opens its Fifth Avenue store, before showing as usual in Paris in January during Couture Week.

Then, come July, the designers will travel to Rome - their home town and alma mater - to host a couture show to coincide with another flagship store opening, in the ancient Italian city. The label plans to return to Paris for the couture shows in January 2016.

Valentino

Fashion commentators - including The New York Time´s Vanessa Friedman - have interpreted the news as yet another signal that the traditional couture show schedule, and all that goes with it, is losing traction, and that brands are focusing on putting themselves where the customers are.

"The choice is important because the brand, led by the Valentino chief executive Stefano Sassi, is one of the mainstays of the ever-shrinking Paris couture schedule," Friedman notes. "Its exquisite shows are among the most highly anticipated of the week, along with Chanel, Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier and Armani Privé. Valentino's willingness to go its own way, even if just for a season, would have to give fellow fashionistas pause."

With Dolce & Gabbana already showing couture in Italy - the designers' home market and inspiration for many of their collections - and now Valentino following suit, we may soon see other brands take the couture show on the road in pursuit of new business for the age-old art.

Lawsuits Loom For J Crew and Abercrombie

J Crew is the latest high-profile retailer to have legal proceedings brought against it, this time regarding a disagreement concerning unpaid overtime.

Former employee Andrew Duberry, who worked for the company between 2010 and 2013, alleges that the fashion brand refused to pay him appropriately for extra hours that he worked and "engaged in a uniform policy and systematic scheme of wage abuse against their hourly paid or nonexempt employees within the State of California and the policy of denying wages for off-the-clock work and missed meal breaks means that store employees were often not paid minimum wage", reports The Fashion Law. According to the lawsuit, approximately 250 more California store employees are also due compensation for overtime hours worked.

Abercrombie & Fitch

The case coincides with a similar legal action brought against Abercrombie & Fitch by former employee Samantha Jones, who worked for its Hollister label from December 2005 to January 2014. She alledges that the brand "as a matter of corporate policy, practice and procedure, intentionally, knowingly and systematically failed to compensate plaintiff and the class members for all hours worked (for on-call time), and undercompensated them for overtime worked that should have been paid at overtime rates had the on-call time been paid for."

J Crew declined to comment on the litigation this morning, while Abercrombie & Fitch could not be reached.

Rihanna's Luxury Shopping Spree

Rihanna´s support for Tom Ford, turned into a luxury spending spree last night, as the singer presented the designer with amfAR's Inspiration Award - before helping the charity herself by bidding on several luxury auction items.

She paid $35,000 for a pair of Harry Winston diamond link earrings featuring 72 diamonds set in platinum, and $100,000 on the photograph "Elizabeth Taylor at the Eden Roc" by Willy Rizzo, signed and numbered by the artist.

Rihanna

"Everyone looks good in Tom Ford," she said,as everyone applauded. "Throughout his career, Tom has been committed to giving back to the community. He has been, and continues to be, a dedicated supporter of the fight against AIDS. He's been a generous friend to amfAR for many years, and is a loyal supporter of the Elton John AIDS Foundation. 

Over the past 20 years, Tom Ford has been honoured with every major fashion award there is. Tonight, we honour him both for his incredible talent and for what he stands for. We honour him for inspiring us with his creative genius, his leadership, his integrity, and his generosity. We honour him for doing good while making us look good."

Indian Textile Mills Accused Of Forced Labour

Five textile mills in the Tamil Nadu area of India - linked indirectly to several high-profile high-street retailers including H&M, Primark and C&A - have been accused of forced labour in a report entitled "Flawed Fabrics".

The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) and the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) are responsible for the report, which was compiled "through a mixture of desk research and interviews on the ground with workers employed at five Tamil Nadu spinning mills". It concludes "that several core labour rights are being violated. Girls and young women are being lured from their home villages by false promises and are working under appalling conditions amounting to forced labour" - a practice known as the Sumangali Scheme.

The mills in question are Best Cotton Mills; Jeyavishnu Spintex, the knitwear manufacturer named KM Knitwear; Premier Mills, part of The Premier Group; Sulochana Cotton Spinning Mills, a part of The Sulochana Group; and Super Spinning Mills, part of the Sara Elgi Group, reports WWD.

In most cases the mills are used by the retailers' suppliers who order yarn, meaning that there is no direct link, however many companies that are associated with the mills have announced that they plan to take action immediately.

H&M have announced it is to "blacklist" Super Spinning Mills, saying that "as this third-tier spinning mill is unwilling to cooperate with H&M in a transparent way and since we have come so far in our transparency work, we see no other option... this will mean that H&M requires that our suppliers do not order yarn from this spinning mill for H&M orders".

Workers Protest Over Conditions

Primark said that it will work with Jeyavishnu Spintex to implement the "Fair Hiring, Fair Labour" programme that it has established with Verité, an international NGO and member of the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking. Meanwhile C&A, who is linked to Best Cotton, said that "Sumangali is completely unacceptable and could result in the termination of a relationship should we find that the system exists in our suppliers' operations," although noted that "it will not be possible to abolish the system" unless it has the support of its local partners.

The report comes as there is increasing pressure on all companies sourcing fabrics and clothing from the region to enforce safe and fair working conditions for the workers involved following several disasters, including the collapse of  Bangladesh´s Rana Plaza in April 2013, which killed more than 1,130 people.

Pierre Bergé's Big Book Sale

Pierre Berge is having another cultural de-clutter, and this time he has turned his attention to auctioning his personal library that includes works spanning from the 15th century to modern day.

Highlights from the anthology - which comprises more than 1,000 manuscripts and books - include a first edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island dated 1883, and works in their original languages by the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare and James Joyce and their contemporaries.

The move comes five years after Berge raised $500 million from auctioning off the expansive art collection - which included pieces by Matisse, Picasso and Gainsborough - that he had accumulated with his partner  Yves Saint Laurent. Before he met Saint Laurent, Bergé was a well-known antiquarian book dealer in Paris.

Yves and Berger

A selection of lots will go on display next autumn in New York, London, Geneva and Moscow, reports  WWD. Before seven themed sales take place in the French capital led by Pierre Bergé & Associates in collaboration with Sotheby's.

A selection of lots will go on display next autumn in New York, London, Geneva and Moscow, reports WWD. before seven themed sales take place in the French capital led by Pierre Bergé & Associates in collaboration with Sotheby's.

Beyoncé And Topshop Launch Activewear

Beyonce is launching an activewear label with Topshop, including "clothing, footwear and accessories across dance, fitness and sports categories". The singing superstar has created a 50-50 partnership with the British retailer, listed as Parkwood Topshop Athletic Ltd, to produce an athletic streetwear brand, which is - as yet - unnamed.

"I could not think of a better partner as I continue to grow the Parkwood business. I have always loved Topshop for its fashion credentials and forward thinking," Beyoncé said in a statement today. "Working with its development team to create and produce a technical and fashion-led collection is exciting and I'm looking forward to participating in all aspects of this partnership."

Beyonce

Philip Green - owner of Arcadia, which operates Topshop - was keen to distinguish this venture from other high-profile brand-celebrity collections on the market, noting that this is a "partnership" rather than a conventional collaboration.

"We have been looking at this category as fashion-inspired fitness develops, and know that this is right in our customers' heartland," Green said. "Creating a partnership with Beyoncé, one of the most hard-working and talented people in the world, who spends many hours of her life dancing, rehearsing and training is a unique opportunity to develop this category. Being partners with Beyoncé and her team, who have the greatest creative energy and enthusiasm, is inspiring for all of the team at Topshop. We have much to achieve in just under a year, but we are all up for the challenge, and look forward to delivering athletic streetwear in an inventive and exciting way."

Topshop confirmed that Green intends to hire a separate team to run the Beyoncé activewear label, including a creative director and designers.