Vivre Magazine.com

You have watched them, you have listened to them now you can dress like them. We have had heroin chic, grunge, rocker chic and just about every fashion era there is. So, why not Polygamy chic?

High-collared, long-sleeved dresses, loose trousers and modest blouses are now available online at a special clothing store launched by the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

 The controversial breakaway Mormon group, led by Warren Jeffs, was recently raided and investigated by Texan authorities who removed 440 children from the Church’s compound after it was alleged girls were being sexually abused and forced into under-age marriage.

 FLDS member Maggie Jessop said there had been a  flood of interest as the clothes were simple, modest and home made. Get in line, ladies!

The children have since been returned to their mothers, due to lack of evidence, but the women have been advised to stay away from the Church’s compound while the investigation continues.

It means they must now earn their own money to rent apartments and cover living costs, so 20 of them have launched a website, offering a range of handmade children’s clothes that they created for their offspring while they were being kept in foster homes.

We think the plan is to make everyone wear these clothes since we were all so fascinated by them at the trial. The site offers a range of Church-branded clothes including dresses, overalls, nightgowns, sleepers, babygros and even ankle-to-wrist underwear. When demand is high enough, women’s clothing will be added. (Times)

Okay, the haute couture shows are on in Paris and that is seriously huge fashion business. Other than that, it is pretty slow here on earth. There are only so many bankruptcies and management changes one wishes to read about. 

Obama is the democratic nominee already and talking about that again or how he got there would be whipping a dead horse, which the TV stations are already doing.

Michelle Obama has also been talked to death and Lord knows, Cindy McCain does not do or say ANYTHING!

So, what to talk about?  The Wall Street Journal is NOW! talking about the Vogue Italia All-Black issue.Come on guys, this is fashion, you are arriving at the party sooooo late. That was LIKE so 5 minutes ago! According to WSJ ”the spotlighting of black models in a grouping of their own — not integrated with any other races — could have unintended implications. The issue also fails to recognize any other ethnicity’s that are underrepresented in fashion.

Jourdan Dunn - Givenchy Haute Couture Fall 09

Can a single edition of one magazine cause an historic breakthrough?

Apparently not! Dior, which uses the most models by showing 45 looks on 45 girls, used only one Asian model,Hye Park, and a single black model, Chanel Iman , who has been the industry’s designated “black girl” for a few seasons now. Remember when it was Naomi.

“It’s a slippery slope towards reversing the kinds of problems that the magazine was trying to overcome by making this gesture,” says John L. Jackson, Jr., a professor of media analysis at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. “The danger is that all [the editors] have done is find a different way to single out the difference of European beauty, by marking off these racialized bodies in their own special issue.”

You know what, no-one is going to be happy, ever! but not to worry, Professor Johnson, the Vogue Italia is just a thought, a great gesture. That the agencies, designers and magazines will change anything and evrything all of a sudden.  You gotta be kidding! Just check out the couture shows. They already picked up their token black model - Chanel Iman.

On June 11, BET  ran a segment called “Fashion Blackout” which we are sure not so many people watched.

“After keeping its silence on the issue, the Black Fashion World is moving to action after last fall’s shows at New York’s fashion week.  Their mission is to keep Black models from becoming extinct in a business they, at one time, were near dominating. So why have images of Black models been in sharp decline in high fashion for more than a decade?  - Bethan Hardison

What does this mean for society at large? At the helm of the issue is Bethann Hardison who has modeled, run her own modeling agency and handled casting over the years.

At her recent town hall meeting, “Out of Fashion: The Absence of Color,” she said, “In the United States of America, this is the one industry that still has the freedom to refer to people by their color and reject them in their work.”

Yep, once again, check out the current runways. Nothing has changed. Aside from DSquared2 who used black male models exclusively, it was pretty much the same issue.

Designers such as Givenchy who uses black models as much as Yves St. Laurent did is still the only designer who featured a rainbow coalition of models. Armani used not a single black model, and only one Asian, Ai Tominaga.  Chanel followed the same template using only Liu Wen.

According to Targetmarket News.com, Black women in the United States spend more than $20 billion on apparel each year.  However, the runways, magazine spreads and the image/beauty industry at large is increasingly ignoring their buying power and their existence, choosing instead to market an eastern-European form of beauty as the standard.

Liu Wen - Chanel Haute Couture 2009 (Photo: courtesy Style.com)

 Maybe, just maybe the $20 billion is not spent on designer wear and couture. Having said that, the biggest buyer of couture is the Middle East and we cannot recall any moment when there was a representation of Arab looking models.

At the spring 2008 collections at Fashion Week in September 2007 in New York, the runways were dominated by white faces.  In fact, Black faces were more absent from the runways than some fashion insiders have seen since the ‘60s.

Lacroix chose to use a completely Caucasian cast. It took Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci to acknowledge the issue at all, choosing to open his show with (gasp!) a South Asian model, Bangalore model Lakshmi Menon, immediately followed by black models and Vogue Italia cover girls Jourdan Dunn and Sessilee Lopez.

With the exception of the Middle East, there seems to be a direct correlation between the world billionaires list and the representation of the nationality on the catwalks.

After saying that, we don’t completely get the Eastern European model thing. We don’t understand the over representation on the catwalk.

Lakshmi Menon- Givenchy Haute Couture Fall 09

If you are like most of us, all those self promises we made back in January are looking a little distant. I will wear a bikini this summer becomes, okay, maybe a two piece. Alright, I think I’ll just get myself a tankini.

If you are not going to reach Liz Hurley-swimsuit-splendour before you hit the sun lounger though, there are a few things you can do to look and feel several times more gorgeous - however short your countdown. Here is a little action plan.

We have put together things you can do at home after work so that you don’t have to worry if you can’t get to the Spa right this minute.

 FACE

Whatever you do, don’t forget your eyebrows. Since your make up wearing will be at minimum, the best way to present your face to the world is now resting squarely on your eyebrows. Get professional eyebrows with the Brow Shaping Stencil Arch

HANDS AND FEET
A mani-pedi is a prerequisite for leaving your house never mind going to the beach. If you are a die-hard french manicure girl, here’s a product you should have on hand at all times.
KISS Salon Results Sheer Pink French Manicure Nail Kit for Tips & Toes Custom Fit Guides Included (Model: FMK02). For the rest of us, we’ll file and use clear nail varnish. 

GYM AND DIET

Fitness experts insist you can make pleasing changes to your body in less than a month.

“If you want to make a difference in three weeks, you don’t have to go to the gym every day for two hours,” he says. “Just focus on moving as much as possible: running and walking where you can, burning calories that you wouldn’t otherwise. Even if you are only going up the stairs, squeeze your bum and tighten the core muscles in your abs and lower back.

“If you can get to a gym, go for the machines you least like - they are probably the ones that work you the hardest. Stair and rowing machines are good for toning. Try to do 30 minutes of hard cardio each time.”

One week of intensive activity works, don’t go to bed on a full stomach,  have your last meal before 7pm. If you cut out heavy carbohydrates, you can get rid of water retention - and bloating.”

Whether you need to Lose Inches or get a total body lift, whatever you do, great skin is vital.

TREATMENTS-A glow is a must before you hit the beach but don’t overdo the sun thing. This bronzer by Clarins should do just fine.

No one seems to possess quite the arsenal  of body care items like Clarins. For seemingly all stubborn cellulite problems, -  Strengthen skin cells and connective tissue, the true causes of cellulite. Safe and effective program - Real Results!  Its guaranteed to work.

Elemis’s Body Sculpting Cellulite and Colon Therapy also banishes water retention and bloating with its unique abdominal massage. It’s been described as a non-invasive form of colonic irrigation that makes you look and feel lighter. A month-long course is recommended, but you’ll feel a difference if you have a couple of treatments in one week. Elemis Body Care, 200ml/6.8oz Body Sculpting Lipo-Refining Serum for Women is also very effective

We are not for popping pills whether they are guaranteed to work or not but if you are open to the idea, check out Lipozene.com.

Remember the scene in Sex and the City where Miranda was cultivating the National Forest, don’t let that be you. Try MOOM Organic Hair Removal Kit with Lavender  for a quick at home bikini wax

SWIMSUITS

If your thighs are really truly too rippled to bare, there’s always next season. Endomologie or Mesotherapy (a popular from of cellulite therapy in France) treatments are great. Try a home version with DDF Mesojection Healthy Cell Serum.  For now, try a great sarong. A little or a lot of Beach bling always helps. It distracts from the thighs and belly.

The couture dresses are stunning beyond belief. Pity most of us regular humans do not have an abundance of places to wear such creations. Check out more Gaultier pics.

Vogues’ Anna Wintour apparently has committed the biggest fashion blunder there ever was. Or is she making a statement? We think its the latter. Wintour is known for her impeccable sense of style. She wore the same dress three times… gasp!

This is not the first time Ms. Wintour has made waves by wearing the same dress over and over again. She did so with a Prada red/white gingham dress in February.

The Telegraph reports ,Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue, is so attached to this floral shift dress by US designer Carolina Herrera that she appears determined to give it a repeat airing.

She first wore it for Milan Fashion Week on June 22 as she perched in the front row of the Salvatore Ferragamo show.

Five days later, Wintour was sporting the dress at Wimbledon, where she took up a seat in the Royal Box to watch her favourite player, Roger Federer, on Centre Court.

Finally, fashion watchers were startled to see the dress making yet another outing at Paris Fashion Week, this time accessorised with statement jewellery and sunglasses during the Karl Lagerfeld show for Chanel.

The dress, from Herrera’s resort collection, has been modified especially for her. Would you consider this a fashion sin or just a practicality that is never seen in fashion?.

Go Anna, we ain’t mad at you. If you can do it, so can we.

After viewing the runways and catwalks for this seasons spectacular designs, we realized the designers are under so much pressure to show a collection that sometimes they just “hash”stuff together. A lot of incredibly stupid or vain designs or both stupid and vain then make their way to the catwalk.

The abundance of manbags, pom poms, ribbons etc on the mens shows were just an example. After all is said and done, the edited version is presented to the public. All in an effort to make the designers look good and the rest of us feel we so not worthy.

Here are some of fashions not so bright ideas. Please offer your opinion.

ANNE VALERIE HASH

The ultimate in accessories. Who needs earrings when you can have a helmet attached to your shoulder. Ms. Hash, no offence but you may want to drop the last name.

PAUL SMITH

Believe it or not, this stuff was on the runway. What wicked inspiration!

GEORGES HOBEIKA

Now, keep folding, till it resembles a skirt. Then bind her legs and make sure she cannot walk. This must look as uncomfortable as you can make it look. Brilliant!!!! Just Perfect!!

JOHN GALLIANO FOR DIOR

Now, how did we say you could disguise that belly.

STEPHANE HOLLAND

The baby doll grew up and went couture. No, its a skirt! on a dress. Now, if you think the top is not worthy of attracting attention, pin something resembling a black giant spider on it. No wonder, the poor model looks dazed.

GEORGIO ARMANI

Mr. Armani Sir, Mr Armani…… Nobody kind of wears their hair like this anymore, sir.

GALLIANO FOR DIOR

Isn’t this just precious. Pad your belly and double its size. Why the heck have you been starving yourself for all these years?  You could just have said “Darling, Its couture!”

Korean designer WOOYUNG MI 

The gladiators proved to be such a hit last year, lets see what else we can do to improve it. Lets put the feet in plastic shoes and it will be fun to see sweat trickle down.

Ebay is to appeal against a ruling in the French court yesterday, which ordered the online auction site to pay €38.6 million Euros (£30.6 million) to luxury goods group LVMH, for allowing the sale of fake goods.

Yesterday the French court ruled that Ebay must pay the fine to LVMH for not doing enough to prevent the sale of fake LVMH goods on its site. LVMH had claimed damages of around €50m (£39.4m)Ebay said in a statement: “We will fight all these decisions in the name of Ebay users, and we have decided to appeal. If counterfeit goods are put up for sale on our site, we scrap them as soon as possible.”

Ebay continued: “Today’s [Monday's] decisions are not about fighting counterfeiting. It’s about LVMH’s desire to protect commercial practices that exclude all competition.”

Louis Vuitton Autumn 08/09

The ruling came one month after Ebay was ordered by another French court to pay handbag maker Hermes €20,000 (£15,769), for allowing the sale of fake Hermes products.

As Suzy Menkes states in the Herald, “It was time for Galliano to move from haute fantasy to fantastic haute couture and maybe it was the reality of dressing a beautiful woman for the modern world that has saved him from himself.

The models had stepped metaphorically down from their pedestals - even if the shoes were still fetishistic platforms of straps.

The full-skirted white coat that opened the show and a myriad of light cocktail dresses all created a parade of wearable ultra glamour (once you invested in a slip).

 
Nothing was mired in Dior’s history or heavy with the imprint of the past - although the ultimate in craftsmanship was a recreation of Dior’s famous Venus gown, its structure as light as the embroidered feathers.”
Is it possible not to be smitten by Carla Bruni?

Although this was theoretically a winter collection, the colors were poetic and summery, as black and white, like those Penn images, gave way to aquatints of eau de nil, lilac and lime.
For once, the star-studded front row, from the actress Liv Tyler to the singer Janet Jackson, were talking not about the extraordinary spectacle but the divine clothes.
And Bernard Arnault, who has supported Galliano through success and excess, must have been as pleased that Dior has come back to a rarefied reality as that the house has beat out its rivals in dressing Bruni Sarkozy.
“Of course we are proud and honored to dress the first lady of France,” said Arnault. “But it is her choice - and she chose us.”
 
 
  

Okay, maybe we’re just a tad carried away but these shoes are just damn gorgeous.

Paris is elsewhere remembering Saint Laurent. At Roger Vivier, where the couture shoes have become an ever-more-complex distillation of craftsmanship into foot architecture embellished with flowers and feathers, the designer Bruno Frisoni created his own YSL commemoration: black shoes with a flat bow on the front and a re-creation of the wheat sheaves that were symbolically put on the late couturier’s coffin. (IHT)

This confirms that the rich are even less like you and I.

PARIS — One morning last January, a clutch of well-dressed women gathered outside the Christian Lacroix fashion house on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

But the occasion wasn’t a sample sale. Rather it was the day after Lacroix’s summer couture show, and some of the most privileged women in the world were anxious to get dibs on some of the most expensive clothes in the world.
“At 8:30, they’re in front of the door,” marveled Marie Martinez, the chic, silver-haired couture director at Lacroix. “They know that after it’s sold, it’s impossible to have. They want to be the first appointment.”

“The demand for very, very high-end products continues to be very strong,” agreed Sidney Toledano, president of Christian Dior, citing an increase in couture sales of more than 35 percent last year and a “strong double-digit” growth so far this year. “Very rich people are not suffering from the crisis. The workshops have been very busy,” he said.

 At Chanel, the team travels between two and three times a month to meet with clients for fittings or sales appointments, Pavlovsky said.

“We have to keep it totally exclusive, but there is no limit to the service in haute couture,” said Pavlovsky. “We are ready to go anywhere to see a customer. We are traveling more and more. Now when a customer needs something, we have to go to her.”

Over the past year, the Chanel team flew to Jamaica, Greece, Switzerland, the U.K., Russia, and several times to the Middle East for three major weddings.

“This clientele is very demanding and requires a lot of attention,” Caillaud at Gaultier agreed. “We can be asked to go to a boat in Monte Carlo, as well as to a chalet in Gstaad or a palace in Riyadh for just a day.” 

Middle Eastern clients are famous for requesting evening dresses they wear on only one occasion and also special wedding dresses. Gaultier makes an average of four to five wedding gowns a year, each requiring between 200 and 500 hours of work, Caillaud said.
Yep, Rub it in! (WWD)